By Reverend Laurie DeMott

We can all believe in forgiveness when we see evidence of its transformative effect, but it is much harder to forgive when we see no sign of change, no indication of remorse from the recipient. The story is told of four ministers who spent their day off on a fishing expedition and as they sat casting their hooks into the quiet water with nary a bite, the conversation gradually became more reflective until finally one minister said to the others, “The beauty of this day makes me keenly aware of the occasional ugliness of the human soul.” (Ministers are prone to become philosophical at the drop of a hat.) “I want to feel worthy of this beauty around me. What would you say to having all of us bare our souls to one another and confess our greatest sin?” The others thought this was a great idea and urged the first to begin. “Well,” said the first minister, “A few years ago, the church refused to raise my salary so I filched a few bucks from the offering plate every week. I know it was wrong, but at the time it seemed the only way to make ends meet.” The group nodded in sympathy and accepted his confession.
The second minister revealed, “Several years ago I had an affair. It was a one time thing and I knew it was wrong.” All sighed deeply and offered their expressions of God’s forgiveness. The third took a deep breath and said, “Last week I drove to a small town in another state and got rip-roaring drunk. I’ve just been under a lot of pressure lately.” The others offered their counsel and assured him of God’s forgiveness.
Finally they turned to the fourth minister who shook his head and said, “I have to admit that my greatest sin is the sin of gossip ... and I can’t wait to get back to shore!”
It may be hard for us to forgive someone who has hurt us but we can usually manage it when the person demonstrates an awareness of their wrong-doing and a willingness to try to change, but what about when the person shows no remorse and doesn’t change?

I believe that there is never a situation in which forgiveness is offered that change does not occur; I just think we’re looking for change in the wrong person.

‘Your problem, people, is that you are going about your forgiveness all wrong,” Jesus said. “Let me show you how you what I mean,” and he told a parable about a king who forgave the enormous debt of a servant and the servant who then turned around and refused to forgive his debtor and how the servant’s colleagues reported his actions to the king and how the king was angered and took back his forgiveness and threw the man to the torturers and no one ended up forgiven and no one changed and everything was bleak despair. “This is how you all think about forgiveness,” Jesus said, “and it’s all wrong.”
Forgiveness as it is practiced in this parable, and as most people practice it in our society, is a demonstration of dominance. Forgiveness is something bestowed by the strong upon the weak. In the parable, the king uses forgiveness to demonstrate his power to give or withhold his grace over the people. The servant, on the other hand, has to beg for mercy and he knows that people will remember that he once had to depend on the mercy of his king. The servant, then, has to immediately set upon a weaker person to re-establish his own dominance in the pecking order. “I may have been forgiven,” the servant is in effect saying, “but don’t make the mistake of thinking that I am therefore weak and you can take advantage of me.” When the servant’s peers tattle to the King, the King worries that now he will look weak because his mercy seems to have had no effect, so he in turn reasserts his own power by withdrawing his forgiveness.
Jesus’ parable is about the politics of forgiveness and the way in which human beings turn forgiveness into a weapon of power and dominance instead of a gift of grace.
Is this a fair description of our own approach to forgiveness? Just look at all of the recent debate in the 2008 presidential campaign about the candidates’ relationships to controversial figures in their past and ask whether forgiveness is still being used as a tool to demonstrate strength and weakness? Or, to bring it closer to home, ask yourself how many church study groups have discussed the difficulty of forgiving other people versus the difficulty of accepting forgiveness: most of us would much rather talk about how hard it is to forgive other people because we would always prefer to start from a position of strength. To confess that we are struggling to forgive someone is to say in effect, “I am the one in a position of dominance. Forgiveness is mine to bestow or withhold.” And if we decide to forgive someone, but that person doesn’t change, then we are upset because it is as if they have not shown an appreciation for our benevolence. And if, we forgive them a second, third, or fourth time, and still they refuse to change, we, like the King in Jesus’ parable, take back our forgiveness because obviously our benevolence has been flouted, our charity unappreciated. Forgiveness as we practice it, is a lesson imparted from the strong to the weak. We see forgiveness as a synonym for pardon – I, the one in a position of authority, offer you, the weaker party, pardon, clemency, in the hope that my forgiveness of your sin will restore you to good citizenship in our relationship.
But this is not forgiveness as Jesus preached it. The Greek word which Jesus used that we translate forgiveness doesn’t mean pardon; it means “letting go” or “sending away.”
Look at the difference in how this definition sounds from the definition of pardon:

You took advantage of me, but I have decided to pardon you.
You took advantage of me but I have decided to send that episode away, to let it go from me.

To define forgiveness as pardon embroils us in the controversy of who is right and who is wrong and who is strong and who is weak. When we pardon another person, we say in effect, “I have the right to hold this sin against you, but I choose not to – instead in my mercy I will pardon you. And in pardoning you, I expect change, a re-establishment of the trust between us. When you break that trust again, I will need to decide all over again whether to give you pardon or whether, like the discouraged King in the parable, I will take it back since you obviously didn’t appreciate it in the first place.”
But when we translate forgiveness as “letting go, sending away,” we say nothing of the rightness or wrongness of the act against us. We say nothing of our position over or under the other person. We aren’t even really saying anything about the other person at all. We are talking about ourselves and the choice we are making about whether we will continue to live in the misery and hurt of that event or whether we will send it away from us and move forward. “I send it away. I let it go from me.”
I said at the beginning of this sermon that forgiveness always effects change and it does; it’s just that we are usually looking for change in the wrong person. Forgiveness is not about the change that you hope to effect in someone else; it is about the change that you make in your own heart. It is opening your heart so that you can air out the hurts that have festered there for too long, send away the wounds, and let go of the past.
It may be that letting go of those hurts and no longer holding them against a person will cause that person to change, but that’s is not a requirement of your forgiveness. If a person cheats you once, and you forgive them, then they cheat you a second time, and you forgive them, and they cheat you yet a third time, maybe you should say, “I will let my hurt go, but I will be careful about trusting them a fourth time.” Lewis Smedes, an author who wrote about forgiveness, said, “You can forgive someone almost anything. But you cannot tolerate everything... We don't have to tolerate what people do just because we forgive them for doing it. Forgiving heals us personally.”
Jesus said, “Forgive seven times seventy times;” he didn’t say, “Tolerate seven times seventy times.” He didn’t say, “Be taken in seven times seventy times.” He said, “Let go seven times seventy times”. And any one who has ever tried to let go of a hurt knows full well that it may take seven times seventy attempts before we are able to say with confidence that we have truly evicted that hurt from our heart.
Christ promises that forgiveness brings change. Sometimes when you forgive you will create a place of freedom and peace for the other person where change might occur. Sometimes your willingness to wipe the slate clean will give them the chance that they need to begin anew. Sometimes, but not always. But forgiveness is not really about the change in the other person; it is about the change in your own heart, and Jesus promises that when you forgive, you will create a place of freedom and peace for yourself. Open the windows of your heart and send away the hurts, let go of the wounds, clear out the debris of the past, and breathe in the fresh air of peace.