^{“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, [and] you shall love your neighbor as yourself’… In order to love like that, we need to be ready to forgive. In order to love like that, we need to be able to see people as more than their actions. In order to love like that, we need to believe that there is something holy and sacred at the heart of every person– something worth staying connected to.”}

Sermon Preached: Sunday, September 13, 2026 at Trinity on the Green, New Haven

Proper 19a: Genesis 50:15-21 | Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13 | Romans 14:1-12 | Matthew 18:21-35 

May I speak in the name of God, who is to us Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

This summer we embarked on a series of workshops called Made to Make. We invited people to come to the Undercroft and share their skills with each other. Gloria Hoda taught people how to make pasta from scratch. Our friends from St. Paul’s Norwalk taught us how to arrange flowers for display on a church altar or in your home. And our Associate Director of Music, Sarah Johnson, bravely led a group of people in making French macarons– and not a single one of them cracked. Keep that in mind when you’re writing the hagiography for Sarah, Saint of Macarons.

As we prepared for this series, we came up with a number of skills and talents that people might be interested in teaching and learning. Our list included chocolate truffle making, painting religious icons, brewing beer, and pyrography – that’s burning designs into wood with hot tools, in case you were curious. But nobody came forward to offer a workshop on the fine art of forgiveness. 

The series wasn’t really about those kinds of skills, you might say. And it’s true. We weren’t diving deep into the spiritual practices of our faith. But that series reminds me of how we like to talk about the things that we are good at. We gravitate towards our strengths and we shy away from our weaknesses. And here comes my confession for this morning: I don’t think that I am particularly good at forgiveness. Holding a grudge? I can do that very well. Digging in my heels on a matter of principle? Put me in, coach. But forgiveness– forgiveness is an art that I am still learning and growing into every day.

Forgiveness is all over today’s readings. Joseph forgives his brothers for doing the unthinkable: betraying him; leaving him for dead. And in the Gospel Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive. Seven times? Peter asks. And Jesus replies, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Forgiveness is woven throughout Jesus’ ministry, from the words in the prayer that Jesus taught us– forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us– to the words that Jesus speaks about his persecutors from the cross: Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.

There are certainly people who could lead a masterclass on forgiveness. Often, these are the people who have had the most to forgive. I think of Eva Kor, a survivor of the Holocaust, who publicly forgave her perpetrators, and provided resources for others to find their own path to forgiveness. I think of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho Tutu, both of whom have shared their experiences of racial hatred during apartheid in South Africa. Together they wrote The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World. Perhaps you are someone who has been hurt in profound ways in your life, and the burden of forgiveness is similarly heavy. But sometimes, it isn’t one big hurt but a thousand small hurts that we are called upon to heal. Remember that Jesus tells Peter that we ought to forgive “seventy-seven times”– a number not meant as a specific quota, but rather a symbolic number; representing an infinite and perfect capacity to forgive. Some days, in the span of 24 hours, we might need to forgive over 77 times– but in small ways. Like forgiving the delivery person for scattering your mail over your doorstep. Or forgiving your coworker for never asking about how you’re doing. Or forgiving yourself for forgetting something at home. Or forgiving your body for its aches and pains. True forgiveness is not so much an event as it is an attitude. A way of life. A perpetual practice that changes how you see yourself and the world.

If you are looking for a workshop on forgiveness, there are wonderful resources out there. My hope this morning isn’t to tell you how to forgive, but why to forgive. After all, why should we forgive? Why forgive – when we worry that forgiveness might diminish the wrong that was done in the first place? Why forgive, when the damage has already been done? Why forgive, when we might not even be in contact anymore with the person or people who hurt you in the first place? Why forgive, when the hurt may come from people you don’t know– people whose beliefs or politics or practices have real impacts on your life, even though you have never met them?

There are so many answers to the question: why forgive? The utilitarians among us would tell us we should forgive because it will make us feel better. And it is true. Forgiveness  helps us let go of the burdens that we carry– burdens of anger, resentment, and grief. And, I also think that forgiveness has roots that run deeper than that. Ultimately I believe that we are called to forgive because we are called to love. And love is not possible without forgiveness.

Think first about the people you love dearly– friends, family, maybe even church members. Can you imagine loving them, without forgiveness? The people we know and love best are often the people who have the greatest capacity to hurt us, in big and small ways. And I’m sure these are the people we are most likely to hurt in return, through actions done and things left undone. Forgiveness makes it possible for a relationship to continue when harm has been done. Forgiveness makes it possible to still love, in a world where none of us is perfect. Forgiveness might not always be instantaneous. In fact, it rarely is– and forgiveness that takes 20 years is just as valuable as forgiveness that happens in 20 minutes. The most important thing about forgiveness isn’t how long it takes, or how great the magnitude of the wrong. The most important thing is to stay committed to forgiveness, as the goal every relationship. Because forgiveness is what makes it possible for us to stay in relationship. Forgiveness is what makes it possible for us to love again and again.

Now think of love, on a grander scale. As Christians, we pay attention to the Greatest Commandment as shared through Jesus Christ in the Gospel. “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). In order to love like that, we need to be ready to forgive. In order to love like that, we need to be able to see people as more than their actions. In order to love like that, we need to believe that there is something holy and sacred at the heart of every person– something worth staying connected to.

In order to love our neighbors, we need to be ready to forgive our neighbors. We need to choose love, and forgiveness, as values that guide all of our living.

Ultimately our model for how to love and forgive is God alone– God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God who loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten son, so that those who believe in him might not perish, but have eternal life. It is because of God’s love for us– it is because of God’s forgiveness for us– that we are able to love and forgive.

I’d like to conclude with a poem from the late Wendell Berry, the poet and mystic who died recently at the end of August. Berry wrote about faith, and he wrote about forgiveness. This week I encountered a new-to-me-poem by Wendell Berry called “To My Mother.” In this poem Berry writes about the love and forgiveness of parents– and when I read this poem it reminded me of the love and forgiveness of our Heavenly Parent; the love and forgiveness of God. We love because we have been so thoroughly loved. We forgive, because we have been so thoroughly forgiven. I invite you to hear these words as a kind of prayer; as words spoken by a child of God to the one who has always loved us, and forgiven us already.

This is “To My Mother,” by Wendell Berry:

I was your rebellious son,

do you remember? Sometimes

I wonder if you do remember,

so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been

I wonder sometimes if it did not

precede my wrong, and I erred,

safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,

or my bed at night, so that almost

I should forgive you, who perhaps

foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,

causing me to smile now, looking back,

to see how paltry was my worst,

compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,

is the vision of that Heaven of which

we have heard, where those who love

each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,

the light a music in the air,

and all is unentangled,

and all is undismayed.

Amen.