Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”(Matthew 18:21–22)

“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”(Matthew 6:9–13)

Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.(From the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous)

 

In my time as part of the clergy, and even before that in my previous career, I have more often than not had to help people navigate some pretty intense interpersonal conflict.

Which is just kind of a fancy way of saying that I have had to help people when they have been fighting with each other.

Conflict seems to be part of the human experience. And, much to my chagrin and disappointment in myself, I am not immune to it either.

We human beings have ideas about what is right. We have expectations about how people should speak to us, care for us, parent children, spend money, organize meetings, make decisions, and generally behave in the world. And more often than not, we disagree.

Sometimes those disagreements turn into conflict.

Big-time conflict.

Life-changing conflict.

And what is interesting—or at least what I have experienced—is that the depth of the conflict does not necessarily correspond to the importance of the issue people are disagreeing about.

I have seen people rage at one another over the proper way tea should be served at a meeting. Whole churches have fought and split over the paint colour in the sanctuary. Families have stopped speaking to one another over the name of a new baby. Relationships have ended over finances, child-rearing, politics, holiday plans, seating arrangements, email tone, and whether someone said the thing they insist they did not say.

Conflict is inevitable.

And unfortunately, the aftermath of conflict—the simmering anger, the rehearsed conversations in our heads, the resentment we carry around like an overstuffed backpack—can start to run our lives.

Regardless of whether the original issue was enormous or, in the grand scheme of things, pretty small.

And into all of this enters forgiveness.

Now, I need to be absolutely clear: forgiveness does not mean acting as though the harm never happened.

Forgiveness does not mean pretending everything is fine when it is not.

It does not mean that everything goes back to the way it was. It does not mean that the warring factions reconcile, hug it out, and are happy-clappy for the rest of their lives.

It does not mean forgetting.

And it absolutely does not mean tolerating abuse, violence, manipulation, or ongoing harm.

Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is create distance. Sometimes forgiveness includes a locked door, a blocked number, a boundary, a safety plan, a lawyer, a therapist, or simply the sentence: No. You do not get access to me anymore.

That is not unforgiveness. That is wisdom.

Jesus is not handing Peter a calculator and asking him to keep better score. Peter offers seven times, which is already a pretty generous number. Most of us are likely thinking, Seven? Really? Seven feels ambitious.

And Jesus responds with seventy-seven times—or seventy times seven, depending on the translation.

Either way, Jesus is not setting a new quota.

Jesus is saying: stop counting.

Not because what happened does not matter. It matters very much. But because a life spent counting offences will eventually become a life built around them.

The number Jesus uses also reaches back into the book of Genesis. In the story of Lamech, violence and vengeance are multiplied: not just sevenfold, but seventy-sevenfold. Jesus takes that old, ugly pattern of escalating retaliation and turns it around. Where the world says, “Make them pay,” Jesus says, “Do not let the injury turn you into someone whose life is organized around revenge.”

That is hard.

It is especially hard when the person who hurt us does not understand what they have done. Or does understand and does not care. Or apologizes just enough to try to make the consequences go away, but not enough to actually change?

And you know, when I read this, I’m left with questions, right? What about repentance? What about restitution? What about justice? What about power differences? What about the person who has been harmed by someone stronger, more powerful, or more dangerous than they are?

And that’s not small.

Forgiveness is not a spiritual shortcut around accountability.

This is where our neighbours in AA have something important to teach the church.

The Twelve Steps are not built around vague regret. They are built around honesty. Step 4 asks for a searching and fearless moral inventory. Step 5 asks us to say out loud—to God, to ourselves, and to another person—the exact nature of our wrongs. And Step 9 asks us to make direct amends wherever possible, except when doing so would cause further harm.

That last bit matters.

Making amends is not the same thing as demanding forgiveness.

An apology does not obligate another person to reconcile with us. It does not erase the consequences of what we have done. And it does not mean that someone has to put themselves back in harm’s way so that we can feel better about ourselves.

Real repentance is not: “I said sorry. Why are you still upset?”

Real repentance is: “I harmed you. I am willing to name it truthfully. I am willing to accept that I cannot control whether you forgive me. I am willing to change.”

That kind of repentance requires humility.

And humility is not something most of us come by naturally.

It requires us to see ourselves as human beings who are sometimes wrong. More than that, it requires that we admit it out loud. Not in the vague, “Well, I am sorry you felt that way” kind of apology. Not in the “I made mistakes, but so did you” kind of apology. But in the clear and uncomfortable naming of what we have done.

I did this.

It caused harm.

I am sorry.

I will work to do differently.

That is not easy work. But it is holy work.

Nadia Bolz-Weber often writes and speaks about grace in a way that refuses to sentimentalize it. Grace is not pretending that sin does not exist. Grace is not saying that pain does not matter. Grace is the startling and freeing truth that we are not reducible to our worst moments—not the worst thing we have done, and not the worst thing that has been done to us.

As she puts it in a sermon on forgiveness, we can get trapped in resentment toward ourselves and others, caught in the belief that we will never be more than our worst moment—or that the person who hurt us can never be more than theirs. But forgiveness tells a different truth: we belong to God, not to the maze of shame, punishment, resentment, and endless re-litigation of old injuries. You can read the sermon here.

That does not mean we stop telling the truth.

It means that truth is not the same thing as condemnation.

It means that we can name harm without letting harm have the final word.

It means that we can hold people accountable without becoming consumed by the need to punish them.

It means that, sometimes, forgiveness is less like a single decision and more like a practice. Something we return to over and over again. Like prayer. Like recovery. Like learning to put one foot in front of the other when we are not entirely sure where the path is leading.

Some days forgiveness looks like offering an apology.

Some days it looks like accepting one.

Some days it looks like refusing to send the email you drafted at 2:00 a.m.

Some days it looks like being honest with a friend, a sponsor, a therapist, or God about the bitterness you are carrying.

Some days it looks like saying, “I am not ready yet.”

And some days, forgiveness looks like releasing ourselves from the shame of not being able to forgive on command.

Because here is the good news: God is not standing over us with a clipboard, waiting to see whether we managed forgiveness perfectly this week.

God knows we are complicated. God knows that harm leaves marks. God knows that reconciliation is not always possible, wise, or safe.

And God also knows that we need freedom.

Freedom from the things we have done.

Freedom from the things that have been done to us.

Freedom from the exhausting work of carrying every old wound as though it must determine the shape of the rest of our lives.

So, if you are carrying resentment today, you are not a bad Christian.

If you are struggling to forgive, you are not failing God.

If you need boundaries, distance, safety, or time, you are allowed to need those things.

And if you are the one who has caused harm, it is not too late to tell the truth, to make amends where you can, and to begin again.

Forgiveness is not easy. It is not tidy. It is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

But it may, eventually, be one of the ways God leads us out of the prisons we have built for ourselves and one another.

And that is good news.

Blessings today, and remember you are Loved.

~Rev. Lynne

 

Audio File: https://audio.com/lynne-gardiner/audio/office-hours-forgiveness