In today’s world war continues and the financial markets are at present in turmoil. Turmoil caused by war, the effect of AI on the American economy and the economic difficulties in Japan and other causes beside. We can add to this the rising cost of borrowing and the burden of debt, felt most keenly in the third world.
An outcome of this uncertain time, which has borne fruit in a cost-of-living crisis, is anxiety and frustration that can lead people towards an intolerance of others and a culture of blame without due consideration of reasons for failure.
It is not easy, then, in our present time to stay with the teaching of today’s Gospel which is all about forgiveness. What this text is revealing to us is that however much you feel a person has done you wrong, God calls upon us to forgive that person not seven times but seventy times seven. Then, having been forgiven, you must be willing to forgive also or you will incur the wrath of God.
In our troubled world this is a tall order but the alternative is an increasingly intolerant society that ridicules, humiliates and condemns others. Such intolerance will ultimately mean a fragmented society and the cracks have already begun to appear.
To avoid this fragmentation growing how to do we water the plant of forgiveness to ensure its growth? One way is to imitate God by being compassionate. In today’s Gospel reading the King is compassionate when he takes pity on the slave and forgives him his debt. This imitates God because there are many instances in the Bible when God shows compassion on his people. In the Old Testament, God rescues Noah and his family and animals from the flood at a time when ‘the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth’. God rescues Moses and the Israelites from captivity in Egypt when he hears their groans. In the Book of Micah it is written that ‘God does not show his anger forever because he delights in showing clemency. He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under his foot’. Compassion is demonstrated throughout the New Testament in the healing ministry of Jesus.
Another way is to be merciful. In his letter to the Romans, Paul asks us not to judge one another because we all stand before the judgement seat of God and we will all be accountable to God. We must not, as Paul writes, drag each other down. God’s kindness, he says, will lead us to repentance. If we continue to judge one another there will be a hardness of heart that stores up anger and there is so much anger in today’s world.
This does not mean that we should not examine. The law has its place in society as otherwise, as David Pawson writes in his commentary on Matthew, we are left with too little discrimination. However, we are not judge but jury.
In the Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus addresses the crowds saying: ‘Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy’. The title of the hymn that reads ‘there’s a wideness in his mercy that is wider than the sea’ reveals the limitless mercy of God that we need to imitate to help us work towards forgiveness.
Lack of mercy is where it goes terribly wrong when Jesus is brought to be tried by Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea. Pilate believes that Jesus has not done wrong, but mercy is not in his mindset. He sees his job as keeping the people content to avoid unrest and so is willing to let them decide the fate of Jesus. Fortunately, for our salvation, this lack of mercy is turned on its head by Jesus when he cries out on the Cross ‘forgive them Father for they know not what they do’. Here is forgiveness at its height.
Then there is prayer. As we say in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’. In this prayer we are confirming that we are dependent upon God’s grace for forgiveness of our sins. We are saying that we are mindful of the need to be forgiven as well as those who have trespassed against us.
Compassion, mercy and their fruit of forgiveness all reflect the abiding love of God that we need to imitate in our behaviour towards each other. We must love our neighbour as ourselves. If we do this now in the difficult time think how beneficial that will be when the grass is green again.
AMEN