Ripples of Grace

A pebble is thrown into a still pool, and from that single plunk, circles of water flow out, one after another, until they reach the shore. 

A man named Cain, full of jealousy and hate, furiously kills his brother Abel, and from that first murder, consequences flow out, one after another, until someone says, No more.   

A king forgives his servant an astronomical debt, and from that act of forgiveness ripples grace after grace until everyone is relieved of his or her debt.  Or that is how the story is supposed to end, except that it doesn’t, because this is a parable, and parables never take us in the direction we think they are headed.   

What an interesting scripture to look at any morning, and particularly on this morning.  Since the beginning of chapter 18, Jesus has been talking with his disciples about what it means for them to live in community.  He has spoken about children being the model for greatness.  He has spoken about not creating situations which will cause another to stumble.  He has spoken about the necessity of leaving the entire flock to go find the one sheep that is missing.  He has talked about how to restore a sinner to the community.

But this morning Peter begins the conversation, asking “How often should I forgive?”  Don’t you wonder why Peter asked?  Was there someone in particular he needed to forgive?  Was he looking for the path of least resistance? Or had he taken the previous teachings to heart, and was really wanting to do right by Jesus?

We’ll never know Peter’s reason for asking.  All we have is Jesus’ answer: You must forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven times; seventy times seven; which is to say, you must never stop forgiving.  

I find this a weird little parable, mostly because of the dire consequence predicted in the last two verses, that if we do not forgive we will not be forgiven.  It is what scholars call a kingdom-of-heaven parable – this is what life looks like in God’s realm.  At the beginning of the parable, life is good.  Life looks like a gracious king, who wants to settle accounts with his servants.  One owes his master an impossible sum.  If we were in that servant’s shoes, it would be like one of us had to pay off the national debt.  It’s a ridiculous amount, a ridiculous amount to have loaned in the first place, and an impossible amount for anyone to repay. So at first the king follows the law he created: sell the slave, and his wife and children, and all their possession, to begin to pay the debt. 

But then the debtor pleads with the king, and in pity, the king forgives the whole debt.  He wipes the slate clean.  The balance is back to zero.  Life is still good in the kingdom, until the forgiven debtor runs into a fellow servant who owes him a little bit of money.  At this point in the parable, we expect the ripple effect to take place.  The first servant experienced mercy and forgiveness, and he should then, in turn, offer mercy and forgiveness to his debtor.

But he doesn’t.  He wants to be paid for what is owed to him.  There is no forgiveness in his heart.   

Forgiveness is so hard.  It is the thing that many of us work on for our whole lives.  But I am convinced that practicing forgiveness is the only way to live, if we are going to try to follow Christ, if we are going to pursue peace, and if we are going to have anything that resembles wholeness in our lives.

Forgiveness is complicated.  It’s complicated because it requires that each of us confronts our own sin, our own complicity in hurting someone else.  We have to admit we did something wrong that requires forgiveness from another.  Most of us don’t like looking in the mirror and seeing the truth of our actions and choices and the consequences they have.  But in order to be forgiven, we must first admit that we have caused a hurt that needs to be pardoned.

Forgiveness is complicated on the other side of things too.  To forgive someone requires a certain kind of humility, and a letting go, and more grace than most of us can muster most days.  To forgive someone means risking that that person will hurt you again, and again and again and seventy-seven times.  To forgive someone means that you are willing, and maybe even desiring, for that person to live under the umbrella of grace that forgiveness opens up.  It means you want that person who hurt you to know the same kind of grace that you have known, even if you think that person doesn’t deserve it.   

Do you know what it’s like to be forgiven?  Have you experienced that?  It’s like opening a beautiful present.  It’s like getting a do-over.  It’s like receiving an answer to prayer.  It’s heavenly, to be forgiven, and the gift becomes that much more wonderful when we’ve acknowledged the depth of that which needs forgiving

If you have experienced forgiveness, you know what it’s like to live under the umbrella of grace.  Things look shiny and new the way the garden looks after a good rain.  Hope is restored.  Relationships are restored.  Grace, and not hurt, reigns.  So who are we to withhold that grace from someone else?

That’s what the king, in essence, says to the servant in the parable.  “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?”  What is interesting and hard about this parable is that when we place ourselves in it, we are not the king.  We are the servant, the debtor, the one who is forgiven an unpayable debt, the one who is to forgive others.

