Forgiveness

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Rabbi, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, not seven times but seventy-seven times." Matthew 18:21-22

Maybe we wouldn't be who we are today if people hadn't done all the horrible things to us that make us lash out, weary, testy and at the end of our ropes. Maybe if the speakers of all the harsh words we have endured could be punished, maybe then we could be able to live our lives fully. As it is, we brood and worry, we dream of revenge and payback, and we live lives of unfulfilled dreams. Peter, the one who is honest about his humanity, asks Jesus for a limit. He's had it with his brother. He's forgiven him over and over, and is brother is still trying to ruin his life. So, he wants Jesus to make some clear boundaries around the situation and let Peter off the hook for being angry and punitive. Jesus tells him a huge number, 77, and in some Gospel versions it says seventy times seven. No way we have to forgive our brothers and sisters that much - it's impossible to keep track of that many offenses, and not to get lost in the counting alone. Funny how we act like small children when we are really hurt. We really want the permission to hit or bite someone else, just to release the stress of receiving hurt. None of us, if we were honest, really likes this passage, and Jesus' words. None of us jumps up and says, "yeah, I get to forgive others forever!"

Jesus speaks to each of us in this way about forgiveness, in that, we can't right the wrongs or damage that others have done to us. The only thing we can do is to forgive them and forgive ourselves too. The repeated motion of forgiveness, the necessity and regularity of the activity means that it is a liturgical, basic, core reality of our living faith. It is the work of the people. It is what releases in us the capacity to see the face of God in others. It releases the capacity for us to see ourselves and others, for a brief moment, as the loving Creator does, with eyes of compassion and understanding. Like all other exercise that is essential, we fight it and sometimes want to be let off the hook. In reality, it is our forgiving, our letting others off our hook, as it were, that releases in us the compassion and love of God. It releases transformation in our beings, and in our communities. As long as we hold on to the controls, as long as we hook and hang up the perps, the longer we are unable to be transformed - be made new. When we forgive, we release them to God. When we release them, we relinquish control of our lives to God. And when we do, our hearts and lives break open and are remade a bit more in God's image.

May we today have the courage to stop counting the infractions against us and welcome the opportunities to forgive. It is our calling, it is our work, our liturgy as the followers of Christ. It is an open invitation to live beyond our means in the resplendent love of God, the loving one who created us following the pattern of the Creator, and who wants us to know and be known intimately. The exercise of forgiveness seems a small task then, in light of the invitation to know and be known, to be bathed in love, surrounded by hope, and reconditioned and renew for deeper love and fuller service.