According to the song ‘Sorry’ is the hardest word.
According to most of the children I work with it seems this rings true. Saying sorry certainly doesn’t come naturally; either that or it is a word banded about with no real meaning. A child having hit another, when prompted by staff, will begrudgingly offer a ‘sorry’ while not really meaning it and going to perhaps hit someone else a short time later. Words they say are cheap – in this case it can certainly prove true.
Adults, I dare to suggest, say the word with a little more meaning and thought, at least I hope so – but being able to both forgive and forget (as they say) proves more difficult.
A mother will instinctively forgive her child most things; lovers too are able to forgive but in the event of break up or breakdown old wounds flare up and are often used as ammunition in the next fight.
So Peter asks Jesus “how often shall I forgive? As many as seven times? Peter is trying to quantify forgiveness. “I’ll forgive you the first time and the second and the third and so on – but there is a limit to my forgiveness”.
Jesus says not seven times but seventy seven times – implying that we should show unlimited forgiveness, endless forgiveness and so we should.
Whatever the provocation, however deep the hurt and pain inflicted, however frequently someone takes against us, hurts us on any level, it is our duty, as Christians to forgive them. In this instance words are not cheap. In fact they can come at great cost to ourselves. We may need to lose face, or relinquish what we see as the moral high ground. Because not only do we need to forgive without boundaries, without conditions and in love, but equally when we are in the wrong or perhaps even perceived to be in the wrong, we need also to be humble enough to say that we are sorry. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry you feel like that, I’m sorry I ….”– and hopefully the recipient of our words will forgive us.
Forgive and be forgiven, and then with Grace move on; move forward. Old grudges hold us back; they prevent our progress emotionally and spiritually; they stunt us and old hurts lie as wounds that if we allow them will fester and infect our life.
What Jesus says is a very tall order, a big deal and does not come easily to our human nature. Jesus forgave without discrimination. He forgave his disciples when they doubted, when they fell asleep in the garden instead of praying, when they denied him (Peter) even when they betrayed (Judas) or abandoned him – he forgave them and he loved them. He forgave too – the woman taken in the act of adultery, the woman at the well of Samaria, the lame man (the man lowered through the roof). He said “is it easier to say your sins are forgiven, or to say get up and walk”. In the end he said both. And Jesus went ultimately to the cross of crucifixion to take all our sins and to die for our sins so that we too might rise to a new and clean life; a life free from sin.
Jesus goes on forgiving us every day of our lives, but we need to say sorry – we need to have that change of heart – to make amends – to turn from our sins and try again. Not like the children of my playground to say sorry and then to repeat the same mistake again – we need to learnt to say sorry and to mean it. And we need to accept the apologies of others when they say sorry to us, not one, not seven times but seventy seven times.
God’s forgiveness is limitless, we should not therefore limit our forgiveness.
Jan Walker
Reader