No Fair! The Math of Forgiveness — Part 2 | Lakeside Light Podcast

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Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, as your word is read and preached, pass among your gathered people, opening minds to increase understanding, opening hearts to bind us together in your love.

In Jesus' name we ask it.

Amen.

Our first reading this morning comes from Romans 14, verses 1 through 12.

Romans 14:1–12

Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.

Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables.

Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat, for God has welcomed them.

Who are you to pass judgment on slaves of another?

It is before their own Lord that they stand or fall, and they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike.

Let all be fully convinced in their own minds.

Those who observe the day observe it for the Lord, and those who eat eat for the Lord, since they give thanks to God, while those who abstain abstain for the Lord and give thanks to God.

For we do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.

So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lords.

For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?

Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister?

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

For it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.

So then each one of us will be held accountable.

Our New Testament reading comes from Matthew 18, verses 21 through 35.

Matthew 18:21–35

Then Peter came and said to him, Lord, if my brother or sister 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.

For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.

When he began the reckoning, the one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him, and as he could not pay, the Lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children, and all his possessions and payment to be made.

So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.

And out of pity for him the Lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.

But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves, who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat, he said, Pay what you owe.

Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you.

But he refused.

Then he went and threw him into a prison until he would pay the debt.

When his fellow slaves saw what happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their Lord all that had taken place.

Then his Lord summoned him and said to him, You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave as I had mercy on you?

And in anger his Lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.

So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

For the word of God in Scripture, for the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

You pray with me.

O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer.

Amen.

Well, as some of you may have noticed or may already know, this weekend we have been babysitting my one-year-old niece, Jane, here, and this means that my weekend has been full of really phenomenal babysitting techniques like feed her candy, bribe her with toys, and introduce her to addictive television.

That's right.

Jane has now been introduced to Captain Crunch, uh, to Geta, who went to Oktoberfest yesterday.

She liked it.

Um, and importantly, to Bluey, the television show.

That's right.

The classic Bluey.

And one of the episodes of Bluey we watched this weekend is a classic.

They're all classics.

If you've never watched Bluey, you're missing out.

Um, and it's an episode called Ice Cream.

Um, so in the episode of Bluey called Ice Cream, Bandit, who is the dad dog of a family of four dogs, right?

Bandit is out about with the two daughter dogs, Bingo and Bluey, they're sisters.

And after they visit a museum, they stop by an ice cream cart and all want ice cream, and there's some back and forth on this.

But ultimately, they each get a scoop of ice cream.

Bandit gives each of the girls an ice cream cone.

Bingo chooses mango, and Bluey chooses strawberry.

But things start going a little haywire.

Because Bluey asks Bingo if she can try a taste of the mango ice cream, which uh Bingo is okay with as long as it's only one bite.

Um, and as long as she also gets a taste of the strawberry ice cream, because things should be fair.

Uh, but then things, these things are so subjective, right?

Because what is a bite really?

And what size is a bite really?

And if it's too much of a bite from you, then I should get two bites.

And how are we going to work this out?

The sisters start to get uh more and more into negotiations.

Who gets to have the first bite, right?

That would be an advantage.

So they these stricted negotiations ensued, and they they come up with a plan to control one another's licking by having one sister hold the ice cream for the other sister while simultaneously taking the bite, right?

So you're holding it for your sister while trying to take a bite of the other sister so that you can control everything, and it can all happen simultaneously.

And of course, what happens is they start to sort of dance around each other, right?

While one sister's trying to lick the cone, they're pulling it back, and it they start doing a dance and they they go around in circles.

Some parents are like looking like I know this episode, right?

Yeah, and they start going in circles and going in circles, and you all can see where this is going, right?

Because the bingo and Bluey get so caught up in trying to monitor each other's bites and have this be perfectly fair that they fail to notice that the ice cream is melting and then is gone.

All they have left is two sticky messes and no ice cream.

This is all very disappointing.

But you have to admit, they did end up making it fair.

And in last week's reading, Jesus gives very straightforward practical advice about conflict resolution.

If someone sins against you in your community, you resolve it with direct communication.

Um, and then if needed, only if needed, but if needed, you can get the help of the community and you try to resolve conflicts in this way.

And so the the disciples are processing this when Peter comes up with a follow-up question, right?

It's time to start digging into the details, the technicalities, the exact size of each lick, if you will.

And he asks, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?

As many as seven times?

Now we have to be fair to Peter.

See what I did there?

It's okay, okay.

