Forgiveness is for the Forgiver

 November 2, 2025

Rev. JT Smiedendorf  – Acting Lead & Intentional Interim Minister

Text: Matthew 18:21-22

Download and print a PDF of this sermon here.

 

CENTRAL FOCUS

Forgiveness is a practice for liberating the self from the past, from self-harm, and from righteous indignation and arrogance.

“Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’
Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

These are the words of our ancient tradition.
May these words become Living Wisdom within us, among us, and beyond us.

 

It was Holocaust Awareness Week at the University of Denver some years ago and the late Rabbi Harold Kushner shared a story from the Jewish author Elie Wiesel from Wiesel’s book Sunflower. Wiesel, working at a hospital, was brought to the bedside of a gravely wounded Nazi who has asked that a Jew be brought to his room. The Nazi did not even ask him his name or anything about him, but merely attempted to apologize for his actions against Jews. Wiesel walked out on him. Later, Wiesel wondered if he had done the right thing.

Kushner used this story to open his discussion of forgiveness. He said he could not venture a definitive opinion on the situation because the matter was between Wiesel and the Nazi, between those directly injured by the Nazis and those responsible.

Forgiveness is mentioned often in Jesus’ ministry and the early church’s understanding of a faithful response to the Christ event. I would say that the practice of forgiveness is a central path of a truly spiritual journey.

Our story of Jesus today comes from Matthew’s Gospel in a section that has to do with the disciples learning from Jesus about the Realm of God. So, into this context, Matthew places a story about lost ones in the church, about separations in the church. Peter comes to Jesus and says, “Lord, if another member of the church does harm against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus replied, “Not seven times, but 77 times.” (Or seventy times seven)

Part of the meaning of this 77 is in the symbolic meaning of the number seven. It is considered to be sacred because it is considered to be the number of wholeness. Like the seven directions that many First Nation people like the Lakota Nation know (four compass directions plus above, below, and within), seventy times seven is in a way trying to emphasize to Peter that he will need to keep forgiving in the service of making community and relationships whole. Coming from the ancient Hebrew tradition of Jesus, this whole-making, known in Hebrew Scriptures as tikkun olam, repairing the fabric of the world, is in the essence of the call of the Gospel, the call to Beloved Community within, among, and beyond ourselves. So, we are called to learn the practice of forgiveness, the art of repair and whole-making.

The late Rabbi Kushner offered a most helpful insight into the question of how to orient in that difficult moment of forgiveness in the story of Wiesel and the Nazi. Kushner suggests that the Nazi did not deserve to take up space in Wiesel’s heart or mind as an object of attention—neither as an object of revenge nor as an object of demand for an apology. That would be a way for the Nazi and the past to continue to haunt Wiesel. In this aspect of forgiveness, forgiving is a way to release the energy stuck in the past so that one might bring that life energy instead to the present and to the future. Forgiveness then is a way to re-humanize oneself, to release and open oneself to a new future of possibilities.

In large measure then, forgiveness is for the forgiver, the repair and whole-making of forgiveness, does repair and make whole the one who experiences hurt.

The Tibetan Buddhist Dalai Lama and the late South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu met for a series of recorded interviews that became a book titled, The Book of Joy. In this book, they list forgiveness as a necessary core spiritual and psychological practice of the heart.
Said Tutu,
“Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound to the chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped. Until we can forgive the person who harmed us, that person will hold the keys to our happiness, that person will be our jailor. When we forgive, we take back control of our own fate and our feelings. We become our own liberator.”

Kushner tells of a story he heard from another rabbi of a woman in that other rabbi’s congregation. This woman and her children were left by her husband years ago. She shared her bitter feelings with the rabbi, deep resentment about her husband’s desertion and how hard she had had to work to support these children all alone. Now, given the time that had passed and her persistent intense feelings, the rabbi replied to her, “My dear your resentment for your ex-husband is like a burning coal that you have been waiting to throw at him. Do you think he is going to drive right in front of your house after all these years so that you can throw it at him? As you are waiting, the burning coal is eating through your hand.” The resentment and resistance to letting go was hurting this woman, crowding each passing day of her life, and burning a hole in her future, one day at a time, by keeping her attention hostage to the past.

