There may be no other quality of the Christian life with which we struggle more than the requirement to forgive.  Of course, we know that we are called upon to forgive.  We say it every time we pray “The Lord’s Prayer.”  But we also know that there are people and situations in the world that we must remain wary of…that to forgive seems as though it will put us in danger again.  We know that there are wounds so deep that can’t imagine ever forgetting or forgiving the ones who caused them.

There are real and painful incidents in our lives that wound us, that nearly kill us, even; and that require tremendous effort and time from us if we are to recover.  Abuse, violence, or negligence that results in real physical injury is horribly difficult.  Then there are those invisible psychological wounds that often have their origin in childhood when those charged with loving and caring for us are not trustworthy.

I know that forgiveness doesn’t come easily, even to those of us who pray regularly “forgive us as we forgive those others…” I know it doesn’t.  I watch people struggle with it all the time.  I struggle with it all the time.

In today’s text, both in Romans and Matthew, the situation is particularly that of relationships among those who are members of the church together.  Of course we should forgive in the church.  Is there any doubt that it’s the right thing to do?  Sadly, there’s plenty of evidence that we are not very good at forgiveness, even in the church.  I’ve noticed this across the years.  All of these are real examples, but, of course, they occurred in other congregations.

I’ve planned a wedding seating arrangement so that the bride’s mother and father would never have to talk to or sit next to each other during their daughter’s wedding; and watched the young woman agonize about whether their broken relationship would spoil her wedding day.

I knew a woman who would not work in the church kitchen if that “other woman” was going to be there.

Families have quit the church because of an incident between their child and another family’s child.

I’ve worried about a long standing rivalry between siblings ruining the funeral of one of their parents.

I’ve watched clergy leave the church, unable to forgive the institution or a particular bishop for an appointment that didn’t work well for them.

I’ve watched as people withheld their participation from the church when a congregational decision went against their personal opinion.

Rarely has the wronged party sought my counsel about their need to forgive, or about a process to facilitate reconciliation.  In several cases, they sought my alliance, however, to go against the party that had wronged them.

Most of these situations were, in the overall scheme of things, relatively trivial.  No one was physically injured.  No one had lost their life.  But bitterness, anger, and a stubborn refusal to make the first apology kept people isolated from one another, and tore at the fabric of congregational and family life.

Jesus questioners wanted to know how many times they needed to forgive before they would be counted righteous.  What was their responsibility, their duty?  How many times until they have satisfied the demand?  Jesus answer is not really a numerical answer.  The numbers he gives are most appropriately translated as “70 times 7.” What he really does is give an answer that means “as often as you are wronged; as many times as necessary; or, until all is reconciled and well between you.” Then he tells an absurd story.

It is a parable about one who is forgiven an amount something like the National Debt, who then refuses grace to a guy that owes him twenty bucks.

But the disparity between the amounts of the debt is not the real point.  The real point is the difference in character between the debtor and the one who forgives his debt.  How often are we like this forgiven debtor?  We receive grace upon grace from God, and then turn right around and withhold grace from others.

Forgiveness trades in grace.  And Jesus is trying to point out to us that because God continues to extend grace to us — no matter what — without regard to who we are and what we do — but because of God’s gracious nature — we ought also to extend grace to others.

Forgiveness trades in grace.  But we, my friends, so often trade in mean spiritedness and vengeance.  Our first thought, when we are wronged, is how to hurt the one who has hurt us.  And that’s probably okay as a first thought — normal and human.  But God does not want us to live a lifetime with our wounds, waiting every moment for a chance at retaliation.

After we talked about this in sermon shaping, someone mentioned to me how this idea of trading in grace had stayed with her.  She said, “I thought about this giant hurt in my life”, and she gave it a name, as she held out one hand to show its weight and presence.  And then she said, “and then I thought about all the graces God has given me throughout my life” and she held out the other hand.  It seemed to me that she was almost measuring and realizing that there was enough grace, more than enough grace, to finally take away the power of painful memory, and allow deeper forgiveness.  When we trade in grace, the balance shifts, and burdens can be lifted.

We who call ourselves Christians are called upon to model this for the world.

I think it’s no secret to any who know me very well that I have very high expectations and aspirations for the church.  Here is one aspiration I have for the church.  I long for the church to be the place where we practice being forgiven and forgiving.  I long for us to grasp the graces that come to us when we abide in the broken body.  Too often, what we really demand is an unbroken body.  Fix it, and we will come.  But Jesus said, “my body is broken for you.”

God’s grace moves in our lives at the broken places.  Some of us resist this grace by ignoring our broken places, insisting that we are just fine.  Others of us nurture the broken places.  We trade on our hurt feelings, using them again and again to wound ourselves and others.  But not all of us are that way; and few of us are that way all the time.

There have been situations when people sought my counsel about forgiveness.  And often when the person had been seriously wronged.  Wounded.  No question.  But they heard Jesus words, they knew that the Christian life demands that we learn to practice forgiveness.  And they were struggling with knowing what to do, and not knowing how to do it.

I remember one woman in a Sunday School class who shared over several years, her struggle to reconcile with a next door neighbor about whom she had difficult feelings.  But she tried.  She worked at it.  She got her mail for her; she baked her cookies; she waved and spoke when they met on the street.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that the person who hurt us will stop.  We may need to take some precautions to prevent them from wounding us again.  But physical separation for safety’s sake should not preclude an attitude of the heart that opens us and them to the possibilities of grace and healing.

Maybe some of you watch the cable television show called “Jon and Kate Plus 8” about the family with twins and sextuplets.  The sextuplets are about 4 now.  When one of them does something to the other, the no nonsense Mom always insists, “say you’re sorry.  Now give your brother/sister a hug.” If only it were that easy!  But there is something to teaching children a ritual of reconciliation.  Especially when that ritual is carried out in the context of relationship that cannot be broken.  These children are siblings and nothing can change that.  They will stay in relationship with each other.  They’ll eat dinner together that night.  They’ll share toys and space and affection and experiences.  They have to talk to each other to negotiate their days.

The church can become for us, if we forgive it for all the times when it isn’t, a place of grace and reconciliation.  Maybe we can’t go back and re-invent a mother or father who abused us, or a spouse who betrayed us, or a boss who was cruel to us, or a system that failed us, but we can discover in the church a man or woman of grace, whose love becomes healing to us.  We can discover an avenue of conversation with a fellow Christian where we practice grace, and then take the practice into another relationship.

When we stay in the church, we practice rituals of reconciliation.  We say we’re sorry in prayers of confession.  We express the peace of Christ to each other.  We come to the same table, and receive the same broken bread.

The very time to stay in relationship, to practice forgiveness and count the blessings of grace is when there is brokenness.  Because there is the moment when miracle is possible.  Forgiveness restores health to the community.  Forgiveness is what moves us to reconcile with those who have hurt us.  Forgiveness unleashes the grace that is in our own lives, promoting our own well being.

Forgiveness is possible because God holds us all in relationship.  In Christ’s life, death and resurrection, we are already reconciled.  There is a plane of existence, a place of grace, where all is well.  It is already done.

We have some work to do to access this grace, for sure.  And this work takes time.  We may have to apologize.  We may have to assess our own attitudes and acknowledge our pain.  We may have to sit down with our enemy and work it out.  That takes time and grace.

Time we may be short on — maybe this is the week to make that phone call, and have that reconciling conversation.

Take heart.  Grace is always abundant.  You can count on it.  And that’s a good thing.