We have to be fair to Peter.

Because this is a legitimately good question, this is a good question.

Um, because we have just heard from Jesus that within our community we are to strive for reconciliation when mistakes are made.

When someone sins, if they listen to the one they sins against and they listen to their community, and through all of these things they hear in a way that allows them to be regained by the community, this is a good thing.

But Peter wonders, as he follows the thread of logic, what if they then make the same mistake again?

What if they do it again, right?

And then what if they do that again?

And then what if they do it again?

So Peter asks this question: how many agains do they get?

And he guesses the possible answer, right?

Perhaps he suggests seven.

And of course, Peter does not pick the number seven out of nowhere, right?

Seven is a symbolic number.

Seven is a number that signifies that would point to wholeness or completion.

In the Jewish tradition, there are seven days of creation, right?

Seven pops up all over the place in Hebrew scriptures and in Jewish tradition.

For instance, right now, we're in the midst of Rosh Hashanah, uh, which is in the seventh month to indicate the new year, right?

So seven is a good guess.

It means wholeness.

But Jesus takes it even further, right?

He says, not just seven, seventy-seven.

77.

And then Jesus goes on, right?

He goes on to illustrate this point by describing a servant who has his debts entirely forgiven, but then immediately turns around and refuses to forgive the debts of his fellow slave.

Notice, by the way, that this parable echoes the words Jesus uses to teach his disciples about prayer.

Right?

This is a good shout-out to Presbyterians if you're not familiar with the Presbyterian tradition.

We uh we usually choose the words for the Lord's Prayer that they're the most direct translation of this Matthew text, right?

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

The use of debt here implies that forgiveness is not just a feeling.

Forgiveness is not just words we say or hear.

Forgiveness is something enacted, embodied, something that has practical implications and practical applications.

It's like Dolly Parton forgiving the debts of Porter Wagner, right?

So that he could have back the rights to his song catalog.

We talked about last week.

It's like Dolly Parton forgiving the debts of Porter Wagner so that his children and his children's children and his children's children could have back the rights to his catalog.

So Jesus uses this story and this number.

And he uses this number 77 in another way as well, because the number 77 puts the story of forgiveness into an even larger context.

It's about individual relationships, right?

It's about the relationships between one who sinned against and one who sins, but it is also and crucially about a larger community, and not just the larger community of the church.

By invoking this number 77, Jesus also is invoking generation upon generation of tradition, right?

In many ways, Jesus is taking forgiveness and placing it not just in the context of two people or even a community, but a culture and of generations.

You all know that story, right?

Maybe.

But if the name Lamech doesn't ring a bell immediately, maybe another name will, the name of his great, great, great grandfather, because Lamach was the great, great, great-grandson of Cain.

Cain, of course, is a great crossword answer, but also is the story the story of Cain and Abel, uh, this first story of murder in Genesis.

Cain murders his brother Abel.

And here's the part of the story that often gets lost, which is how God responds to this murder.

God is angry with Cain, but God also realizes that Cain is now in great danger himself.

Anyone Cain meets will know that he is a murderer.

They will know that he has murdered his brother, and they may wish to seek revenge.

They may wish to kill Cain for being a murderer.

That would, of course, be fair.

A life for a life.

But God does not want revenge killings.

And so God makes it clear that Cain is not to be killed by other humans.

Cain is not to be killed.

God says, whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.

So God puts this mark on Cain so that Cain will be protected.

It's a mark of protection, Cain's mark.

So Genesis tells this story and then offers a bit of an epilogue to the story before moving back to Adam and Eve, before moving back to the story of Adam and Eve having their next child, Seth.

It follows the chain of Cain and his children and his children's children and his children's children's children for multiple generations until we get to Lamach.

The great-great-great-grandson of Cain, Lamach, we find out, is wounded by another man.

He is hurt.

And so Lamach decides to kill that other man in revenge.

By Lamech's logic, God's sevenfold vengeance upon anyone who would kill Cain has been multiplied over the years, so that Lamach is due not only protection from God, but the power of vengeance for himself.

He is quoted as telling his wife, he says, I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.

If Cain, my great, great, great, great grandfather, is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamach 77fold.

So these are the words Jesus is using here, 77, where it first appears in Scripture and then where it once again appears 77fold.

Jesus takes Lamach's words and reverses them.

I do want to flag here, because this is an important thing for all of us to remember, right?

That this is not a story about a New Testament Jesus reversing an Old Testament God's approach to vengeance.

Quite the opposite, right?

