May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
Amen.
I once heard a politician say, in the Bible, it says they asked Jesus how many times you should forgive,
and he said 77 times.
Well, I want all of you to know that I'm keeping a chart.
Sometimes I feel the same way.
Forgiveness is hard.
Forgiveness doesn't seem natural, especially when every single bone in your body is telling you
to seek revenge.
When Jesus says to Peter, you are to forgive not seven times, but 77 times, he's actually
reversing the effects of a story told in Genesis about revenge.
The story from Genesis says that a family who sins against another family should be
avenged for 77 generations.
Before we commit the heresy of Marcianism, the heresy that says that the God of the Old
Testament is different than the God of the New Testament, that the God of the Old Testament
is the vengeful God, and the God of the New Testament is a merciful God, it should be
noted that this 77-year cycle or generation cycle of vengeance is actually made by a
Lamoc, not God. Anyway, Jesus is obviously pushing against a worldview that believes
vengeance is how justice is to be served.
Like Lamoc's world, we too live in a world that believes that justice can be achieved
through vengeance.
We live in a world whose understanding of justice is punitive, in that we believe when
the offender is punished fairly, then justice is accomplished. Once they pay for their sins,
justice is then accomplished.
The problem with punitive justice is that it's woefully incomplete. It can't heal wounds,
nor neither the wound of the one who was hurt, nor the wounds of those who did the
hurting. As Gandhi once said, an eye for an eye will leave the entire world blind.
Jesus therefore wants to see a different kind of justice. Jesus is interested in a justice
that we might call restorative justice, a kind of justice that seeks healing and hopes for
reconciliation. Restorative justice not only restores the offender, but also the one who
is the victim, the one who is sinned against.
Rabbi Kushner tells the story of a single mother recently divorced who struggles to
raise her three children on a meager salary. The mother resents her ex-husband who's now
off in another state with his new wife. Meanwhile, she's left without child support and struggling
to make ends meet. She can't even take her kids to the movies because she can't afford
it. Then the rabbi tells her she must forgive him.
The single mother, not surprisingly, says, how can you tell me to forgive him? The rabbi
answers, I'm not asking you to forgive him because what he did was acceptable. It wasn't.
It was mean. It was selfish. I'm asking you to forgive because he doesn't deserve the
power to live in your head and turn you into a bitter angry woman. You keep on holding
on to him. You're not hurting him by holding on to that resentment, but you're hurting
yourself. In this post-enlightened age, it might be helpful to note that science backs
up the truth that forgiveness is good for the victim spiritually, emotionally, physically.
When we hold on to anger, when we hold on to resentment, we store that up in our bodies
and our souls. When we don't forgive, we are letting the offender continue to hurt us.
Now, I'm well aware that forgiveness is hard, that it's easier said than done. There are
crimes committed every day that by human standards should be unforgivable. Forgiveness isn't
something that happens overnight. It isn't really something that we can even do when
we try harder. Actually, forgiveness is only something that can happen through a relationship
with a God whose property is always to have mercy.
But also, remember, forgiveness doesn't mean that the offender shouldn't experience consequences.
It doesn't mean that the offender shouldn't be removed from whatever situation they're
in. Forgiveness doesn't mean going back to the way things were. Rather, forgiveness
is simply meant to free you from the sinful act, free you from letting the sinful act
continue to hurt you. Forgiveness also doesn't mean forgetting. The scar will always be there.
The scar will be a reminder of how you've been hurt, but it's also a reminder of how
you've lived beyond the scar. Remember, when Jesus emerges from the tomb, his resurrected
body still has the wounds on his hand and his feet. We too can live beyond those wounds
with God's help. That's the hope of the gospel. However, if we hold on to that sinful act,
we are essentially picking at the wound again and again, which makes healing impossible.
If you need help letting go of your own sin or the sin that has happened against you,
please let Emily or me know. If we can't help, we can find someone who can.
After Jesus does this teaching on how often we should forgive, he tells us this parable
of the unforgiving servant. In this parable, the slave of the servant is forgiven an astronomical
amount, an amount that not even the number one person on the four or five hundred less
could pay back. The same slave or servant is then asked to forgive the psalm equivalent
to three months' pay, significantly less. The slave or servant apparently has a short
memory and refuses to forgive. When the king who forgave this astronomical debt hears about
this, he is infuriated and he throws his slave into debtor's prison until he can pay it back,
which doesn't make any sense because he will never be able to make money to pay him back.
The biblical commentators suggest that the amount initially forgiven by the king represents
the wealth of Israel during that time, the entire GDP of the nation. One might conclude
then that the entire debt of a country is forgiven through this one slave or servant.
Perhaps this foreshadows the story of the cross. When through one man, the debt of all
is forgiven. As I mentioned earlier, just because there is forgiveness doesn't mean
that there aren't consequences. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Someone must
bear the cost. And the cross is where the sin of the whole world is born by Jesus of
Nazareth. And do you remember what Jesus says in Luke when he looks upon the crowd? He doesn't
condemn them for putting them there. He doesn't curse them for the next seventy-seven generations.
He essentially aims to stop the cycle of vengeance and violence when he says, Father, forgive
them. They do not know what they do. They do not know what they do. This is awful generous
of Jesus to say, to say that we don't know what we do. But now as we look at the other
side of the cross, as we look Jesus there, hanging there, how can we not know what we've
done? In some form or fashion we've destroyed the image of God and our brothers and sisters.
We've failed to respect the dignity of every human being. We have forgotten that everyone
we meet in their face is the child and image of God. So who are we then, like Paul says,
to withhold forgiveness? God knows it is impossible to forgive the person who hurts you like
that all on your own. God knows it's impossible to forgive yourself after you did something
like that. But with God all things are possible. If you can't forgive for the sake of the other,
if you can't forgive for the sake of yourself, forgive because of what God did for you and
the whole world on the cross. God in Christ makes it possible to forgive ourselves, to
forgive others. There is no sinful act so heinous that puts someone outside of God's
saving embrace. When Jesus emerges from the tomb three days later, he does so carrying
the scars that the wounds of the cross left behind. He also emerges into a new world,
a new being, a new creation. Jesus is different. At first his disciples don't even recognize
them. Only after seeing his scars do they believe when we forgive others, there is no
doubt that a part of ourselves will die. A part of us will die. But if we are to move
on, that part of us must die. Otherwise we are going to stay there right beneath the
cross, picking that wound again and again. As Jesus three days stay in the tomb suggests,
God does give us time to grieve that part of us that dies with forgiveness. That's
a part of the healing process. In time though, if we let it, God's own forgiveness will
pull us out of the tomb into the new world, a new life. On the other side of the tomb,
we will be the same person, but our life will tell a new story. We will carry ourselves
differently, stronger and more confident in the person God made us to be as wise as the
serpent and as gentle as a dove. Our open wounds will have transformed into scars that
tell a story of perseverance and hope to those who remain stuck at the foot of the cross.
So no wonder God doesn't want to keep a chart. No wonder God is in a good home plate umpire.
God will not rest until the power of forgiveness and the hope of resurrection transforms this
world into the world that embraces a kind of justice that demands healing and wholeness
for all. Amen. And now we...