The irony struck me as I began work on my sermon for today. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the things I do each week as I began thinking about my sermon is to go back through my files and read other sermons I have preached on these propers. Looming over each of the five sermons I’ve preached on these texts over the years is the memory of September 11, 2001, the twenty-fifth anniversary of which we commemorated two days ago. 

The events of that day and the days, weeks, and months that followed brought out the best and the worst in human nature and American culture. There was solidarity and compassion but there was also anger, hatred, and violent retribution. The war on terror brought with it an erosion of civil liberties, islamophobia, torture, and countless lives lost. Like so many other eras in American history, we have not had an honest reckoning with the past nor are we able, apparently, to learn from those errors. 

To hear Jesus speaking about forgiveness on this occasion is challenging indeed. But before we get to the gospel, the story from Exodus offers another perspective on the response to trauma and violence.

Our reading from Exodus has brought us to the Red Sea. The Israelites are fleeing Egypt and are caught between the army chasing them and the sea in front of them. A miracle brings them across the sea and destroys their enemy. In verses not included in today’s reading, we’re told that as they watch the destruction, the Israelites sing praises to their God:

“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, horse and rider has he thrown in to the sea.”

                                                                                                           Sentiment like this may be difficult to express, to rejoice in the destruction of one’s enemies; it is also a natural, human response to such an event. Yet, we sense that responses like this, no matter how natural, do not seem appropriate for Christians. An old rabbinic story, going back nearly two thousand years, offers another perspective on the Israelites’ celebration at the destruction of the Egyptian army. It goes like this:

“Having reached safety on the other side, and seeing the Egyptians perishing in the sea, the Israelites began to sing and dance.

“In heaven, the angels saw the Israelites singing and dancing, and they too began to sing and dance. But God rebuked them: ‘Those Egyptians perishing in the sea are my people also, and you want to sing and dance?'”

To celebrate a victory is one thing, whether that victory is on the battlefield or the playing field; to ask for, or offer forgiveness to someone who has harmed us, or whom we have harmed is quite another.

The parable we read in today’s gospel challenges us to think about forgiveness. It is set in the context of Peter’s question to Jesus, How often should I forgive someone who has wronged me? Jesus’ answer to Peter is over-the-top. Jesus says, “As many as 7  times 70—490 times. 

In its own way, this saying has also caused harm and trauma. It is one thing to ask forgiveness of someone I’ve wronged; it’s quite another to demand that an injured party forgive the perpetrator when there has been no repentance. I wonder how many times victims of sexual abuse or violence have been expected to forgive their abuser based on these verses. 

And then there’s what used to be the public ritual of the public figure caught in some wrongdoing who makes a grand show of confessing their sin and expecting to be reinstated to the public’s good graces. Today, in our coarsened society, such empty rituals are no longer common. It seems like public figures, be they celebrities, politicians, or athletes, can do what they want with impunity.

Still, we expect or desire offers of forgiveness in our personal relationships, when we have hurt a loved one with our words or actions, or when we have been hurt by someone. So Jesus’ words stand as a challenge to us: how often should we forgive one who’s behavior has harmed us once, or repeatedly? What might Jesus mean by these words?

Perhaps the parable is meant to make Jesus’ meaning clear, I don’t think it does. We are given the story of a rich man who takes pity on someone who owes him 1000 talents. The slave goes off and demands the repayment of 100 talent debt from someone else; when the debt isn’t repaid, he has him thrown in prison. Learning of that action, the king, denounces and imprisons the first slave.

The math: a talent was roughly 130 lb a measure used of gold and silver; one estimate is that it equaled about 15 yrs of wages for the typical worker; so the king, being owed 10000 talents, is owed 150,000 years of wages. A denarius was a coin worth about a day’s wages; the slave is owed 100 denarii, so that’s quite a bit of money as well.

The parable leaves us with questions, even though its meaning is quite clear. We should forgive those who owe us, just as God forgives us. But the questions—why does the king not forgive the slave a second time? After all, Jesus has told Peter to forgive not seven but seventy seven times. The parable invites us to think of forgiveness as a calculus—there exists, somewhere a finite number of times, beyond which it is not necessary to forgive. But that’s precisely the wrong way of thinking about things.

To think about forgiveness as a debt suggests that we understand it in terms we comprehend—mathematics or economics, and given all the talk of debt in our culture, we are sorely tempted to go down that route. That’s overlooking something that is crucial in understanding Peter’s question: “How often should I forgive my brother? For that question implies there is relationship between the one forgiving and the one owed. Including that in the equation changes everything. 

We ask God to forgive us and we experience God’s forgiveness, rich, unbounded, unmerited. It is that relationship and that experience that should shape our own forgiveness. That is the point both of Jesus’ answer to Peter and the parable itself.

I have lived long enough and served as a pastor long enough to know that pain and anger from hurt can last a very long time. We process things quite differently; in different ways and at different speeds. Even the same hurt inflicted on two different people can linger in very different ways in those who have been affected. Forgiving others may be difficult, even, at times, impossible. Yet our God, who has forgiven us so deeply and so completely, invites us, not only to be forgiven, but to forgive in the same way, richly, unboundedly, and totally. Thanks be to God!