Matthew 18:12-22
Given on 09/13/2020
My father is a great storyteller. At parties, family gatherings, even just among friends he can keep whole room regaled by tales from his life And one of the best yarns that he spins is about when he was growing up. My Dad was the younger of two sons and his brother, my uncle Alex, is 2 years older than my father. And growing up they were best friends. They hunted and fished together. Explored the miles and miles of woods around their house. When the time came, they even managed to share a car. However, also as is often the case, they had their fair share of brotherly squabbles and even had a few bouts of fisticuffs. Now, my grandmother McLeod, a woman of infinite patience, eventually got pushed to her limit and sent them to where all troubled youth of a certain generation tended to end up, the pastor’s office. And as the story goes, my dad and my uncle sat in Dr. Sloop’s office above the sanctuary at my home church and began to each give his side of the story and Dr. Sloop, also an infinitely patient man, listened to each boy for awhile and then, as we pastors are oft to do every now and then, began to quote the bible to them. Now, my dad with all the seriousness of an attorney arguing a case in front of the Supreme Court might muster had offered a litany of complaints against my uncle, normal brotherly kind of stuff. And no doubt my uncle responded in the role of the plaintiff until the case was finally handed over to the judge. And when the boys’ dear pastor, Dr. Sloop finally rendered his verdict, he turned to this scripture that we have before us today. And he read about how the often overly inquisitive disciple Peter came up to Jesus after he had finished talking about how a healthy community should function with one another and as Dr. Sloop was an older man by this time he retrieved from his shelf his weathered King James version of the bible and read to them, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” And the McLeod boys, having heard Jesus speak about how brothers should behave towards one another, departed from their pastor’s office having been thoroughly chastised by scripture. And upon returning home, my grandmother noticed some amount of calm had returned to the house. Anytime my uncle would do something to torment my dad, dad would take the higher road and forgive him. But as my dad tells the story, he began to record it every time my uncle did something to him that would necessitate forgiveness. Called him a name, recorded it. Stole something out of his room, recorded it. Took the last cookie from my dad, recorded it. And my dad kept up with these things until he got to 490, and while history does not record what wrong number 491 ended up being, my dad, who had long grown frustrated with the forgiving approach, in his words, “laid my uncle out on the ground.” It is possible that he had missed something of the meaning behind the words of Jesus.
Today’s reading from Mathew comes at a point in the ministry of Jesus when it is getting time for him to turn towards Jerusalem and his eventual last days on earth. And just as when any of us grow closer to our own passing from life into new life, he knows that he needs to begin to get his affairs in order and offer any final pieces of advice that he thinks the disciples need to hear soon, before the machinations of life and death begin to spin out of control. Moreover, he knows that now it is time for the disciples to start figuring some things out. From the beginning, Jesus has offered a message that runs counter to much of what the disciples had thought to be the case. Whereas the Greco-Roman world was extremely striated between economic classes with the ceilings between levels nearly impossible to break through, Jesus talked about an economy in which all person shared freely with one another so that no one would experience want. In an occupied area in which revolts and revolutions against the Roman forces and retaliations by those forces created an environment in which violence cycled into more violence, Jesus implored the people, “blessed are the peacemakers for theirs is the realm of God!” In a time in which might made right, Jesus reminded all who would listen of the blessedness of meekness and how it was those who practiced it who would inherit the earth. And all this flew in the face of the dominant cultural narrative and he was well aware of the potential costs to questioning the powers and principalities of the age. But even now, as he stood before them, it was clear that the disciples still had a ways to go. And so as the time when he was to return to God drew nigh, Jesus knew that it was time for the disciples to gain a greater understanding of how the realm of God would look when it became a reality. But now, it was time for Jesus to impart on the disciples the deepest secret of the universe—the most powerful force in all of creation—Jesus was going to show them the full measure of grace that is offered to all people, regardless of what has been done or left undone. And to do so, he offers a parable of a man who had accumulated so much debt that he could no possibly pay it all off. And in facing the depth of his debt, he is a’washed in feelings of sorrow and shame and falls down on his knees before the ruler of the realm and begs for more time to pay back the astronomical amount owed. And seeing this man’s anguish, seeing his pain, the ruler forgives him all that he owes. And you would be forgiven if you assumed that this man left the presence of the ruler feeling deep and abiding feelings of gratitude and joy but Jesus knew better the brokenness of human nature and so instead he tells of the man going to another man who owes him a pittance of what was owed by the first and immediately tries to get what is owed him. And upon discovering that the second man cannot pay he has him thrown into prison where he can work off his debt until it is repaid. Word of this soon reaches the ruler of the realm who soon has the first debtor tortured and imprisoned until the whole of his astronomical debt is paid off. Then Jesus offers the lesson, forgive one another, 7 x 70 times.
