Matthew 18:21-35
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[a]
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[b] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “At this, the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[c] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Forgive Your Brother or Sister
Congregational Church of Easton – September 17. 2023
The message of today’s reading in Matthew is that God is all-forgiving. We can’t do anything that would keep God from forgiving us. There is one exception to this, however. Your hurtful behavior and mine is always forgiven – unless we fail to forgive others.
Forgive everyone? you may be asking. Aren’t there people who don’t deserve to be forgiven? What if the other person hasn’t asked for forgiveness? Jesus would say, “Forgive them anyway.” There are so many cases where doing that is very difficult. This is not an easy message.
Today’s passage about the unforgiving servant also makes the point that we hurt ourselves if we don’t forgive. So, this morning, we’ll wrestle with the question of how to forgive when we need to but when we also find it very hard to do so.
Take a moment to think of a person or a group of people that have caused a great deal of harm – a person or group who would be very hard for you to forgive. Do you have someone in mind? Think of the suffering they have caused you or others. Now, imagine yourself forgiving them in your heart.
I thought about a fellow who caused me to lose my best client when I was consulting. I sure can remember the harm he did to me. I suppose I can imagine myself forgiving him in my mind, but as I picture him, it’s not easy.
Again, think of the suffering your person or group caused. Now, imagine yourself forgiving him, her, or them. Not easy, right?
Hold on to the difficulty of doing this as I tell you a true story of a woman who had a terrible time forgiving a young man who murdered her sister. A high school student named David Biro invaded her sister’s suburban home and also killed her brother-in-law and their about-to-be-born baby!
You can read about it in a book called, Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer by Jeanne Bishop.
As one reviewer wrote:
Jeanne Bishop] walks us through her journey from anger and hatred, where she would not even speak the killer’s name, to openness and forgiveness. She pursues this change of heart at the risk of losing her relationship with certain family members who were appalled when she began to reach out to him.
A year after the murder, shortly after Biro had been sentenced to life in prison without parole, Bishop decided she needed to forgive him. The Christian century quotes her as saying:
If you look at the gospels, you see Jesus over and over again saying, “You have to forgive because you have been forgiven.”
Jeanne was a lifelong Christian, a Presbyterian. One of the Bible passages she refers to is today’s parable of the unforgiving debtor. Let me read it again:
The Kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle accounts, they brought to him a servant who owned him 10,000 bags of gold. Because the servant didn’t have enough to pay it back, the master ordered that he should be sold along with his wife and children and everything he had, and that the proceeds should be used as payment. But the servant fell down, kneeled before him, and said “Please be patient with me and I’ll pay you back.” The master had compassion on that servant, released him and forgave the loan.
Jesus uses some shockingly large numbers here. In Greek, 10,000 stands for the largest possible number, so 10,000 bags of gold is an unimaginably huge debt. Yet the master had compassion and forgave a debt the servant couldn’t possibly have repaid.
There’s certainly a parallel here with David Biro. Having brutally ended the lives of Jeanne’s sister and brother-in-law, he incurred an enormous debt that even a sentence of life in prison could not repay.
The size of the crime in both stories is important, because there’s no way to deny how much harm was caused. Forgiveness is not denying the hurt the other has caused.
When someone causes us pain, we may be tempted to minimize it or make excuses for the other. Evangelical pastors sometimes minimize the hurt and terror of abused wives. Some tell them to stay with their husbands and simply forgive. As one commentator puts it…
[slow:] Forgiveness is not denying our hurt. When we minimize what has happened to us, gloss over it, tell ourselves it was really not that bad, we cannot really forgive. Forgiveness is a possibility only when we acknowledge the negative impact of another’s actions or attitudes on our lives.
If there were no negative impact, there would be nothing to forgive.
Jeanne Bishop was certainly not able to minimize the pain David caused. And, she read passages like today’s reading in Matthew and decided she had to forgive him, but because Biro was permanently behind bars. Bishop thought she could move on without ever informing him that she had forgiven him in her heart. She thought she would never have to say his name aloud
But she couldn’t let it go. She kept thinking about him, wondering whether he had changed or whether he was still a monster. To the horror of her family and friends she decided to write and tell him she had forgiven him. Then she decided to visit him in prison. Would he still be a monster? Would he be repentant? I won’t tell you how it turns out. I encourage you to get a copy and read it for yourself.[1]
We’ll post this sermon on the website, and you can go to the Amazon link.
There’s a second lesson in her story. Jeanne learned that when we hold on to our resentment and anger, we hurt ourselves. All that anger can eat us up. It can cause huge stress. It was the stress from constantly thinking about him and how she wanted him to be punished. It was the stress that caused her to decide she had to let go and forgive.
The second part of today’s reading in Matthew makes the point that not forgiving hurts us. Listen to what the servant did after his master forgave his debt:
…when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
The master was outraged as well and handed the first servant over to the prison guard until he paid the entire debt.
Failing to forgive may not land you and I in prison, but it sure isn’t good for our health. Years ago, Susie and I went to a University of Wisconsin alumni gathering where a professor gave a talk on his research on forgiveness. I came away amazed that forgiving someone who is absent or no longer living can improve your immune system. As Jeanne learned, holding on to her rage and desire to see David punished was stressful. And, as you know, stress harms us both physically and mentally.
I’d like you to go back to the person or group you were thinking about when I asked you to choose someone or something that would be very hard to forgive. Are you still angry at her, him, or them for the hurt they had caused? Do you want to see them punished, like the servant punished his fellow servant? I can’t imagine my talking with you for the last 10 minutes has magically made it any easier to let go of your resentment.
Jean Bishop wrestled with forgiving David for more than a year before she made up her mind to do so. So feel free to take some time before you decide to forgive your person and, as you do so, keep in mind another verse of scripture:
We say the Lord’s prayer every Sunday. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” At the end of Matthew’s version of the prayer, Jesus says,
If you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your sins.
I used to lead a lunchtime meditation group at a wholistic health center. Once I led a guided meditation on forgiveness. We started with forgiving ourselves.
Try it yourself. Sit up straight. Take in a deep, spirit-filled breath. Then be mindful of slowly letting your breath out. Do that one more time. Now as you breathe in, imagine yourself breathing in God’s forgiveness. Then exhale. Breathe in God’s forgiveness, then exhale into the peace of God. Forgiveness in peace out. [ca. 1 minute]
Now, change it a bit. Breathe in God’s forgiveness and then breathe out forgiveness for the person who had caused harm that you were thinking about. Breathe in God’s forgiveness, then exhale into forgiveness for your person. Breathe in God’s forgiveness. Breath out forgiveness for the other. [ca. 1 minute]
Forgiving someone who has caused great harm is not easy. It may take some time to find the resources to do so. Prayer and meditation can be a big help. When I started breathing out the word, “forgive” as I thought of someone I was really annoyed with, I found myself softening. I could feel the beginnings of compassion for the person.
Let us pray. We thank you God for urging us to forgive even when it is very difficult to do so. We thank you for giving us the example of people like Jeanne Gibson. We thank you for giving us the huge resource of prayer. Amen.
Forgiving her Sister’s Murderer, Face to Face,” Christianity Today. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/may/reconciler-jeanne-bishop.html
[1] Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer by Jeanne Bishop. https://www.amazon.com/Change-Heart-Justice-Making-Sisters/dp/0664259979