Forgiveness is for the forgiver.

John Patton, a noted pastoral counselor and seminary professor, wrote a wonderful book called Is Human Forgiveness Possible? The masterful insight of this book was to present forgiveness not as an issue of justice and guilt and power (Who is right? Who is wrong? Who must ask for an apology? Who has the right to forgive? Who has to come to who for forgiveness?)

… but as an issue of injury to the self. This injury is often an experience of shame that we might have weakness or vulnerability exposed. And shame is an intimate issue to the self and to the relationships we each have with each other and with God. Like Eve and Adam running and hiding from God because they were ashamed at their nakedness, we, too, can hide behind our judgment and anger and bitterness to escape exposure.

Perhaps the woman mentioned a moment ago sharing with her rabbi could have said, “Because my husband left me and my children, I am ashamed—ashamed of being left, too ashamed to face the world and so I will never forgive him, never let go of my hostility toward him. That way I will not have to let the true pain of this experience in and wrestle with the wound to how I see myself.”

But what of the questions of right and wrong?
What of the other “offending” person?
Don’t they need to ask for forgiveness?
Wasn’t the husband a bum for deserting her and the family in that way?

Sure, he may have been, but for the suffering woman this continued focus is unlikely to help her move forward. The ex-wife cannot control what he will do. Nor can we control what another person might do. In this sense, forgiveness is not about another taking responsibility, which would be very important for that person, but it is about us, about what each one of us can choose to do. It is about the one who perceives and experiences injury. What I’m talking about is the deserted or hurt person getting on with life, releasing their time and energy for the future, for new possibilities, for their own liberation, well-being, and empowerment. In this case, the woman would have more energy for living and loving for her children or for her next relationship.

Let me be clear: This way of forgiveness does not mandate repeating a behavior that continues to generate hurt in us or puts us at undue risk of injury. If my neighbor borrows tools and doesn’t return them, I could choose to harbor a grudge because that neighbor was in the wrong. I could even demand a certain kind of apology because I was owed it, or so I judge. Yet, I could forgive my neighbor, and also not lend them any more tools, moving on to a further and different relationship with the neighbor, free of the energy focused on and stuck in the past. Forgiveness in this sense is not the same as forgetting or continuing the same pattern or the same as reconciling on an issue, nor is it a rush job of denying feelings of disappointment. But forgiveness is for the forgiver because it allows the forgiver in time to heal and to move on.

Patton encourages those stuck in forgiveness to discover who they are beyond the shame and injury: an imperfect human needing to give and receive love, one of God’s children in a community of imperfect people. To practice forgiveness, we must in some way see ourselves like those who hurt us.

As Archbishop Tutu witnessed in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission time and time again, grieving families and victims set themselves free by offering forgiveness to the perpetrators. Once again, forgiveness is NOT condoning or allowing or even forgetting. Nor is it standing by and letting harm occur. The Dalai Lama and Tutu knew that as much as anyone.

The key, say these wise elders, is not losing sight of the humanity of the person offending. The Dalai Lama speaks of being concerned for the well-being of the Chinese. Says the Dalai Lama, “You must not hate those who do harmful things. The compassionate thing is to do what you can to stop them—for they are harming themselves as well as those who suffer from their actions.”

Both these elders know the power of practicing forgiveness in ending cycles of revenge and retribution and setting the pre-conditions for the possibility of reconciliation. If punitive justice is all one wants, significant social and personal healing will be elusive.

My friends, in this church, in our lives, no matter our age, it is inevitable that we will experience hurt from another. Let us receive the guidance of the spiritual elders to set ourselves free and discover empowerment for this present moment of living by practicing forgiveness, by seeing the humanness in others and releasing the grip on the burning coal of bitterness in our hands. Even 77 times…

AMEN.