Forgiveness

 Matthew 18 21-35

Forgive Thy Neighbor
Scott Erickson

September 17, 2023

 

So Peter asks, “How many times should we forgive someone?

seven times?

He probably thought he was being generous with that.

But Jesus says No, a lot more than that.

Try seventy and seven times.

 

Now these numbers were not just picked out of the air.

Their linked to an important reference in Genesis.

After Cain kills his brother Abel,

Cain is banished from his home and

sent to wander around the earth. He tells God that

he can’t live with that punishment, and

someone will surely kill him. So God protects him

with a seven times vengeance against anyone who does.

 

Cain remains an outcast, not counted in

Adam’s official lineage, but he marries

and has a family of his own and Cain’s great, great grandson

Lamech, is born he has two wives,

and he tells them:

“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
    wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
    a young man for injuring me.
²⁴ If Cain is avenged seven times,
    then Lamech seventy-seven times.”

 

It was kind of a brag and kind of a threat.

He was taking advantage of his protected status,

and instead of being thankful for it,

he was vengeful he didn’t give others the grace

that he and his family were given.

Seventy seven fold.

 

 

It important to remember that in Jesus time

and before, revenge was a way of life.

If someone did something to you or your family,

you didn’t just brood over it, and internalize it

and stopped talking to the person or leave the neighborhood,

You didn’t let law enforcement do its work,

since there was no law enforcement as we understand it now.

You got back at the person who did it.

It was your right and obligation.

If you didn’t, you and your family’s honor was at stake.

 

It was supposed to work like a code of honor,

but you could see how it could easily out of hand and it did.

Someone could kill you or punish you for something that

your grandfather did 50 years earlier. Or someone could

be mad at someone or want some of their property

and use the excuse that their ancestors

had hurt someone else a centuries earlier.

In Leviticus 24, it’s spelled out and kind of tried to temper it,

“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”

In other words, just keep it to one eye for one eye.

And one tooth for one tooth.

 

And then in Matthew 5, Jesus says,

“You have heard that it was said,

‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 

But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer.

But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also”

In other words, stop the cycle of violence.

 

And today, we hear Jesus call for forgiveness.

Jesus says that the call of his followers is not 

seventy-seven fold vengeance like Lamech, but seventy-seven fold forgiveness.

Jesus is calling for his disciples to undo the curse of Cain

and the vengeance of Lamech that has trapped humanity

in endless cycles of hate, vengeance, and violence,  over generations.

Jesus is calling his disciples to be different from our ancestors

and to take another path a path of life, not death.

So now knowing some of that, we can look at Jesus parable.

 

In the parable, A slave owes a king a ton of money.

Remember, exaggeration is one method of parables.

And 10,000 talents was a lot.

One talent was 15 years wages, this was 10,000 times that.

Basically It’s a lot of money. More money than can be repaid.

This means that king had a lot of power over his subjects.

He could do almost anything he wanted.

And if he held onto that debt, he could leverage it

over this man and his whole family not just now, but for years to come.

And what does he do?

He releases the slave of the obligation of the debt.

Not just some of it, all of it. That must have sounded ridiculous.

And scandalous and radical.

Holding onto debts and grudges maintained power,

the caste system, a pecking order.

If the king started just forgiving people it would be

mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together,

you wouldn’t know who was who, slave or free,

man or woman, Jew or Greek.
This would be a new world, new freedom, new life.

Jesus meant to overturn a basic system of society.

 

For this now former slave, it could have been

a new morning, a new day, a new life for everyone.

He could have passed the Kings forgiveness on

and created a new reality in his community.

But as soon as he left that meeting with the king,

the slave forgot the new world he was given.

He went out into the world and forgot the forgiveness he was given,

and resumed the old way. The counting every debt,

the demand, the violence and the torture.

 

Now Matthew’s Jesus is always taking it over the top

in God’s justice department, but this old way

of accounting sins is torture –

 for the counted and for the counter.

Have you ever been in a position of not being able to forgive someone

for something they’ve done, whether it’s a large or small offense?

Of grumbling every time their name comes up

and relishing every bad thing that happens to them?

Of course you have, just like I have. Everyone has.

It’s human nature. And I can tell you it’s not good for you.

You think about it, you relive it, you imagine you’re offense over and over again. 

The one who’s done it has probably moved on and doesn’t

think much about it. But we can be held by the offense for years.

