Last week, Pastor Imani preached a powerful sermon about “what God believes human community can become when grace enters the places where sin has torn us apart.” (If you missed it, be sure to listen to it here, beginning around 15:38.)

This week’s gospel – where Jesus tells Peter and the disciples that we ought to forgive not just seven times but seventy-seven times – follows directly from those verses. To summarize the parable Jesus tells: God forgives us and we fail miserably at forgiving one another. And we are tortured because of it.

Sounds about right.

God is God and we are not. God is an endless store of forgiveness and apart from the grace and help of God, we are incapable of forgiveness. We hold on to our grievances that fester into resentments and anger and heartaches that do indeed torture us, keeping us from living wholly and fully, keeping us stuck in systems that dehumanize, keeping us condemned in relationships that destroy us.

Again, as Pastor Imani reminded us last week, God does not want us to die. God wants us to live. That’s why we speak truth. That’s why we call out sin when we recognize it. Because sin is death. And God wants us to live.

We do not sit idly by when people are being people – royally screwing up, forgetting that we are not God, acting selfishly, taking our hurts out on others, and denying each other’s humanity. We speak up, we reach out, we intervene.

And we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is part of clearing away the stuff that gets in the way of moving forward in the kind of life-giving, abundant relationship with God and one another that God intends for us.  Sometimes, forgiveness allows the relationship to be restored.  Sometimes forgiveness leads instead to a releasing of the relationship and the pain, bitterness, anger and other consequences of the offense.

God loves us, full stop. And God loves us so much that God wants us to live. God does not want us to torment ourselves or one another by holding on to anything that is getting in the way of living in the fullness of God’s love.

While God is the inexhaustible fountain of forgiveness, we humans are not. Forgiveness is less about trying to be as forgiving as our God and more about acknowledging our humanity that makes such forgiveness so necessary for all of us.

May we remember that God is God and we are not. May God grant us the grace to embrace our humanity and our need for God and for one another. And may God’s love and forgiveness flow through us to others.