Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time,Mt 18,21-35

Perfect willingness to forgive as an ideal

Purpose: I want to make it clear to the audience that the gospel requirement to always forgive is an ideal that we should strive for without hesitating when we cannot fully and completely fulfill it.

Crossbar in your eye

As drivers, you probably know this situation: Another car will go right in front of you and will not give you priority. There will be no accident, but you are angry. And to show your anger, blow the trumpet. You go on and suddenly, you turn a bit risky on the road with priority. The car that comes after you brakes but does not blow. You are looking forward to the one who follows or is following you so forgiving. And now you think much more leniently about the previous person who took your advantage. This example makes it clear to me that surely each one of us is still dependent on the forgiveness of our surroundings. None of us is perfect. Everyone always makes mistakes. And that’s why it’s only fair for us to forgive ourselves for what they’ve done to us. Forgiveness is the glue without which families, friendships, every form of community and society as a whole would be broken.

Perfect willingness to forgive

That is why I understand when Jesus calls us to forgive. Our text becomes more difficult as we go into detail. Peter asks if he should forgive seven times. Seven is not meant here as an absolute number – in the sense of more than six and less than eight. Seven in the Jewish understanding is a symbol of perfection. Peter heard Jesus say: Your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees! They taught that one must forgive two – or three – times. Peter knows that Jesus said: Be as perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. That is why he asks: Do I have to forgive perfectly, that is, always and everything? Jesus does not simply agree with the question, but the willingness to forgive that Peter has in mind increases: Not seven times, but seventy-seven. The forgiveness of disciples must be much more than perfect. In explaining the parable, he clarifies what he means: We must not only always forgive everything, but also wholeheartedly.

First difficulty: Great injustice

When we imagine using this requirement in real life, we get into trouble. It seems to me that too much is required when a person is asked to forgive his partner in marriage by seven adulteries, bounces. And then with all my heart. Eighth and ninth, etc. What about a mother in an African country in a civil war who has to watch soldiers kill her children. She can be told, “You must forgive the murderers of your children with all your heart! Even though they still massacre your husband and parents! ” It seems to me personally that there must be mercy for the victims. This would mean that, to suffer what had happened to them, they would not be additionally required to immediately forgive criminals perfectly.

The second difficulty: Life in the state community

The second difficulty emerges from our text when we look at Christianity-marked statehood. Doesn’t an unconditional and perfect pardon order also apply to law enforcement and judicial authorities? For Christian society as a whole? Should all criminals be pardoned immediately? In the past, considering this difficulty, they have helped each other by exempting rulers, judges, educators, and other authorities from this command when they have to punish the injustices committed by their subordinates. But today such a morality cannot be the solution for us – two classes. Firstly, it opens doors and gates to its will, and secondly, it contradicts the principle of equality, by which our hierarchy of values ​​is bound. A society that feels bound by Christian principles cannot simply ignore the forgiveness order.

The third difficulty: God’s debtors

It is difficult to say whether Jesus meant the law of the state or a number of inhuman crimes when he gave the command of forgiveness. In Matthew’s Gospel, the requirement to be prepared for perfect forgiveness is in the talk of life in the church community. So, it is a relationship between the disciples of Jesus and the disciples. Here, the massacres can be ruled out. But it is not only Paul’s letters that teach us that even the first Christians were not angels. So the question remains, how did Jesus come to this harsh demand: You must always forgive everything with all your heart, that is, be perfect in your willingness to forgive. He gives the answer in the parable of an unjust servant. The king in the parable represents God. The message is clear: The debt that God forgives man is unimaginably greater than the debt we cause to each other. The sums mentioned in the parable are in the ratio of 600,000 to 1. In other words: One cannot sin against someone else at all so hard that one’s debt is even he could only roughly match what each man has before God.

Christians in recent times have probably hardly had any problems. Again and again they were pushed into them: You are part of a fallen creature, you are involved in inherited sin. You are all actually massa damnata – destined for damnation. Even Christians who are serious about their faith now have problems with such a negative image of man. In all self-criticism, however, we see a lot of good that is hidden in a person and what a person does. Whatever the personal balance of crimes and good deeds, the cynical African mother would say from the example: What you did to God is much worse than what the murderers have done to your family.

Attempting a solution: The ideal we are orienting ourselves from

The three difficulties mentioned must certainly not lead us to reject Jesus’ demand for a perfect willingness to forgive. As his disciples, we must hold fast to her. However, we must also see it in the overall context of its message and its effects. Jesus was a preacher and not a legislator in today’s sense. He certainly did not understand his requirements as norms in today’s legal sense, which apply unconditionally and relentlessly until an exceptional rule is formed. It was he who had a heart for the poor and weak who would certainly understand because the victims of cruel injustice have trouble forgiving their tormentors. We humans, with our abilities, unlike God, run into the limits of being merciful. However, Jesus’ demand for a perfect willingness to forgive should encourage us to work on those borders as well. I can practice in small steps; by, for example, forgiving what I do not prefer; or by realizing that God still loves those who don’t seem worthy of love to me at all. So I can try to forgive my willingness to work, to improve it.

 The same is true for the state. It certainly still needs the police, the courts and prisons. But the treatment of criminals should show as much respect for their human dignity as possible. The impetus for this may not be the idea that we are all poor little sinners and sinners before God. But we can live in the consciousness that God’s love is the cause of our being and our hope for the future, that is, our Where and our Where. And that is why, in God’s name, we try to love even those who, according to our standards, would no longer deserve any love. This could make us and our society more merciful step by step. And in the end, we would all benefit from this, as people who are dependent on forgiveness over and over again.