Like with so many of the stories of Jesus, the parable of the debtors arose out of a question that was posed to Jesus. Peter comes to Jesus with a question that sounds simple: “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”
Peter wants a number.
How many times do I have to forgive this person? Seven times? And what happens after that? At what point have I done enough?
I think most of us understand Peter’s question because we have probably asked some version of it ourselves.
He probably thinks he is being generous when he says seven times. Jesus answers, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
Jesus is not giving Peter a larger number to keep track of. Jesus is telling him to stop keeping score.
Jesus is inviting Peter to imagine a community where mercy is not measured, and forgiveness is not reduced to a number.
And I think that question still belongs to us.
How many times do I have to forgive?
How many times do I have to put up with the same person?
How many times do I have to let go of what happened?
How long do I have to carry this?
Those are honest questions because we know what it feels like to be hurt by someone we love, someone we trusted, someone we worship with, or someone we thought would never hurt us.
So what is Jesus asking of us when he tells us to forgive?
Matthew places this conversation in a section where Jesus is teaching his disciples how to live together as a community.
That is important because Peter does not ask Jesus about forgiving a stranger. He asks, “my brother sins against me.”
This is about relationships inside the community.
Jesus knows that when people live together, worship together, serve together, and make decisions together, we will sometimes hurt one another. People misunderstand each other. People say things they should not say. People make mistakes. People carry old wounds.
The church was not made up of perfect people then, and it is not made up of perfect people now.
Jesus is teaching his disciples what it means to live together as people who have received God's mercy.
So, Jesus tells Peter a story.
A servant owes the king an enormous debt. There is no way he can repay it. He begs for mercy, and the king forgives the entire debt.
The servant walks away free.
Then he finds another servant who owes him a much smaller amount. Instead of extending the mercy he has just received, he demands payment and has the man punished.
The servant had received extraordinary mercy, but he did not allow that mercy to shape the way he treated someone else.
He had been forgiven, but he was unwilling to extend mercy to someone else.
Jesus is challenging Peter, and he is challenging us, to understand forgiveness differently.
Forgiveness can bring healing. Being forgiven can lift the weight of shame and guilt from our shoulders. Forgiving another person can help us move beyond old hurts and make room for healing, restored relationships, and new beginnings.
I want to be clear about what forgiveness is because we sometimes confuse it with forgetting or excusing. Forgetting means pretending the harm never happened. Excusing means finding a reason for someone’s actions that removes or lessens their responsibility. Forgiveness is different.
Forgiveness recognizes that harm was done. It names the wrong and acknowledges who is responsible.
To ask for forgiveness means taking responsibility for what we have done and admitting that we have hurt another person. To offer forgiveness means recognizing the hurt and choosing not to hold it over the other person or make revenge the goal.
Forgiveness does not deny the pain. It makes a new beginning possible in the middle of that pain. without pretending that the harm never happened.
Forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation. Reconciliation may take time, and it requires trust to be rebuilt. Sometimes forgiveness includes boundaries. Sometimes the relationship cannot return to what it was before.
Forgiveness can be difficult. Asking for forgiveness makes us vulnerable because we have to admit that we were wrong.
Offering forgiveness can be just as difficult we may still be angry and hurt, and we have to decide that revenge will not control what we do next.
Saying “I forgive you” may take only a few seconds. Living that forgiveness can take much longer.
“Forgiveness is central to our Christian life because we are people who live from the forgiveness we have received in Christ.”
God meets us in our brokenness, forgives us through Christ, and gives us a new beginning.
Think about our own congregation.
We are one church with people who come from different places, speak different languages, have different experiences, and carry different histories. We have different opinions. We do not always understand one another. Sometimes we say the wrong thing. Sometimes we misunderstand someone's intentions. Sometimes there is frustration behind what we say or do. Sometimes we hurt each other without intending to.
I am sure some of us have experienced something like this. The person who was hurt carries that moment with them. Every time they see the other person, they remember what happened.
Weeks go by. Maybe months. The church can become a place where two people are worshiping in the same room while carrying an old wound between them. Sometimes that wound becomes so heavy that one of the people eventually stops coming to church.
Forgiveness does not mean saying, “It was fine.” It means having the courage to name what happened, to seek forgiveness when we have caused harm, and to begin letting go when someone has hurt us.
Forgiveness means that, over time, we refuse to let the wound determine how we will live or how we will treat others.
And this is where the Gospel meets us. We do not have to create forgiveness on our own. We begin with the forgiveness God has already given us through Jesus Christ.
Every week we come before God with the things we have done and the things we have failed to do. We come with our mistakes, our regrets, our impatience, our anger, and the ways we have hurt other people.
And then, every week, we pray the words Jesus taught us:
“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Those are serious words. We are asking God to forgive us, and at the same time, we are saying that we will forgive those who have hurt us.
That can be uncomfortable because there are people we do not want to forgive. There are hurts we still carry. There are times when we would rather hold on to our anger than let go of it.
Jesus does not tell us that the harm did not matter. He tells us that we cannot receive God's mercy and then refuse to extend mercy to others.
God's forgiveness is not something we earn by becoming good at forgiving. God forgives us because of Christ. And that grace calls us to forgive others.
Sometimes that takes time. Sometimes we have to pray these words again and again because we are still angry. Sometimes the most honest prayer we can offer is, “God, I know what Jesus asks of me, but I am not there yet. Help me forgive.”
Every time we pray the Lord's Prayer, Jesus puts this question in front of us: Are we willing to extend to others the mercy we ask God to give us?
And that same mercy is extended to us when we come to this table. We do not come because we have earned our place here. We come because Christ invites us.
Like the servant in Jesus' parable, we come carrying what we cannot repay. Christ does not ask us to earn forgiveness before we come to this table.
We receive the bread and the wine as gifts of Christ’s grace. We receive forgiveness that we cannot earn. We receive the reminder that God's mercy is bigger than our failures.
And we leave this table as people who have received mercy, carrying that mercy with us into our homes, our relationships, our congregation, and our community.
Maybe there is someone we need to forgive or someone from whom we need to ask forgiveness.
Maybe we are not ready to forgive yet. Maybe all we can honestly pray is, “God, help me get there.”
That prayer is enough for today.
Friends, Forgiveness is a long process. We may have to bring the same hurt to God many times. We may have to ask God for strength to release our desire for revenge, to ask for forgiveness when we have caused harm, and to trust God's forgiveness when we are carrying our own guilt.
We do not do this because we are naturally good at forgiving. We do it because Christ has first shown us mercy.”
God forgives us, restores us, and gives us a new beginning.
God continues to teach us how to live with mercy toward one another.
“We are forgiven people. And God continues to teach us how to forgive.”
Amen.
