Robert Berra
Year A Proper 19
SMEC
Y'all.
Have you ever
been reading the Bible--particularly the
New Testament--and thought to
yourself, “I wish Jesus had
been more reasonable.”
And I suspect I
might not be the only one to read and hear scripture--and we nod our
head 'yes'--but we are also thinking
“what did I just read?”
The readings from today bring up a double whammy of
questions.
1. Do we
really have to forgive that much?
2. Does God
really hold our choice to forgive as being that important?
If I’m honest,
I’m not as good at forgiveness as I would like to be.
It does not come natural to me.
But it has become a beautiful part of my life because, as
a priest, my responsibility in a community is to point to the possibilities of
reconciliation and to grant absolution on behalf of the church.
Still,
forgiveness is hard.
Forgiveness is so
hard, it is known in psychiatric settings and other helping professions as “the
other ‘F’ word.”
But you know
this, too, I think.
I suspect that
there are a number of people in this room who come here with hearts heavy from
recent pain and injury.
I suspect I’m not
the only one here who has a few open conflicts that have grown cold.
Estrangements
going back years.
Regrets going
back years.
And here’s the
kicker—
I’m much better
at forgiving people who do something
wrong to me than I am at forgiving
those who hurts others I love.
I can turn my
other cheek to be struck, but I will not
hold someone else’s cheek out to be struck.
In those cases
where I am angry and unforgiving on behalf of others, the compassion I’m
supposed to have for the person who did something wrong comes into direct
conflict with the sense of duty and obligation I feel like I have to care for
the person who was hurt. If you’ve ever had to cut someone out of your
family for the sake of others in your family, you know that dynamic. You know that tension. That discomfort of
choosing not between good and evil, but choosing between the competing goods of
being compassionate and yet also protecting others.
And yet, here are these passages on forgiveness. and they refuse to go away.
And I think Jesus
makes this parable so hyperbolic—so exaggerated—so over-the top—because he
knows how hard a thing it is to forgive.
I mean, the
passage is over the top. The debt that
the first servant owed could translate to as little as 10 million dollars.
There is no hope at all for something like that to be repaid. None. The
servant’s debt is forgiven by the king— who in mercy foregoes the satisfaction
of selling the servant’s family to others in slavery, thereby leaving the servant
in pain for the rest of his life. The
king could here have said, “I know I’ll never get this money back, and even
selling you and your family will not approach the debt you owe, but I would at
least have the satisfaction of knowing that you will live and die in the agony
of separation and loneliness.”
Instead,
forgiven. All of it.
That wouldn’t
actually happen—who would write off that kind of debt?
The king even writes off the foolish attempt
by the slave to protest that he would eventually repay it.
Then the
unforgiving servant goes after another, who owes him the equivalent of a third
of a year’s wages. Chokes him out and
gets him thrown in prison. But really,
what is this going to do? Even if the
first servant thinks he’ll still get the money to repay the king, at this rate
he’d have to shake down 450,000 of his fellow-servants to do it.
But as it turned
out, the debt came back. The king called
it in after hearing that the first servant did not heed his object lesson on
mercy. He sends the servant to be
tortured until the debt can be paid off, which we established above, means
never. Everlasting torment. There are a few rare places where Jesus is so
forceful with the prospect of perpetual punishment. This is one of them, as are
the warnings for hypocrites, those who tie up heavy burdens they themselves are
not willing to bear, and those who care not for the hungry, thirsty, naked,
sick, imprisoned, or those deemed a stranger among us.
This, frankly,
can make the Lord’s Prayer a frightful thing—because in it we prayerfully
assent to that notion that God can act unto us according to our own standard of
forgiveness. “Forgive us our trespasses,
insofar as we forgive others.”
If there is a
commandment in Christianity at all, if there is something that cannot go away
about how we understand our relationship to God and our neighbor, it is the
persistence of forgiveness. It is that
we have to hold out forgiveness to those who do wrong to us and evil to others
precisely because we know that same forgiveness from God.
