by CCW | 23 October 2016 15:00
Abundant love. Super-abundant love. The love which cannot be numbered. The love which cannot be constrained. It is a beautiful concept. How is it to be realised in us? In a way, that is the great question of the Trinity season. How are the living words of Christ to be made alive in us? How will we act out of what we have heard and seen? Will we? The point is that we hear and see things that require a response in us.
The Gospels often provide us with powerful illustrations about our human failings, on the one hand, and God’s redeeming grace at work in us, on the other hand. The Gospel for the 22nd Sunday after Trinity is one such example. It begins with a question from Peter to Jesus about how often do you forgive the one who has sinned against you. Is there a set number? Can forgiveness be limited to an algorithm, to a mathematical formula? Everything else is in our world and day, it seems. We are quite content to let the algorithms of Googledom send us birthday greetings and tempt us with endless advertisements programmed to our supposed interests, not to mention letting the entire stock market be run by algorithms. So why not forgiveness? Why not seven times?
Jesus’ response is about abundant love. “I say not unto thee, until seven times; but until seventy times seven.” Literally? Four hundred and ninety times? And, then, at the four hundred and ninety-first time, what? Forget it, your allotment of forgiveness is up? Tough luck, buddy. It is, of course, a deliberate exaggeration. Who, after all, is going to keep track of such a number? Why, you would need some sort of algorithm just to do the numbering! But that misses the entire point. Forgiveness is not something that can be quantified. To think that it can misses the whole meaning of forgiveness. Ultimately it is something from God that is meant to live and move in us, if we will let it.
There is the crux of the matter brought out in the parable which Jesus tells to illustrate the point about the immeasurable nature of forgiveness. It is the parable of the unforgiving servant who having been forgiven a great debt of “ten thousand talents”, a huge sum, turns around and refuses to forgive a lesser servant a far, far, smaller debt owed to him, a mere “hundred pence”. It is a brilliantly clear example of someone being forgiven who does not forgive in turn; the complete opposite of the petition in the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.”
Forgiveness is about the abundant love of God towards us. It is beyond measure. It cannot be reduced to an algorithm, a formula. It is meant to live in us with respect to our feelings and our dealings with one another. If it doesn’t then we are the ones who have negated the forgiveness that has been shown to us. We have betrayed the abundant love by constraining it completely to our own immediate self-interest. Forgiveness is absolutely dead in us if we cannot forgive one another. At the very least, we have to want to make the effort to forgive one another, especially those whom we think have offended us. No one said it was easy. No one said that it is mere words. It has to be about words alive in us.
The parable shows us, sadly, how easy it is not to let the words of forgiveness have their resonance and force in our lives. But it also is showing us that the failure of forgiveness is always in us. Not in God. Abundant love is what is shown to us in the story of Jesus, in the words and deeds of Jesus. To refuse to forgive others is to turn our backs on the love of Christ and his forgiveness for us on the Cross. It is to deny the abundant love of God in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” It is to be sure the first word from the Cross but even more that word of forgiveness is the meaning of the crucifixion of Christ himself. It is entirely about the abundant love of God towards us in that “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us”. That is abundant love, the abundant love that is wanted for each of us.
The parable is told as a kind of shock and awe strategy. It is meant to move us to take seriously the forgiveness of sins and not to take it for granted. It involves more than mere words; it is about the living words of Christ in us. To forgive even as we have been forgiven.
How is that even remotely possible? By letting go of all the memories of our hurts and pains and letting Christ’s words rule and move in our hearts. It means to be what we pray.
Forgiveness opens us out to the abundant love of God in Jesus Christ. It is, too, the meaning of our fellowship in Christ, the fellowship of the forgiven. But that is impossible without two things: first, the recognition of ourselves as sinners; and, secondly, the full-hearted acceptance of God’s forgiveness of us for which we have no greater expression and reality than the cross of Christ. For there is the abundant love of God towards us. There is the mercy of forgiveness that is our joy and our life. Only if we will it can it live in us. The parable does not hide from view the sad business of our turning our backs on the abundant mercy and love of Christ. The point is to awaken in us something of the awesome wonder of the infinite and abundant love of God which is greater than all our petty follies and sins. The abundant love of God is what we must want for ourselves and for one another. What is wanted is “that your love may abound yet more and more”.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XXII, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/10/23/sermon-for-the-twenty-second-sunday-after-trinity-3/
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