The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost, September 17, 2023 – Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams

Sister Helen Prejean, in her book, Dead Man Walking, later made into a movie, included this passage:

Lloyd LeBlanc has told me that he would have been content with imprisonment for Patrick Sonnier.  He went to the execution, he says, not for revenge, but hoping for an apology.  Patrick Sonnier had not disappointed him.  Before sitting in the electric chair, he had said, “Mr. LeBlanc, I want to ask your forgiveness for what me and Eddie done,” and Lloyd LeBlanc had nodded his head, signaling a forgiveness he had already given.  He says that when he arrived at the sheriff’s deputies there in the cane field to identify his son, he had knelt by his boy – “laying down there with his two little eyes sticking out like bullets” – and prayed the Our Father.

And when he came to the words: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” he had not halted or equivocated, and he said: “Whoever did this, I forgive them.”  But he acknowledges that it’s a struggle to overcome the feelings of bitterness and revenge that well up, especially as he remembers David’s birthday year after year and loses him all over again: David at twenty, David at twenty-five, David getting married, David standing at the back door with his little ones clustered around his knees, grownup David, a man like himself, whom he will never know.  Forgiveness is never going to be easy [Prejean concluded].  Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won.

            Most of us have not had a child brutally murdered, like Lloyd LeBlanc did.  Very few of us have had to forgive a human being who had sunk as low as Patrick Sonnier.  But we have all experienced deep pain, caused, or at least partially caused by another.  We have been betrayed by one whom we trusted.  We have been deprived of what we counted on as ours.  We have been deliberately misled.  We have been wrongfully accused.  Our intentions have been misunderstood.  We have had to work harder because of the thoughtlessness of others.

            We are wronged daily, sometimes deeply, sometimes much less so.  But no less than Lloyd LeBlanc we are called to forgive, to relinquish claim of requital, to let go of blame and resentment and bitterness.  Sister Prejean’s concluding words are just as true for us: “Forgiveness is never going to be easy.  Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won.”

            Today’s Gospel reading focuses on the significance of forgiveness.  Jesus exhorts us to forgive without limit, “not seven times, but … seventy-seven times,” i.e., as often as someone wrongs us.  This is no perfunctory exercise, but one which affects us at our deepest level.  We are to forgive our brother or sister from our heart.  Who can do that?  How can we truly let go of resentment even once, let alone time after time?

            Perhaps we need to step back for a moment and come at this from another way.  After all, Jesus’ parable is in two parts, and the first part tells us about God’s forgiveness of us.  We are the servant who owes ten thousand talents and cannot pay.  Everything we have has been given us by the king, and yet we are often ungrateful, selfish, and unproductive.  When we are held accountable, we are the ones, or should be, who beg for mercy and compassion and forgiveness.  And most of all, we are those referred to in this parable whom the king magnanimously absolves and releases, forgiving all our debt.  Our life and our freedom and our opportunities are precious, undeserved gifts from God, who as the Psalmist (103) proclaims, “…is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  …He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.  For as the heavens are high above the earth [an infinite quantity!], so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.”

            And how do we fear him?  How do we reverence and pay homage to and live in awe of this God who graces us with so much, especially loving, unconditional forgiveness?  The second part of the parable illustrates that or rather shows us how not to do that.

            Again, we are the servant, who now does not extend the same generous forgiveness he has received.  Having been released from the debt of ten thousand talents, he refuses to forgive his fellow servant who owes him only one hundred denarii.  (Such is the difference between what we owe God and what others owe us.)  He casts him into prison, which is what we try to do to those from whom we withhold forgiveness: we confine them in an enclosed space within us.  The truth is, however, that as in the parable, it is we who end up imprisoned and unfree – not simply because our master holds us accountable, but because locking others within us and holding in our resentment costs us the love and freedom and peace which sustain us and allow us to flourish.

            It is not only for others’ good that Jesus calls us to forgive, but for our own good as well.  Nelson Mandela, after being released from prison, was asked about his attitude toward his captors, who had robbed him of the best twenty-seven years of his life.  “Resentment is like drinking poison,” he said, “and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”  He added, “I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”  True forgiveness is a precious gift to “a fellow servant,” a liberation for ourselves, and an act of gratitude and obedience to God.

            “Forgiveness is never going to be easy,” however, as Sister Prejean noted.  “Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won.”  Praying for the gift of forgiveness is something we do too little of.  While forgiveness is a decision, as it was for Lloyd LeBlanc and Nelson Mandela, we need God’s saving grace both to make that act of the will and to persevere in it.  Part of our daily prayer ought to be for help in forgiving others, not only for those daily annoyances that afflict our existence, but also for those deep harbored resentments that we buried long ago.  Consciously or unconsciously, we have all said, “I will never forgive so-an-so.  That painful memory is unpardonable.  I cannot forgive.”

            Yes, you can.  With God’s grace you can.  As God has forgiven you ten thousand talents, so you can forgive one hundred denarii, no matter how large it seems to you.  Ask God for the grace of forgiveness; that is the first step.  But make it a genuine prayer.  If you do not really want to forgive, spiritual writers tell us, ask for the grace to want to forgive.  If you cannot authentically make that request, ask for the grace to want to want to forgive!  Go back as far as you have to in order to start on solid ground.

Keep on asking daily; that is the second step.  Sometimes immediately, but more often eventually, your prayer will be answered.  Cooperate with that grace; that is the third step.  Struggle with it; win it.  True forgiveness is at the core of your spiritual journey, at the heart of the Christian life.  Do not back away from it.  Be encouraged by the God who forgives you, who “is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”  Let that God work in you, who bids you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

Matthew 18:21-35