Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 19A, September 14, 2014; 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.

Today’s Gospel passage concludes the section in Matthew about what discipleship really means for Jesus followers. 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.” Since the problematic translation occurs again in today’s reading, this week I took the time to try to discover when that shift from “my brother” to “member of the church” happened – in the ancient Latin translation of the early church? Was it during the German or the English reformation? I went on an investigative tear. Alas. It was in 1989 with our present translation in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. I’m completely baffled by that.

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. Perhaps you read the interview of New Testament scholar, Amy-Jill Levine in last Sunday’s Boston Globe. She has a new 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.” [1] In this parable, forgiveness and mercy are the same thing. And 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 at all. 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. [2] 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 that does not count the cost of mercy. God 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, even if it has grown as high as ten-thousand talents, which is an ancient way of saying “a zillion dollars.” [3] As 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, 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. (Do you think the researchers had a difficult time finding subjects?) 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! 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.

Yesterday at the consecration of our new bishop, Alan Gates, the preacher, Bishop of Ohio, Mark Hollingsworth reminded us that when we make our vows in an ordination, in a marriage, most importantly, in a baptism, we are asked questions about the future rather than about the past. “Will you” is how we begin our questions – not, “Did you.” With God, Bishop Hollingsworth reminded us, we are always leaning into the future. We are always being invited – beckoned to a better future. Mercy and forgiveness and reconciliation are about the future. You might remember that Brother David Steindl-Rast talks about forgiveness as “giving a fore – a future.” [4]

So what does it mean to remember a new way in the future? Here are three things. First, it means remembering the incident or the offense and taking it less personally – not that the hurt didn’t happen to you, but often it’s less about you (or me) than we think. I had a friend who used to say, “I’m not much but I’m all I can think about!” There are so many examples of the benefits of taking things less personally. Second, remembering in a new way means taking responsibility for our own feelings and experiences – our reactions, our actions, and our inactions – before and after the offense. We all tell stories in which we abdicate responsibility and solidify our victimhood. Remembering in a new way means rethinking all of the parts in the drama, including our own share. And third, remembering in a new way means re-telling the narrative as a story of reasonable or even good intentions, or a story of inevitable conflict, with the hurt that resulted as more of a ‘blip,’ [5] than something from which we cannot recover or from which we will not move along.

Daley Ryan’s parents and godparents are about to give us an opportunity to remember our future in a new way – through the baptismal covenant – giving us a way to look toward a future replete with mercy and forgiveness. Thank you all for that. Daley is the fourth Ryan child to be baptized at Emmanuel – his older brother, Jack’s baptism was my first here, about 6 1/2 years ago! Then Daley’s big sisters, Macyn and Campbell, were also baptized here! The kids refer to their baptism ceremonies as their Blessing Days. I love that! Their blessing days have become blessing days for the rest of us too. Today is a wonderful blessing day – blessed with the promise of abundant life. Let’s live and love into this promise as fully as we are able!

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