Of course these lessons did not com easy to the disciples anymore than they come easy to us today. As we grow older, even as we have accumulated memories of love and affection, of good times and unbridled happiness, we also tend to keep a repository of slights, pains, annoyances, and hurt that we have received from others. And just as those good times in our stories help us to see the light that still sits just in front of us, those hurts wounds that receive from the hands of another tend to fester, tend to grow, tend to infect more and more of our psyche until they become like millstones around our necks that drag us down even when we want to reach up. I am certain that if I asked any of you think back into the story of you, that you could bring to mind some tiff had on the playground, or argument with your best friend in high school, or insult you received from someone you believed loved you and in an instant you are right back to the jungle gym, your locker, your work, your home. Maybe you can even feel your skin tightening just a bit as you replay the dialogue that you have rerun some many times that if it was a film it would have long since broken. These moments are as much as part of our story as any other and they have a power that few other things possess, save one, the power of love put into action, which is forgiveness. It is forgiveness that allows us to rebuild that which has been broken and makes it stronger, more resilient, better able to absorb the slings and the arrows that too often are shot at us by even the slightest provocation. In order to live into our divine and holy lineage, in order that we might see the movement of the spirit bring us life in abundance, in order that we might finally come back home, we must learn to forgive all that is in the past even as we offer ourselves and one another a grace that transcends everything else in this life. For the reality is this, grace means that we accept that people really are doing the best they can at any given moment given all the exigencies of life. Our biological make up, our psychological make up, our families, our stories, our commitments, our struggles, all of these different pieces of us come together into a single point of time when our darker demons and our better angels do battle with one another for the next moment only to have it start all over again. And its hard. Life is hard. Whether the challenges of addiction or scarcity or hatred or brokenness or loss, life is hard and it only gets harder. This is what makes the Gospel the most potent message in all the cosmos. For it is only when we accept that God loves us as much as God loves them as much as God loves creation that we can truly be reborn, reconciled, renewed, alive, beloved. And when we live into that central Truth of live, we can see and believe that everyone around us really is doing the very best they can.
The last few months have seen this message of love and grace both challenged and accepted. Challenged because for many, this world does not always feel like a safe place, does not always feel accepting, does not feel warm and inviting. The complexity of that reality is far too dense to try and unpack in the time that I have left this morning as it is based on chains of events that stretch back hundreds if not thousands of years into the history of humankind. But that largely doesn’t matter. Cycles of violence have spun in every direction for some time in a great man directions, but, as followers of Christ, our response can only ever be to love the one in front of us and in doing so stop the feelings of pain and abandonment and struggle felt by too many in our world. If we are to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world we must be about the work of intentionally sewing seeds of love into the fertile soil of a people who are desperate to know that they matter. So it is that we, in this place, are called to do the difficult work of forgiveness and being forgiven for all the ways that humankind is terrible to one another so that we may find ourselves seeking to collect on a debt owed to us when the ultimate debt has already been paid. 7x70 times.
And this takes practice. It takes being woven into the very life of worshipping communities. Now, at the church in which I grew up, there are two services, one more contemporary, the other traditional. And one of the features of the contemporary service is having the sacrament of communion each Sunday. There was something nice about having a chance both to remember the last moments of Jesus’s life but also taking the opportunity to look forward to a time of unification with all people in the house of God. Practically speaking, it also gave us the opportunity to clear the air with one another. Because to break bread with another, to share cup with another, was to recognize their membership in the family of God and the family of the church, was to recognize the shared sisterhood and brotherhood of gathering together at table. And you could not break bread with someone and still be mad at them. To do so was to deny the redemption and reconciliation that was at work in the life, death, new life, and resurrection of Jesus. It was to deny the power that the simple act of coming together around table had on the lives of all those with whom you may struggle to be in community. In the same manner, our prayer of confession, assurance of pardon, and passing of the peace each week has the power to do this. When we speak words of confession, we are confessing not just to God, but to one another of our fallenness, our brokenness, our sinfulness, and asking for forgiveness with each other. Because at that moment, if we are being authentic in our prayers, if we are deeply seeking forgiveness, acceptance, wholeness, then whatever has divided us, whatever we have done to one another, pales in comparison to the forgiveness that we experience in Jesus Christ and that we offer to all those we meet. 7 x 70 times.
And so it is, in a culture that forever is dividing people, one from another, attempting to shatter the common lineage and destiny of all people, lets us, as the church, be the place where people can come to put is all back together, where people come to be family with one another, where people come because it is a source of light in an increasingly dark world, because it is the one place where they know that they can get a smile, a hug, a cup of coffee, and can sit in silence, meditative silence, knowing they are surrounded by the love of God. And glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace amongst all God’s peoples. Alleluia, Amen.
Image: The Sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church of Lumberton, NC