In the name of the One who raised Jesus Christ from the dead after first raising Israel out of Egypt. Amen.
How much debt do you have? That’s a serious question. We all have debts and sometimes the amounts are so large that we don’t really know how much we are carrying. Oh, I’m not talking student loans, medical debt, car loans, mortgages, or credit card balances. While our relationship to money and financial debt is absolutely a spiritual matter, that’s not what I mean. No, I’m talking about a much more searing and uncomfortable conversation about our relational debt. Jesus says, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
We don’t often talk about our relationships or forgiveness in terms of indebtedness, but it’s the language that Jesus uses, particularly in Matthew. We’re accustomed to praying “forgive us our trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer, but that’s not a great translation. As a friend of mine once said, “No one has accused me of trespassing since I was 8–years-old.” As some of you might have grown up saying, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” really is a better translation, at least when we’re reading Matthew.
Forgiveness is hard. We don’t know why Peter asked the question about how many times we should forgive someone. As we heard last Sunday, Jesus has just talked about how to seek reconciliation when there is conflict in the community and Peter then asks if they should be expected to forgive as many as seven times. We’ve all heard the logic “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Forgiving seven times would make us a triple fool.
Maybe there had been some conflict among the disciples. Perhaps they couldn’t get over the inclusion of the turncoat tax–collector Matthew in their number. Or maybe they knew about the things that Simon the Zealot did in his career before following Jesus. It could be that they had begun to see signs of betrayal in Judas.
It’s a question we’re well acquainted with. We know about “cancel culture,” in which people are shunned for making mistakes or expressing opinions that a certain group does not agree with. More and more children are going “no–contact” with their parents. If we were to forgive someone even five times, we’d probably be accused of being an enabler or co–dependent. In Peter’s world and in ours, Jesus’ response is stunning—“Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
When people meet with me to talk about the burdens they are carrying, questions of forgiveness often come up. In fact, I’d say that struggling to forgive is one of the top three topics that people bring to me. And while we all know that we’re supposed to forgive, for most of us, being told that we need to climb up to the roof and fly down seems about as plausible as forgiving certain people.
I want to be upfront about this—there’s no shortcut or hack to make forgiveness easy or to make it happen at all. And it’s something I struggle with alongside you. I speak as a fellow sinner, not as a guru.
The grammar that Jesus uses to speak about forgiveness though is the path of salvation. Debt really is a helpful way of thinking about forgiveness. What does your balance sheet look like? You know—in your heart and mind, how much do you owe other people and how much do other people owe you? For most of us, we’re far better at remembering who wronged us, who needs to give us restitution, who owes us an apology than we are at recalling our wrongs. We hold onto our grudges as if they were our most valuable assets.
If someone owes you money, until you collect that money, you are lacking something and possibly unable to move forward. Think about planning a vacation—you don’t have money for the airfare right now, but you loaned a friend $500, and as soon as they repay you, you can book your ticket to paradise. But until they settle that debt, you’re grounded. The balance sheet might show the liability on their side, but until you have what you are owed, you are also missing something. And the more you think about that $500, their debt soon becomes yours as the resentment and frustration grow. Instead of being excited about the trip, the prevailing emotion becomes bitterness about not being given what you are owed and before long, the relationship breaks.
Most of the time, it’s not $500, it’s an apology, a “thank you,” an admission of guilt, or having a favor returned—and those are far harder to come by than money. So, forgiveness, in financial terms, is writing off certain debts as “uncollectable” and not carrying it around on your balance sheet. Because we all know that we have an inner debt–collector in us. It takes a lot of energy to keep track of who owes us a favor or an “I’m sorry.” We’ll constantly be off–balance if we’re focused on how things are out–of–balance in our relationships. She said this. He didn’t do that. They should have.
Jesus offers an absurd parable to illustrate the point. Imagine there’s someone who owes an unimaginable amount of money. Jesus puts it as 10,000 talents. Ten thousand, in the Hebrew of Jesus’ day, was the highest number. And a talent was the largest unit of money. Jesus is saying, “Imagine someone owes infinity times infinity.” Well, miraculously, the entire debt is forgiven, erased, settled. The person is free.
By chance, this person was owed something by a colleague. In comparison, a negligible amount. But the forgiven refuses to forgive and ends up in a self–imposed debtors’ prison because he insisted on playing the debt–tracking game. The same is true for all of us: if we want to count what other people owe us, we’ll soon be bankrupted by our own insufficient funds.
