Nearly 50 years ago Elton John recorded a song that seemed to strike a chord with just about everyone who heard it. Unlike some of his other his high-energy, feel-good songs, this was a mournful ballad about a relationship that was falling apart. It’s title? “Sorry seems to be the hardest word.”
The theme running through today’s readings is all about forgiveness, something that seems to be the hardest thing for many of us to do, whether that is extending forgiveness to someone who has hurt us or accepting forgiveness from someone we have hurt.
It seems we would rather nurse ancient slights and hurts, brood over past injustices or repeatedly agonise about our past sins and mistakes, rather than deal with them. Perhaps this is not surprising, because the work of forgiveness takes determination, persistence and humility, and when it is a matter of accepting forgiveness from another person or from God, that can be even harder.
But what if you have genuinely tried to forgive someone or yourself, and you still find all the old feelings coming back again? The good news is that there are things we can do about it, even if we cannot bring ourselves all the way to forgiving or to feeling forgiven.
The first thing is to remember that we are loved, utterly and completely. Because of who God is, nothing we can do can make God love us more and nothing we can do can make God love us less. God’s love is like the sun shining behind a cloud: the sun is still there, even if we cannot see it or feel its warmth. So, the first thing is to stand on God’s love and on God’s complete forgiveness of us because of what Jesus did on the cross. We will never fully understand how and why, but we can trust that, in Christ, we are already forgiven.
If we are struggling to forgive someone else and can’t seem to do it, then we can ask God to forgive them, or even let God know that we are willing to forgive them. Then we can hand it over to God, trusting that the alchemy of God’s love and redemption will be at work within us and anyone else involved. Every time we are plagued with feelings of guilt or hurt or lack of forgiveness, we can determinedly give it all back to God.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Peter asks Jesus how many times we should forgive, and he wonders whether it should be as much as seven times. Jesus responds quickly – ‘not seven, but seventy times seven!’ Jesus then illustrates his command with a hard-hitting parable about what happens to people who do not forgive others.
It seems forgiveness is not an optional extra for someone who wants to follow Christ. That’s probably because true freedom includes the freedom to know we are forgiven and the ability to forgive, or even the willingness to want to forgive. The good news is that Jesus has paved the way for each and every one of us to live in this kind of freedom.
The Revd Christina Rees