The
Paradox of Forgiveness
Text: Matthew 18.21-35
On August 22, just a few weeks ago, an extraordinary liturgy of
forgiveness was enacted in the English city of Coventry and the German
city of Dresden. The English ceremony took place at Coventry
Cathedral, which, on the 14th of November 1940, was destroyed by German
bombs. The German ceremony took place at the newly restored
Frauenkirche, which was destroyed by English bombs on the 13th of
February 1945. At each of the ceremonies English and German
worshippers asked for, and received, the forgiveness of both God and
each other for the blindness which led to their mutual destruction of
each other in the 2nd World War. Of course, as we learn from the
gospel, true forgiveness cannot be granted without an acknowledgment of
real guilt, so the liturgies did not shy away from naming that
guilt. The bombing of Coventry was part of a campaign to steal
away the freedom of the English people. It was explicitly
designed to kill people—women, men and children—and so to cower them
into submission and surrender. The Dresden bombing took place
when the war was all but over. It is widely acknowledged that
there was not even a strategic military reason for the bombing.
The German military machine has already broken down. The bombing,
which levelled Dresden and killed 40 000 people, was ordered simply to
kill as many German civilians as possible. It was extremely
humbling to be in Dresden on August 13th of this year to hear a local
Roman Catholic priest tell us, with tears, how much it meant to him,
and to the people of Dresden, that my colleagues and I should come to
Dresden to reflect with them on the forgiveness at the heart of our
shared gospel.
The crimes committed in the 2nd World War were, you see, not only
crimes committed by one group of human beings against another.
They were also crimes committed by one group of Christians against
another. Many of the soldiers and pilots involved in the conflict
were Christians—Anglicans, Lutheran, Methodists, Presbyterians,
Reformed and Roman Catholic—Christians who were killing each other in
the name of tribal sovereignty. What the Second World War
highlighted, graphically and tragically, was not only the inhumanity of
men and women towards other men and women, but also the lack of true
reconciliation at the heart of European Christianity.
In turning today’s gospel reading, I’d like you to note two
things. First, that Peter’s question about forgiveness is not
occasioned by the misdeeds of someone beyond the community of
faith. Peter asks how many times he is called to forgive a member
of his own church. “Seventy-times-seven” times, says Jesus, or,
if I may translate, as many times as is necessary for the sake of
reconciliation. For what is the church if not a reconciled
community, a community that is able to live at peace with itself in
spite of all the sins of its members? What is the church if its
members cannot forgive each other as Christ has forgiven them? If
the church cannot do this, then it is not the church. It is
nothing more than a sociological or political reality when birds of a
feather flock together. If a church’s members cannot live with
each others differences and forgive each other’s sins, then we are
nothing more than social clubs, gathered around the tribalisms of race,
class or gender that Christ came to overcome. People sometime ask
me why I am still part of the church. The people who ask are
usually people who have been wounded by the church, people who feel
that the church has let them down or, at least, undervalued what they
had to contribute. My reply usually goes like this: the
scandal of the gospel is that Christ, who had no sin, yet became sin
for our sake. He took on the flesh or people who hate and kill
each other. By doing so, he loved and accepted our fragile
humanity. He forgave our sins and made reconciliation
possible. Who am I, then, to pretend that I am somehow superior
to anyone else in the church? The church can only exist by
forgiveness. How can I, who have been forgiven my sins by both
Christ and my sisters and brothers, fail to forgive the sins of
church? I cannot.
Which brings me to the second thing I would like you to notice about
today’s gospel passage. That forgiveness is only possible for
people who are willing to forgive. That’s the point of the story
about the forgiven slave who cannot forgive his brother, is it
not? Although the king, out of sheer mercy, had forgiven his
unpayable debt, the slave was not able to do the same for a brother who
owed him something. So the king threw the unmerciful slave into
prison. Now, some of you, I know, will think this very
harsh. Perhaps some of you will even get a little theological and
say that this story encourages a gospel of works because what it says,
in the end, is that it is our capacity to forgive that ultimately earns
God’s forgiveness. Well, to that I would reply in the classically
reformed way: that our capacity to forgive another does not earn
God’s forgiveness, but rather shows that we are people who have truly
experienced the power and truth of forgiveness ourselves. Only
the person who knows that they can never repay the debt owed to God,
only the person who knows themselves to be loved and forgiven it all,
would possibly be able to forgive the crimes of their brother. If
we do not know this, perhaps we have never experienced the true power
of forgiveness?
At a human rights conference in 1997, in the mist of lots of grand
speeches about the power of forgiveness, I met a man named
Retosa. At lunch one day, I asked him where he was from, and what
he did all day. His reply taught me more about the truth of
forgiveness than all the speeches put together. Restosa was from
Liberia, and what he did all day was this: gathering families who
had killed each other’s children during the civil war together in a
room to confess their sins and learn to forgive one another.
“Only the person who knows the depth of their sin, and the amazing
liberation of God’s forgiveness, could possibly forgive such crimes
from the heart” said Retosa. Perhaps that is why this work is
being undertaken by a Christian pastor rather than a social worker.
Allow me to summarise what we have noticed thus. (1) That the
church is called to be a community of forgiveness. (2) That our
capacity to be that is directly related to the extent to which our
sins, which are many, are forgiven in Christ. And this
finally: (3) that Christ’s forgiveness comes alive in the world
only where the church actually embodies Christ's forgiveness by its
willingness to live in the unity of forgiven sinners. For that,
my friends, is what all that talk in Matthew about binding and loosing
is all about (see 18.18-20). Christ will only do in the world
what his church is willing to do. For we are his body, in whom
the Spirit of Christ faces his world. What we do or do not do is
what Christ himself does. Such is Christ’s vulnerability.
Such, then, is our responsibility. The paradox of forgiveness is
this, then: that we are forgiven only insofar as the truth of
forgiveness has so penetrated our hearts that we are able to see
others, also, in the mercy of Christ’s grace. May God help us to
forgive, and keep on forgiving, as Christ forgives.
Let me finish with a prayer, the litany of reconciliation from Coventry
Cathedral:
All have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God.
The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from
class,
Father forgive.
The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their
own,
Father forgive.
The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the
earth,
Father forgive.
Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
Father forgive.
Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the
refugee,
Father forgive.
The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,
Father forgive.
The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,
Father forgive.
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God
in Christ forgave you.
Garry
Deverell
17th Sunday after Pentecost
2005
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