18 Pentecost Yr A

I imagine Peter having an argument with one of the other disciples. Who knows over what, where they should sit at the table, what they should eat for dinner, who they should invite over for dinner, whether they should get circumcised or just tattooed or pierced. Anyway, my very good friend Peter once again shows his true colors. He’s thinking about all this, and he says, Jesus, how many times do I have to forgive? Obviously figuring there’s got to be an end to forgiveness, Peter is astounded by Jesus’ response. There’s never an end to forgiveness, never, ever. Not seven times but seventy times seven. And since Peter is a good Jew, he knows what Jesus means. Seventy times seven represents infinity, it is limitless, and unfathomable. That’s how many times Peter must forgive, that’s how many times we must forgive.

Forgiveness and reconciliation have been the themes of the gospel reading from Matthew for the last few weeks. But this one stretches us further than any other. You must continue to forgive until you think you have forgiven all, and then you must forgive some more. It seems impossible.

This is our life in Christ. The fruit of forgiveness is joy, the fruit of forgiveness is freedom. The other is a tortured, bitter and resentful heart. Why do we choose not to forgive? We do so because we believe it is more important to be right than to forgive. It seems so simple, and yet so impossible. Needing to be right has resulted in loping off heads and burning at the stake. At least we don’t do that anymore. Now we just throw out insults, call each other names, leave churches and families and stop talking to one another.

In our families we hold on to resentment and bitterness until it eats us up, and then our brother or sister, mother or father dies, and we never were reconciled. Not forgiving holds us captive, forgiving sets us free. I often wonder why we do this, why we hold on so tightly to not forgiving, why we hold on so tightly to our bitterness and resentment.

I just finished a book, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd. It’s a story about a young girl who must learn to forgive. As the young girl gets up the courage to tell her story and let herself be loved, she thinks, “In a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds. They provided me with some real nice sympathy, with the feeling I was exceptional.”

I wonder if that’s why we hang on to our bitterness and resentment, and even anger, and not even know that we are doing it. Because we come to believe that we’re exceptional, that we’re somehow different from others, or better than others, or right, because everyone else most definitely must be wrong. Maybe we come to believe that our personal pain is unique, a pain unlike any other. A pain that no one can understand, a pain that causes our heart to turn to stone. Our personal pain may be ours, but it is not exceptional, and it is not isolated. Our personal pain is not an excuse to not forgive, and it is not an excuse not to ask for forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a gift that we have been given, it is the grace that goes with not being perfect. It is the grace that goes with being human. It is the grace that goes with this God who loves us so much and who is willing to be in our midst to feel the same pain that you and I feel. It is the grace that goes with being chosen and marked by God’s love, being the delight of God’s life.

The reality of forgiveness is that we don’t do it just once and then are done with it. The young girl in the story as she thinks about her mother says, “I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.”

Sometimes I wonder what all this really has to do with our lives as we live out there in the world, out at our jobs, and in our schools, in the grocery line, or while waiting to fill our tanks with gas. What does God in Jesus Christ have to do with all that? Forgiveness is at the heart of who we are as we go about the minute to minute living of our lives. Forgiveness is the quintessential not about me thing. It is about my pain, or your pain not being exceptional. Forgiveness I think is impossible without the reality of God coming into our lives. Why would I forgive otherwise? Why would I not just hold on to the hardness of heart, the bitterness, the resentment, and let that power take hold of me. Why would I admit my own imperfection, my own shortcomings, if I didn’t think there was some greater love that enfolds me. It is God’s love that transforms me, that melts my heart, that bears my bitterness and resentment and imperfection no matter what.

It is God’s love that holds us when we cry, that never rejects or abandons us, and that gives us another chance. It is when we feel like the end is near, when we are in the midst of suffering and death, loneliness and alienation, like there is no hope, like we could lay down and die, that God transforms our life into something absolutely new.

Alleluia! The mercy of the Lord is everlasting: Come let us adore him. Alleluia!