Forgive, and You Will Be Forgiven - Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
Author: Pastor Scott Schul
February 23, 2025
The twelve verses in
today’s Gospel are densely packed with enough meaty substance to keep a
Christian well-fed for a lifetime. But
it’s just six little words from Jesus that have preoccupied my thoughts this
week with equal parts consolation and concern. “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”
We talk a lot about forgiveness every Sunday morning. We begin worship by confessing our sins and seeking God’s forgiveness. That’s the part of forgiveness which consoles me. And every Sunday we pray the Lord’s
Prayer, which contains a petition similar to what Jesus taught in today’s
Gospel. “Forgive us our trespasses, as
we forgive those who trespass against us.” That’s the aspect of forgiveness which concerns me, because it
seems to connect God’s forgiveness of us to our willingness to
forgive others. And we all know
that though we are quick to seek and even expect God’s forgiveness, we
are sometimes reluctant to forgive others.
But is that so
wrong? Each of us could easily think of
a situation where forgiveness may not be deserved. It might be because of the extremeness of the
offense. Or perhaps it’s because we
believe the offender is not sufficiently sorry. And it’s undeniable that there have been situations where humans have compelled forgiveness as a tool of coercion or control, or to cover
up or deny the pain caused by a transgression, or worse yet, to escape the
consequences of what they’ve done.
If any mere human were
telling us, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven,” I would resist it with
suspicion and skepticism, for all the reasons I’ve just stated. But it’s no mere human who is calling us to forgive and then to be forgiven. It’s Jesus. And so we cannot casually dismiss or downplay what he has said. We have to wrestle with this question.
So let’s take it on
directly. Is God’s forgiveness of you conditional upon you forgiving others? In other words, if I withhold my forgiveness from my neighbor, is God
going to withhold forgiveness from me? Well, the answer is a little more complicated than the question would
suggest, but there is an answer. Stick with me for a few moments and I’ll try to unpack it for you. To do that, we need to turn to two passages
in Matthew’s Gospel which expand Jesus’s teaching about the vital importance of
forgiveness.
The first one is a
familiar one; it’s in Matthew 18 when Peter tried to get Jesus to concede that
there’s a limit to how many times we can be expected to forgive someone. Seven times should be enough, right? Jesus responds, "Not seven times,
but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”1 It’s an expression that means, “always,
without limit.”2 Jesus clearly
puts enormous value on human forgiveness and reconciliation. Next, let’s turn to another passage from
Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 5, as Jesus further explains God’s expectations
when it comes to forgiveness.
There Jesus says, “So
when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother
or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and
go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your
gift.”3 Jesus said this in
the context of visiting the temple in Jerusalem to obtain God’s forgiveness. People would’ve made that trip from every
corner of Israel, walking for days and even weeks at a time, so they could make
a gift as a symbolic sacrifice to God in order to be forgiven. Now imagine someone arrives at the temple
carrying a gift for God while also carrying a grievance against someone
else. Jesus’s teaching is
unmistakable. Put your gift down, go all
the way back home and first make peace. Then come back and you’ll finally be ready to make your sacrifice and receive God’s
forgiveness.
That sounds harsh. Legalistic. Impractical. Unrealistic. Yet it’s entirely consistent with what we’ve
heard in our Gospel: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven,” and what we
will pray in a few minutes: “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who
trespass against us.” Is God really that demanding? Well, think of it this
way. The other day my one-year-old
granddaughter was cutting a molar. She
was miserable with teething pain. So her
dad held her as mom put some medicine into her mouth to ease the pain. Addison promptly turned toward her father and
spit it all over his face. It gave my
daughter a good laugh, but the medicine didn’t do my granddaughter any good now
that it was splattered all over her dad.
That’s what’s at the core
of Jesus’s teaching on forgiveness. God
isn’t setting an arbitrarily demanding standard for us to be forgiven. God is just recognizing the reality that the
medicine of God’s love and forgiveness isn’t going to penetrate our spiritual
heart if that heart is hardened against another person. For our sake, not God’s, we have to
forgive others before we can experience the full freedom of God’s forgiveness.
Forgiveness is
hard. But it can be transformative. Let me give you an amazing real-life example. In 1902, Maria Goretti was an 11-year-old
girl living in rural Italy. Her family
was very poor, and their situation became even more dire when her father died,
because Maria’s mother now had to find a way to provide for this family of six
children. A 20-year-old neighbor of
theirs, Alessandro Serenelli, took an interest in Maria. She did not reciprocate. And so he brutally attacked her. As she was dying in the hospital, Maria astonished
everyone by expressing forgiveness for Alessandro. She even said she wanted to have him in
Heaven with her.
An unrepentant Alessandro
was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. For the first six years he was so violent that
he had to be isolated from the other prisoners. But after he received a vision of Maria in heaven forgiving him, he was
a transformed man. Decades later, when
he was released, he went to see Maria’s mother. You see, when Alessandro killed Maria, he destroyed the entire Goretti family,
because the poverty and trauma meant that all the children had to be sent away
to other families. And so when he begged
forgiveness, he expected nothing in return. But Maria’s mother said if God and Maria had forgiven him, she could not
withhold her own forgiveness. It was
Christmas Eve, so she accompanied him to Christmas Mass and received Holy
Communion alongside him.4 She
then took Alessandro in as her own son.
Alessandro eventually
joined a religious order where he worked as a gardener. He died in 1970 at the age of 87. After he died, they found a letter he penned,
a sort of testament to the world about the transforming power of
forgiveness. He wrote, “Now I look
serenely to the time in which I will be admitted to the vision of God, to
embrace my dear ones once again, and to be close to my guardian angel, Maria
Goretti, and her dear mother.”5
Maria forgave. Her mother forgave. And it changed a life. In all honesty, I don’t think I could forgive
to that degree. But I can surely forgive
more readily than I presently do. I can
at least forgive the person who cuts me off in traffic, and the person who
treats me rudely or unfairly or gossips about me. Each time as I kneel for confession, I can review
my life and relationships, let go of my grievances, and at least extend
forgiveness in my heart, so the consoling medicine of God’s forgiveness
can free me by finally penetrating deep into my soul. You can do that too, not just because
Jesus commands it, but because we need to, for our own well being. Friends, our Lord wants to lavish you with
forgiveness. So prepare the manger of
your heart to receive your king. God
knows we need more forgiveness in this fractured world of ours. So let it begin with us. “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Amen.
Copyright Rev. Scott E. Schul, 2025 All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
Citations:
1 Matthew 18:21-22
2 Gerhard Lohfink, The Our Father, pp. 76-77 (Liturgical Press, 2019)
3 Matthew 5:23-24
4 www.gaudiummag.com/p/hope-and-forgiveness-the-story-of; see also https://mariagoretti.com/the-murderer/
Gospel Text: Luke 6:27-38
[Jesus said:] 27 “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
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