Sermon by Tom Are Jr. | May 25, 2025 | Fourth Presbyterian Church

Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 25, 2025

Forgive Us As We Forgive

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Psalm 130
Matthew 18:21–35

I don’t often do this, but I have decided to preach something different from what I planned. Even yesterday morning I was finishing the sermon on John 3. But I decided to write something different.

Why?

Like you, I was heartbroken to learn this week of the murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, two Jewish young people who, by all accounts, were planning to get engaged this weekend. They were gunned down by Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, himself only thirty years old. It is one more expression of the flawed confidence of individuals and nations that violence solves problems.

While knowing little, I have learned that Sarah grew up in the shadow of the church I served for twenty years. She graduated from the same high school as my own children. Given that this kind of senseless violence is a daily occurrence in America, I suppose I could have chosen any week to speak to it, but about lunchtime yesterday I decided today was the day. You may see all of this differently than I do, and I’m not claiming to have a full grasp on what our faith says about this, but let me share with you what is rumbling around in my brain and in my heart. So instead of John, listen to Matthew 18:21–35.

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There will be a time in your life when you will find yourself thinking about forgiveness, either because you need to offer it or you need to receive it. In that moment, questions will come. Are there limits to God’s forgiveness? Are there limits to our forgiveness? What about accountability?

Jesus’ disciples asked these questions, too. Trying to balance grace and accountability, they asked, “How often do we forgive?” Peter threw out what he thought was a big number: how about seven times? Jesus responds, “What about seventy-seven times.” In other words, if you are counting, you’ve missed the point.

Then Jesus told a story. A king wants what’s owed him. One servant owes ten thousand talents. Most laborers in those days never saw a talent. To make ten thousand talents would require an average laborer to work a long time, approximately 150,000 years. It’s a ridiculous, unpayable sum.

The silliness of this story continues. Regardless of the impossibility, the servant promises, “Just give me some time. I will gladly pay you everything.”

Well, he can’t. Even if he is given to the end of time, he can’t repay.

Nevertheless, the king shows mercy. Your debt is forgiven.

But then this same servant goes out and meets a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii, or about what one might earn over the summer. He says, “Pay me.” The second servant, uses the same words of the first servant: “Be patient with me and I will repay you everything.” But this time there is no mercy. And because being poor has often been and is still often against the law, the debtor is tossed into prison.

In response, the crowd boos. What a schmuck! After receiving grace beyond counting, he can’t distribute a modest measure of grace. The character of the king has had no influence on the character of the servant.

Unlike some of Jesus’ stories, we read this one and we think, “I’m better than that. I wouldn’t be that hard-hearted. I would be kinder to one who owed me a little.” You would. But how much would we be willing to forgive? I mean, there comes a point when we are not so sure we can forgive, doesn’t there? There are limits to forgiveness, aren’t there?

I read about Nadine Collier, whose mother was murdered in the horrific shooting at the Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Do you remember? Dylann Roof, guided by white supremacist sin, sat in a Bible study with her mother and others before opening fire on them. Ms. Collier, while choking back sobs, said to Mr. Roof, “I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. … You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. If God forgives you, I forgive you” (David Von Drehle, “How Do You Forgive a Murderer?” Time, 25 November 2015).

When asked later what made her offer forgiveness, she quoted the parable we have read today: “should you not have had mercy as I had mercy on you?”

But others — even in her own church — found her forgiveness revolting. It came too soon or too easily, they said. It disrespected the dignity of those who had been murdered, they said. To forgive failed to respect the pain that so many were feeling. It was too much grace, not enough accountability.

There are limits to our forgiveness, aren’t there?

It raises a question: when we have been injured, what response to our injury is justified? How does the pain that we experience influence our encounter with others. Or to ask it more starkly, does yesterday’s pain justify today’s vengeful response? That’s what Elias Rodriguez believes: he gunned down two innocent young people as he shouted “Free Palestine.” The oppression of Palestinians, in his mind, justifies the bloodshed of innocent Jewish people. Palestinians are suffering. Some can’t admit that. But they are. But does the suffering justify the bloodshed of innocents? Others, who begin history on October 7 say, “Well, they started it, so they get what’s coming.” Does that justify the overwhelming military force against a mostly unarmed people?

When something has gone wrong, when we are the ones who have offended, when you have injured another, disappointed another, sinned against another, the first response is not to ask for forgiveness. The first response is to do what we can to make it right.