 

A society that is build around revenge and getting even

cannot move on. It cannot sustain itself, it will eventually blow itself up

with depression, or addiction, or guns, or nuclear bombs.

Jesus wants to overthrow this system with our forgiveness and love.

 

Now a days, we’re more sophisticated than they were in Jesus time,

we like our retribution for sins taken care of by our institutions,

we like our justice departments, we like our revenge meted

out by solitary confinement and the death penalty,

we like our debts counted by credit agencies and payday loan companies, 

we still like the church to divide us

into holy and not holy, sinful and righteous.

We’re comfortable with the caste system

created by sin and debt and we are reluctant to give it up

but still and all, it’s torture for everyone.

It cannot survive.

Even though it’s lasted for thousands of years,

we can’ t sustain ourselves like this.

As someone said, “If everyone took an eye for an eye,

the whole world will go blind.”

We will destroy ourselves.

 

And that is why Jesus made forgiveness

front and center of his ministry.

And that’s why God’s forgiveness comes first

and sets us free so we can pass it on and

create a new reality in our community.

 

In 2014 I went with a group of other clergy to a presentation

of a group called Sandy Hook Promise.

It was started by the parents of the victims of the Sandy Hook

school shooting in 2012 where 26 people were killed,

20 of them first graders. Two of the parents were there talking to us.

They have a foundation who’s purpose it is to curb school shootings

it’s called Sandy Hook Promise.

 

One arm of their foundation works on reasonable gun control

and all of those safety precautions.

 

But their main focus is on loving everyone’s children.

They called it “Parenting our whole community.”

They know that the young man, who killed their children, Adam Lanza,

was, like a lot of other mass shooters, called a loner.

No one knew him, or knew his name.

They wanted to work to correct that in schools so that other

 

They have two programs:

“No Child Eats Alone”, which encourages children 

and staff to go and eat with other children who are eating alone.

And “Know Me Know My Name” an effort for every 

staff teacher and administrative person to know every child’s name and use it regularly.

 

The man who lost his son said that his son, Ethan, was a person who

would go and sit with a child who was alone or was crying.

And this father, who’s son was killed said:

“If more children like my son were there for Adam Lanza,

maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”

Which I thought was an amazing statement.

This man who had every right to be bitter and angry and spiteful even,

but instead he had compassion for the person who shot his child.

 

The group said that many of them were people of faith.

And their faith brought them to a place of compassion .

And they felt that this was a better place to be, a more productive place

than if they chose vengeance and hate.

That is forgiveness.

It’s not being a “doormat”. Not “doing nothing”. 

That’s not “just letting it happen again”.

But it’s also not relishing in the pain of his offender.

It’s being truthful and honest about where we are.

But it’s not being hung up in cycles of offenses and vengeance,

It’s facing the past, and working towards new solutions and healing.

 

What if we could do this in our own lives?

What if we could do this in our own communities?

What if we could do this in our countries and our world?

It could change everything, everything we’ve ever known.

 

Forgiveness starts with remembering we are forgiven.

In Jesus parable, the first thing that happens is that the

king forgives the servant everything.

He is released and freed.

He was able to start a new day and a new life.

But the servant forgot that, and that’s where the trouble began.

 

We who have been given so much,

have been asked to give those debts that we hold

against other people, back to God.

And in the process, the debts we used to hold

will no longer have a hold over us anymore.

In forgiveness, we are freed too.

And our forgiveness can also show God’s grace to the world.

 

Jesus, How many times should we forgive?

Seven times?

Seven times might seem like a lot, but more than seven.

Keep doing it.

Keep practicing, keep trying and keep failing and keep trying again.

Do it with your family, your church, and community

and then do it with others.

Until God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.

 

Conversation

 Matthew 18:15-20

September 10, 2023

 

A pastor from Texas told me this story.

Where Two or More Are Gathered
Theresa Daughtry

He had just started a new call at a church in a small town.

Soon after he started, he was in a grocery store.

One of the members of his church saw him from down the aisle.

He was right behind him, he said “hello, Pastor”

a couple of times. He had to have heard him.

The pastor ignores him.

He acts like he didn’t see him and scoots quickly down the aisle.

The member is offended.

 

The member tells his wife: the new pastor ignored me.

He saw me and avoided me. Maybe he’s mad at me.