Jesus is not reversing the story of Lamach and what God is doing in this story.

He is echoing it.

Jesus is echoing this story and referencing it.

And then this parable of the unforgiving slave is a reimagining of the Lamech story, right?

The unforgiving servant ignores the mercy that has been given to him.

Lamech twists God's mercy for Cain, corrupting it into a false sense of entitlement, right?

Not only does Lamech not interpret his inheritance as an inheritance of mercy, of forgiveness, he twists and manipulates his own interpretation of what God has done so that he gets to inherit God's powers of justice.

Your inheritance, Jesus reminds us, our inheritance is an inheritance not of vengeance but of mercy.

Our inheritance is grace, it is forgiveness.

It is not and never has been an inheritance of revenge or of vengeance or of earthly fairness, right?

When we take God's grace and twist it into a sense of power or entitlement instead of a sense of gratitude and humility, it can curdle.

It can curdle inside of us and it can curdle inside of our culture and our world.

It can pass from one generation to the next, spilling out into communities and cultures.

Last week I wondered what is the opposite of generational trauma?

Where can we see the spoils of vengeance now?

Where do those who feel threatened or wounded or wronged feel justified in leading out revenge?

Even revenge that is seven times or 77 times harsher than any of the wrongdoings or threats they've encountered.

And how do we reverse those patterns?

How do we begin to tackle the overwhelming injustices of our lives or of our moment?

How do we become inheritors of a 77-fold grace?

Peter asks a reasonable question, and Jesus gives an unreasonable answer.

Right?

We are called to respond in ways that are beyond unfair because we are called to respond the way God responds.

Which, well, of course, this is all very overwhelming.

This is very overwhelming.

So take to heart a few things.

Take to heart a couple of things.

First, notice the part played by all of the other servants in this parable that Jesus tells, this parable of the unforgiving servants, because it is the other servants, the community surrounding this, that bring this story of injustice to the attention of the king.

This story is about the kingdom of heaven, not just the king of heaven, right?

It is about a whole community and how it should act.

These other servants, they don't seek vengeance themselves.

They do not meet out revenge, but nor do they think that the injustice should have no consequences.

Instead, they advocate for the suffering of the debtor.

Justice and fairness, they're not off the table, right?

But nor do they get the last word.

So also notice that none of these servants has to act alone.

The whole community is paying attention.

The whole community is tackling the issues together.

And together they do make a difference here.

If you want one small way to do this as a community, may I remind you that we have an adult ed class that started today called Five Risk Presbyterians Must Take for Peace.

So join us on Sunday mornings at 9.45 a.m.

in the library to explore that.

Justice and fairness are not off the table, but nor do they get the last word.

But moreover, hear this, right?

The justice, the fairness.

It was never the end in and of itself, right?

And it was never about punishment.

It was never meant to be a burden.

Justice, fairness.

It was always about everybody getting some ice cream, right?

It was about everybody getting some ice cream.

At the end of the Bluey episode, Bandit, the ultimate father, the standard for parenting to which none of us can or will ever live up.

The paragon of imagination and love, bandit of Bluey.

Bluey and Bingo's dad, Bandit, refuses to get the girls new ice cream cones.

They did this to themselves.

But he's a bit of a sucker.

And he does happen to have a double scoop of chocolate for himself.

So the three of them finish this ice cream off together.

The end of the episode, Ice Cream in Bluey.

In the spirit of sharing ice cream, I'd like to close with a poem written by Wendellberry.

I mentioned this last week, along with losing Dolly Parton the last few weeks.

We lost Wendellberry.

Wendellberry is a Kentucky native who returned to his roots and spent his life writing, theologizing, and sharing about his experiences and his hopes for a future that prioritized grace and community and peaceableness from his farm.

And he wrote this poem to his mother.

It's called To My Mother by Wendellberry.

So I will close with this poem.

I was your rebellious son, do you remember?

Sometimes.

I wonder if you do remember.

So complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been, I wonder sometimes if it did not precede my wrong.

And I erred, safe found within your love, prepared ahead of me the way home or my bed at night, so that almost I should forgive you, who perhaps foresaw the worst that I might do, and forgave before I could act, causing me to smile now, looking back, to see how paltry was my worst compared to your forgiveness of it already given.

And this then is the vision of that heaven of which we have heard, where those who love each other have forgiven each other, where for that the leaves are green, the light a music in the air, and all is unentangled, and all is undismayed.

May it be so.org for more information.

Have a great week.