I was about ten when my dad taught me how to replace a window — at least the way they used to repair windows. We measured the pane and went to a glass shop and purchased the glass. We chipped out all the old caulk and removed what was left of the broken window. Placed the new window in the sill and recalked it. Then we painted it. I would have been pretty proud of my new skill, but the new window was not at our house. It was at the van Arsdale’s house. It was actually their window that was broken when — and I am fuzzy on the details here, but somehow my baseball ended up in their living room. As a result, I learned how to replace a window. My dad told me, “You broke it. You repair it.”

It’s a good practice with windows and even more so with people. When we have created harm, we should do everything we can to make it right.

But what happens if wrongs can’t be made right? What happens if we work to the end of time and still can’t repay our 10,000 talents?

Forgiveness is needed when things can’t be made right. No matter how hard we might work, the debt can never be paid. It is impossible. I think what Nadine Collier knew is that Dylann Roof could go to prison for the rest of his life but it will never make things right. The only way she will find her way to peace is to forgive.

But is there a limit?

With us, often there is. But there doesn’t seem to be with God. Even from the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them.” While he was being crucified, he offered forgiveness.

I don’t know that I have that strength.

I have been hurt. You have too. Perhaps you have been hurt unjustly at times. It is infuriating. In those moments it is difficult to speak of forgiveness. It might even feel dismissive of pain.

The murder of Sarah and Yaron has been called an act of antisemitism. And antisemitism, the hatred of Jews because they are Jews, has dramatically increased in this country. It is sinful. The church cannot condone the hatred of any person or group of people because of their identity.

But Elias Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine.” Palestine should be free, as should all people. But Mr. Rodriguez did not address his hatred at Mr. Netanyahu, who stood before our Congress and called Palestinians barbarians. No, he shoots down an innocent couple who have nothing to do with what the state of Israel is doing in Gaza. Just as you cannot be held responsible for everything our government does, it is absurd to hold Jews responsible for what the State of Israel might do.

The night after I learned of the senseless murder of Sarah and Yaron, I watched the CBS Evening News and watched reports of food being withheld from Gaza. I watched images of Palestinian children with bloated bellies and birdlike limbs so weak from starvation they lack the energy to cry. The images are not unlike the images of starvation we witnessed in German camps. These children have nothing to do with the suffering that Jewish families endure while still waiting for the hostages to come home.

It is one more example of the foolish confidence of so many that violence is a persuasive tool.

Here is my point: If the injury that someone has done to me becomes justification for violence, then everyone is justified. There is no one in Israel/Palestine who has not suffered. There is no family on either side who has not bled. If such injury justifies violence, then everyone is justified.

So here is what I think.

At some point yesterday’s injuries will have to be set aside to allow the possibility of a different tomorrow. Or as Gandhi has been known to say, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

I think this story of Jesus urges us to let our character be shaped by the character of God. Let our lives be shaped less by what the world does to us and more by what God has done for us.

One of my earliest international trips was to Nicaragua. It was the mid-1980s during what was called the Contra War. I traveled to a beautiful mountain village called Jicaro. The people there were simple. They raised their chickens, grew coffee, and went to church. Small places like this are peaceful. They may have arguments; there will be fights at times; but they lack the power to make war. War comes from the powerful with grand ideals. And war came to Jicaro. They had to suffer what they couldn’t make. I met Maria Blandon. She had just buried her son, who was a coffee farmer and while tending his crop stepped on a land mine, which had been planted to keep the farmers from farming. It blew him to pieces.

Our small delegation of a few Americans was invited to her dirt-floor home.

She welcomed us, asked us to pray, and she hugged each one of us.

I was stunned. After all, my country was financing the land mines that killed her son. She said, “But they told us you are from the church. If you too are a follower of Jesus, then you are my brother,” she said. And she hugged me again.

She was responding not out of what the world had done to her but what God has done for her, and it left me amazed. I am not much like that simple woman from Jicaro, but I want to be.

In the parable, the servant was forgiven, but he couldn’t bring himself to forgive.

Connecting those dots is no easy thing. But if I understand the text, Jesus invites us to let what God has done for us shape how we respond to what the world does to us.

Wendell Berry wrote about the pain of 9/11. He wrote:

“It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong. The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them, and if we pray to pray for them. If we can’t do any of that, then we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies’ children, who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of enmity that they did not cause (Wendell Berry, Citizenship Papers, p. 16).

I think, if we are honest, for most of us there is a limit to forgiveness. So when it comes to those we cannot bring ourselves to forgive, we should remember that God has forgiven them. Like it or not, God has forgiven them. And God will forgive us too, when we can’t bring ourselves to do the same.

But maybe someday everything we do will be shaped by what God has done for us. And if that happens, then maybe the cycle of violence that is constantly justified will be disrupted and our “children will grow to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed” (Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams, p. 303).