She tells her friend who is on the council.

Do you know how much money we give to this church?

The council talks. We have seen signs. The pastor is not friendly.

Other church members are told.

Maybe we made a mistake in calling him.

There’s phone calls and quiet discussions.

Yes, we noticed it too. He thinks he’s better than us.

 

Sunday, people seem cold to him, the pastor doesn’t know why.

The pastor doesn’t find out until after church when

one “concerned” spokesperson comes to talk to him.

“Some people are not happy.”

Always a good line to hear.

Well, what’s the problem?

I think it started because you didn’t say

hello to Joe in the grocery store.

Why did you ignore Joe in the grocery store?

 

The pastor is caught unaware.

The pastor thinks, that doesn’t sound like me.

After a little thinking he remembers:

the battery in one of the pastor’s hearing aids gave out,

so he didn’t wear them to the store that day.

If he doesn’t wear his hearing aids, he can’t hear.

He never heard Joe.

He explained it to Joe, and then to the congregation,

and apparently they worked it all out because

the pastor was there for the next 20 years.

 

This story is true.

Well, this is how it was told to me by the pastor.

And I believe it, because this happens a lot.

I’m sure we all have a story or two like this.

Some a lot more destructive than this one.

People complaining to other people instead

of to the person their complaining about.

It happens in families, at work, in organizations

and definitely in churches

maybe most often in churches.

 

I think it might happen in the church even more

than other organizations because we’re supposed to be nice.

We get this impression that we’re supposed

to be of one mind and one opinion and thought.

We think that to be church means that we’re

supposed to only be sweet in front of one another.

To show no disagreement. So when we do disagree with someone,

when we’re frustrated we couldn’t possibly tell them.

That wouldn’t be nice. That could be rude. That could create conflict.

So, we just tell someone else. Maybe even innocently, concerned.

We have parking lot discussions and share gossip.

I have surely participated in it. I bet most of us have.

 

If it helps at all, we obviously haven’t been

the first people to do it this.

We’re in Matthew 18 this week.

The whole concept of the church

has just been brought up for the first time

in chapter 16 when Jesus tells Peter that

he was going to build his church on him.

And here Jesus is, two chapters later,

telling them how to deal with disagreements.

Almost instantly, after church, there was church conflict.

 

Matthew 18.

This is maybe the most directly applicable,

and the most practical advice we’re given in the whole bible:

If someone sins against you, if someone does something to you,

like snubs you in a grocery store,

the first step is to talk to the other person directly. Alone.

 

Don’t tell a bunch of other people first.

That means don’t embarrass them.

Don’t tell them in the middle of a meeting.

Or in the middle of the Narthex where other people can hear.

Don’t tell their spouse or their friend about it. Go to them.

 

So much in the church and the world would be solved

if we just went to that first step.

We wouldn’t have any sit-coms if we did that.

But it would solve a lot of problems.

 

And if that step doesn’t work, there are other practical steps outlined too: 

Take a couple of people and talk to the other person.

(Of course, there’s always a chance the other

two people might disagree with you.) 

And if that doesn’t work, then tell the church.

Then bring it up in a meeting. And if all that doesn’t work,

then treat them as a Gentile or a tax collector.

Of course, we know how Jesus treated Gentiles and Tax Collectors.

This gospel was, of course, written by Matthew-

the Tax Collector – a disciple chosen and loved by Jesus.

 

So this is simple advice.

If you’ve got a problem, go directly to that person and talk to them.

Simple. So why don’t we do it?

Why is it that churches, who have this in our scriptures,

forget to do it so often?

 

The fact is, the steps might be simple and clear,

but they are very, very hard.

They leave us very vulnerable.

Telling other people,

especially other people we are around all the time,

something that they’re doing or saying that we don’t like,

having an honest discussion with them,

staying connected with someone you disagree with is difficult.

Whenever I have to do it, I know I get a knot in my stomach

and it worries me for days.

 

This is often what, I think, turns people off of the church.

It turns people off of organized religion. It can get difficult.

 

Have you ever told someone that you were involved in the church

and they told you that they were “Spiritual but not religious”

They just don’t like all that church stuff?

 

A UCC pastor named Lillian Daniel wrote a great little blog entry

more than 10 years ago called:
“Spiritual But not religious? Stop boring me.”

