Forgiveness
is one life’s most difficult challenges. But we have no choice. In
saying that, I am thinking not only of the gospel of forgiveness that
Jesus preached, I am also thinking of the teachings, the holy wisdom, of
another, much less well-known teacher, also named Jesus – Jesus Ben
Sirach – the author of today’s first reading from the Book of Sirach.
The Book of Sirach (sometimes called
Ecclesiasticus) isn’t all that well-known. It is part of our Catholic
Bible but it’s not part of the Jewish Bible, and some scholars have
advanced the theory that that one possible reason it’s not is that its
teaching about forgiveness and mercy as the only proper response to
violence are not in keeping with the Jewish Law, the Torah, which makes
clear provision for retaliation - measured retaliation, for sure, but
retaliation, nonetheless. For instance, if your eye was ‘taken’ in a
fight, you could take an eye in return, but no more; the same for a
tooth, or a limb, and so forth. But that doesn’t sound like today’s
passage from Sirach. Listen again and you will see why it could
have been regarded as being out of step with the Jewish Law:
Wrath and anger are hateful things…
The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance
For he remembers their sins in detail.
Forgive your neighbor’s injustice;
Then when you pray
Your own sins will be forgiven.
Can anyone nourish anger against another
And expect healing from the Lord?
Can anyone refuse mercy to another…
And seek pardon for his own sins?”
Any
way you read that, the author of those words, Jesus Ben Sirach, writing
some 200 years before the time of Jesus the Christ, seems to be
anticipating the teachings of Christ by holding up forgiveness and mercy
– not retaliation - as the only way to respond to an unjust attack
(“Forgive your neighbor’s injustice, then when you pray your own sins
will be forgiven”).
You see why that reading was paired with
today’s gospel. Peter’s question to Jesus (“How many times must I
forgive, seven times?”) sprang from a heart that was willing to go well
beyond the demands of strict justice. Peter probably thought he was
being very generous - going overboard even - in his willingness to
forgive a person as many as seven times (in Scripture, a number meaning
infinity). But that wasn’t generous enough for Jesus. Jesus raised the
ante, as he so often does. He challenged Peter to go beyond generosity –
even to go beyond common sense. He challenged him to go to the
place where only faith can go.
In saying to Peter, “not seven times but
seventy-seven times,” Jesus was telling him that there is no limit to
how many times a person is to forgive - that we are to forgive no matter
how great the evil or how grave the injustice. And he went even further:
he went beyond forgiveness carefully measured out based on the
offender’s sorrow or willingness to make amends. Jesus made forgiveness
a blank check we are to write, just as he did when he forgave his
executioners from the cross.
My friends, I realize that all of this can be
hard to swallow in our personal relationships. It’s even harder when we
project it onto the world scene and see, for instance, how we – not our
government, but how we as individuals – respond to a grave evil like the
terrorist attacks of 9/11. No doubt, our government had to respond in a
way that limited further violence and protected national security, but
what was our personal response? Did we join the voices of those who
scapegoated an entire people, promoted religious intolerance, and passed
on hate-filled propaganda about the Muslim faith as a violent religion
bent on world domination? If that was our personal reaction – and if it
still is – then we need to ponder closely today’s gospel parable.
In the parable, the unforgiving servant who had
sinned extravagantly was also forgiven extravagantly - “a huge amount.”
A more familiar and accurate translation renders that huge amount as
“ten thousand talents” – maybe something over the top like a trillion
dollars. So, we’re not just talking about “a huge amount” – we’re
talking about a colossal amount. And Jesus says that we must be willing
to forgive even something as great as that, and not once, not seven
times, but seventy-seven times.
My friends in Christ, that is our challenge as
followers of Christ, and a great challenge it is. It came to mind
recently when I listened to Julia Blake, the mother of Jacob Blake, the
young black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who was shot in the back seven
times by a white policeman and who is now paralyzed from the waist-down.
In comments his mother made to the media, she said some remarkable
words: “I’m praying for Jacob and I’m praying for the policeman, too,”
she said. She then went on to ask for prayers not only for her son but
for the healing of the nation. She may not have known it, but Julia
Blake was giving a powerful homily on a Christian’s response to
violence, on Christian forgiveness – a homily far more powerful and more
real than any I could ever give.
My friends, to follow Jesus Christ is to
forgive. Seventy-seven times. Without limit. It’s to see things and to
do things differently. I only wish I understood that as well as Julia
Blake does. Happily, the Eucharist we are celebrating and are about to
receive can help bring us to that place.
Father Michael G. Ryan
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