High Significance

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This is a prayer, but forgiveness is clearly a matter of high significance to Jesus for how you imagine yourself participating in what he’s doing and being one of his followers. Forgiveness, it’s a very personal reality, the experience of being wronged by somebody and then having to sort out my feelings and my relationship to that person, this is pretty basic to the human experience, being hurt by somebody, having to figure out how to move forward. Forgiveness, it means most literally to release or to let someone leave or to let them go or emancipation, to set someone free from an obligation, it’s a financial word. In one sense, forgiveness, to let go or to release, but it’s most commonly used outside of just you letting someone walk away, it’s most use was in financial, of releasing someone from a financial debt or obligation.

The year of Jubilee, every seventh year was a year of release and then the seven time seven year was a year of Jubilee, the year of setting free, because debts are canceled in that year. Both the seventh year and the seven time seven year was a year of letting go free. This is core to understanding the story underneath the word forgiveness in the teaching of Jesus, because if you don’t know that story, Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness are still really powerful and personal. We need to imagine ourself into the bigger story Jesus saw himself as a part of and how certain words or ideas are loaded with a backstory and forgiveness is one of them. Vocabulary about moral failures continue to develop through time, the word debt, the word for a financial debt becomes one of the main words for wronging someone.

It only makes sense in a worldview, where you view other humans as an image of God, so that a wrong done to someone is a wrong simultaneously against the one whom they image. When I wrong another person, I am in debt to God and if I financially wronged them, I’m in that person’s financial debt too, but to wrong another person is to put one in moral debt with God, I owe God now. I need to do something to make things right, I need to go make repair with that person, then go repair with God through prayers of confession or offering a sacrifice in the temple as an expression of my humility and desiring to surrender back to God. The idea of forgiveness of what one owes God and if that hasn’t been forgiven, then I’m sitting in a place of indebtedness or being bound, in need of release.

The fact that the year of Jubilee is called the year of release and it was every seven years and every seven time seven years, it was all a reenactment of Israel’s first release and emancipation which was from slavery in Egypt. Jesus sees himself as being born into an Israel that is in debt and in need of release, it’s like the Egyptian slavery and being released is like being freed out of Egypt, but the reason they’re under this new version of slavery and oppression is because of their sins, in other words, release from the consequences of our sins. The consequence of sins within the Covenant storyline is an army, God’s going to allow an army to come take out Jerusalem, you’re sitting in your sins if your enemies are crawling over the wall and you’re being taken off into another land for exile.

What will the forgiveness of sins mean, it’s not just an exchange between God and your average Israelite, it will by definition be like a dual relationship, you can’t claim to be forgiven by God and then be holding out forgiveness, not releasing other people of what they’ve done to you, but then somehow thinking that you’re really grateful that God released you for how you wronged him. The forgiveness of sins becomes a shorthand for the restoration of a community that is forgiven and that people mirror and imitate that Divine forgiveness by reshaping how they relate to each other. If you don’t forgive, then what you are demonstrating is that you are actually incapable of really experiencing what you say you have experienced, which is God’s forgiveness, it doesn’t work that way Jesus says. Within the Hebrew Bible storyline, forgiveness is not merely something between Israelites individually or between individual Israelites and God, it has social and communal and a covenantal storyline attached to it.

Luke 4:16-30, this is a Jubilee announcement Jesus is announcing, that it is the arrival of God’s Kingdom, the ultimate release, the great forgiveness and to be a prophet announcing that to Israel as they sit under foreign domination from Rome, he’s announcing that the great restoration is going to happen. To announce the forgiveness of sins was a prophetic announcement of the arrival of God’s Kingdom, for Israel, God has forgiven us, he’s in the process of forgiving us right now. For Jesus to go around announcing forgiveness to individuals is bound up with the forgiveness of Israel’s sins, because it’s the sins against God that brought the covenant curses upon them. For Jesus announcing forgiveness and then really practicing it as a community was a sign of the arrival of God’s Kingdom, a community of radical forgiveness is an incarnation of God’s Kingdom people living under the rule and the reign of God’s blessing.

There’s this reciprocal nature, if I believe I am among the community of the forgiven and part of realizing that is I myself, my life has been full of shortcomings, where I have morally failed to do right by other people in my life. God through Jesus has moved towards me in my debt and declared that I am forgiven and if that’s my identity, that’s the starting place, then how I then go out and begin to relate to other people, it must be from a posture of forgiveness to practice forgiveness and if you deny other people forgiveness, the kind of forgiveness that God has shown towards me, then you show you don’t actually get what’s going on here, you haven’t really participated in the forgiveness. This daily prayer is meant to shape me into the kind of person, so that I’m prepared to be wronged by people, mentally preparing myself that I’m going to be wronged by somebody today and what’s my response going to be. This is what Jesus is after here, he wants to shape a community of people who are like this emblem of radical forgiveness to each other and that communicates a story of the good news of God’s forgiveness of us.

 

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Go To The Person
Matthew 18:15, Jesus begins, he says listen, if a brother or sister in the community, so notice, he’s talking about within the community of his followers, let’s say somebody wrongs you, then what you should do first is go one-on-one and talk to them about it, go to the person and talk to them and if they listen to you, you’ve restored the relationship, where it’s the phrase, you’ve gained your sibling back. You lost a sibling through rupture of the relationship, because they did something to you, it’s a very vulnerable act to go share with somebody that they hurt you, they may not even realize they did it. Jesus builds this into his wisdom teaching here, don’t go talk to somebody else, go to the person, but if that doesn’t work and they don’t listen, then what you should do is take one or two more with you, by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.

