Don Friesen
The Gospel of Matthew was written by someone acquainted with numbers. Matthew was a member of Israel's Border Services, collecting dues and customs from persons and goods crossing the Sea of Galilee or passing along the Damascus road between Bethsaida and Capernaum. Matthew knew how to assess and calculate the value of things. He had the precision of an accountant; you won't find him saying "some" or "approximately" or using any other vague term when an exact number can be used. Matthew had a great facility with numbers, and he had the wealth to prove it.
Matthew's facility with numbers is also reflected in his Gospel. Last week we looked at the spiritual power that is there when two or three or more gather in Jesus' name. (18:20) If you look at the whole of chapter 18, you'll find even more numbers! A numerical inventory of chapter 18 also includes one eye (Matthew 18:1); two eyes (18:9); 100 sheep (18:12); one lost sheep (18:12); 99 sheep, their whereabouts known (18:12); two church members (18:15); one or two others (18:16); two or three witnesses (18:16); two people who agree with each other (18:19); and in today's text: seven (18:21); seventy times seven, and by inference 490 (18:22); 10,000 talents (18:24), and 100 denarii. (18:28) And if you really want to push it, the first verse of chapter 18 talks about who is the greatest, or, in other words, numero uno! (18:1)
Advice, and a Story
Peter, one of Jesus' disciples, desperately wanted to be numero uno, to rise to the top of the class in the original School of Christian discipleship. He had heard Jesus speak on forgiveness and he was trying to excel in that course as well, but he was uncomfortable with the open-ended-ness of the idea. He had heard Jesus say, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy." (Matthew 5:7) He had heard Jesus say that "if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also" (5:39), and the clincher: "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you...." (5:44) Peter suspected that Jesus would be very generous on the matter of forgiveness.
I doubt Peter was mathematically minded, but like Matthew, he wanted some precision, especially in the matter of forgiveness. After all, rabbinic teaching put a limit on forgiveness. The Talmud states: "He who begs forgiveness from his neighbour must not do so more than three times" (Rabbi Jose ben Hanina, cited in Barclay), as well as the following:
"If a person transgresses one time, forgive him.
If a person transgresses two times, forgive him.
If a person transgresses three times, forgive him.
If a person transgresses four times, do not forgive him."
(Rabbi Jose ben Jehuda, cited in Barclay; paraphrase)
Peter wanted some parameters on forgiveness, but he was feeling rather magnanimous when he popped his question: "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" (Matthew 18:21) And Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but seventy times seven." (18:22, NRSV/RSV)
Well! This was going to make it difficult for Peter to advance in the class! Now, Matthew would have understood Jesus' answer to be 490 a large number, admittedly, but precise. Apparently Emily Brontλ understood it likewise. In Wuthering Heights Nelly, the housekeeper, exclaims, in reaction to a preacher's 490 sermons on 490 separate sins: "Sir, ...sitting here within these four walls, ...I have endured and forgiven the four hundred and ninety heads of your discourse. Seventy times seven times have I plucked up my hat and been about to depart Seventy times seven times have you preposterously forced me to resume my seat. The four hundred and ninety-first is too much." (Brontλ, In Wuthering Heights, Chapter III)
Peter and the other disciples were also stunned by Jesus' answer, although the number was not intended to be as precise as it sounds. Seventy times seven is a colloquial way of saying that you must forgive someone who wrongs you an unlimited number of times, which, of course, renders the concept of numbers meaningless.
If the expression, "seventy times seven," is deeply imbedded in the Christian psyche, it was also so embedded in OT memory. And here we're right back to the story of Cain and Abel! The same number cited by Jesus is used in talking about the revenge of Lamech, one of Cain's descendants. Lamech had killed a young man, and he noted that if the going rate for revenge for Cain is seven, then he should be avenged seventy times seven! (Genesis 4:24) The story of Lamech reveals the escalating cycle of hatred and revenge that follows Cain's violent act. The world, after the fall of Adam and Eve, became a violent and vengeful place.
Jesus' response to Peter's question breaks the cycle of hatred and revenge. Perhaps Jesus could see that Peter was worried that this might be on the final exam, and so he told a story to press home the point. You heard the story read, and I won't belabour it. It concerns a servant who was carrying a huge debt load, and when he was called in to "settle accounts" (Matthew 18:23) there was no way he could pay it! His future looked bleak, but he begged for "patience" (18:26) and his master had "pity (on him) ...and forgave him the debt." (18:27) A very generous act!
