One of my deepest held beliefs is that pretty much everything is “figure-outable;” almost everything in this life we can figure out if we have the time, talent, or tools. When I first started hiking, I didn’t know how trails worked or what blazes were, but through experience, I learned. The first things I planted in my garden were not in the right sunlight zone and I watered incorrectly, but I figured it out. And in seminary, at first I didn’t know how to read the academic theological tomes that spent many long and beautiful words talking about how God is good. But for me, even though I believe everything is figure-outable, I *need* to know what the boundaries are. What is the structure and routine of this task: how many times should I try to wander off the trail to make sure I’m on the right trail? (Zero.) How much sunlight should strawberries get? (A lot.) Do we really need such long sentences about God? (Sometimes.) I am confident that I can do pretty much anything, but I need to know how it ought to go before I try it.
In our gospel lesson today, Peter seems to approach Jesus’ teachings with the same perspective. After Jesus taught about radical forgiveness, Peter, needed to know just how often we are required to forgive someone, and he throws out a wild number of times to forgive someone: as many as seven. But Jesus, who I believe delighted in disorienting the disciples with the radical nature of the gospel, responds, “not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” At this point, I imagine Peter going from a confident affirmation that if Christ really asked him to, he could forgive as many times as seven to an astounded disbelief as Christ multiples his wild guess by eleven. I imagine his face moving slowly from confidence to disbelief to subtle acceptance as Jesus lays out the parable of forgiven and unforgiven debts and hypocrisy therein. This parable squarely plants both Peter and us in an awareness of God’s work on our own lives and how that ought to shape how we treat our fellow humans.
This is not a parable that makes us feel warm and cared for, it is a parable that challenges how we see ourselves and how we interact with others, but it also is parable that is not meant to be applied blindly and universally. This parable is not forcing us into relationship with those who harmed us because forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things. It is hard to not hear that we ought to forgive, but I think forgiveness is complex and gnarly. To forgive someone is rarely, if ever, to check a box and move on, it is an ongoing and complicated process. And if we take forgiveness not just as a passing act, but as a full, long process, Jesus’ insistence that we are to forgive not only seven times, but seventy-seven times might feel plain impossible.
But I hope that you are not here this morning to hear about the easy path of Christianity or that all we have to do is to simply follow the Bible, because life and faith are more complicated than that. And when it comes to how our society and world work, the church honestly doesn’t really make much sense. The economy of God, with its abundance that overflows even when it comes to forgiveness just simply doesn’t make sense when held in comparison to how our world usually works. When it comes to Christianity, the easy path is not easy in the eyes of the world; because if based on nothing else than the radical life of love and forgiveness to which God calls us, it can seem like a heavy burden, but I believe that this sort of love and forgiveness is a path to freedom and ease in a counter-intuitive way.
And that’s not to say that this sort of radical, overwhelming expectation to forgive should not be heard lightly; we, like Peter, can hear this parable with our mouths agape with what our faith requires of us. But when I think about the heavy weight of forgiveness, I’d be remiss if I did not name that it is not only that we are to forgive others 77 times, but ourselves as well. We are only human and we miss the mark when it comes to all the relationships in our life and the work we do together, so very often if there is something to forgive of another, there is probably something to forgive within ourselves as well. Forgiveness is not just an action, it is a way of being and moving through the world with compassion and care, and many times it is a way of life when you can do nothing else. Too often we find ourselves locked up in painful despair and the only way out is forgiveness. And if that despair feels inescapable and forgiveness too far out of reach, then we pray that God forgive our inability to forgive. We pray that we can see the light out of the pain and hurt that we inflict on others and on ourselves.
When we lean into the life of love and forgiveness to which God calls us, we will be transformed by it. Just as the salvation that is found in the baptismal waters works on us slowly over time, so too is the way of forgiveness. Forgiving ourselves or others again and again and again, often not for separate hurts, but usually the same one that keeps coming back to grab us, is a life that is transformed by forgiveness. And like all transformations, forgiveness may be a slow process, but I pray that we are so deeply and fully wrapped up in our baptismal life that we have no other choice that there is no other path ahead than to forgive. That we have no other choice than to be transformed by forgiveness.
Becca Kello 
“Forgiveness is not just an action, it is a way of being and moving through the world with compassion and care…”
So important!❤️❤️