Jesus using the Torah’s wisdom literature, because the original context of that is in like a legal dispute, but he’s deriving a wisdom principle from that, don’t go tell other people, because whoever you tell is somebody that is going to get involved. You need to get someone involved, maybe you’re off base or maybe they’re off base, what you need is some third party that’s neutral, that doesn’t have a conflict of interests, get a mediator and if one is not going to do it, maybe two, widen the circle of perspective. If still that doesn’t repair it, you probably need to share it with a wider circle and Jesus famously, this is the only time Jesus brings up this idea, which is about a form of excommunication, tell it to the gathering and if that person refuses to listen to every other follower of Jesus that they’re in relationship with, then what you should treat them is as somebody who doesn’t actually know or follow Jesus.

This is of huge significance to Jesus that this be a community, where we are practicing radical forgiveness, that he goes to these lengths to describe the process. The moment Jesus finishes saying this, Peter comes up and says, how often am I supposed to forgive the sibling here in the community if they wrong me, Peter’s trying to bring up a loophole, what if they do it seven times, at what point do we realize this is just a bad apple. Jesus says not just seven times, but 70 times 7, he’s taking the phrase of what Cain’s descendant Lamech said, if God forgave Cain seven times over for murdering his brother, then God’s obligated to forgive me 70 times 7, Jesus takes that line and he flips it about brothers wronging brothers, you forgive them the intensity of Lamech’s violent selfishness, he inverts the intensity of forgiveness. Lamech, Genesis chapter 4, Cain gets exiled, but God forgives Cain, he forgives a murderer, Cain still experiences consequences and is forgiven and then a descendant of Cain, Lamech, he murders a young man in his city and then says if God forgave my ancestor, then he’ll have to forgive me seven-seventyfold.

Peter, what’s the limit on the amount of generosity and forgiveness I show towards someone, Jesus, think of it this way, there was this guy who owed a 100 dollars to somebody and the guy that he owed eventually just said, I release you from your debt, go be free and then he walks out of the room and he sees somebody who owes him 20 bucks and he takes him to court, gets him arrested and won’t let the guy out of jail until he pays him the 20 bucks. The guy that he owed a 100 dollars to calls him back in, you wicked son of, into jail with you and you won’t get out till you pay me my 100 dollars, but it’s a parable realization of what Jesus said in the Lord’s Prayer, which is, if you don’t forgive, you show you have not understood who Jesus is and what it means to live as the community of the forgiven, you haven’t grasped your identity as a forgiven one.

These teachings of Jesus can actually be used and abused and have been in communities of faith to keep people in abusive relationships, family settings, where they’re told to just keep forgiving when they’re in physical danger or in suffering emotional abuse and it’s hard to comprehend how we could misunderstand Jesus on such a deep level. But what that shows is the lack of getting to the heart of what Jesus is teaching about radical forgiveness, if we just ponder, meditate on these teachings, for Jesus, forgiveness is not ignoring or forgetting that somebody wronged you, you are naming it and drawing attention to it, one-on-one and then with other people and then with as wide a circle as is necessary to communicate that this is not acceptable. This is not water under the bridge, trying to move on, because time heals all wounds and Jesus doesn’t expect us to think it does, forgiveness doesn’t mean you endorse or condone what this person is doing, just the opposite, with this widening circle of safety, to go yourself, which is very vulnerable, in the moment you realize this person is not safe, Jesus says never be alone with that person again, this is Jesus’ teachings, you can still forgive them and act that way, that’s not exclusive with forgiveness.

In Jesus’ mind, forgiveness and reconciliation are different, they’re not the same thing, in reality, what is happening is they’re not listening, they actually fit into the category of the person who refuses to stop or acknowledge what they’re doing, don’t be with that person alone and include other people in the process, so you know you’re not just being overly sensitive, but the moment that’s been established within a circle that you know, bring mediators in the moment that you and your conscience can say, I’m not crazy, I’m not being overly sensitive, me and some other people think this person’s out of line, but if they keep doing it, then we need to cut off relationship, treat them as if they’re not a follower of Jesus. Don’t hold them to the standards of a follower of Jesus, if they’re not a safe person to be around, don’t be around them, that’s just unwise.

Forgiveness is a posture of the heart, God will treat you like this angry debt collector if you don’t forgive your neighbor from the heart, a heart posture towards somebody that’s wronged me and that has to happen regardless of whether we are ever able to repair the relationship or reconcile, refusing to treat them as if they owe me, but releasing them. Not allowing the wrong that they did me to have power over me, not allowing it to define me, but getting some wise advisers to discern what is an appropriate level of consequence and what’s the point at which I am trying to get even.





So much depends on the circumstances, it would be irresponsible to have no consequences for somebody acting criminally or something, but you could forgive that person in the heart, it’s at least about my heart posture for them, not reducing that person’s humanity to the wrong that they did toward me. Learning to discover a compassion for them, I know what it’s like to act out of selfish motives, begin a journey, try to reframe why that person did that and see that they’re an image of God and adjust my heart posture towards them, it’s wisdom guidance, it’s going to look a little different in every different type of situation. This is not a formula, this is wisdom guidance for very murky difficult situations, forgive us our debts, just as we forgive those indebted to us.