70 x 7

In 1944, Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch Christian living in Amsterdam, was arrested along with the rest of her family for sheltering Jews who were hiding from the Nazi authorities.

 

She was taken to Ravensbruk concentration camp and though she survived, her sister Betsie died there, just a few weeks before the camp was liberated later the same year.

 

On release, Connie took up her charitable work again and grew in the conviction that forgiveness was the only force that could bring Europe together again after the war. So she started touring in Holland, France and Germany, sharing her experiences and preaching about the need for forgiveness.

 

One Sunday she was speaking in Munich and after the service, a man walked up to her and offered his hand  "Ja, Fraulein Ten Boom," he said, "I am so glad that Jesus forgives us all our sin, just as you say."

Straight away, she recognised  him.  He was one of the guards who had looked on, laughing and leering, when the women in her camp were forced to take showers. Corrie remembered. And as the man reached out his hand, expecting her to take it, her own hand froze at her side.

Could she practice what she had just preached?

Corrie’s story is an especially heightened one, but her struggle to forgive is one that we’re all familiar with. None of us go through life without needing to forgive others or be forgiven by them. And it has ever been so.

So what are the parameters we should live by, when it comes to forgiveness? How do we make this work in the real world? That’s the question Peter comes to Jesus with in today’s reading.

“Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times do I have to forgive him? Seven times?”

Now Peter, being a good Jew, knows that the rabbis worked on a three-strikes and you’re out policy. If someone sinned against you in the same way three times, you had to forgive them, but when it got to the fourth time you could legitimately walk away without settling the matter.

But Peter, being a follower of Jesus, knows that the Lord often sets the bar higher than the law demands. So he doubles the rabbi’s figure and adds one to bring it up to that nice, holy Biblical number of 7. Surely that would be enough?

‘No’ said Jesus. Not seven times, but 77 times. Or – as some translations have it – 70 times 7. The number’s not important. The point is, it’s a number that’s so big it’s not worth counting. If you’re still counting you’re not forgiving. You’re just postponing revenge. Throw away the calculator, says Jesus. We’re not working that way in my Kingdom.

 

But why? Surely when someone does me wrong I have a right to be angry, especially if they don’t show any signs of remorse?

Well, it all depends on how you see things, says Jesus. And that’s his cue for the parable of the Unforgiving Servant.

A king decides it’s time to call in the accounts of his servants. One of them’s brought in and it’s discovered that this man owes 10,000 talents. That’s billions in your money and mine.

Now let’s stop there for a moment because that should give us pause for thought. How come this servant has managed to rack up debts that even a Premiership Footballer and his wife couldn’t dream of?

Well some commentators think that the kind of King Jesus is drawing on here for the story, is the kind you’d find in the bigger nations to the east of Israel. All-powerful, ruling vast empires with a rod of iron and exacting taxes from all his provinces. It might be that the servant’s debt isn’t a personal one, but the monies that are owed the king from the province that the servant oversees. That would make more sense.

Or it might be, for the sake of the story, that Jesus is just exaggerating for effect. This guy owes the king more than he can ever hope to pay.

Whatever the truth of it, the point is that there’s no way the servant can make this right. And the King, being that kind of severe eastern King, orders that the servant and his family and all they own be sold to pay the debt.

Now, will the sale of one family and all their possessions raise the missing billions? No, but it’ll help ensure that the next person to take the king’s money won’t play fast and loose with it.

And the servant’s just about to be carted off when the he falls to his knees and begs for mercy. But his plea is a nonsense. “Be patient and I’ll pay you back” he says. Like that’s ever going to happen!

But for reasons we never fully understand, the king – surprisingly – takes pity on him. The servant asks him to ‘be patient’ and the Greek there literally means ‘be big hearted’. And indeed the King is, because he does far more for the man than we might have expected him to.

He doesn’t give the servant more time. He doesn’t arrange for repayment on a capital and interest basis. He cancels the debt. The King takes the financial hit himself because he feels sorry for the guy – or more likely his family.

And so the servant’s sent out, the totally undeserving recipient of an incredible act of mercy.  You would expect that out of gratitude, he might start extending mercy to others.

But no. Maybe he doesn’t believe the King. Maybe he thinks the King’s going to change his mind and come looking for his money again. Is that why he grabs this fellow-servant who owes him a few months wages, and tries to bully him out of it? 

We never know. But we know how the King feels about it when he gets to hear what’s happened. The unmerciful servant’s thrown into prison until he can pay his debt, and given the size of the debt, that’s a roundabout way of saying that he’ll be there ‘til kingdom come.

And the message from the Parable, and indeed the whole of the New Testament, couldn’t be clearer. If you choose not to forgive others, don’t expect God to be forgiving towards you.

