Homily for 13 September, Trinity XV

“So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Last week we heard about an important aspect of loving those around us – that is correcting them when they are in error. This week, Christ continues to address the question of our relationships with those around us, and what the demands of love are when these people do things which offend us.

S. Peter begins the discussion with a question, how often must I forgive? On human terms this is a perfectly reasonable question – we all know people who have made mistakes, and even when these mistakes offend us or hurt us in some way, the sorrow which they express afterwards means that we’re ready enough to repair our relationship by forgiving them quite quickly. But then, so often, they go and repeat the same offence; again and again. We can start to feel weary by the constant litany of forgiveness. We can even start to cloak our irritation by telling ourselves that it’s not helping them to keep forgiving. This much is human forgiveness.

The problem is that Christ isn’t greatly interested in human forgiveness – he is bringing God’s forgiveness to us. God’s forgiveness doesn’t have the same limits as our human abilities give us. What Christ offers to us, in God’s forgiveness, is both a threat and a promise – a promise of the endless nature of forgiveness for our faults, and a threat that it is dependent on our own forgiveness of others.

The story he tells us is immediately understandable, the first debtor owes his master a vast amount (we can’t make an exact conversion, but ten thousand talents would be several million pounds), but out of compassion he is forgiven. This newly forgiven debtor comes across somebody who owes him money – far less, but still not just pocket change (for comparison, a denarius was a day’s wages for a standard labourer, which makes a hundred denarii about three months work), he refuses to have the least mercy on this debtor. The master rightly responds to this hypocrisy by dragging the man back into pay his original debt.

When we look at these, the first point we can note is that the first debtor wouldn’t have the faintest chance of repaying his debt. It isn’t merely that his debt is greater, it’s a debt that will stand against him for ever. This is what we all owe to God. The forgiveness which he gives to us, is the forgiveness of a debt which would not even be reduced if we spent the rest of our lives giving absolutely everything to him. It is only by God’s love and grace that we have the chance of freedom from that debt. The debt which we owe to God is actually infinite, and so in this story by invoking millions of pounds Christ isn’t even exaggerating. Set against that, the debts which others owe to us are comparably small.

That doesn’t mean that these debts are meaningless. There aren’t many people who could lose out on a few thousand pounds without it having a major impact on them. That is part of the story too. Forgiveness of others isn’t easy. Christ certainly isn’t pretending that we can simply smile sweetly and all will be fine and dandy. The forgiveness which Christ is preaching here is something which can really hurt and challenge us. It also has to be a complete forgiveness – unless you forgive your brother from the heart.

This forgiveness means that we acknowledge that people have really wronged us, have really done things which offend and hurt us. There is legitimate and just claim to hold this against them. The fellow servant really did owe him a indeed denarii. But this difficult forgiveness is still necessary.

It is necessary because we are called to become like God. We are called to grow to his perfection. Just as he was able to forgive, we must also forgive. As always, in telling us to forgive, Christ does not merely give us an instruction he also gives us the means. Through prayer and the sacraments, and here especially the sacrament of confession, he gives us the grace to reach deep into our hearts to find the strength to turn to those who have offended against us and to release the, from that bond of debt.

But there is one final element. It isn’t merely that we release this other person who has done some, potentially very grave, wrong against us. We find that in doing this, we release ourselves as well. When we are in debt to somebody else, we carry that as a heavy burden; but when others have that debt to us, that itself is a heavy burden too. At the heart of forgiveness is a turning to the other person and saying in releasing you from this debt, this burden, I also free myself from it. I won’t allow this to hold me down any more. However much what you did hurt me, hurt me gravely, I’m not going to allow it to hurt me any more.

This is no easy statement to make, certainly not to make with all of our hearts, but at the end of it we can find a great freedom for ourselves. Freedom from the weight of other people’s offences against us, as well as freedom from the weight of our burden. Let us all turn to God and ask for his strength to do this.