Thomas J Parlette
“The Calculus of Forgiveness”
Matthew 18: 21-35
9/13/26
To be honest, math is not my strong suit. I was always better at English, History and Social Studies than I was in anything math-related.
To be even more honest, I never took Calculus. I got through two years of Algebra. I would say that I survived Geometry – barely. But I was able to successfully graduate both high school and college without ever taking Calculus.
So, I felt a little funny about titling the sermon for today, “The Calculus of Forgiveness” – because really, what do I know about Calculus?
So, I googled the definition of Calculus – “the branch of mathematics that studies continuous change and motion using the core concepts of limits, derivatives and integrals.”
Wow – I lost myself on that one right off the bat. Let’s try another one:
“the mathematical study of continuous change, split into looking at how things change at any exact moment and how small pieces add up to a whole.”
Ahhh… yes, that definition feels better to me. I can get my head around that. “The study of continuous change, split into looking at how things change at any exact moment and how small pieces add up to a whole.”
That seems better suited to our passage for today.
Peter brings an interesting math problem to Jesus today. “How many times should I forgive someone? As many as 7 times?”
It’s an interesting number, seven. Peter didn’t just randomly pluck that number out of the air. It has significance. The number seven is a holy number, it represents perfection. So what Peter is really asking is, “Should I be practicing perfect forgiveness? Should my forgiveness be unlimited? What’s the limit here Jesus – when is enough, enough.”
I think Peter may be asking this with a bit of irony. He is expecting Jesus to wave him off – “Oh no, my friend, of course not, I’m not saying that, I’m saying…”
Now, you have to admit, what Peter says here makes sense. Forgiveness has limits, right? Isn’t there a point at which forgiving someone becomes “enabling” someone, to use our modern parlance.
That’s worth considering. When we say that word, “forgiveness,” what comes to mind. We often think of that phrase “forgive and forget.” But is that even possible, or healthy? Sometimes we approach forgiveness as if we are saying to someone – “It’s OK, forget about it, no problem, water under the bridge.”
But that doesn’t feel right either. Sometimes it’s not OK, and we can’t forget about it and it’s almost always a problem. What about consequences? What about justice? No, Peter has a point here. It’s a good question, how much forgiveness is enough.
And here is where Jesus flips the calculus of forgiveness on its head. Instead of offering any sort of reasonable limits on forgiveness, as Peter may have been expecting, Jesus gives an extreme number, an absurdly high threshold for forgiveness – 77 times or 70 times 7 times. Whichever translation you prefer, Jesus’ point is clear. There are no limits on forgiveness. To drive his point home, Jesus tells a dangerous and often mis-used story.
A King decides to settle his accounts, collect some overdue payments. There is one slave in particular who owes him what amounts to millions of dollars – a crazy sum of money. So the King orders the man and his family to be sold and all his property seized to pay the debt. The slave begs for mercy and promises to pay back the debt, “I just need a little more time.”
The King shows him mercy and lets him go. As soon as the debt-ridden slave is out the door, he runs into a fellow slave who owes him some money, grabs him by the throat and demands payment – but the slave who has been shown mercy, shows none to his debtor.
The other slaves report back to the King, and the King is outraged. “I forgave you this astronomical sum of money and you couldn’t forgive your fellow slave a hundred denarii? Come on! You should have shown the same mercy you received.” And the King handed him over to ne tortured until his debt was paid.
The story concludes with the ominous post-script – “So my heavenly father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from the heart.”
Hard to miss the point there. Forgiveness and mercy is one of the pillars of our faith. It is one our defining traits as disciples of Jesus and a community of God.
Yet this parable has been mis-used over the centuries. Preachers have leaned too heavily into the individual focus of forgiveness, teaching that as individuals we should forgive everyone for everything. That can be dangerous.
I recently watched a documentary on Netflix called “Death of the Pastor’s Wife.” It tells the story of a young pastor in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, whose wife turns up dead under suspicious circumstances. The death is ruled a suicide, but many friends and family doubt that’s what really happened. The case is still on-going – but in one of the scenes, the producers show some footage from one of the church services where this young pastor is preaching on this very passage. He encourages his members, especially his female parishioners, to forgive their husbands of their infidelities and even physical abuse and move on with their marriage – because that’s what God wants. If they don’t forgive their husbands, then they are destined for eternal punishment, like Jesus says at the end of the story.
That’s why this parable can be dangerous. There are many interpreters of God’s word that have used this passage to encourage women and abused spouses to forgive and stay in abusive relationships, because, they say, God hates divorce. And that is, quite simply, a mis-use of this text. Yes, God does not like divorce – God doesn’t want any relationship to end up broken. But God hates abuse more. God is all about forgiveness, mercy AND reconciliation. The reconciliation part, unfortunately, usually gets left out of the interpretation of this parable.
This story is meant to show what God’s mercy and forgiveness looks like. It is a hyperbolic parable – it is meant to be extreme in order to make Jesus’ point. The point is: God’s mercy and forgiveness is unlimited. Desmond Tutu once told a story about a man who struggled with one sin in particular. He would ask God for forgiveness, but as soon as got up from his knees, he would sin again. One day this happened, and he rushed back to God and said, “I’m sorry, Lord, I’ve done it again.”
And God looked confused, and asked, “What have you done again?”
God suffers from amnesia when it comes to our sins. God does not look at the caterpillar we are now, but at the dazzling butterfly we have in us to become.” (1)
Or, as Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking wrote, “Every human being is worth more than the worst thing they’ve ever done. All life has dignity, guilty life too.” (2)
In response to the mercy and forgiveness God has shown to us, we should be a forgiving people, a people guided by mercy, a people hungry for reconciliation. Does that mean we are to forget about how we have been hurt or abused, just pretend it never happened? Of course not – God may be able to do that, but we can’t.
Forgiving does mean that we can let go of the burden of carrying our hurt and anger and resentment and seething desire for revenge and stop letting it control of every thought and action.
There is a scene in the show “Ted Lasso” that captures this moment well – even if you don’t have Apple TV, you can find it on YouTube pretty easily. The star player, Jamie Tart has always had a tough time dealing with his demanding, abusive father. He harbors a lot of anger toward his Dad for leaving him and his mother and driving Jamie so hard to be the best soccer player he could be. Jamie has used his anger as his motivation – but after a confrontation with his Dad in the locker room that ends in violence, Jamie is at a lost.
Coach Ted says to him, “If hating your father isn’t motivating you like it used to, it might be time to try a different approach. Maybe you should try forgiving him.”
“No way,” says Jamie, “I’m not giving him that.”
And Ted responds, “Choosing to forgive isn’t about giving anything to the other person – it’ a gift to yourself to let go of a heavy burden you shouldn’t have to carry.”
It is in that moment that the calculus of forgiveness gets turned upside down. Our normal approach is to take the Golden Rule – “Do unto other as you would have them do to you,” and invert it to “Do unto others as they have done to you.” It becomes more about revenge than grace.
But Jesus encourages us to change the calculus of forgiveness, to engage in continuous change, looking at how things change moment by moment, how small pieces of mercy and forgiveness and grace will add up to a new whole that looks more and more like the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom meant to show the kind of forgiveness and mercy shown here today.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Desmond Tutu, An African Prayer Book (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 38.
2. Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking, (Random House, 1993.)
