The Persistence of Mercy

In his autobiography, Chris Patten, the former Chancellor of the University, writes about an experience in Northern Ireland, when he chaired the commission which eventually led to the establishment of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. As part of the process, he convened a number of public meetings. In one coastal village, he listened to stories of suffering and complaint which seemed  really discouraging. He ended the meeting with a ‘little peroration about the need for generosity, reconciliation, healing and hope…’ But then: ‘A little old lady at the back of the hall in a hat and coat of many colours put her hand up insistently. ‘Before you go,’ she said loudly, ‘I’ve got just one thing to say to you. It’s all very well coming over here and giving us all that stuff about generosity of spirit. You go home after this is over. We have to stay with our histories and experience all around us. For example,’ she said, leaning forward and touching a young man in front of her on the shoulder, ‘this man here murdered my son’.

It is a story which reminds us how complacent our warm words about reconciliation and forgiveness can be sometimes. But it perhaps gets to the heart of the question posed by Peter in our gospel reading today. [And Peter is a significant figure in these chapters of Matthew’s gospel. In chapter 16, Peter is the one who recognizes Jesus as the Christ (Mt 16.16). Jesus responds, ‘You are Peter and upon this Rock I will build my church’ (Mt 16.18) – a curious pun on the Greek name Petros, and its resonance with the Greek word petra, which means a rock. The pun works in Aramaic as well, which is why Peter is sometimes called ‘Cephas’. But then as Jesus explains the nature of his mission, Peter remonstrates with him and begins to rebuke Jesus. But Jesus turns to Peter and says, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’(Mt. 16.23). Peter is no stranger to disagreement. The writings of the New Testament bear the scars of a blazing row between Peter and Paul at Antioch over whether Jewish Christians should eat and mix with Gentile Christians. It’s an argument that Paul recounts in his letter to the Galatians, ‘But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned’ (Gal. 2.11). Peter had been happily eating with Gentiles, and the moment he got wind of the fact that a group of Jewish Christians disapproved, he withdrew, causing huge offence to Paul and the Gentile Christians. So when we come to the gospel passage today, and] Peter says, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? Seven times?’ (Mt. 18-21), those listening to this gospel know that Peter is someone who has wrestled with questions of conflict and forgiveness.

And the number seven is significant because it is a symbol of perfection. So Peter is asking Jesus, ‘Is perfect forgiveness expected of me?’ Indeed, what would perfect forgiveness look like? When we contemplate the story with which I began, we cannot help but be sympathetic to Peter’s question, because it seems contrary to any sense of natural justice to offer unlimited forgiveness. For without true repentance, without a genuine change in behaviour on the part of the person who has caused offence, it is hard to imagine any genuine reconciliation.

But Jesus responds saying, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times’. Indeed, the Greek is ambiguous – it could also mean ‘seventy times seven’. Jesus is speaking about the unlimited character of forgiveness and the endless labour of reconciliation. The number seven is the number of perfection and completeness.  In other words, there is a boundlessness to the gift of mercy. But then, almost immediately, we are confronted with a rather more perplexing picture - a slave is forgiven a huge debt by his master, but then refuses to extend the same gift of mercy to another slave. Instead, he grabs him by the throat and says ‘Pay what you owe’. But in spite of pleading for mercy, the poor man is thrown into prison until he would pay the debt. But when the master finds out, judgment is swift. The wicked slave gets a dose of his own medicine. He is made to pay his master the entire debt: ‘So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart’. 

Perhaps in this parable, there is an intimation of what the world would look like if we lived under the threat of our own judgement. It betrays the sheer horror of a world without mercy. But it is also a story which alerts us to some of the curious power dynamics at work in the whole enterprise of reconciliation. All of us will have experienced at some stage someone saying ‘I forgive you’, when that little phrase is designed not to effect reconciliation but to alert us to the depth of their offence. I was struck reading an article by Stephen Cherry, the former Dean of Chapel at King’s Cambridge, describing the difference between a public apology and a private apology. He asks a salient question: ‘What do public apologies mean?’ 

Public apologies are much in vogue, and yet as Dr Cherry points out, a person who makes a public apology very rarely bears the genuine cost. He says, ‘A genuine personal apology is an expression of remorse. It is intimate and unshowy. For the apologizer, there is some cost, such as loss of face or self-image or self-esteem or status. It is not that abasement is necessary, as in some primal rite of appeasement, but that some personal vulnerability before the harmed is appropriate in the harmer.’ A public apology is often merely performative. The person doing the apologizing is often a person of power and influence, and after the public apology, they remain a person of power and influence. The reconciliation, however kindly meant, is not often realized, particularly if the victims or survivors are pressed to accept such an apology in the glare of public scrutiny. 

Faced with the brutal reality of human cruelty and the complexity of human relationships, we know that forgiveness is difficult. It is not easy. It is hard. And if I think of the times when I have been hurt or treated badly and found it difficult to forgive, in those moments, I have been filled with indignation and a sense of injustice. And I have felt almost compelled to go down again and again into the depths of my soul to stir up a burning cauldron of anger and grief and resentment. In those moments, no one can demand forgiveness of you. But when I have been ready to forgive, I have usually realized that my refusal to forgive has been eating away at my own soul. And it has felt like hell.

Perhaps the parable at the end of our gospel reading today offers us a glimpse of that same hell. And yet it will not imprison us for ever – for there is in the heart of God the persistence of mercy, however precarious that might sometimes appear to be. But to receive the gift of mercy, in that moment of extraordinary grace when we have genuinely heard the words ‘I forgive you’, few of us will have forgotten our own fragility and frailty, our own vulnerability. And it is with that same sense of our own fragility and frailty, that same vulnerability, that we plead forgiveness for our sins and come with hands outstretched to receive these tokens of divine mercy in the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.