It is not unusual in this day and time to find people who lead perfectly normal lives despite their shortcomings in mathematics. I know many of you are skilled in the areas of math. Many did just fine in high school algebra or college calculus or some other twisted mind numbing formulaic learning.
But there are some of us who just don’t understand beyond simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. My first arithmetic nightmare was in elementary school. It stopped being fun when I tried to learn the multiplication tables? The nines just about did me in…
I shuddered with this memory, and others, when faced this morning with more math. Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, how often should I forgive my brother and sister who sins against me? Seven times? No, he says, and then we have this really bad flashback as Jesus responds with a geometrically progressive figure, not seven times, but, seventy-seven times.
It is also not unusual in this day and time to find people who lead perfectly normal lives despite struggling to try and understand the moral to every story found in scripture. This mornings’ parable of the unforgiving servant is an example.
There is this king who wants to settle accounts with his slaves. One in particular owes so much he deserves to be sold to pay his debt. The king is ready to give him what he deserves then changes his mind when the slave talks the king into feeling pity for him. The king changes his mind and actually forgives the entire debt, clearly not what the servant deserves. Then, you guessed it, the king changes his mind again, becomes angry with the servant and turns him over to be tortured until he would repay his entire debt.
Wedged in the middle we read of this slaves’ refusal to return the same mercy he had just received to a fellow slave who owed him money. Once forgiven, his mistake was to not return the favor.
Next in the scripture we read this, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Brennan Manning has written an interesting book titled, “The Ragamuffin Gospel.” In it he tells a personal story, “On a blustery October night in a church outside Minneapolis, several hundred believers had gathered for a three-day seminar. I began with a one-hour presentation on the gospel of grace and the reality of salvation. Using Scripture, story, symbolism, and personal experience, I focused on the total sufficiency of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ on Calvary. The service ended with a song and a prayer. Leaving the church by a side door, the local pastor turned to his associate and fumed, “Humph, that airhead didn’t say one thing about what we have to do to earn our salvation!”
The author goes on to say, “I hear in his fuming the clear impression that the pastor believes salvation is something we earn. And if we ignore this truth, we will get exactly what we deserve.” It is not unusual in this day and time to find people who lead perfectly normal lives who would agree completely.
At the beginning of the gospel story, when the king initially decided to sell his slave to pay his debt, I didn’t want to see the servant go to jail. Like me, you may have felt sorry for him. Poor little slave being ruined by the big powerful king. But, by the end of the story, when this once forgiven servant socks it to his fellow slave, we are delighted to see him led off to get what he deserves. Where we once would have appealed for clemency, for generosity even, we now applaud with vengeance in our hearts when the slave is punished for his own injustices.
By the end of the story, there is actually no difference between the selfish little servant and the big forceful king. At least the king showed he had a soft side. The servant on the other hand had no nice side in him at all. In the end, they both are the sorts of person who repay injustice with punishment. Many of us would be ok with this story. We could easily explain, this is just the way the world works.
Perhaps this is the point the pastor was making in the story from the Ragamuffin Gospel. We know about grace and salvation, we just need to know what we have to do to earn them!
Then again, it seems obvious, to earn something we have to do something. And if we don’t do something, we won’t get paid. We will then get what we deserve, nothing. We know the slogans, “There is no free lunch”, “You want money, work for it”, You want mercy, show you deserve it”, “Do unto others before they do unto you”, “God loves good little boys and girls”. Oops, did I sneak that last one in?
If we must be a good little boy or girl before God will love us, well, we may be doomed. This may be a formula none of us will ever live up to. Clearly, if it is up to us, we will get what we deserve and it won’t be pretty.
Yet, we try. Even in this morning’s gospel, Peter asks Jesus for us about being a good little boy or girl. “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Jesus’ answer is clear. There is to be no magic formula, no limit to our forgiveness. Forgiveness is to become for us a way of life that never ends!
