“And Peter said … Lord, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
Far be it from the church to ease us into the year with something light and breezy. The readings in these first few weeks back together take us straight into conflict, disagreement, and, one of the hardest demands of our Christian faith, forgiveness. In Luke’s version of this same passage, Jesus replies that Peter ought to forgive not seven times, but seventy-times-seven times. The difference stems from ambiguity in the original Greek, but in either case, we’re meant to understand: more than you’re ever going to count. When it comes to forgiveness, get out of the counting business. That’s the first rule.
Over my years in ministry this reading has come up quite a few times, and many of those times I’ve held up big, heroic acts of forgiveness as examples for us--as indeed they are. The people from the church in Charleston who were brutally attacked during their Bible study--that was a bit over 10 years ago now. I was still in my old parish.
More recently, and whatever you think of her politics or social views, I was moved a year ago when Erika Kirk stood up at an otherwise very vindictive rally and spoke words of forgiveness for her husband’s killer. It’s a shame we didn’t rally in support of that across the political divide the way we should have.
I heard last week on a podcast by a former writer on the show Cheers (who is now becoming an Episcopal priest) I heard there how Dolly Parton--surely headed toward sainthood--was verbally and professionally abused for years by Porter Wagoner, but then, much later when he was going bankrupt, she bought his entire song catalogue and gave it back to him in an enormous act of forgiveness. When asked about this later, she said simply: “Forgiveness: that’s all there is.”
Of course this week, 9/11. Twenty-five years. I’ll never forget how on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, which fell (that anniversary) on a Sunday, the then-bishop gave us special permission to skip these Scripture readings and choose something else. Very rarely is such an exception made from on high. Most clergy I knew took that as a challenge to preach These Very Texts about forgiveness on that difficult day. It wasn’t easy.
Big, public acts of forgiveness seem heroic--are heroic. But in recent years I’ve wondered how much forgiveness really works like that, even in these instances. The words may come out of the mouth of the person offended. The words may be entirely genuine. But the work of forgiving is probably ongoing in ways we’ll never see or appreciate.
We’re so wrapped up in this idea that forgiveness, in order to be genuine, has to go with forgetting. That forgiveness, in order to be real, has to be big, and effective, a one-time declaration that really takes, and the way we know it takes is that we then forget the offense, let it go, forever and always. It’s a crushing standard. And it’s not the way it works with most people I know. It’s probably not even the way it works with the people whose huge acts of forgiveness we hold up.
I wonder whether Jesus’ response to Peter that day was an acknowledgement of this. Not that there will be seven or seventy-seven big offenses you’ll need to forgive over the course of your life (and how many there will be partly depends on how easily offended you are, I just note on the side). It’s more that some offenses will require repeated utterances of forgiveness, out loud or in the heart, and that’s just how human nature is.
Forget seven, once for every day of the week. It might be for every day of the life remaining to you. Expect that the Christian requirement of forgiveness is going to be so frequent and ongoing that the first thing you’ll need to do if you’re ever going to succeed in it is get out of the business of counting it.
And it may be That the repetition, is what transforms us. In forgiving on a regular basis, you can actually develop a more forgiving nature. Martin Luther King wrote about this in his essay “Love in Action” (which I’ll place in the church library!) Here’s what he says about this encounter between Peter and Jesus:
During his ministry in the sunny villages of Galilee, Jesus talked passionately about forgiveness. This strange doctrine awakened the questioning mind of Peter. “How oft,” he asked, “shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?” Peter wanted to be legal and statistical. But Jesus responded by affirming that there is no limit to forgiveness. “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” In other words, forgiveness is not a matter of quantity, but of quality. A man cannot forgive up to four hundred and ninety times without forgiveness becoming a part of the habit structure of his being. Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.”
We’re awed by grand and beautiful stories of forgiveness, and we should be. They’re like how the larger-than-life acts of the saints spur us to the smallest virtue in imitation. But we’d be mistaken to take the need to forgive over and over as a weakness. It isn’t. It’s normal, it’s human, and moreover it’s how most of us really change. In the day in/day out commitment to say, again and again, however long it takes (and that may be to our dying day) -- I forgive.
Again, Dolly Parton: “Forgiveness: that’s all there is.”