“Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” - Matthew 18:22
Peter offers to forgive seven times, sure that's generous. Jesus answers with a number too large to count. He's not raising the ceiling, he's taking it away.
In the parable that follows, a servant is forgiven an impossible debt. He then turns and seizes a fellow servant over a fraction of what he owed. His failure wasn't noticing the smaller debt - that debt was real. His failure was forgetting, within the same day, what it had felt like to kneel and be released and forgiven.
That's how a grudge works. We remember exactly what was done to us, and we forget exactly what we've already been forgiven. What we don't let go of, we tend to pass along to whoever's standing nearest.
The king didn't wait to feel forgiving before he acted. He canceled the debt first and let the feeling catch up. Maybe that's permission for us, too. We don't always find our way to forgiveness by feeling our way there first. Sometimes the doing comes first - the decision. The small act of releasing someone and the feeling follows behind it is moved by the action rather than leading it.
This week as you consider that story I wonder - What are you still asking someone else to repay that you yourself have already been forgiven?
A short prayer: God who cancels the unpayable, loosen my grip on what I'm still carrying. Amen.
Pastor Erin
