Ordinary 24
September 13, 2020
"How often should I forgive? As many as
seven times?”
This is what it means to take part in his dominion, what the New Testament calls “the kingdom.” The kingdom is not a place on a map. It is not a piece of turf surrounded by borders. Neither does it exist on a cloud in the afterlife, even though it is called the “kingdom of heaven.” No, the kingdom lives wherever Christ is king. The kingdom is wherever the teachings of Jesus are embodied in action, both here and now – and forever.
But old Matthew is not naïve. He knows Christian disciples are forged out of imperfect people. He understands that any of us can affirm Christ with the best of intentions, but our actions frequently fall short. Our pious words can ring hollow. Our good example could be as a sham of hypocrisy. That’s why we need constant training. That is why Matthew writes his book.
Today’s text begins with a question from one of the most experienced followers of Jesus: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive them?” Do you hear what he says? Not “how many times should I forgive the man who robs my house?” Not “how many times should I forgive the wife that leaves me for another man?” But how many times should I forgive a fellow church member? Imagine that. Church members can hurt one another.
Simon Peter is the one who speaks and he doesn’t specify the sin. It could be the inveterate gossip who can’t help but talk behind your back. It could be the volunteer who can’t keep the hand out of the offering plate. It could be the leader who makes big promises but never gets anything done. It could be the lady with the smile who lies to your kids. It could be any number of things.
Matthew is not naïve. He knows, in the words of one theologian, “the church at its best is merely the world under the sign of the cross.” That’s why he reports how Jesus is constantly calls out hypocrisy, especially among the most religious people of his own day. They put on good appearances, but they are never as good as they profess to be. At least fourteen times in Matthew’s book, he calls out the hypocrites. We should never be surprised how many there are.
I remember Lois, wise old sage in my first church. She called up a church member who had slipped away and said, “We miss you. Why don’t you come back?” The lady replied, “I stopped going to church. Too many hypocrites there.” Lois said, “That’s why we want you to come back. There’s always room for one more.”
It is a hard reality: sinners in the church. Apparently plenty of them are repeat offenders, for Peter says, “How many times must I forgive them?” How many times?
Just a few sentences before, Jesus instructs Peter and the rest of us on what to do, specifically, “if another member of the church sins against you (18:15).” First thing you do: go to them directly. One on one. Privately. Quietly. You don’t publish the infraction on Facebook. You don’t send out a pile of anonymous letters. The point is not embarrassment, for that doubles the harm. The point is not punishment, for punishment is above our pay grade. No, the point is restoration, to regain the person as a brother or sister. In the community of Christ, that is the utmost priority.
And if they don’t listen to you as you share how you have been hurt, Jesus recommends taking one or two others along – not as a mob with torches and pitchforks, but fellow saints who will share in the conversation. The aim is restoring the fellowship. Gaining them back. It’s about healing. It’s about reconciliation. And if they don’t want that, they are excluding themselves from the peace you wish to make. “Wherever two or three gather in my name,” says Jesus, “I am there, right in the middle.”
Peter hears all of this. He considers it. Tradition says he’s going to be the first Pope of Rome, after all, so he has to get this excommunication thing down. So he asks the question: if somebody in the church sins against me, how many times do I have to forgive them?
That’s a good question. In the Bible, there is a collection of sermons by a prophet named Amos. God speaks up and says, “Three times there is a transgression, the fourth time I will punish.” (1:3ff) Three strikes – and after that, you’re out. That seems generous, don’t you think?
So Peter offers an answer to his own question. He doubles the three of Amos and adds one more. This is church, after all, and we all need to practice forbearance. “How about seven times, Lord? Should I forgive them seven times?
And we heard what Jesus says. Not seven times, but “seventy-seven” times. Or if you read the footnote in the text, you can translate it as “seventy times seven.” It’s a ridiculous number. Jesus does not mean it literally. We don’t forgive somebody four hundred ninety times, and then drop them on the four hundredth and ninety-first sin.
No, Jesus is pushing us into a hyperbole. What he offers is a fantastic number, a ridiculously enormous number. To translate “seventy times seven,” the better translation is a “bazillion gazillion.” That’s how many times you forgive the person who sins against you.
Now, all of this is a set up for the parable for today. Like so many of the parables of Jesus that Matthew tells, it starts out rather sweetly. It sounds pretty good. Then a trap door opens and we are pushed to extremity.
The parable is about a king who settles accounts with those indebted to him. There are two kinds of debt, according to the financial gurus. There is good debt, as in when you borrow a sum of money, you can pay it back, and you gain something in return. A reasonable mortgage is considered “good debt.” Pay it off, gain a house.
