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Luke 17:3-4 NRSV Be on your guard! If a brother or sister sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” Like it or not, people have a problem with forgiveness. Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, put it “Christianity is a religion in which sinners have all the advantages [...] They can talk bad about you every time you leave the room, and it is your job to excuse them with no thought of getting even. The burden is on you.”[1] Often that is how the church and many have approached forgiveness, as something you have to do whether you like it or not. One pastor shared how a young woman once stepped into her office and told the pastor that she couldn’t forgive her abusive father. The young woman explained, “‘I can’t forgive him, and the Bible says I have to. I can’t, so I can’t be a Christian anymore.’”[2] Even today’s scripture from Luke seems to say the same thing, where Jesus tells his audience that if anyone repents, “‘you must forgive.’” Except, like so many parts of our Christian witness and discipleship, forgiveness means little if it is forced. No one is entitled to your forgiveness, just as you are not entitled to God’s forgiveness. Forgiveness must be a choice, a gift because that is how God forgave us, not because God had to but because God chose to. Unless forgiveness is a choice of the heart, a costly choice, it cannot ever be real.
These verses from Luke actually have a lot to say about choice. Our choices impact others, first and foremost. At the start of Luke 17, Jesus warned his followers that “‘Things that cause people to trip and fall into sin must happen, but how terrible it is for the person through whom they happen’” (Luke 17:1 CEB). In other words, our sinful actions and inactions, whether we meant them or not, can and will cause someone to lose faith in God or act contrary to their own faith. Jesus continues by adding “‘It would be better for them to be thrown into a lake with a large stone hung around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to trip and fall into sin’” (Luke 17:2 CEB). Stop and sit with that for one second here this morning. Jesus tells his disciples this is the kind of harm we are doing to each other all the time, the gut-wrenching destructive impact of our sins on our neighbors. Imagine that harm. When we miss the mark, stray from the path, and sin against our neighbor, this causes harm in their relationship with us and ultimately with their relationship with God. Jesus, using the epitome of hyperbole in Luke, implies that it would be better to destroy ourselves than risk destroying someone else’s faith, someone else’s relationship with God. Jesus sets the tone for the Christian community, that we are to do our best to keep other believers from doing this kind of harm. Sin is not individual here but communal and intimate. This is not us parading around the world pointing out what everyone else is doing wrong. This is a conversation with your sibling, your brother, and your sister in Christ. Why are you warning them? Is it because they are doing wrong, so it’s your job to point it out? Not at all, when Jesus says, “‘rebuke the offender,’” Jesus is saying you are rebuking or warning them to keep them from doing the harm Jesus talks about in Luke 17:1. Imagine then that the harm has been done, the terrible impact of our sin destroys the relationship with our neighbor and so also with God. What do we do when the other person, our neighbor, comes to us and says, “You’ve hurt me.” Tell me if this response sounds familiar, “Well, I am sorry that you were offended, but that was not my intention.” Or maybe, “I miss the days when people weren’t so sensitive.” Or, “It was just a joke! Why do you have to take everything so seriously?” However, if they stay upset, how many times will the offending Christian bring up that old weapon of forgiveness, telling the person they’ve hurt that they have to forgive? This is the thing about harm, you don’t get to dictate how much or how little harm your actions and inactions do to your neighbor. We also do not get to set the timeline for victims to forgive. Forgiveness is a choice. Jesus reminds us all how much we can hurt each other, so it should not be a surprise that forgiving is not and cannot be an instantaneous thing. Forgiveness means letting go of the cost. It means giving up our ability –our right– for repayment, for punishment, and for recompense. To forgive is to ready ourselves for the perpetrator's repentance. Repentance is key in Luke’s gospel. As repentance leads to forgiveness. Repentance for Luke means “transforming wicked thought and practice that opposes God’s goodness into that which accepts the grace of God.”[3] Repentance is about turning harmful thoughts and harmful actions into ones that build up our neighbors. Repentance fosters a right relationship between the community and so also a right relationship with God. This is what salvation looks like for Luke, everyone living in the right relationship with each other and the right relationship with God. When I say right, I mean a reconciled and harmonious relationship. Think of it this way. How many of us fought with other kids when we were kids or had our own children or grandchildren get into fights? Often after the fight is over, what do adults make kids do? They make them apologize, “Tell so-and-so you’re sorry.” Let me ask you, are the kids always actually sorry? If they don’t mean it, can they then get along? Can they love and care for this other person if this same wrong is still there beneath the surface? Sometimes the same thing happens with forgiveness when we do not treat it as a choice. Turning back to our scriptures this morning, this is where Jesus goes when he speaks of repentance. If we are not ready to forgive, we are not ready for the other person to repent. Imagine now that we were told by the other person, “You’ve hurt me,” and instead of all the defensiveness, we respond with, “You’re right. I’ve hurt you, and I want to make a change so I don’t hurt you again. Will you forgive me?” How many of us would be ready to forgive, knowing that forgiveness might mean that we have to live harmoniously with this person in the future without this wrong between us? That’s a big ask! Jesus even ups the ask by adding that if they sin against you seven times in one day and turn back to you seven times, saying “‘I repent,’ you must forgive.’” No one is entitled to our forgiveness because to forgive is incredibly costly. It asks much of us. To offer it too lightly is to ignore the enormity of the harm done to ourselves and to our neighbors, and conversely, to never be able to offer it at all causes us to slip into resentment, something Barbara Brown Taylor calls “the arthritis of the spirit.”[4] We can get preoccupied with the wrongs done to us, and they become powerful toxins called self-pity and bitterness. Hatred and resentment are a drug, not letting go of wrong can make us feel good. There are many who love to bring up “secret anger” or “remembrance of wrongs” at the first opportunity.[5] It stagnates our relationships, making them stiff and unwieldy. On the other side, Jesus tells us that sin against our neighbor has real consequences, and those cannot be taken lightly. This is where warning your siblings about their sins, and telling them when they hurt their family is crucial. This harm should not be repeated over and over again, even if you’ve forgiven them. Again Jesus models forgiveness for us so well as he never takes it lightly but offers costly forgiveness to us to help us transform our hearts and minds to be reflections of God’s heart and mind. The woman, whose story I shared at the start, was told by her pastor that forgiveness is a choice and that her father was not entitled to her forgiveness. Guess what? The woman ended up forgiving him because she finally understood that it is not an obligation but a gift. She left the pastor’s office physically and spiritually changed. When we make the costly choice we turn instead to God for the grace and faith to make this choice, just like those listening to Jesus in Luke. After Jesus tells them all that forgiveness entails, they responded by exclaiming, “‘Increase our faith!’” (Luke 17:5 NRSV). Forgiveness is a choice, but it is not a choice we make alone. Jesus models it and God gives us the grace to make the choice possible. Not just our choice to forgive but also our choice to change, to be transformed, for all of us to be ready for a reconciled future together. Amen. [1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Arthritis of the Spirit,” in Relfections on Forgiveness and Spiritual Growth, ed. Andrew J. Weaver and Monica Furlong (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), 74. [2] Emily Snell, “Forgiveness: A Journey Filled with Choices,” Interpreter Magazine (March- April 2015), https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/forgiveness-a-journey-filled-with-choices (June 30, 2023) [3] V. George Shillington, An Introduction to the Study of Luke-Acts, 2nd ed. (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 149. [4] Taylor 2000, 88. [5] Hieromonk Damascene, “Resentment and Forgiveness,” The Orthodox World 38, no. 6 (November-December 2002), 283.
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