Forgiveness. Easy word to say. Harder in practice, but not quite in the way you would expect.

Academic Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.

The first slave was forgiven – but refused to forgive in turn, and that gives us a clue into the human condition. It’s not forgiving that is difficult – it’s being forgiven that is the real problem.

If I forgive someone, that’s an end to it, whether they accept their fault or they don’t. I can move on. But being forgiven – that’s difficult. If I don’t accept that I did something wrong, then to accept forgiveness would make it appear that I agree that I did. So you can take your sanctimonious forgiveness and stuff it.

Or, if I do believe I was wrong, do I really trust the person who forgives me – or will they resurrect the issue in the future? In which case am I right in thinking that their forgiveness was insincere and had strings attached?

It gets even more complicated when there are third parties involved, or when the issue is historical. Have I the right to express remorse on behalf on someone else? In turn, can I accept forgiveness from someone who was not party to the fault?

Difficult to understand, all this, and the debate will continue, questions unresolved. In the meanwhile, as a working hypothesis, I shan’t worry about the consequences of my forgiving others, I should just do it anyway. And if someone else feels that I have hurt them and forgives me, I should accept with a good grace.

And when it comes down to it, I will always need forgiveness – as do we all. For all of us have sinned and fallen short. But I know that when I confess it, I can completely trust the One who forgives and redeems me. And He expects me to do the same in turn – not just to say the words, but to mean them.

…forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…

It’s a measure of just how well Jesus understands human behaviour that He finds it necessary to teach about resolution of disputes, even among the fellowship. Worse, and sad to say, it’s quite often that this Gospel teaching (which is clearly about addressing sin and subsequent reconciliation) is used instead as a means of exerting discipline in church congregations when there has been disagreement and argument, especially by those in leadership positions who don’t like their authority questioned. It is deployed – wrongly – as a Scripturally-based multiple step approach to getting one’s own way and suppressing disagreement.

The way it goes is this. If someone doesn’t agree with you:

Step 1 – Take him or her on one side and ‘in love’ tell them they are wrong.

Step 2 – If that fails, get a couple of people who will take your side of the argument, and again ‘in love’, tell him or her they are wrong.

Step 3 – And if that doesn’t work, claim your authority to insist the whole church should fall into line in agreement with you, and then tell ‘the transgressor’ in public how wrong they are – of course, still ‘in love’.

Step 4 – Boot them out of the fellowship and treat them as you treat dogs.

Which is not what Jesus is saying at all. The steps Jesus suggests are ways of making sure that actually you’re not the one holding the wrong end of the stick. At each level, there is a need to test and validate your belief by eliciting the opinion of others, all the while being conscious of your own fallibility. Certainly, the other person may be wrong – but so could you be. Never forget that just because someone dances to a different drum than yours, they must inevitably be the one who is in the ‘sinner’.

There’s an even bigger sting in the tail regarding your subsequent action in dealing with ‘sinners’ when all else fails. Jesus tells us to treat our opponent as a Gentile or a Tax collector in the same way He treated them. How? The same way He treats Jews, Greeks, Slaves, Free, Men, Women: as sinners, but still people who He loves enough to die for.

Yes of course we have a responsibility to address sin – but before we criticise others, we need to start with ourselves. Today’s Gospel message is not about condemnation. Rather, it’s about not being the one who casts the first stone.