Rev. Nick Cheek
Psalm 103: 1-12 and Matthew 18: 21-35
Scientists have spent years studying how forgiveness works, and they’ve uncovered some fascinating insights. Did you know… that animals know how to forgive? Scientists have observed reconciliation after conflict among chimpanzees, gorillas, goats, hyenas, and all sorts of other social animals. They approach one another, embrace, groom, and reconnect after a fight.
Cats, however, are more complicated. In fact, the only species that has so far failed to show outward signs of reconciliation are domestic cats. We have two cats, so I am not surprised. If our dog gets in trouble, she immediately seems to say with those puppy eyes, “Please forgive me. I love you.” But a cat can knock your glass off the counter in front of you, look you directly in the eyes, and say, “I have reviewed the incident and stand by my decision.”
Forgiveness is powerful. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of forgiveness, then you know what it feels like. It feels like freedom… it feels like love and grace. It seems the greater the need for forgiveness… the greater the feeling of gratefulness when you are forgiven. There are times when receiving forgiveness may have even brought you to tears… authentic tears of joy… tears because you realize you’re receiving something you may not really even deserve. Forgiveness. It has the power to heal marriages and friendships… it can bring the possibility of reconciliation even in the most helpless of situations. Forgiveness has the power to renew, to restore… it has the power to help people let go and move on.
Forgiveness is an incredible gift, but it doesn’t come easy. It is hard to practice. When someone hurts us, we remember. We remember what was said and what was done, who apologized and who did not, who showed up and who disappointed us. Our world often reinforces this type of accounting. We keep track of the offenses. We keep score. And if we are keeping score, it is human nature to start wondering: How many chances does this person get? How long do I have to keep on forgiving them?
This is Peter’s question… After listening to Jesus preach on reconciliation…. and grace… Peter thinks to himself… There must be some sort of limit to this. This can’t go on forever… that’s not how the world works. And so… he asks Jesus… “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Is that enough?
Peter, like the rest of us, wants to know the number. And Peter probably thinks seven is a pretty reasonable one. There was a rabbinic tradition in their time… that spoke of forgiving someone three times….so…. Peter more than doubles it. That sounds generous. Peter may have even expected Jesus to say, “Well done, Peter. You are VERY gracious…. Seven times is more than sufficient.” That is not what happens. Jesus challenges this assumption… , “Not seven times, Peter… but seventy-seven times.” In some translations it is read 70 times 7 or 490 times. Either way, Jesus isn’t giving Peter a new endpoint to forgiveness here… Instead… Jesus is gently moving Peter away from an understanding of forgiveness with limits… away from a forgiveness that asks, “How many chances does this person get before I can finally be done with them?” or “How many times do I have to forgive before I have earned the right to retaliate?”
Seventy – seven times. …. The number Jesus chooses here is relevant. He is not simply pulling it out of thin air. His words take us all the way back to Genesis, and one of the earliest stories about what happens when human beings begin keeping score with one another. He harkens back to the story of Cain and Abel – the first two sons of Adam and Eve. You may know the story. Cain becomes vengefully jealous of Abel… and that jealousy provokes him to anger and violence. Eventually Cain kills Abel. Afterward… God protects Cain from retaliation, warning that vengeance against Cain will be returned sevenfold. A few generations later, Cain’s descendant Lamech takes that language and escalates it. Lamech boasts that if Cain was protected sevenfold, then anyone who harms him will pay back seventy-sevenfold.”
The story of Lamech opens our eyes to a culture of escalating violence and a disregard for forgiveness. Lamech’s vision of the world is essentially this: if you hurt me or someone I love, I will hurt you more. If you strike my friend or me, I will repay you tenfold.
We know this system well, church. If someone says something about you, you make sure people hear something about them. If someone embarrasses you, you wait for the opportunity to do the same. In a similar way… if we have beef with someone, we can hold a grudge for years. We withdraw; we avoid. We show our disdain with cold shoulders… and the stink eye…. And all the while we keep the offense alive in our minds, replaying it again and again until anger begins to harden into bitterness.
On a grander stage… we see this with communities…. And nations. One act of violence is answered by another, and wounds of bitterness grow. We see it in places like Israel and Palestine, in the wars involving Iran, Hungary, Ukraine, and Russia…in conflicts around the world where histories of animosity and lack of grace or mercy… continue to perpetuate the cycle of keeping score. This morning… Jesus proposes a new way. While the way of Lamech and the way of the world imagine vengeance without limit. Jesus imagines forgiveness without limit. And it’s hard…
Corrie ten Boom (Bohm) knew the difficulties of forgiveness quite well. During World War II, she and her family helped hide Jews from the Nazis. Eventually, Corrie and her sister Betsie were arrested and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where Betsie eventually died. Corrie survived… and years later, while speaking in Germany about God’s forgiveness, a man approached her after the service. As he came toward her, she recognized him as one of the former guards at Ravensbrück.
The man told Corrie that he had since become a Christian and believed God had forgiven him for the terrible things he had done. Then he held out his hand and asked Corrie if she would forgive him. She couldn’t move… she was like a statue… While she had just preached about forgiveness, standing face-to-face with this man was something altogether different. She writes about the encounter in her book, The Hiding Place, “…to me it seemed like hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do. For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience.
Since the end of the war, I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained [emotionally and mentally stunted]. And so I stood there with coldness clutching my heart. “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.” And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. “I forgive you, brother!” I cried.
Corrie’s choice to forgive did not change what had happened. It did not bring her sister, Betsie, back, nor did it make the horrors of Ravensbrück any less evil. Corrie’s forgiveness was a refusal to let the evil done to her determine the person she would become. Corrie refused to answer hurt with more hurt, vengeance with more vengeance… or to spend the rest of her life keeping score.
Years after Corrie’s story, theologian Lewis Smedes reflected on it and described the freedom of forgiveness this way: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was me.” Perhaps that is part of what happens when we finally stop keeping score. We discover that forgiveness is not only about releasing the person who has harmed us…. But releasing ourselves as well…. From carrying the harm… and the bitterness… forever.
Friends… Maybe there is someone in your life or sitting in this sanctuary whom you need to see differently. Maybe there is an old hurt you have carried long enough…. Maybe there is a conversation you are avoiding that needs to happen… or an apology that needs to be offered… maybe there is somewhere within yourself that forgiveness needs to grow… and begin. Friends… church should be one of the places where the world can see that another way of living together is actually possible. Not because we never hurt one another. We will. Not because we always get it right. We won’t. But because, by the grace of God, we believe forgiveness is more powerful than vengeance.
So I ask you… the same question Peter poses this morning… How long can we continue keeping score? And to the question, Jesus answers… not with a number… but with an action. “Put the scorecard down.”
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the holy spirit… Amen