Debt Free

Imagine for a moment if all of your debt was forgiven. You wake up tomorrow and receive notice that your mortgage is paid off, your student loans forgiven, credit card debt erased and car note paid.  How great would that feel?!

And then right after finding this out, you go out and tell someone that you are taking them to small claims court because they didn’t pay you the $50 that they owed you.

What?! That’s the kind of story Jesus tells today.

But first, the first reading.  Here’s a little prayer/meditation I pulled from the words of the reading:

Do not take away your mercy from us,

With contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received

As we follow you unreservedly

[And] with our whole heart

I wonder as you move through your day what it might mean to follow God without reservations and with a whole heart.

And in the gospel Jesus is asked by Peter mow many times we’re to forgive people and offers what he thinks is a generous amount (seven times).  Jesus counters with his famous phrase of saying that we need to forgive “seventy-seven times.” He then goes on to tell the story about the person who is forgiven a lot who then goes out and has someone arrested for owing him a fraction of the debt that he was just forgiven.

Whenever I hear readings about forgiveness, I immediately think, “Are we really supposed to forgive people who keep hurting us? What about people who abused us or did serious harm and knew they were doing it? Are we supposed to just let people get away with it?” I’d love to know what your questions are or where you get “stuck” in forgiveness.

But his answer seems clear that, yes, we are called to do that and that it is a process, not a moment.  One definition of forgiveness that I have liked is, “letting go of the right to settle the score.” Forgiveness is about our freedom, not the other person’s. But please hear this: no one can or should force you to forgive anyone.  Many of us, when we were young, were hurt by people and our parent or caregiver (however well intentioned) said, “Forgive your brother…” What this might have set in motion was yet another violation for us because we were told to forgive yet never worked through what happened!

We forgive when we are ready to, and I would imagine Jesus would say this to us.  He might also say that forgiveness is not a passive process. It requires us to lean into the pain and do the hard work. And why I think Jesus suggests this is that it enables us to go to a more imaginative and creative space.  Forgiveness helps us to get out of the crime/punishment, victim/perpetrator harm/retribution binaries and can begin to help us imagine a world where we can build new social and person skills for living together.

I also would want to affirm that forgiving someone does not necessarily mean you grant them access back into your life. That is yours to decide.

I often look to the work of Transformative Justice activist and writer, Mia Mingus, for guidance in these kinds of things.  Mia writes a lot about accountability and what that looks like in the world.  And while our forgiveness does not necessarily require someone else to be accountable, we might certainly invite that as part of our process of forgiveness.

Mia says that apology is only one part of accountability.  The 4 essential parts she’s identified are: self-reflection, apology, repair, and changed behavior, and I’d encourage everyone to read more of Mia’s work at https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2019/12/18/how-to-give-a-good-apology-part-1-the-four-parts-of-accountability/ because it really gives some language and concrete steps to this whole conversation.

I try to remember all this when I am the one who hurt someone else as well.  I try to remember that they do not owe me their forgiveness, and I try to remember that they are not on a time schedule for giving that to me. I try to think about what I have done, what a good apology would be, what would repair look like (keeping in mind Step 9 from AA about making amends except if trying to make amends might cause further harm) and how might I change my behavior.

Obviously this is a conversation that requires more than a blog entry to address it, but it may be a starting point as we reflect on those who have hurt us and those whom we have hurt.

And we will end this reflection by reiterating what Jesus was trying to teach in the gospel. That God loves us so much and nothing we have done – nothing – can stand in the way of that love. We are held by God no matter what we do.