What could you forgive?

Or does it depend…and if so, on what?

In the days before medical science had found a solution to the problem, a man was bitten by a rabid dog. He was rushed to hospital and told his condition was incurable. I am sorry, the doctor told him, but there is nothing we can do. My best advice is that you put your affairs in order as soon as possible. The dying man was shocked but took the advice and asked for a pen and paper. He was still scribbling when the doctor returned to his bedside an hour later. I’m glad you took my advice and have begun to write a will, said the doctor. This is not a will, the man replied, this is a list of all the people I intend to bite in the near future.

One of the interesting things about the comment by Peter that leads Jesus to tell this parable of the unforgiving servant is that he asks how often he must forgive someone else. ‘How many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?’ He offers seven – the rabbinical teaching was three – so Peter is being generous. Twice what the Torah commands.

But he’s still putting a number on it; this often and no more. Peter at this stage, still has a legalistic approach to forgiveness.

When Jesus says you must forgive seventy-seven times, he is not doing the same. Seven is the number of perfection in Scripture, of completion. God rested on the seventh day. Jesus is saying you keep forgiving, in a sense, until you really have done so. Until the journey to forgiveness is done.

It does not occur to Peter, as it would not occur to most of us, and it doesn’t occur to the unforgiving servant either, to think in terms of how often or how much we should be forgiven. As with the dying man with rabies, writing a list of wrongs to right, instead of maybe people he should ask forgiveness from, there is a natural tendency to think of the wrongs done to us rather than the wrongs we do.

Peter’s introductory comment highlights that and the story of the unforgiving servant is the antidote.  Jesus’ response restores the balance.

Forgiveness takes practice. Forgiveness, like any Christian virtue, needs to be learned. It needs to become a habit of mind and heart.

What do I mean by that?

Forgiveness does not come naturally or easily. But there are things we can do. The chief of which is to pray. Pray for those who hurt you; this is the most wonderful thing to do for anyone. And keep on praying for them, you cannot pray for someone and go on hating them. When you pray for someone you see them as God sees them. That is the nature of prayer. It is what prayer does.

And if you can’t pray for them, if you feel too angry or too hurt, and you might, then just make your inability to pray the prayer itself.

Father, forgive me for not being able to forgive…

Forgiveness is not a single event for most of us, we don’t just do it and move on, but a journey, with many false starts and wrong turnings. We go back to that bad place where we were hurt time and time again.  The hurt is real, and ever present. How can we forgive? It requires tremendous stamina, a willingness to keep trying and to keep failing. And great humility – a remembrance that we too have hurt others; said and done things we might ourselves, in the shoes of the person we have hurt, find unforgiveable.,

But it is a journey which can only even begin with our own sense of how much and how often God in his grace has forgiven us. Remember another stage in Peter’s journey, when Jesus forgives him for denying, that first Maundy Thursday, that he ever even knew him.

And we need to forgive ourselves for finding forgiveness hard. Just keep at it; keep praying, keep trying, and thanking God that he thinks we’re worth forgiving. And he makes every day a new day.

Matthew 18: 21-35 NIV – The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant – Bible Gateway