[Micah 6:6-8 / Philippians 1:3-11 / Matthew 18:21-35]
Let’s be honest: it’s not that we don’t WANT to forgive those who have sinned against us – yes, 70 times seven! The problem is that we don’t know how. When we’ve been really hurt, damaged by someone’s words or behavior, their lying or ridicule, something inside of us curls up like a little child that has been abused, and we’re simply scared to move, scared to forgive. Scared that the pain we’re barely coping with right now is only going to get worse – and that it will kill us or drive us crazy. We just don’t think we can bear it.
There’s not a person in this room who didn’t know before walking in the door today that our God expects us to live in total, absolute and unconditional forgiveness toward each other, toward those who have hurt us, toward those who have trashed us to others. We know it and so we all wince when we hear our Lord speak in the Gospel reading.
We KNOW we’re like the servant who had a big debt forgiven. But those littler debts owed to us – well, to us they're not little. It’s a matter of pain. Can we take the pain? We’re afraid, very much afraid, we can’t. That if we open our hearts again and forgive, and they do it again – and we really suspect they will - then we’ll end up even more damaged than we already are. And that leaves us terrified, because we know exactly how Jesus ended today’s Gospel. We know that He speaks the truth, the absolute truth to us: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
“From the heart.” That’s the problem. Oh, it’s easy to say sometimes: “I forgive you.” But the heart? When Satan goes to work and plops in his DVD and plays the whole scene again in your heart in slow motion, all the anger, the hurt, the betrayal come rushing back and we’re convinced, absolutely convinced, we can’t forgive. The old evil foe persuades us it will kill us or send us to the loony bin. And so many live lives of quiet despair, knowing that they are harboring resentments that the Lord absolutely forbids, and yet convinced that they are helpless to do anything about it.
But, people loved by God, if WE are helpless, HE is not. If pity dies in our heart, it never dies in His. St. Paul said in today’s epistle: “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes THROUGH Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.”
Your every “I can’t” He counters with: “I know, but I can. I have forgiven the sins of the world. I am the King who tears up the accounts of what is owed and sets people free from their bonds. I am the King who came into the flesh to pay for you all the debt that you could not pay: the debt of love. I am the King whose life was love from start to finish. Love caused my incarnation, love brought me down to you. Love led me to the Tree. Love led me to the tomb. And love led me out into a life that never ends. Love I send with My Spirit to dwell in you. My whole being is a burning fire of love. And I can do IN you what you can never do on your own.”
The fruits of righteousness – such as the ability to forgive and to pray for and to seek God’s blessing on those who have really and truly hurt you – this comes “through Jesus Christ” and so God gets all the glory and praise. It’s not something you have to work up, some feeling you have to muster, some enormous effort of your will. No. It’s a gift your Savior simply gives you – the gift of His forgiveness and His love to live inside you. A forgiveness and love that embraces not just you, but the whole world. That’s WHO He is.
Do you see then why the Eucharist is so at the heart of the Church’s life? If we are going to forgive all, to love all, to embrace those who have done us harm and hurt us and who will likely do it again, there is only one way: and that’s to become united with Love incarnate, to become one with Forgiveness Enfleshed. When we open our mouths and Jesus puts into them the body that took away the sins of the world and the blood that cries for pardon for our whole race, when He unites Himself to us, we can know the secret that St. Paul would talk about in a later chapter of Philippians: “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”
But what about the hurt? What about the pain? Can we bear it? What if it destroys us? His answer is profound: “Child, it did not destroy me. It cannot destroy me. I forgave all, and they killed me. And yet I live forevermore. My life will never end. And that life, that unending fire of love, is now yours. I pour into you to become your life, your love. The hurt will still hurt, but it will not be able to destroy you, because you are united to Me.”
In the face of this, what can we do but kneel before Him and confess that we surely deserve nothing but His temporal and eternal punishment, and yet ask for the grace He gives, ask that His love, His forgiveness, His unquenchable pardon would take root within us and shape us into a people of forgiveness. We can’t from our own resources forgive to the extent we’ve been hurt, that is true; but we don't have to live from our own resources. We live from the Crucified and Risen Lord to whom be the glory with His Father and His all-holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages! Amen.
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