Good morning - our fall season at St. James (I guess) officially starts today with our welcome picnic, which I hope everyone will go to! I’m so glad we have lovely weather again this year.
And a very warm welcome to the Schroeter family! We’ll be baptizing their twins Jackson and Sable just after this sermon. We’re so happy you’re here at St. James. You picked a great church.
I like that we’ve started the year with now two baptisms, last Sunday and today. Baptisms go to the core of the Christian message: serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves--all this we’ll say together shortly in the Baptismal Covenant.
And so does our reading from today’s Gospel, because what could be more central to the Christian message than Forgiveness?
Here’s how things unfold when I sit down to write a sermon on forgiveness; this passage comes up every few years, and also of course in Lent and Holy Week especially we visit the subject as we reflect on Jesus’ mercy to his enemies from the cross. But here’s how things unfold: I read the Scripture passage, I think, well this seems pretty straightforward: never stop forgiving, remember we are forgiven. I can preach this.
And then … I start thinking. And reading more. And reflecting on my own life. I think of things I’ve done to others. Things people I know have had done to them. Then I start thinking about all the stories I’ve heard and read over the years about people I don’t know, whose offenses committed or incurred are on a level I can’t begin to fathom or understand:
The murder of five Amish school girls in 2006. I remember when that came up. It was October. I was brand new at my former church, my first as a solo priest, five years ordained, and I had to stand up and preach about that.
The deaths of those innocent men and women at their AME Church in Charleston who unwittingly invited their killer to participate in Bible study with them. That was in 2015. I’m sure you remember it too.
Sandy Hook, right near Christmastime, 2012. Who will ever forget that?Recently I read a book by an expert on Terrorism but the book was about a crime committed against her as a child, and her quest to find out more about the person who had terrorized her.
And of course last week and this we remember those who lost their lives on 9/11, 22 years ago, and their families, as well as the innocent victims across the world of the wars sparked by that tragedy.
It goes on and on. The more I think about the difficult instances of offense and forgiveness, the harder it gets to say, well, Jesus says forgive seventy-times-seven times (or “seventy-seven”; the Gospels differ on the amount but the point is: it’s a lot).
One lesson we might take from this is that If there are forgivable grudges you’re harboring against someone, where someone wasn’t killed, or your dignity stripped away, or something about you irrevocably changed for the worse -- most of the offenses committed against a person are not the major ones -- then leave here today and go take care of that. First start with the internal work of forgiving, and then if it's possible take the steps outlined in our Gospel reading last week: Go to the person, and try to reconcile yourselves insofar as is in your power. Restore the relationship or at very least make that your aim.
The universe is full up enough with harms that people may never be able to forgive--major offenses, major pain. So let’s examine our lives for anything that maybe we can forgive, and make the world less polluted with outstanding grudges.
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But because we are the human beings we are, even smaller things can be hard to forgive.
In our Gospel reading, Jesus tells a parable about a wealthy king who forgives a slave an enormous amount. On his way home, that slave happens upon someone who owes him a smaller sum. Even though he’d just been forgiven, he refuses to extend that same grace to another.
Soon enough, the king finds out, and comes back and then throws the slave he’d just forgiven into prison.
It’d be great if the parable ended before that last little bit. I have a friend who said, Why did Jesus have to go on and ruin a perfectly good parable! What the ending does, though, is call into question our usual assumption that the powerful figure--the king, or the landowner--in the story, is God.
A colleague and one-time professor of mine, Marilyn Adams, once preached a sermon on this, and it made me think about it in a whole different way. I hope I do her justice here. She argued that this king who takes back his forgiveness after granting it just once, never mind seventy seven times or even just twice, is not meant to be God, in the parable.
The unforgiving servant… that’s us. We all recognize ourselves in the person who knows better, yet still feels disadvantaged, wronged, still finds it so hard to forgive even the smallest things. Let’s not be too hard on him because, we know what this is like. But God, is not that king whose forgiveness extends just once, and no more.
For an image of God that fits better with Jesus’ teachings, Mother Adams turns to one Jesus used just a few verses earlier. God is like a parent, and we, are God’s children. Let me conclude by reading from her sermon. I love what she does with this--it’s not your conventional take on the passage, but beautiful nonetheless.
For God’s human children, forgiveness is no quick fix but a seventy-times-seven process based on consolation and comfort. It begins by running to Jesus, crawling up onto his lap, thrashing, crying, accusing with childlike candor and abandon; carrying on until our energy is spent; snuggling up, catching our breath, carrying on some more, pouring out pain and rage again and again, seventy times seven until the wells are drained.
Jesus knows how to take our outcries seriously--he knows how much it hurts; he suffered, too. Jesus gives birth to our change of heart, not by arguing with our premises, but by making us feel safe, by showing us this surplus--love in abundance, more than we could ask or imagine, life eternal. Returning to his lap, seventy times seven, as often as it takes, convinces us of our connection, [convinces us of God’s] strength.
And I would just add to her words:
We’re much more apt to forgive, from the smallest to the largest of offenses, only when we’re ready. And often we’re only ready once we’ve raged, and thrashed, cried, and felt the full extent of our pain, in the arms of a God who loves us, who has tremendous patience, and who (I have to think) won’t abandon even those who in the end, cannot forgive. But if we have any shot at it, it’s in those safe arms of unconditional love.
Today we baptize two little ones into the faith, and welcome them into these arms of love. And as a community, we’ll do everything we can to help them know that Neverending Love, of God. Amen.