And so, our Lord tells us to forgive—to rip up the I–owe–yous, to cancel the debts. Because the truth of the matter is that the apology that you’ve been waiting on is probably never going to come. And by continually holding on to that sense of what is owed to you, you’ll end being the one bearing the burden of the debt as you’re stuck and can’t move on. Maybe they won’t apologize or take responsibility for their actions because from their perspective, they’re completely in the right and it’s actually you who owe them an apology. Or maybe they were taught the lesson that apologizing is a sign of weakness and just can’t do it. Perhaps they are completely unaware of the wrong.
In the meantime, as we wait for the uncollectable debt to be paid, we end up deeper in the hole of resentment, anger, and regret. So, Jesus says, “No, don’t forgive seven times.” Seven, while requiring more grace that we can usually muster, is a number we can count. And one of the hallmarks of the Kingdom of God is that there is no counting there because the only currency is Grace. So Jesus says “Seventy-seven” times, or perhaps better translated as “Seventy times seven times.” Either way, the point is that forgiveness is to be unlimited. We lose track of how many times we forgive.
It’s absurdity to count all of the wrongs in life and expect everyone to give us what we think they owe us. It will leave us in a constant state of entitlement, rage, and pettiness. And we have plenty of that in our society already. Forgiveness isn’t about saying that what someone did to you is okay or acceptable. Not at all. Forgiveness doesn’t diminish the pains or wrongs. If anything, forgiveness accurately names those pains. Forgiveness says “You have done something that cannot be undone. You have said something that cannot be unsaid. And instead of insisting that you fix what cannot be fixed, I’m simply wiping that debt out and moving forward. I will not be stuck here; I will not spend my life waiting for you to repay that which can never be paid. You don’t owe me anything because my wholeness is secure in Jesus Christ.” Forgiveness is not weakness; it’s putting our full trust in God to make us whole instead of waiting for someone else to do that.
This sort of God–given liberation is what the Exodus is all about. When we pay attention to the text, we see that God is the one who does all the acting and saving. God leads the people, God splits the sea, God leads them on. One of the major themes throughout Scripture is that God liberates us so that we might be a liberated people who liberate others. It’s the same logic as the Lord’s Prayer and this parable—we are forgiven so that we might forgive others. God’s plan is for a debt–free world, and so God starts by clearing our debts. God does not intend that we live in debt or enslaved to anyone or anything. Instead, the purpose of Creation is to be in communion with God, nature, and one another.
On the Cross, when Jesus says “It is finished,” the cancelling of the debts is what he’s saying is finished. When he turns over the tables of the money changers in the Temple, he’s overthrowing the idea of a transactional approach to forgiveness. This is what Grace means—there is nothing to do, say, pay, give, or earn when it comes to our belonging or belovedness. The accounting is finished. You are loved and you are free. Jesus has done for us all that needs doing. What is left for us is to simply use and enjoy our forgiveness.
Each spring, I go to a conference hosted at an Episcopal Church in Manhattan whose tagline is “Enjoy your forgiveness.” The intention of the Exodus is similarly, “Enjoy your liberation.” Meaning, use it, spend it lavishly because it will never run out, invest in the Kingdom of God as it is coming on earth as it is in heaven.
One of the great prayers of our Prayer Book tradition says of God, “in whose service is perfect freedom.” That’s the paradox of faith—that in serving God, we find perfect freedom. And freedom and forgiveness aren’t about the “from,” but the “for.”
Yes, Israel was freed from Egypt, but that wasn’t the point or the end of the story, but rather the beginning. They were freed from Egypt so they might free to be the light of the world. Likewise, we are forgiven from our sins not so that we can do whatever we want and not feel guilty about it, but we are forgiven for the forgiveness of others. Our debts are wiped out so that we can offer the same saving Grace to others and live in harmony as God intends. As St. Paul wrote earlier in Romans, “Owe no one anything except for love.”
Jesus knows that we, the Church, cannot survive if we’re in the debt tracking and collecting business, and so through the Cross he settles all of our accounts. Jesus knows that the world will not be inspired by our witness of keeping score, and so he gives us the most excellent way of love. Jesus knows that we are carrying the heavy burdens of broken relationships, unmet expectations, and frustrating failures, and so he says, “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.”
I can’t do anything about your credit card debt, but in the name of the Church, it is my joy and delight to proclaim to you that all of your sins and debts are forgiven, that no one other than God has a claim on you, and that you are free to serve God as if it’s the only thing that matters, because it is. Enjoy your forgiveness.