And I almost hate
to say that because I’m also mindful of how passages on forgiveness like this
have been misused in the past--how the
quick jump to demand that someone forgive their abuser can put the abused
person right back in the abuser’s power. Many a battered partner or exploited
child has been sent back to their abuser with no serious call for the abuser to
be held accountable for his or her actions.
So I think it’s
important to mention a few ways in which forgiveness goes wrong.
First
Forgiveness
does not mean that we have to minimize the evil or the hurt that we
experience. The Christian commitment to
truth means that we cannot lie about the hurt we experience or the pain others
feel in an effort to get to forgiveness faster.
If someone wrongs you, you get to be honest about that pain instead of
trying to “walk it off.” Evil and pain exist, and to pretend that they do not,
and to pretend that they do not matter—just for the sake of the comfort of
those around you—is not a path to truth or healing. Over time, the hurt may lessen, but you do not have to pretend it didn't exist.
Second
Of the
number of ideas that are “almost Christian, but not quite,” there is the phrase
“forgive and forget.” I’m sure you have
heard that phrase. Forgiveness is
possible, and it’s an obligation of the faith, but we are not likewise required
to forget—nor, sometimes, can we forget.
I kind of get why “forgive and forget” is a shorthand for our
faith. Forgetting in this sense could be
a shorthand for what it means to forgive. It means that we release the other
person from our power; we give up our claim on them—for revenge, for
retribution, for restitution. But that
is release—it is forgiveness—it is not forgetfulness. It means that we do not remember in such a
way that implies that we have a claim on the person.
Case in point, we gather
every week to remember the life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus. We bring to life that last supper, at which
he sat with his disciples—who would become deserters and betrayers—and yet he
both died and rose breathing forgiveness.
But we do not forget. We do not say that the crucifixion wasn’t that bad
after all because Jesus rose from the dead, and so it can be forgotten. we
instead say that evil is real, our capacity to hurt others is almost unbounded
(see: Auschwitz), the torture and crucifixion was a moral catastrophe— but we
follow savior who suffered the worst we could inflict, and a God whose love and
redemption proved stronger than death, and a spirit who promises access to this
loving power. We remember, not because the crucifixion and the betrayals and
the desertions didn’t matter, but because our story as Christians is one of the
power and possibilities of redemption and a love that conquers all adversity.
Third
We can
forgive, but we are not required to continue in old patterns of
relationship. If you notice from the
parable, the king did not keep the unforgiving servant in charge of the
finances. Likewise, in winning back a
fellow believer, as our gospel passage from last week put it, we do not need to
continually put the same people in the breach to be abused and mis-used again
and again. The relationship of the
forgiven to the community may need to change.
Yes, some of the
ways forgiveness gets talked about makes it harder than it has to be, but it’s
still hard.
Now here's the thing. To my bones, I believe that if our reading of scripture does
not lead us to healing and liberation, we have misread scripture.
And I believe
that the point of the Gospel of Matthew is less about what we do, and more
about who we become. But what Matthew
also makes clear is that we are not in this alone. God does not leave us to our own devices only
to pull the rug from under us at the end.
We are invited to a life of growth, of healing, and training in holiness
even when it’s borne from being broken on the wheels of living.
That brokenness
is our human condition. God knows it. And
God knows the difficulty of forgiving.
And I stand
before you today with some trepidation because I am aware that I cannot tie heavier
burdens than I myself am willing to bear, and forgiveness is a goal that no one
but you and God can set the timeline to.
So, what shall I
say?
MLK Jr. once said
“If you can’t fly, run; if you can’t run, walk; if you can’t walk, crawl; but
by all means keep moving.”[1]
Forgiveness may
be far.
But are you at a
place where you can bring your pain to God?
Can you trust
that God is big enough to hold your anger?
Will you let a
member of this community sit with you in your sorrow?
Will you seek the
help of a community that can bear what you cannot carry alone?
If you are here, living with the shame of knowing you have injured another, are
you ready to make amends?
Would you let
yourself be surprised by redemption?
[1] MLK,
Jr. Spelman College Museum April I960, pp. 10-11. https://literarydevices.net/if-you-cant-fly-then-run/