But there is also bad debt, frequently describes as being “in over your head.” or “under water,” or “up a creek without a paddle.” And that’s the plight of the poor sap in the parable. He was probably a peasant farmer who kept expanding his fields, buying more seed, enlarging his crops – and the whole thing collapses. Perhaps it’s a bad year for crops, or a bad couple of decades for him, but he’s deeply in debt. There’s no way he can ever repay it.
The king looks down at his ledger sheet, looks up at the servant, and says, “You owe me a whole lot of money.” “Yes sir.” “It says you owe me an enormous sum of money.” “Yes sir.” “It says here you owe me a bazillion gazillion dollars.” “Yes sir, but have patience with me, and I will pay it all back.”
Now, that’s crazy. He is a peasant. He is a tenant farmer. There is no way he can ever pay that back. The king is not stupid. He knows this. In a surprising move, the king rips the page out of that ledger book, crumples it up, and forgives the debt. The servant is free and clear. He is given with a clean slate. No more crushing burden. No more encumbrance. He can get on with his life. He can live in freedom.
It’s a wonderful story. It’s all about forgiveness, which is the supreme gift of freedom. When you forgive, you set somebody free. You set yourself free. The shackles fall away. Life begins again. That’s what we celebrate every single Sunday. That’s what we celebrate every single day. In Jesus Christ, God the King has forgiven all our mistakes, cancelled both our faults and defaults, and set us free. That’s the heart of the Gospel.
It sounds great – until the story goes on. For the king who forgives the peasant’s debt later hears the peasant won’t do the same to his neighbor. In fact, he hears that peasant has just grabbed his neighbor by the throat, shaken him rather vehemently, and demanded the neighbor pay him the twenty bucks he owes from last week’s football pool.
“Pay what you,” he says. When the neighbor can’t do it, the peasant throws him in prison (which is a ridiculous punishment for twenty bucks). When the king hears about this - because you know there are no secrets in the kingdom – the king says to one he had forgiven, “That prison cell is going to be a suite for two, until you both pay what you owe.” As far as we know, the peasant is still there.
Now, this is an ornery story. If it makes you squirm, you get the point. It sounds like the king offered great forgiveness and then took it back. If that is what God is like, it makes me a little nervous. There are things God has forgiven me for that I hope don’t get brought up again. Shouldn’t God have the mercy to forgive us seventy-seven times? I certainly hope so. Our lives depend on that.
But that’s not the point. The man who was forgiven a bazillion gazillion didn’t allow the king’s mercy to enlarge his own sense of mercy. He was forgiven a great debt. And when he was given a chance to live out of that freedom, his first very response is to act like a jerk, to withhold from somebody else what he had received.
The heart of the Gospel is the extraordinary forgiveness of God. The greatest expression is what happens after Jesus is crucified by the world that God loves. God raises him from the dead, sends him back, and he says, “I’d like to make disciples out of all of you.” If that’s not mercy, I don’t know what is. God forgives the worst thing we could ever do, as well as all the lesser worst things we still do. We live in the kingdom if we forgive one another.
This is a lesson we must be taught. It does not come naturally. We baptize a little boy this morning. The day is going to come when some other kid is going to break one of his toys. Should he strike back? Break the other kid’s toys? Get his revenge? Left to his own devices, he may retaliate and perpetuate the damage – unless we teach him that the Christian secret of life is mercy.
“How many times must I forgive?” The best answer is “more.” It is the only real answer.
In one of her books, Anne Lamott tells about her struggles with the mother of her son’s friend. The lady was gracious and kind, which annoyed Annie. She baked perfect cupcakes for school. She wore spandex bicycle shorts everywhere because she could. That woman’s life was so perfect that it disgusted her.
One Sunday, Anne sat in church. The scripture lesson was, “Forgive and you shall be forgiven.” She says,
Try as I might, I cannot find a loophole in that. It does not say, ‘Forgive everyone, unless they’ve said something rude about your child.’ And it doesn’t even say, ‘Just try.” It says, If you want to be forgiven, if you want to experience that kind of love, you have to forgive everyone in your life – everyone, even the very worst boyfriend you ever had – even, for God’s sake, yourself.[1]
This is the truth of that line in a prayer that some of us pray all the time: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” It is never a one-sided petition, never a private business deal with God, as in “Hey Lord, would you please let me off the hook?” No, no, no. It is an all-sided covenant between God and all of us. The essence of this covenant is this: “in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.” All of us. Everywhere. God in Christ has canceled the power of sin.
Without such mercy, we would be imprisoned somehow. We would be captives in penitentiaries visible or invisible. That is the warning of Matthew’s ornery parable for today.
But the good news is something that the Gospel of Matthew has told us before. Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy (5:7).” Now that is the truth that will set all of us free.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Anne Lamott, Small Victories:
Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014)
50-51.
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