I’d rather be the king (or the queen.)  I’d rather be the king, because being the servant, the one who is forgiven and forgives in return, requires a lot.  Forgiving someone else requires that I be my best self, not my most righteous self, not my most vengeful self, not my most prideful self, but my best self.  Receiving and extending forgiveness requires that I let go of all that other stuff so that love and grace have room in my heart.

To receive forgiveness and not to extend it in return has consequences, like a standing rock in the middle of a pool of water will stop the ripples from reaching the shore.  That’s the reality that most of us live in.  We receive forgiveness and hoard the gift.  Or we forgive someone but she doesn’t forgive someone else, and it feels as though the gift is thrown into the garbage like so much trash.

We can understand why forgiveness is hard and complicated, and understanding that is all fine and good until we decide we’re going to stop understanding it and start practicing it.  C.S. Lewis, writing in a different time, said this.  “’Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms.  It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven.  There are no two ways about it.  What are we to do?

“It is going to be hard enough, anyway, but I think there are two things we can do to make it easier.  When you start mathematics you do not begin with calculus; you begin with simple addition.  In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo.  One might start with forgiving one’s husband or wife, or parents or children… for something they have done or said in the last week.  That will probably keep us busy for the moment.  And secondly, we might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means.  I have to love him as I love myself.”  (Mere Christianity, pp. 89-90)

I hear wise people say that loving our neighbors and forgiving our debtors is essential.  But this has been a hard week to think about those things.  Those wise people seem to be saying that the Christian thing to do is to forgive those men who flew those planes on that beautiful clear morning ten years ago.
I am not there yet.  There are images seared in my brain, and stories cemented in my heart, and yours too, I imagine, that prevent me from mustering anything akin to mercy or grace, much less love, for those men.  I acknowledge, intellectually, that forgiveness is the goal.  But emotionally and spiritually, I am not there.  Forgiveness is hard and complicated.  And I don’t think they deserve forgiveness. 

But who does deserve forgiveness, really?  That is the point of grace: it is not earned, it is not deserved, it is not extended only to the righteous or the good.  It is a gift, freely given.  And it’s not about what I think.  It is about what Jesus teaches.

You have probably figured out by now that this is not a sermon about 9/11.  I hope that it is a sermon about a weird parable Jesus told to help us understand the imperative of forgiveness within the Christian life.  That it is preached on September 11 offers an opportunity to imagine what forgiveness could look like in our context today.

C.S. Lewis is right: if we are going to practice forgiveness, maybe it is best to start small, with a spouse or partner, a parent, a child, a co-worker,  and not with the terrorists.   Maybe, as Lewis said, the way to forgive is to start by loving your neighbor as yourself.

One New Yorker got that, in a way.  In an essay she wrote in September of 2001, New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen said, “The end of the world came with both whimpers and bangs and all manner of sounds between.  When it was done, what hung over it all, greater than the smoke or the shock, was the sense of what most people are really made of, the emotional alchemy that enables us, from time to time, to love our neighbors as ourselves.”  (Loud and Clear, p. 258)

We are made of so many things: chromosomes and genes, tissue and muscle and bones, fear, love, anger, jealousy, vengeance, mercy, hope, faith.  The greatest of these is love, yes.  The servant feared debt more than he loved his fellow servant, and that had a ripple effect for both of them. The king loved the servant; God loves us.  And love, like grace and forgiveness, ripples.

If I could this morning I would give each of you a pebble – maybe you can find your own at some point today.  I would give you a pebble, and invite you to imagine that that pebble is a concrete act of love or grace or forgiveness.  I would ask you to hold on to it, put it in your pocket or keep it in a place you’d see it often, until you accomplish that act of love or grace or forgiveness.  And then, once done with that act, take the pebble with you to a pond or a lake or a pool of water.  When no one is looking but God, throw the pebble into the pool, and watch the ripples that flow.  Imagine the ripples that might flow from your 

Love, like grace and forgiveness, ripples.  Those gentle waves wash over destruction, over grief, over fear, and so the world is washed anew like the garden after a rain, washed into a new day because forgiveness has opened up for all of us a different future.

May that be our hope, and may that be our song. 
To the glory of God.

Beth Neel
Westminster Presbyterian Church
September 11, 2011