Forgiveness was a big deal for Jesus. He wove forgiveness into the Lord’s prayer (and appended an additional admonition to fortive in Matthew’s version.) Yesterday in Luke’s gospel Jesus describes a three step process to ensure forgiveness and reconciliation. When St. Peter pressed him about this: how often must I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.” The reason forgiving was so important for followers of Jesus flows from the very nature of God. Christians descibe God as the Trinity because there are three persons in the one God, because there is unity in diverstiy. For human beings diversity is a threat and there tends to be conflict when people look different than us. think different from us, act different from us. Since we are constantly rubbing up against each other giving and taking wounds we must constantly forgive to recover the unity which reflects life in God.
