"Forgiveness in Deed and Truth" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | September 13, 2020

Proper 19, Year A | September 13, 2020

Genesis 50:15-21
Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35

Between the words the words that I speak, and the words that are heard, may God’s spirit be present. Amen.

When you think of forgiveness, what - or who - do you think of? I have this sneaking suspicion that all of us, at any given time, can think of someone who we seek forgiveness from, or perhaps someone we wish would say they are sorry, so that we can forgive them. Whether it’s a parent, sibling, friend, teacher, stranger. All of us have been hurt, and all of us have hurt others. When you think of forgiveness, what do you think of? When you think of forgiveness, who do you think of?

For my own part, I will say that the topic of forgiveness always brings to mind the same three people: my stepmother, and my two step sisters. In this age of sermons that are inevitably filmed and posted online, I wondered, briefly, whether I should admit this in a sermon - in case, by some outlandish coincidence or rare connection, my former stepfamily might watch this video and wonder why on earth I’m still talking about them, after all these years. I bring them up now not to complain about past wrongs, but rather to reflect on how my feelings towards them have changed. I bring them up now to reflect on forgiveness.

Here are the facts: when I was 12 years old my dad got remarried, and my family briefly doubled in size for the span of about three years. As a young teenager who had just acquired two stepsisters around my age, in addition to my own two sisters, we stumbled into all kinds of conflict. I remember arguing about time spent in the bathroom, time spent at the computer, time spent at the piano, time spent with our friends… basically, we argued about a lot of things that we shared, not realizing that in the end our time together was limited. Our parents got divorced and we went our separate ways, easing into lives that were in many ways much easier, much happier, apart.

At this point, it’s practically impossible for me to identify any single grievance that I still hold against my stepsisters. And yet up until a few years ago, I still had a gnawing feeling of resentment, as if some parts of our relationship were still unresolved. That resentment has shifted, and changed over the years. It was initially quite strong, and I thought about my stepsisters a lot during college with anger, or jealousy, or other feelings that generally hurt my soul. But over time these feelings faded - no, not faded, they healed - and that is a process that I have since come to understand as forgiveness.

How does that happen? How could I forgive my stepsisters without even being in contact with them anymore? 

The answer to these questions can be found, I think, in our gospel passage for today - which is all about forgiveness. Forgiveness shows up in two distinct ways in today’s gospel reading - first, in Jesus’ response to Peter’s question; and second, in the parable of the unforgiving servant. 

In the first instance, Peter asks Jesus: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus replies, “Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.” This first exploration of forgiveness seems to be about quantity. How many times? Peter asks, and he wants a specific answer. Jesus gives him what he asks for - sort of - because while Jesus responds with a concrete number, 77, that number has a symbolic meaning in Jewish and Christian culture which makes it more than the sum of its parts. Seven is a number of perfection, completion, the number of days in the week. The symbolic significance of this answer, and the fact that 77 is just a really large number, suggest that we shouldn’t be putting a quantitative limit on the number of times that we are ready to forgive. Instead, we ought to forgive generously.

After this answer Jesus proceeds to tell a parable. In this story, a servant is deeply in debt to a king. After pleading for mercy, the king grants his request and forgives the servant’s debt. That same day the servant encounters another servant, a man who was indebted to him. The newly debt-free servant refuses to forgive what the other man owes him, denying to others the same kind of forgiveness that he himself was shown. There is an ironic connection between Peter’s question, which asks how many times we should forgive, and Jesus’ parable, which shows just how hard it is to forgive - even once! It’s as if the first part of today’s reading is about the quantity of forgiveness, and the second part of today’s reading is about the quality of forgiveness. It’s not enough to simply forgive someone else in word or deed. We have to let ourselves be changed by the process. In other words, forgiveness is not just about quantity. It’s also about quality - the degree to which we are willing to change, and be changed, by the act of forgiving.

These two perspectives on forgiveness from the gospel remind me of my own, lived experience with forgiving my stepsisters. At some point along the way my forgiveness for them stopped being about quantity - that itemized list of grievances I might have held over their heads a few years ago - and instead it started being about quality; how I allowed my thoughts and feelings to change towards those who hurt me in the past.

