Forgiveness & Freedom
Before starting, apologies are due - it's been difficult chasing up our various preachers for their homilies and I (administrator) haven't been as assiduous about it as I should have been. But here is the homily that I (Lay Worship Leader) gave yesterday, Sept 13th. It's easy to chase up the preacher when it's me!! :-)
Genesis 50:15-21;
Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13;
Romans 14:1-12;
FORGIVENESS & FREEDOM
As I read through the Lectionary for today one word kept re-occurring and catching my attention: forgiveness. It is there in the reading from Genesis, where Joseph’s brothers are afraid that he will hold a grudge against them (and, let’s be honest, who would blame him if he did?!) and so they come before him, citing their father’s plea for forgiveness, and are relieved as Joseph refuses to judge them for their actions, but rather welcomes them into his household.
It is there in the Psalm, as the Psalmist praises God for God’s unending mercy and righteousness. It is there in Romans, although here it takes on the guise of not judging others for what they do, but rather accepting them into the community.
And of course, our Gospel centres around Peter’s seemingly naïve question about how many times one should forgive someone who has wronged you, and the parable Jesus told to illustrate his answer.
I started to research and consider the homily that would draw these threads together and I came upon an account of the witness of Desmond Tutu in post-Apartheid South Africa, when old wounds were being reopened, when the horrors of how black South Africans had suffered under white rule were being uncovered. Here forgiveness was so desperately needed, yet one can imagine so hard to carry out.
We live in a culture that rewards sharp judgment and guards forgiveness like a scarce resource. But what we see in the words of Jesus, and the witness of Desmond Tutu flips the script: Stop judging. Start forgiving. In post-Apartheid South Africa, judgement and revenge were not the way to go, but rather forgiveness was the only path to a future.
Tutu wrote: “Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously and not minimizing it; drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens to poison our entire existence. It involves trying to understand the perpetrators and so have empathy, to try to stand in their shoes and appreciate the sort of pressures and influences that might have conditioned them.”
His words show us how to live Jesus’ upside-down ethics.
Forgiveness means trusting judgment to God, and this is only possible by the grace that comes from God alone. But the problem is that we want to play God, we want to judge others – maybe so we don’t feel so bad – and we overstep our role. This is what was happening in the church of Rome: members were judging other members and letting relatively minor disputes become bigger and more important than they were, thus causing disputes and fracturing communities.
Paul reminds his readers that judgement is not our role; judgement belongs to God. We will all be called to give an account of ourselves before God – but we will not be called to give an account of others. That is not our burden, that is not our job; and letting go of that judgement of others is the first step towards peace
And when we stop judging, we can start forgiving. The problem is that as humans we always want it to be fair, - or at least what we consider to be fair! That is, fair in our direction. So we feel there must be a point where it is no longer in our interests to keep forgiving. Peter shows that human side when he asks Jesus for a quantifiable, manageable number in answer to the question "How many times should I forgive?"
He must have been dismayed by Jesus’ answer, that our forgiveness of others should be unlimited because the mercy we have received from God is infinite.
The parable that follows is a demonstration and a warning: the King has offered forgiveness of a debt that is impossible to pay, but instead of reflecting that mercy, the servant refuses to forgive another much smaller debt. The warning is that “So also my heavenly Father will do to you”
If we refuse to show forgiveness to others, then our judgement before God may well become very uncomfortable. We are called on to reflect the mercy that we have received: our forgiveness of others is tied to God’s forgiveness of us.
But do not think this will be an easy thing for us, as Christians. Because, as Tutu said "Forgiveness does not mean condoning... It means taking what happened seriously." We will need to work on the job of forgiving, and we need to recognise what forgiveness means.
And first of all, it means letting go of judgement, because judgement and forgiveness are inverses. When we judge, we declare: "This person doesn’t deserve mercy." We withhold mercy but forgiveness extends mercy. When we forgive we confess "This person doesn’t deserve mercy—but neither do I."
Forgiveness means... trusting judgment to God, and this is only possible by the grace that comes from God alone. We stop judging when, as Paul reminds us, we trust God’s justice. We start forgiving when we recognise that we have received God’s infinite mercy
But, oh Lord, this is hard. It is not hard recognising that we have been forgiven but rather the fact that we must recognise that we are called to show the same radical grace of completely cancelling the debt towards us. It is not about pretending that the grievance didn’t happen, it is not about saying that the grievance didn’t matter, but it is, as Tutu said, about abandoning our right to pay back the perpetrator. And that is the difficult thing, but what it means is that we are liberated. Abandoning the right to “get even” is a loss that liberates us.
How is this grace possible? Well, first of all, we must admit that it’s not all about us. It’s not about our strength. We cannot manufacture this forgiveness. Remember the servant in the parable who couldn’t repay his debt—neither can we. We must surrender to God, knowing that it is only through the grace that comes from God alone that we can even start to truly forgive. And it’s about remembering that as our debt has been forgiven how can we, in all conscience, withhold forgiveness from others?
Sadly in our current society the church seems to be more known for judging others than for forgiving, for excluding rather than including. But imagine a world where the Church was known for this: not for its judgments, but for its mercy; not for its grudges, but for its grace. That world begins with us—today. Because every time we choose forgiveness over judgment, we’re not just obeying Jesus; we’re becoming like Him. And in a culture that rewards sharp tongues and guarded hearts, that kind of love is revolutionary. It’s the only path to the future God intends— the future God intends for us, for our communities, for our world.
So here is the challenge: This week, identify one person you’ve been judging or one grudge you’ve been nursing. Write their name down, then write these words over it: "Not my judgment. Not my vengeance. Yours, Lord." And then—here’s the hard part—pray for the grace to mean it. Because forgiveness isn’t a feeling; it’s a choice. A choice to trust that God’s justice is perfect and His mercy is enough. And when we make that choice, we discover Tutu’s truth: the loss of our right to pay back is the very thing that sets us free.
Comments