Matthew 18:21-35
Gospel Reading for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
When I was a more literally-minded child/youth, I was terrified of the 77 threshold. Because we were reminded regularly that all of us sin every single day and there are 365 days in a year then surely the math would eventually catch up with me. I am going to screw up in at least one particular way seventy-eight times. Then what? Is that it? Grace is going to run out. I got a little reprieve when the footnotes told me that Jesus could have said “70 times 7 times” which would get us to the number 490. BUT WHAT IF WE LIVE LONG ENOUGH THAT WE HIT 491 FOR SOME SIN? How could God ever forgive us of something like that?!
(I have come to realize that my overactive imagination made me a very anxious child.)
Jesus was not giving a number to loom over our heads. He was not warning us about some sort of expiration date for God’s mercy. He was kicking down the door into a world of grace that we could not even imagine. That becomes more clear when you find out that the unmerciful servant in the parable that Jesus tells was forgiven a debt that was worth 20 years worth of wages.
The numbers are not the point. It’s like when we tell kids that we love them 3000, to the moon and back, or times infinity. Quantifying it does not do any justice. I know that “Amazing Grace” is the one hymn that everybody knows, but when you really sit back and think about grace, it truly is something staggering. And I forget that sometimes having been in church my entire life. Yet God’s grace and love for us is unfathomably amazing.
The tricky part is this whole conversation started with Peter asking Jesus how much he should forgive someone else. And if Jesus truly is inviting us into a whole new world* of grace then it is not just something that we receive. As followers of Christ, grace is something we are asked to give.
*“I can forgive you of lies/Pardon blunder by blunder/Ev’ry stumble and bumble/As My forgiveness provides/A whole new woooooooorld…”
And that can be really, really, really, really, really, really, really difficult. This is where we always have to do the caveat that forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation. It is not pretending that hurt never took place. It is not putting yourself back in a relationship that is fundamentally not good for you. Yet it does ask us not to spend our entire lives mentally imprisoning someone for their relational debts.
That can be a struggle when you were hurt profoundly or even when the other person doesn’t ever ask for forgiveness. We want people to acknowledge their wrongs toward us (though most of us don’t feel quite as passionately about admitting our own wrongs). We want someone to say that they see our hurts are real. But we got to stop waiting for that debt to be repaid. If we don’t then we just end up putting ourselves in prison.
All of this falls into the category of “Easier said than done” and I confess that I can write this far more easily than I can practice it. Yet when I think about how unfathomably amazing Christ’s whole new world (“Don’t you dare close your eyes!”) of grace is, it makes me think that there is something to doing my best to give it a honest try.