She complains about the people that she meets on planes

when they find she’s a minister,

most people tell her that “they’re spiritual but not religious.”

She writes:

 

Such a person will always share this

as if it is some kind of daring insight,

unique to them, bold in its rebellion

against the religious status quo.

Next thing you know, he's telling me that he finds God in the sunsets.

These people always find God in the sunsets.

And in walks on the beach.

Sometimes I think these people never leave

the beach or the mountains,

what with all the communing with God they do

on hilltops, hiking trails and . . .

did I mention the beach at sunset yet?

Like people who go to church don't see God in the sunset!

 

What she goes on basically to say is that being spiritual by yourself

with nature that doesn’t talk back, doesn’t have it’s own opinions,

doesn’t change its mind, doesn’t have a bad hair day,

is unchallenging and, in her estimation, kind of boring.

It’s comfortable to be spiritual but not religious. It’s safe.

 

I guess I don’t BLAME people who have decided to leave

religion and the people that come with it.

Church life is difficult, community is tough, people are complicated.

Religion, and all of its humanness is complicated.

We have to deal with institutions that we didn’t create ourselves,

with traditions that might be very important, or irrelevant,

and we have to decide which is which.

We have to deal with people with different experiences,

different upbringings, different backgrounds,

different temperaments, and often very different opinions.

And we have to come together to make something.

 

Sunsets, in comparison, are simple. No attitudes,

no different opinions, they don’t talk back,

they don’t question your methods or motives.

Sunsets don’t want you to be anything

different than you already are.

Sunsets don’t ask anything of you at all.

 

Sure, sunsets and mountains and beaches are

beautiful and can rest your body, mind, and soul,

but is that all that God is? Rest?

 

I think God is rest, but God is also challenge,

God is questions, God is restlessness, God is opinions,

God is sleepless nights, God is messy.

 

God is more complicated than sunsets and beaches.

And church is a reflection of that.

Church is not for the faint of heart.

Community is not for the faint of heart.

I say people, like all of us, who are willing to get in

and get messy, with each other,

we are the bold and daring ones.

 

I think what turns a lot of people away from religion and church

is that often, things tend to fester in them.

Lots of times things are swept under the rug,

sins and offenses are allowed to go on and grow

conflict is avoided until it becomes unbearable,

and then it becomes an all out fight or division.

 

In Ohio, I was on the synod team that dealt with

churches that were in conflict and

I have been to congregational meetings that have

been so destructive, and the words so spiteful

that I have had a crisis of faith myself.

 

You get that microphone set up in the

fellowship hall and people who are normally very

reasonable people suddenly sound like professional wrestlers

challenging the champ to a fight next Saturday night.

 

I have left those meetings thinking that a sunset would

be a much better option.

 

But notice the advice that Jesus gives this week doesn’t say,

“when someone sins against you just deal with it and keep it to yourself.”

or “Just forgive them in your heart and everything will be okay.”

Or “just wait and air all your emotions out at a public meeting”

 

Jesus says talk to that person one on one.

Get involved. Be engaged. Talk to each other directly.

Be vulnerable.

Of course, again, this requires us to be uncomfortable.

 

A lot of those public fights could have been avoided

if there were conversations that were had earlier.

Sometimes 10 or 15 years earlier.

 

In my work on the conflict team I saw some terrible things,

and I have also seen miraculous and beautiful things.

 

Sometimes things are untenable, and

sometimes the best thing is for one of the parties

to remove themselves from the situation.

But sometimes conversations are had, and agreements

are made, and reconciliation happens.

Relationships that were broken are repaired.

 

When this happens at this micro-level, we can see

what God can do. And what God will do, in big ways.

We become signs of God’s grace, love and power.

I will trade a sunset in for that experience any day.

 

God is fixing and repairing and rebuilding all the time.

God is reconciling, and renewing, and resurrecting everywhere.

And we, as church people, get to be partners in that work.

In our own hearts and in our own messy petri dishes

of challenge, conflict, death, and rebirth, which is the church.

 

Sunsets are fine.

But God’s real miracles happen

when we find God’s image in other people,

people that think different than us,

that have different experiences,

different cultures and backgrounds,

different opinions and understandings.

And especially maybe, those who disagree with us.

 

Because where two or three are gathered in Christ’s name –

when we can support one another, work together,

serve God and serve our community—it is a miracle!

And we know that God is with us.