In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Matthew 6.14-21
The Lord said, “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. “And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Today is Forgiveness Sunday, the day when, as we are on the cusp of Great and Holy Lent, we are urged by our Mother the Church, to forgive others. How important is it that we do this? In a word, very. In two words, very, very. Consider what our Lord says in our Gospel reading today: ‘If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’ The meaning cannot be plainer; if you hope to have your sins forgiven by God, you must forgive your brothers and sisters of this world, every single one of them, of the offenses they have committed against you.
You may ask who are these men that our Lord speaks of us forgiving? Who is your brother or your sister? Recall here the parable of the Good Samaritan in the tenth chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel. In it, our Lord tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves; and a lawyer challenges Jesus, asking Him ‘Who is my neighbour?’ In the parable it is the Samaritan who helps the Jew who was left for dead, even though the Jews and the Samaritans were enemies. Our Lord is demonstrating here that all men are our neighbours. Therefore, by extension, all are our brothers and sisters; all are the men that Jesus tell us that we must forgive if we ourselves are to be forgiven.
Perhaps you may think that what our Lord asks of us here is too hard. Perhaps you believe that the offenses someone has committed against you are very great and it is unreasonable that you should be expected to forgive them. Further, perhaps you believe your own offenses against God, your sins, are very small, trivial when compared to the wrongs you have suffered at the hands of others, and that it is unfair that you should have to forgive things so terrible in order to be forgiven such petty little sins.
I would remind you here of the parable of the Unmerciful Servant, which is recounted in the 18th chapter of Saint Matthew’s Gospel. That servant owed his master, the king, a great debt, 10,000 talents. He cannot repay such an enormous sum, so he pleads with his master to forgive him. His master does. But as the servant leaves, he encounters a fellow servant who owes him 300 denarii. This man is also unable to repay his debt, but instead of showing mercy in the way mercy was shown to him, he has the man cast into prison until he should pay the debt. You will recall that when the king hears of this, things do not go well for that unmerciful servant.
It is important, I think, to understand the difference between the sums owed to the king and that owed to the servant. A single talent of gold weighed around 30 kilograms, which is worth over three million dollars in today’s money, an enormous sum. And the unmerciful servant owed his master 10,000 of them, or something like 30 billion dollars. It was a debt that the servant, if he was earning an average wage for the time, couldn’t have hoped to repay even if he lived for a hundred thousand years. And, as the Church Fathers tell us, we are to see ourselves as the servant in the story, the king is God, and the debt represents our sins. Without God’s mercy, we are lost.
And what of the 300 denarii the fellow servant owed his unmerciful colleague? Importantly, that amount is about what a man might have earned over the course of the year. So, it is not a trivial sum. Not many of us, I think, could afford to forgive a debt that amounts to a full year of our pay. But that, I think, is the point. It is not that the amount owed by his fellow servant was tiny. It was not. But it paled in comparison to the debt that was owned by the unmerciful servant. Or, to put it another way, the debt that each of us owes to God. The offenses our brothers and sisters have committed against us may indeed by great. But they mean nothing when compared to our own sins and the mercy we need from God.
Returning to today’s Gospel, it is important as we finish to consider something that the Church Fathers stress again and again when considering this passage. And it is the order of forgiveness. First, we must forgive the trespasses of men, their sins against us; and after that comes the forgiveness of God for our trespasses. There is no forgiveness for us if we do not ourselves first forgive. And our salvation, as you are all aware, or should be aware, depends very much on God showing forgiveness to us. Therefore, in order to be saved we must forgive. A sobering thought and a timely reminder on this Forgiveness Sunday. Amen.
The Holy Orthodox Order of St George the Great Martyr works tirelessly to help those in need. We focus particularly on our brothers and sisters in Christ who live in the Holy Land and those who suffer because of their Christian faith. However, we strive to help all in need. Funds are desperately needed at this time to help those facing the horrors of war in Gaza and Lebanon. Please help if you can by making a donation to the Order. And please keep all those who suffer in your prayers. Thank you and may God bless you.