It would be a moving story, only that same servant refused to forgive a debt one of his peers owed him a much smaller debt but he showed no mercy whatsoever! (Matthew 18:30) The numbers used in this story might be equivalent to 25 million dollars for the first debt and fifty dollars for the second debt. The contrast is staggering, almost incomprehensible! The servant who was forgiven much forgave others nothing and suffered dire consequences. The lesson on forgiveness was lost on the servant but, hoping his disciples might learn from it, Jesus warned them of dire consequences "if (we) do not forgive (our) brother and sister from the heart." (18:35) And unless Peter and his cohorts were unusually dull, they knew that the unimaginable debt we owe God can never be paid. Even so, said the psalms, "as far as the east is from the west, so far does God remove our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:11)
Jesus' teaching and story about forgiveness is the last word of the Galilean section of Matthew's Gospel. Now attention will turn to Jerusalem and an unparalleled opportunity to see Jesus' teaching in action. His last word before embarking on the last leg of his destiny is a profound word about grace not a bad thing to hear when we're in the middle of two North American elections and a lot of nasty stuff is said and done.
Elements of Christian Forgiveness
What are some of the elements of the Christian understanding of forgiveness? Let me suggest several, by no means an exhaustive list.
1) Forgiveness is Difficult
For one thing, forgiveness is a beautiful idea and experience, but it is difficult. In his Letters to Malcolm, C. S. Lewis' twenty-two letters to a fictitious friend, Lewis notes, "Last week while at prayer, I suddenly discovered that I had finally forgiven someone that I had been trying to forgive for over thirty years." (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, pages 106-107) He remarked that everybody thinks forgiveness is a good idea until they have something serious to forgive.
Clarence Jordan, the scholar who bequeathed us the plain-spoken Cotton Patch Gospels, complained that we'll worship the hind legs off Jesus, then not lift a finger to do a single thing he says. That's particularly true in the area of forgiving those who have wronged us. Anger and thoughts of revenge are tasty morsels that are hard to give up. Frederick Buechner says that of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. "To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations to come, to savour to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back ...is a feast fit for a king." (Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC) Forgiveness is a beautiful idea and experience, but it is difficult to carry out.
2) Forgiveness Frees, Releasing us from Things that Bind
A second element of Christian forgiveness has to do with the opposite of our natural inclination. While we may want to savour our anger, the biblical word Matthew uses for forgiveness means to let go. It means releasing feelings of resentment, rage, wrath, revenge, retaliation, retribution and all the other things we hold close when we are hurt by others. In order to be free ourselves, we need to let go of those things in such a way that we do not pick them up again. It doesn't necessarily mean that we forget painful experiences, or that scars do not remain, but the only way to live well with imperfect people is to learn the divine art of forgiveness and release.
A colleague tells of a woman named Betty who was filled with anger at her husband because of an affair he had. She found out through no honest disclosure of his, and when she confronted him he rubbed salt in the wound by telling her that it had been going on for fifteen years. Two weeks after Betty confronted him, her husband had a sudden heart attack and died! Betty was left with a huge ball of rage and resentment in her heart. Betty loved to whistle, but since she had discovered her husband's infidelity she had not been able to whistle. There was no song in her heart.
Several years later Betty shared her pain with a minister at a conference, and he suggested she write a letter to her husband, sharing with him the profound hurt he had caused her. Don't edit your rage, he advised her. Betty thought this was the craziest idea she'd ever heard!
The minister grew concerned when for two days Betty failed to show up at the conference sessions. He thought he had offended her, or worse. The day before the conference ended, Betty came to him with a big stack of paper.
"Betty," he said, "you look tired."
"You're darn right I'm tired!" she said. "I haven't slept in two days (but) here's the letter and I'm going to read it to you all thirty-five pages of it! And she did, her reading punctuated by tears, screams, and long periods of silence when she couldn't speak. When she finished, they burned the letter and they prayed together.
The minister wasn't sure how much the exercise had helped, but at the closing worship service of the conference he saw Betty in the congregation, and while the rest of the congregation sang "Amazing Grace," Betty was whistling it! (Thomas Tewell, "The Things We Dare Not Remember," November 16, 2003)
3) Forgiveness Is Necessary
Earlier we sang "Kyrie eleison," the latter word literally meaning "to unbind," and that's what forgiveness affords us, release from those bonds and shackles that hold us back. Forgiveness is difficult exceedingly difficult but it releases those things that poison and imprison us, and what, really, is the alternative? Which brings us to a third element of forgiveness. Forgiveness is necessary. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who served as chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and was therefore intimately aware of his country's painful history, said that "there can be no future without forgiveness." (Tutu, "Why to Forgive," God Has a Dream) Forgiveness is necessary in order that people like us normal people who are irritable, moody, angry, imperfect, selfish, impertinent, and a few other things can live together.
