Must I Forgive
I can’t hear this passage without thinking of a little green asparagus gasping, “seventy-seven times!?!?” The cartoon series, Veggie Tales had a skit of this scripture and the little asparagus, Junior needed to learn the lesson of forgiveness in the episode, God wants me to forgive them?
I think we can relate to Junior when there are people who have hurt us or done bad things. We don’t want to forgive them. We feel it would be wrong to give them a pass for being hurtful and mean, but we are not to judge.
Jesus says in Matthew 18:22, “I say to you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” He then shares a parable about the King who settles his accounts with his Servants. The King forgives a debt of a Servant and then the same Servant doesn’t forgive a debt owed to him. Word comes back to the King and he tells the Servant that he needed to show the same compassion for the Servant who owed him money as the King had showed. Since the Servant didn’t act in this way, he was held accountable for the original debt.
The warning or lesson of the parable is that if we don’t follow the example of Jesus, who forgives, then we will suffer like the Servant and be held accountable. Jesus, on the cross forgave those who beat him and taunted him. Anyone could understand if Jesus held contempt for them, instead he gave them forgiveness.
This example is the one I go back to whenever I feel hurt or wronged by someone. I spend time in prayer and reflection, working through my feelings until I, like Jesus, commend that “they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). I let go and trust God will make it right. It’s not for me to judge whether their actions were intentional and they desired to hurt me. If this is true then, I believe God will work on them to overcome their wrong.
As a kid, I was taught that if I hurt someone, then I am responsible for saying I’m sorry. I need to apologize and they are to respond. Sometimes the response is a silent agreement such as a nod, or a short, ‘okay’. I’ve witnessed some adults who expect kids to say, ‘you are forgiven’ which to me is teaching our kids unrealistic closure.
As an adult, rarely does it happen that if you hurt someone and you apologize, they say “you are forgiven”. In one very specific scenario, I said something very hurtful to a person, then within an hour, I apologized and acknowledged how hurtful my words had been. The response I got was “it’s no big deal”. However, the relationship was never the same afterwards. Just because I apologized doesn’t mean the sin was forgotten or forgiven.
We are taught that forgiveness is a two-way street but that is not true. In the example of Jesus on the cross, those soldiers didn’t need to accept his forgiveness for their actions. Jesus only needed to forgive them and release any ill will he might feel against them. Only later, maybe the soldiers acknowledged their wrong actions and sought forgiveness. In my situation, I’d sought forgiveness but it wasn’t accepted; it doesn’t change the fact that I did seek it and I was deeply sorry.
Jesus tells us to forgive over and over. It can seem redundant especially if we keep forgiving someone for the same offenses. The act of forgiving is shedding the negative emotion that we hold for another or for their actions/non-actions. To forgive someone, removes the “thing” that has caused division. We need to do it often because it’s how we practice to love one another. We cannot love when there is something between you that needs forgiveness.
If we can count on anything, we can count on us getting ourselves into trouble with words or actions and needing to ask for forgiveness. Just because we will have to do it a lot doesn’t mean it is easy. When we ask for forgiveness, we need to knock ourselves down off the pedestal where we placed ourselves. Then on the other side, when someone asks for forgiveness, we need to allow ourselves to open-up and be vulnerable despite the fear they will hurt us again.
Like the little asparagus, Junior in the Veggie Tales cartoon, we must learn that being a disciple and doing what God wants us to do is hard sometimes. It’s through practice of the hard things, we learn to love and appreciate one another and we come closer to God. Too bad in real life we all don’t come together at the end of the episode to sing a song of forgiveness. It would be awfully cool if we did!
