Sermon - September 17, 2023 - The Rev. Jack Alvey

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...