Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19A, September 17, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of mercy, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Did any of you see the pictures of the strong east wind that blew the water right out of Tampa Bay during Hurricane Irma? The opposite of a storm surge, Tampa Bay was emptied as the hurricane advanced north. For a few hours, parts of Tampa Bay were six feet below sea level and people could walk across the floor of the bay. Meteorologists speculate that the receding water saved Tampa, because by the time the eye of the hurricane arrived, the storm was weaker and the predicted storm surge just filled the bay back in rather than swamping the entire city. The water never came over the city’s barriers. Whatever the explanation, it was a miracle for the residents of Tampa.

Did any of you travel to experience the total solar eclipse last month? At a meeting the other night, one of my colleagues described being in Jackson Hole, Wyoming where the sun was blotted out, the stars became suddenly visible, and the air temperature dropped dramatically. Our contemporary winds and floods, fires and deep darkness, clouds and confusion of epic (or perhaps Biblical) proportion are influencing how I’m hearing our scripture lessons for today.

Are these natural and unnatural occurrences evidence of divine intervention? I’m skeptical. Are they divinely determined? Well, I don’t think so. Is God (a.k.a. Love) trying to send us a message? Always! Regardless of weather or positioning of celestial bodies, I think Love is always reaching for us. Twentieth century Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber’s wise words to the critic or the skeptic about the meaning of events come back to me often. He said: “it is irrelevant whether ‘much’ or ‘little’ unusual things or usual, tremendous or trifling events happened; what is vital is only that what happened was experienced, while it happened, as the act of God…from the biblical viewpoint history always contains an element of wonder.” [1] I want to urge you to pay attention to wonder. Cultivate wonder. Cultivate your imagination to look for and listen for the divine in extraordinary cosmic events.

Cultivate your imagination when looking for and listening for the divine in the ordinary events of our lives. This is what the apostle Paul is encouraging the folks gathered in community in Rome to do: welcome people to the table who eat everything, welcome the vegetarians, don’t judge. Welcome those who observe Sabbath, welcome those who do not, don’t judge. Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s, Paul says, so don’t pass judgment, and do not despise your human siblings. Let the Lord of Love be the judge, let the God of mercy reconcile all things.

Rabbis teach about the sorrow of God when the Egyptians got stuck in the sea – God silenced the angels who were rejoicing and reminded them that the Egyptians were God’s children too.

Today’s Gospel passage concludes the section in Matthew about what being students or followers of Jesus really means. Those of you who were here last week might remember my rant about the words in the ancient Greek which read, “my brother,” being translated as “member of the church.” When did that translation shift from “my brother” to “member of the church” happen? In the ancient Latin translation of the early church? Was it during the German or the English reformation? Alas. It was in 1989 with our present translation in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. I’m completely baffled by the contemporary choice to retroactively assert church membership here.

According to Matthew, Peter has asked Jesus, “Lord, if my brother does wrong against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Now, Peter was actually suggesting something extremely generous when he asked if he should forgive as many as seven times. Three times was the conventional number. (And it still is for many people today – the three strikes laws testify to this.) So Peter’s number is more than double what is expected. Imagine how he must have reeled when Jesus responded, not seven times, but seventy-seven. And some ancient manuscripts read seventy times seven (that’s 490 times). What kind of fool would do that?

The answer to that question, for Matthew, lies in the parable that follows. New Testament scholar, Amy-Jill Levine wrote a book called, Short Stories of Jesus. She explains that by using parables to teach, Jesus employed “inventive ways to challenge his listeners, and [he] didn’t allow them easy answers or room for self-congratulation.” [2] In this parable, forgiveness and mercy are the same thing. Mercy has to do with what is undeserved (in contrast to justice, which has to do with deserving). Mercy, unlike justice, is offered where there is no legitimate claim. Mercy or forgiveness presupposes empathy – a certain sympathy for the debtor or sinner – debt and guilt are the same thing in this kind of economy. In some languages, the word for guilt and debt is still the same. [3] Mercy is both the motive and the standard for action in Jesus’ teaching, and this story illustrates that. But the numbers are way over the top. They are impossibly high. What kind of fool would forgive too many times to count?

Jesus answers that question with a parable that suggests that God is the fool who does that. God is the fool Who does not count the cost of mercy. Love is not keeping a tally. God is the fool whose love for you does not depend on your ability to repay your debt to God, or Love, even if it has grown as high as ten-thousand talents, which is an ancient way of saying “a zillion dollars.” [4] My teacher Bill Dols says, God is the fool whose compassion for each and every one of you “does not depend on your YES or your NO to God’s call. God does not keep score of your willingness to love, stretch, forgive, grow, become more of who you are meant to become. Nor does God ever tire of calling you to a fuller life. God will not give up on desiring more of and for you.”

And since this is the nature of God, or Love, our proper – indeed our expected – response, is to pass it on. The torture that happens when we don’t pass it on is actually self-inflicted. I think of the last part of the story as a description of what happens when forgiveness is withheld, rather than a prescription. How often we keep ourselves and others who have sinned against us in various kinds of torturous positions – prisons really – until enough “time has been done.” That might be justice but Jesus is calling for mercy. Jesus is saying, “for the sake of the community – of the family – of your own well-being — have mercy on one another – more than can be measured.” Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that “forgiveness is not just an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.” It is God’s permanent attitude.

Jesus is proposing forgiveness, God’s permanent attitude, as a spiritual discipline – a habit of life. Matthew the Evangelist is applying Jesus’ teaching to the community, with which he seems more than a little frustrated. Ironically, the way Matthew tells it, the same God who, through Jesus, urges us to forgive one another an enormous number of times, then turns around and clobbers the servant after his first failure! Biblical scholars doubt whether the threat in the last two lines ever came from Jesus at all. I wonder if we could imagine forgiving Matthew for losing his patience with a community of Jesus-followers unable to forgive its own brothers and sisters.

You know research has been done on subjects who have unresolved grievances that did not involve physical violence. The research shows that simply imagining forgiving the offender led to improved immune system and cardiovascular functioning during the visualization process! When subjects forgave, they reported feeling greater hopefulness, they felt more spiritually open, and an improved sense of self-efficacy. And the feelings lasted for periods of several months. Forgiveness is a creative and transformative process that promotes healing and growth and well-being and freedom. If, as I said last week, the Biblical consequence of sin is “broken relationship,” then forgiveness is “restored relationship” with self and with other.

How many times should we do this? Until done! If you have a hard time having mercy on one person, start with other people and work your way up! How else can we live and love fully? Developing a spiritual practice of forgiveness does not mean not getting angry or afraid. It does not mean keeping silent about offenses or letting bad behavior slide. And forgiving is not the same as forgetting. Forgiving is about remembering in a new way. Forgiving is about remembering in an entirely new way. It’s re-writing the narrative – the story that gets told over and over (out loud or in our heads) of the abandonment, or betrayal, or the violation; when we simply did not get what we wanted, what we needed, or what we deserved or what we thought we were going to get. There’s that bit of AA wisdom that forgiveness is letting go of hope for a better past.

Let’s give up hope for a better past, so that we are free to accept the invitation, the beckoning from God for a better future. Let’s pay attention to wonder. Let’s cultivate our imagination to look for and listen for the divine in extraordinary cosmic and in the ordinary, the tremendous and the trifling events of our life together. And let’s practice forgiveness, remembering the endless mercy that we have already been on the receiving end of, even when we didn’t know we needed it, and especially when we didn’t deserve it!

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