It can be difficult to forgive those who use their free will to hurt us. It might be difficult but as we learn in the lesson of the Master who forgave 10,000 talents teach us, we will only be forgiven the sins we commit against God if we forgive even the smallest sin someone else does against us. We can never repay God what we owe Him. God has given us everything we have ever done, but He will forgive with mercy and grace, but only if we have also forgiven others.
My brothers and sisters, I want to share a story with you, and it involves all of us here in our wonderful community. You know that I get very passionate and very zealous about certain things and sometimes I get a little bit excited, just a little bit. And many of you have experienced, sometimes I might say a little something that I didn’t really mean to say. I might hurt somebody. I might say some stupid things. I say a lot of stupid things.
But about three or four years ago, I was sitting with His Eminence, Metropolitan Alexios, and I was thanking him for allowing me to be the priest here in Tarpon Springs. This is sharing now from my heart, and I said to him, your Eminence, I want to thank you because, being in Tarpon Springs, I’ve learned how to apologize very well.
I’ve learned how to say I’m sorry, and I have grown a lot as a Christian man. Now we all know Metropolitan Alexios. He is a very strict spiritual father. And he said to me, “Father, the problem is if you have learned to say you are sorry so many times, maybe you should stop doing what you’re doing in the first place.” Always the lesson, for us to change our behavior.
I shared this story with you because this morning’s gospel is about forgiveness. And at my tender young age of 55, I have realized that the single hardest part of my Christian journey is respecting the freedom of other people, the free will of others. It is the single hardest thing I’ve had to deal with in my Christian journey as a priest, as a human being.
But the second is very close. The second is forgiveness, especially when someone uses their freedom, which I have to acknowledge, to hurt me to say something either to me or about me, and I Found myself difficult to forgive. And stories like this morning’s gospel, my brothers and sisters, remind me of just how important forgiveness is, no matter how big the sin is against us. In this morning’s gospel, the first man we hear about owed 10,000 talents to the master, 10,000 talents, something we cannot comprehend, was so much money, he, no matter how long he lived, would never have been able to pay it back.
Even if he was a wealthy man, every day paying it off, he would never have been able to pay back what he owed. And he simply asked the master for mercy. He says, “Just give me some time. Be patient with me and I will pay it back.” Now, the master knew he was lying because he would never have been able to pay it back. But in mercy, the master says, “Fine, go. I have forgiven you everything you owed me.” That’s us, my brothers and sisters, what we owe to God, we will never be able to pay him back. He has given us everything and as long as we live, as much as we try, it is impossible for us to pay back the Lord.
And we go to him in confession, and we ask for his mercy. We are going to pray for his mercy how many times in this liturgy Lord have mercy. And in God’s mercy, he will forgive us everything we have done.
But the second half of the story is the part that worries me. Because the man immediately left, found someone who had done something small. A hundred Denarii was only a few months to pay off. And because the man didn’t have the money right then and there because the man said, “Please. Be patient with me.” He threw him into the debtors prison and this angered the master. And this is the lesson for us. Because the master called him back. He says, “Didn’t I forgive you such a great thing, and you couldn’t forgive such a small thing?”
He says, “That’s fine. Now you have to pay me back. And because you cannot, into jail you go.” this, my brothers and sisters is what is going to happen to us if we do not embrace and practice forgiveness. It doesn’t matter small or large, what anyone has done to us, about us, for us behind our back, in front of our face, to our friends, to our family. It doesn’t matter.
If we refuse to forgive even the smallest thing against us, God is going to hold everything against us and we will suffer for all eternity because we cannot pay him back.
And so my brothers and sisters, for your soul’s sake, learn to forgive. Not the kind of forgiveness where we depend upon God to take care of them. Oh, I forgive him because God’s going to get him. That’s not forgiveness, that’s revenge. My brothers and sisters, if we take that in our hearts to our death, we will be suffering. Because every single one of us owes a debt to God that we cannot repay.
And I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford the risk of God not forgiving me. And so I challenge myself every day to forgive.
It’s not easy, but it is important. It is not simple, but it is vital to our salvation. It starts today. Today my brothers and sisters, we have the opportunity to forgive anyone, anything, no matter how small, no matter how large, whether they did it intentionally to us, for us, around us, because of us. Now is our chance to get it right with God.
And it begins with forgiveness. Not easy, but also important. We don’t want God to tell us, “Well, you didn’t. So why should I”? We want God to say, “Bravo. You forgave him. You forgave them. Now come, come into your kingdom.” Because without forgiveness, there is no life with God. Glory to God for all things.