Forgiveness isn’t just about the decision to forgive. It is also about the transformation that occurs within us. Contemporary research about forgiveness, done by social scientists, reinforces this fact. For example, Robert Enright and Everett Worthington are two researchers who have written extensively on the topic of forgiveness. Their funder, the John Templeton foundation, introduces their insights in this way:

“Forgiving itself is… seen as more nuanced than it was 15 years ago. Rather than treating forgiveness as a generic process, many researchers are differentiating a decision to forgive from emotional forgiveness. A decision to forgive is primarily a decision to try to act differently toward the offender and, not seeking payback, treating the person as a valuable and valued person. Many people struggle with deciding to forgive, but once the decision is made, it is made-- like turning on a light. On the other hand, emotional forgiveness is the (usually) gradual replacement of unforgiving emotions like resentment, bitterness, or anger with positive other-oriented emotions like empathy or compassion for the offender. Emotional forgiveness means that unforgiveness gradually lessens until neutrality is reached.”

While the Templeton Foundation claims a sea-change in the study of forgiveness over the past 15 years, I think it’s possible to see these distinctions of decisional forgiveness and emotional forgiveness in the words of Jesus, spoken thousands of years ago. Decisional forgiveness is important - it’s that moment when the king forgives his servant’s debts and the impact is immediate, tangible, and real. Decisional forgiveness is the reason that Peter asks Jesus, how many times should we forgive, as if the act of forgiveness is a decision, a moment.

And yet emotional forgiveness is important too. Emotional forgiveness is what happens when the king in the parable opens his heart to the servant who cannot pay his debts, and feels pity, and love. Emotional forgiveness is what is absent when that servant, freed of his debt, refuses to forgive the debt of another. One wonders whether the first servant, with his debts forgiven, has been able to forgive himself emotionally for being in debt in the first place. In the absence of that self-forgiveness, he takes his anger out on somebody who was literally in the same position as him just a few moments before.

We need decisional forgiveness - that moment when we decide to act differently, and treat others as valuable and valued. And we also need emotional forgiveness - that experience of letting go of resentment that prevents us from truly listening, and seeing one another. We need both of these kinds of forgiveness for so many reasons. We need them because our inability to forgive one another prohibits us from listening, across lines of difference. We need them because without forgiveness, people on opposite ends of an issue will just keep drifting further and further apart. But most of all we need forgiveness - both decisional and emotional forgiveness - because both kinds of forgiveness are what God extended to us, when God sent Jesus to live and die among us, to save our souls.

What would the cross be without decisional forgiveness - without Jesus interceding on our behalf and saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?” What would the cross be without Jesus’ decision to humble himself even to death on the cross, saying “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Yet not my will, but yours be done.” Decisional forgiveness is a powerful thing. And yet, if we look at Jesus’ death as only a decision, it becomes a mechanical thing. Sacrifice without transformation. This is where emotional forgiveness comes in. God did not just send Jesus to atone for our sins years ago. Rather God grants us an emotional forgiveness that extends through the ages. God does not look down on the human family, our faults, our failings - with resentment and anger for the ways that we continue to fall into sin. Instead God loves us with a deep emotional forgiveness - the kind of forgiveness that makes relationship possible. The kind of forgiveness that makes change possible.

Our calling as Christians is to love as we have been loved. To forgive, as we have been forgiven. Forgiveness is not just an action that we make and check off the list. Forgiveness is an attitude. Forgiveness is a way of life. And thanks to modern researchers, who have again made that distinction between decisional forgiveness, and emotional forgiveness, we know that we don’t even need access to the person who hurt us in order to forgive - and this is especially important I think, in relationships with others who are estranged, or with someone who died. One half of forgiveness - the emotional half - begins in our hearts. And we can start to forgive as soon as we start to soften our hearts. As soon as we open our hearts to empathy, and compassion for others.

Sometimes we are afraid to forgive, because we are afraid to forget. Or perhaps we are afraid to forgive because we think that things will never change, as if forgiveness were a kind of permission. I reject both of these excuses - and I think they are just that, excuses. In the parable of the unforgiving tenant, forgetting is not a symptom of forgiveness. On the contrary, forgetting is associated with lack of forgiveness - when the servant refuses to empathize with the man he holds in debt, and willfully forgets his own past. His own history. In that same story, the first servant’s stubbornness and unwillingness to forgive is also a roadblock to change. He refuses to forgive the second man’s debts and this perpetuates a system of fear, and selfishness, and self-preservation.

Forgiveness is not about forgetting - it is about remembering differently. Forgiveness is not about keeping the status quo - it is about restoring relationships and making way for change, for transformation. May we forgive, as we have been forgiven. May we love, as we have been loved. Practice forgiveness today in deed and in truth; in your decision making, and in the attitude of your heart. In the name of God who creates, redeems, and sustains us. Amen.