Have you ever heard this warning: Be careful what you pray for – you might get it!  Watch out – you just might get what you are after.  Here’s a prayer many of us pray at least once a week – ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’.

Is that what we really want?  We know that we want God’s forgiveness.  Of that, we are quite sure. However, we are not so sure about the second part, about the way we forgive others. We know that we are not nearly so quick to forgive others as we hope and pray that God forgives us. The Psalmist says, “The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness.” Great news – we mess up – we ask God for forgiveness. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, and so God forgives us. But… when someone does us wrong, when someone does us dirty, we say, “hey, not so fast.” We are not so full of compassion and mercy. We are not so slow to anger and of great kindness. We may be quick to anger and full of… colourful language.

And yet, this is how Our Lord taught us to pray – ‘forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’. Be careful what you pray for – you just might get it!

In today’s Gospel, Peter comes to Jesus and asks, “Lord, if someone sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”

Peter always asks the questions that we would like to ask. He is so earnest and so eager to do the right thing. But Peter also always seems to be getting it wrong. Maybe it’s this fallible humanity that makes Peter an exemplar for us. He had heard Jesus talk about forgiveness, so he wants to know more. And Peter must have done his homework, too. There is an ancient rabbinic tradition that says a person should forgive another who has sinned against him as many as four times. So, Peter, earnest and eager, tries to be even more extravagant than the rabbis, and he adds three more times. He asks, “Should I forgive a person even up to seven times?”

Seven times is a lot. It’s three more than the rabbis. It is a lot of times to turn and forgive someone who has sinned against you. Perhaps Peter was expecting Jesus to praise him for even suggesting such extravagant forgiveness. Perhaps Peter was hoping for a pat on the back, a gold star for the day, for an A+ in his ‘forgiveness’ exam!

This doesn’t happen. Rather, Jesus turns and says, “No, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” New Testament scholars debate whether the Greek text means “seventy-seven times” or “seventy times seven times.” But that is beside the point, because either way, Jesus is holding up an enormous number, a number so big that we can’t begin to calculate it in terms of forgiveness. Peter wants a rule, a measurement, so he holds wide his hands and says, “This much, Lord?

Should I forgive even this much?” And Jesus says, “No, much more than that. You’re not even using the right scale. As far as the east is from the west, that’s how much you should forgive.” It’s such an enormous amount of forgiveness, it would be senseless to try to calculate how much or how often.

Perhaps that’s why Jesus tells Peter the story about the unforgiving servant, a story where the numbers don’t add up because the numbers can’t be added up, when it comes to what Jesus has done for us. In the story, a servant owes the king ten thousand talents. Now, this is a crazy number. A single talent was more than 15 years’ worth of daily wages. So, when Jesus says, this servant owed the king ten thousand talents, he’s effectively saying he owed him many millions of dollars.

The servant, no surprise, couldn’t pay back the debt; therefore the king orders him and everything he has to be sold off. So, the servant falls on his knees and begs for an extension, and promises that if he gets some extra time, he will pay everything back. And, we don’t know if we are to laugh at him or to pity him, because there is no way the servant will ever be able to pay back the king. Maybe the king was amused because he responds to this ridiculous request with an amazing act: Since there is no way the slave will ever be able to pay back what he owes, the king just forgives the debt, every last cent, and sets the slave free.

Yet, when the servant, who has just been forgiven a debt of many millions of dollars, runs into a guy who owes him a hundred denarii – which amounts to a few bucks in comparison to what he owed the king – what does he do? Well, he grabs the guy by the throat and demands that he pay up. And when the king finds out that the servant, for whom he had just forgiven an unimaginable amount, wouldn’t forgive the pittance that was owed him by his fellow, he had the servant thrown into prison.

Jesus reframes the whole question about forgiveness. When it comes to forgiveness, we are all like servants who owe our Lord and King more than we can ever imagine. Try as we may to repay our debt through our character strengths or our virtues, or our willingness to forgive as many as seven times, we will never be able to pay back all that we owe to God. But the good news is that, despite our inability ever to give back to God everything we ought, God forgives us anyway, completely. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has taken upon himself all our burdens, and sins and debts, and has forgiven them!

Completely, irrevocably, utterly forgiven and healed by Jesus -God is the God who forgives!

God forgives. The forgiveness that we are to extend to others is the forgiveness we have in union with Christ. Not because we are moral heroes, or because we seek our own wellbeing, but because we are forgiven, sinners!

Forgiveness may very well be a character strength and virtue. It probably does contribute to leading good and happy lives. Saints like Peter probably do score more highly on Forgiveness Likelihood Scales. But, Jesus reminds us, when it comes to our ability and need to forgive, we are, all of us, those of us who have great character strengths, and those of us who do not; penitents, debtors kneeling at the foot of the cross.

‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’.

Be careful what you pray for – you just might get it!

Amen