16th Sunday after Pentecost

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Peter wants to know how often he needs to forgive a member of the church. His suggestion is seven times. He probably thinks that a rather generous offer. It’s way past the three-strikes-and-you-are-out rule many in today’s society operate by. Good for him.

However, Jesus expects much more than that. Not seven times, but a multiple of that. The text can be read as either seventy-seven times or as seventy times seven, which is 490 times.

As so often in the Bible, these numbers are meant more symbolically than literally. Seven is a number that symbolized perfection and completeness. The number three suggested divinity, as in the Holy Trinity. Four stood for the four corners of the earth. Three and four together meant perfection.

Jesus takes this number of completeness and multiplies it. In doing so, he pretty much says: there is no upper limit to forgiveness; you need to forgive as often as necessary.

Every time I read this gospel text, I assumed Peter and Jesus are talking about a church member who repeatedly sins and repeatedly needs to be forgiven. This year, a couple of commentaries I read sparked a different interpretation. Could it be that Jesus means it might take seventy-seven times or 490 times or even more of forgiving a person for the same offense until we arrive at a place of peace? That forgiveness is a process that can take a long time? That we need to forgive the same sin again and again and again? As often as necessary so that the relationship can continue?

There is no relationship that ever that doesn’t need a healthy dose of forgiveness to be maintained. As the Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. We sin and everyone else sins, and so there will be sin in our relationships.

Yet relationships are utterly important for us, for our wellbeing. They are so important, they are part of our congregation’s mission statement: As followers of Jesus, we are called to be an inclusive and compassionate community, where everyone is connected in relationship with God and each other to foster wholeness of mind and soul.

 We need relationships to be well. God created us to be in relationships. It is not good for a human being to be alone, God says. Yet our LEAD team’s research into the needs of our community showed how many people suffer from loneliness and isolation. COVID has made that need worse. We were reminded how much we need relationships.

And those relationships, be they with neighbors, co-workers, friends, team members, fellow students, etc., need to contain forgiveness.

Peter asks what to do if a member of the church sins against him. We have experienced that, right? Someone made a stupid remark, or someone agreed to help with something and then let us down, or someone criticized our ministry while not doing anything themselves. It happens, right? And we forgive. We forgive because being part of a congregation is so important to our spiritual and mental wellbeing that we want to heal the relationship.

The actual word Peter uses in the original Greek is “brother”. When a brother sins against me, what do I do? And the answer is: forgive. In our first reading this morning, we heard the end of the Joseph story. Joseph and his brothers have done terrible things to each other. Now they forgive each other. A family is made whole again. They will thrive together and survive the famine together.

Families need forgiveness. You cannot live with other people for years without hurting each other. Yet having a strong family is important for us, so we forgive. Even when it is hard, even when it takes years, we work on forgiving again and again and again.

My father is a wonderful man; he is a blessing in my life. My father is also a man of strong opinions that he thinks he needs to share. Sometimes those opinions have hurt me deeply.

For example, I had lived my whole life in parsonages. In the first congregation my husband and I served, we also lived in a parsonage. When we moved to our second call, we bought a house. Our first house ever! We didn’t have much money. Accordingly, we bought a small house that needed some work, but we loved it. My parents had booked flights to come over from Germany to visit us long before we knew we would be moving. They arrived at our new house two weeks after we moved in, when nothing had been done and the boxes weren’t all unpacked yet.

A year later they came for another visit. I picked them up at the airport. We were standing at the luggage conveyor waiting for their suitcases when my father said, “I didn’t want to tell Eric, but your house is horrible!” And he said it with real emotion and emphasis: horrible!!!

I was so hurt. It took me a long time to forgive this remark. In fact, I had to forgive it again and again. It is just like Jesus says in the gospel today: You can’t just forgive something once and expect it to be gone from your life. The hurt comes back time and again, and time and again we are called to forgive, seven times, seventy-seven times, 490 times, as long as it takes.

I am sure he had to forgive me for my failures just as often.

I often hear people use the phrase “forgive and forget”. If we could actually forget, then the forgiveness part wouldn’t be a problem, right? Our dog thinks Eric and I are wonderful. Even though we have sometimes forgotten to feed him on time and have stepped on his tail and have a couple of times left him outside overnight accidentally, he loves us, because he doesn’t remember.

But we remember the offense. It’s always there. Every time it raises its ugly head, we need to consciously forgive again. It’s the only way to stay in relationship with the people who add so much blessing and love and support to our lives.

It’s also the only way to honor our God. With his parable, Jesus reminds us of this crucial truth: What we are asked to forgive another person pales in comparison with what God has forgiven us. When we gather here for worship, we are reminded of the amazing, limitless forgiveness we receive from God. In the confession and absolution, in the readings from scripture, at the communion table, through hugs from fellow members, we are assured: God has forgiven us, and God will keep forgiving us, again and again and again.

In turn, we are to offer forgiveness to others. The Lord’s Prayer asks God to help us with that: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. We are acknowledging what God in Christ has done for us first and what Jesus has modelled for us.

In doing so, we give God the glory and show ourselves to be followers of Jesus Christ.

In doing so, we let others experience the forgiving love of Jesus.

In doing so, we heal relationships that in turn are lifegiving to us.

In doing so, we find peace. Amen.

I now invite our sister Ann to share part of her faith journey with you.