4) Forgiveness Is a very Uplifting Experience
A fourth element of forgiveness, or rather an aspect of forgiveness, is that it is a very uplifting human experience. Who could help but be moved by the recent (June 11, 2008) apology to former students of Canada's residential schools? It was a solemn moment in our history as First Nations national chief Phil Fontaine and other aboriginal leaders many of them former students of those schools listened and wept when the government asked for forgiveness for a policy that had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage and language.
Who could help but be moved by the OT story that was read earlier? Joseph, the second youngest of twelve brothers, was sold into slavery by those brothers. Then, by a providential turn of events Joseph rose to great prominence in Egypt, such that when the brothers came to Egypt seeking relief from a severe famine, who should receive them but Joseph! It's a wonderfully dramatic moment. This is Joseph's chance to exact a pound of flesh from those scoundrels! Sweet, sweet revenge was his for the taking! And they knew it. They were scared spit-less!
There's much more detail and colour to the story, all preparing in a tantalizing manner for the tender moment when Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers. He sent all of the Egyptians out of the room so that he could be alone with his brothers, but he sobbed so loudly that the Egyptians waiting in the other room heard him! (Genesis 45:2) Then later, when his brothers ask for forgiveness and Joseph extends forgiveness, there's another round of weeping. (50:17)
The Habit/Repertoire of Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a very moving, inspiring thing to witness, and that was particularly evident in the developments that followed the horrific shooting of ten young Amish girls in a Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania school two years ago. I have no doubt you know the story, for the media coverage was extensive. What is also interesting is that within six hours of the shooting, Amish leaders were at the home of the gunman as well as at the home of his parents, saying, "We forgive you."
Don Kraybill, who wrote a book about the whole experience, notes that the schoolhouse shooting in quiet Amish country shocked the world, but then, "with a swiftness that also startled the world, the Nickel Mines Amish forgave the killer and offered grace to his family." (Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, page 43) While the parents and others were still trying to sort out what had happened, the Amish leaders were extending forgiveness to the family of Charles Roberts, the shooter. Charles' father was visited by an Amish neighbour who "stood there for an hour, and ...held [Mr. Roberts) in his arms and said, We forgive you.'" (Amish Grace, page 44) Similar encounters happened to all of the people involved in the tragedy.
The media were bewildered by the ability of the Amish to forgive so quickly. "Why is everybody all surprised?" asked one Amish man. "It's just standard Christian forgiveness...." (Amish Grace, page 49) No great puzzle. Said one of the elders, "We made this decision centuries ago. This is who we are." (cited by Jack Suderman)
Kraybill entitled one of his chapters, "The Habit of Forgiveness," and compares the instinctive response of the Amish to forgive others to a musical repertoire. A repertoire is a set of musical pieces that a performer knows especially well, reflecting his or her entire background and training and skills and frequent rehearsals and serving a performer well in a situation in which called upon to respond on short notice. Would that our responses to wrong-doing were so instinctively Christian that we wouldn't even have to think about it!
The Nickel Mines experience was a profound witness to the power of God's forgiveness. It captivated the imagination of many. Journalists found themselves covering a story they had not set out to cover. The initial news stories were soon followed by a host of commentaries and editorials, some dismissing forgiveness as emotionally unhealthy, or asking what might have happened if the United States had responded with forgiveness to the terrorist attacks of September 11. What indeed? Other stories and commentaries, however, reflected on the virtues of forgiveness, noting that the Nickel Mines experience could not so easily be dismissed.
A few weeks ago I attended the wedding of Seth W and Tara D. It was a very thoughtful service, and one of the recurring images used was that of doors, or passages. Seth and Tara and their friends had built several arbours through which the two of them, their families, the wedding party, and eventually everyone passed through, symbolically marking a passage to a new level of commitment in Seth and Tara's relationship, as well as a new configuration of relationships for everyone.
Jesus' teaching on forgiveness also opens a door. It opens a door to a new reality. In the story he told, the master surprised his servant by opening the door to a debt-free world, a world in which mountains of debt could be forgiven. He opened the door to the world of God's mercy and compassion a world in which God forgives out of an extravagantly kind heart, and invites us to inhabit this world. It's a world presided over by Jesus, who, when he was being crucified, cried out, "Father, forgive them...." (Luke 23:34)
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.