Ouch! I wonder, has Jesus gone too far with us this time? The world is a rough place. The news is not filled with stories of justice and forgiveness. This world is often a bloody, exceedingly dangerous, and revenge filled place. We remember 9/11. We know all too vividly, terrorism has no limits. Genocide has occurred during our lifetime, this very moment groups of people live in eternal cycles of vengeance and violence, Arab-Israeli, rich-poor, brown-white, have-have not.
The harsh truth of Jesus’ story this morning is that in our secret satisfaction as the servant is led to get what he deserves, we are probably no worse, but certainly no better than he. From this moment forth, however, we know the moral of the story. And that should make all the difference. It is clear from verse thirty -five, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” How many times? That’s right, the days of playing the “I don’t like math” card are over. Jesus is proposing a new response to a common place story of seemingly deserved judgment. Jesus is offering forgiveness as a new model, a new formula, one that has no limit.
Jesus is actually offering much more. Forgiveness is not the end all. Forgiveness is a small example of a much larger gift from God; Jesus is offering us hope, eternal grace, eternal salvation, and eternal joy.
These past few Sundays we have heard Jesus in the scriptures talking at length about what relationships in the Christian community are like. By now it should be obvious, Jesus is making the point over and over again, the most important thing in the world is the life of this community. In this community, if we want to be members of it, we are called to do everything in our power to nourish and strengthen the bonds of love within us, and between us.
We cannot do that if we are like the rest of the world, repaying injustice with punishment, being the ‘give them what they deserve” police. Scripture is clear, life is not about being a good little boy or girl to earn God’s love. God doesn’t keep score and we shouldn’t either.
Truth is, some times we have forgotten what it is like to be forgiven – from the heart, to have our record scrubbed clean, our name removed from the ledger with no chance of the score ever being kept again. We forever bury that feeling when we keep score with others or when we search for ways to earn our own forgiveness, our own salvation, our own love.
Truth is, it is just not up to us, it is just not of our own doing. All we have ever been able to do is ask for it, for forgiveness, for salvation, for God’s love – and when it has been given, it has come to us from outside ourselves, from another, from God alone, and most importantly it is, we forget, a free gift. A free gift from someone we have hurt, someone to whom we are in debt, but someone who has decided that what is more important than getting even, is to forgive us and stay always in relationship with us and give us hope beyond ourselves.
The story is told that when the Civil War ended a group gathered outside the White House and President Lincoln came out to say a few words to the crowd. It was a great time of celebration. A band was there. The President talked briefly about the horrors of war and then he joked a little because he had a great sense of humor. The people were delighted and exuberant that they had won the war that had been going on for four years. Lincoln talked about how important it was to get back together and heal the nation’s wounds and let brothers and sisters join each other once again. Then he said, “In a few moments, I want the band to play and I am going to tell them what I want them to play.”
The crowd thought he would get them to play “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” that had become their theme song. But Mr. Lincoln said, “I wonder if we, in winning the war, have the right now to play that music again…if maybe that would not be appropriate”. That should have been a clue to what he was going to say. Because he turned to the band and said, “Now this is what I want you to play – I want you to play Dixie.” The band almost dropped their instruments. For a minute they just stood there with the crowd open mouthed. The looked at one another. They didn’t have the music to Dixie. They hadn’t played Dixie in quite a while.
Then after a long pause the band finally got together and they played Dixie. There wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd.
With the wisdom and love of Jesus Christ as our example, having heard him say as he hung from the cross, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they are doing”, we are in the unique position this morning to get back together with those we have been separated from, to heal all wounds needing forgiveness, and to let brothers and sisters join each other once again. Forgiving seventy times seven.
It is quite a unique position we are in this morning and what a rare and wonderful God who loves us. For our God never retaliates, our God is always forgiving and remembering our sins no more, and though our God has given us our cross to bear, especially on this anniversary of 9/11, God is praying, that despite ourselves, we too will live a life of forgiveness equal to his.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
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