Blessed are the merciful, said Jesus for they will receive mercy.

¹⁴If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. More words of Jesus.

And the apostle James put it this way – “Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful”

Sobering stuff this Sunday morning because as every one of us knows, it is terribly hard to forgive; And some of us have much more to forgive than others – I’m always very mindful of that when I speak on this issue.

 

But what are the alternatives, if forgiveness seems too hard?

Venegeance seems sweet at the time, but as Ghandi once said, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. When does it stop? Not much sign of vengeance ending the cycle of violence in Gaza, or Syria at the moment.

If we lash out at the other in hate, it only makes the situation worse. But if we bottle it up in resentment, it ends up making our own lives worse.

Rabbi Harold Kushner talks of counselling a woman whose husband had left her for a younger woman and was now defaulting on his maintenance payments

"How do you expect me to forgive him after what he's done to me and my children?" she said.

"I'm not asking you to forgive him because what he did wasn't terrible: it was terrible! I'm suggesting that you forgive him because he doesn't deserve to have the power to turn you into a bitter and resentful woman!"

Storing up resentment poisons the wellspring of our own lives, and yet that’s often the way people choose to deal with their hurt. Many would rather grow bitter than try to forgive.

Why such resistance to forgiveness?

Part of the answer is that folk often believe that choosing the way of forgiveness means belittling the hurt caused; pretending away a genuine wrong that was done as though it didn’t matter. Pretending we’re ok when really we’re gutted inside.

Well, none of that is either true or necessary.

The best definition I’ve heard of the process of forgiveness comes from a little book called Forgive and Forget, by Lewis Smedes. He says there are three stages in forgiveness -

"We hurt, we hate, we heal”.

“We hurt; that is, we allow ourselves to feel the depth of an injury that has been dealt to us. We don't minimize it, or try to sweep it under the carpet”

“We hate; that is, we blame the one who has hurt us. We don't condone or excuse the offense.

“Finally, when we are ready, we heal; we let go of the pain that is binding us to the past, and move on. That is how we human beings forgive."

And for me, it’s that last insight that’s key – we don’t pretend the past away or belittle it. But we seek to let go of the pain and move on for the sake of our own wellbeing. It’s hard work to do that, maybe the hardest work we’ll ever do, but it leads us into life and freedom instead of the prison of our own resentment.

We forgive not primarily to bless the other, but to free ourselves.

 

Is God nudging you this morning, I wonder?

Are you nursing a spirit of unforgiveness towards someone? Are you aware of the damage it’s doing to you? How it affects your moods and your behaviour and the people around you?

Are you feeling like you’re locked into that way of thinking? Would you like to get out of it but don’t know how?

Forgiveness is God’s doorway to freedom. It doesn’t change the past, but it does allow you to move on so you don’t have to live in the shadow of the past.

That’s what Corrie Ten Boom discovered that day in Munich, as she stood there facing an enemy who was reaching out to shake her hand.

What could she do now that she was confronted by a person she struggled to forgive?

She prayed: "Jesus, I can't forgive this man. Forgive me." At once, in a wonderful way that she wasn’t prepared for, she had a sense that she was completely forgiven by God.  And from that strong place she was able to do what she couldn’t have done in her own strength.

She raised her hand, took that of her enemy, and then let it go. In her heart she freed him from his terrible past. And she also freed herself from hers.

Why does Jesus command us to forgive the people who hurt us, seventy times seven? Because forgiveness is the only way we can ever be set free from the wrongs that we do to one another and move on from them.

 

I’ve said nothing thus far about September 18^th, and while I’m sure there’ll be colleagues up and down the land rallying for the Union today or condemning the evils of Trident and UK foreign policy you won’t get that from me. You’re old enough to make up your own minds!

But let me say this as I close – whatever political solution you put your hopes in and your cross beside this Thursday, remember that as Christians we live to serve another Kingdom.

No political system is able to deliver the change I want to see – men and women turning back to God and one another, because they’re inspired by the person of Jesus Christ and determined to keep in step with his Spirit.

Whatever we decide, we won’t wake up in Utopia on September 19^th this year or any year. And maybe the church’s greatest contribution to this time in our life as a nation won’t be at the ballot box, but afterwards as we try in our homes and communities and families and churches, to draw folk back together again for the common good.

Alongside the robust debate and fervent campaigning of the past few months there’s been a darker underside of hurt and hate that’s left many feeling bruised and sore. And the only certainty after the referendum is that half the folk in Scotland will be feeling disenfranchised.

Let’s pray and act now for the healing that will lead to forgiveness.

And let’s pray that whatever the result, we might become a nation which determines -  in the prophet Micah’s words – to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.