Peter von Cornelius, The Recognition of Joseph by His Brothers
On Sunday, September 17th, we considered the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. In the Lord's Prayer, we ask God to forgive our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us. But is forgiveness an absolute commandment? Are there limits to forgiveness?
Sermon
Good morning. I want to share a story with you, a story I
heard before I went to seminary. I used to be a member of Sixth Presbyterian
Church of Pittsburgh. The church is located right in the heart of Squirrel
Hill, and the congregation has a strong relationship with one of the nearby
synagogues, Temple Sinai. The two congregations participated in some book
studies together and created a number of opportunities for fellowship. I
remember one Sunday morning when the senior rabbi from Temple Sinai, Jamie Gibson,
came to Sixth Church, and he preached the sermon—and he was amazing! I’m going
to tell you some of the story that he told to introduce his sermon. Any
inaccuracies are a product of my poor memory.
Gibson grew up in the New York area. As a young child, he
lived in Queens, I think. One morning, when he was seven years old, he was
running late for school. His only hope to make it on time was to cut through
the yard of his neighbor, Mrs. Shaughnessy. As he entered the yard, Mrs.
Shaughnessy threw open the upstairs window and screamed down at him: “You! What
are you doing? Get out of my yard this instant!”
Gibson replied, “Mrs. Shaughnessy, I’m going to be late for
school! Please let me come through!”
“No!” she cried.
“But why not?” Jamie asked.
“Because you and your people killed Jesus!”
Almost without missing a beat, Jamie said, “I’m sorry, Mrs.
Shaughnessy! I didn’t mean to do it! And I promise I’ll never do it again!”
The rest of his message focused on forgiveness and
reconciliation, and as I said, it was amazing. I mention this because there’s a
common thread running through all of the scriptures this morning, and that’s
forgiveness. This is one of the thorniest topics in Christianity. Every time we
recite the Apostles’ Creed, we remind ourselves that we believe in the
forgiveness of sins—that is, we believe that God forgives the sins that we
commit. Also, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to forgive our debts.
But we often have trouble practicing the other part of that prayer: forgiving
our debtors; forgiving those who have sinned against us. This is tricky.
It’s even trickier when we watch a family member or a
friend who is suffering, who has been hurt by another person. We’re very quick
to take on that pain and respond in anger. What do we do with that anger?
Whether you are the victim or just someone who knows and loves the victim, what
are you supposed to do? As a Christian, what’s the appropriate response?
Invariably, any time these questions come up, someone will
say: “As Christians, we’re supposed to forgive.” And somewhere in that discussion,
someone will quote some scripture, such as this morning’s Gospel lesson, in
which Peter asks Jesus: “Lord, if another member of the
church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven
times?” Jesus replies, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
Then Jesus goes on to tell a parable about a king and his unforgiving servant. The
servant owes a debt to his master that’s so great he will never be able to
repay it. The servant begs for forgiveness, and the king responds by canceling
the debt. It defies all explanation. And then the servant goes out to collect
on debts that others owe him, but he won’t forgive those debts, so the king
says to the servant: “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?” Then the king sends the servant off for punishment, and Jesus
concludes by saying, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you,
if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Does that mean we have to forgive everyone who hurts us? No
matter what? I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s an oversimplification
that Jesus commands us to forgive everyone and to forgive unconditionally.
There are some problems with reading this passage so broadly that we turn this
into a blanket of forgiveness to everyone and for everything.
First, we can’t look at this story in isolation; we have to
look at its context. Earlier in this chapter, Jesus tells the parable of the
lost sheep. In that parable, Jesus says:
If a shepherd has a
hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the
ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And
if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the
ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in
heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
And then in last week’s
Gospel lesson, Jesus gives instructions to the disciples regarding reproach and
discipline within the church: sinners are counseled to repent from their sins,
so that they may be reconciled to one another. And that’s the key: In these
stories, Jesus’ instructions are about dealing with repentant sinners who wish
to be reconciled to the community.
There’s also a problem with the way we hear the word,
forgive. When we hear this word in English, we think of forgiveness as an
intellectual act; we simply forget the hurt, as if we’d never been wronged. But
that’s not exactly how the disciples, or the members of Matthew’s community,
would have heard the word aphiemi,
the Greek word that’s most commonly translated as “forgive.” Matthew’s
community would have heard Jesus say, “let go,” “send away,” “cancel, “pardon,”
“leave,” “give up,” “divorce,” and “abandon;” and they would also have heard,
“forgive (debts)” and “forgive (sins).”[1] According to New Testament
scholar Maria Mayo:
These meanings suggest
that interpersonal forgiveness in the time of the composition of the Gospels
had an active or outward character and was not only a matter of changing one’s
mind or feelings (an inward action) …. In most cases, the verb depicts a
concrete action, usually taken toward another person. Given this semantic range
for aphiemi, first-century hearers
would have understood forgiveness to have an active character. In other words,
it is something one does (words spoken, action taken, physical things altered)
rather than something one feels.[2]
This is also true for
Hebrew verbs; they express action, more than a state of mind or a feeling. To
love God is to show our love through our actions; to love our neighbor is to
demonstrate that love through our concrete actions. Forgiveness, like love, is
about what we do. But—and this is really important—forgiveness, as Jesus
instructs the disciples, only comes after repentance; it only comes after the
sinner has turned away from the sin.
Sometimes, we in the Church do the wrong thing; we think of
forgiveness only as a change of heart, and then we take Jesus’ instructions on
forgiveness out of context. When we exclude repentance from this picture, we
misunderstand Jesus. And in our misunderstanding, we make grave mistakes. For
instance, we often tell women who are victims of domestic violence to forgive
their husbands or boyfriends and reconcile, even if the husband or boyfriend is
unrepentant. And by “we,” I mean pastors and parishioners, alike. We misuse the
biblical text to compel the victim to forgive the sinner. We say things like,
“the Bible tells you to forgive,” or, “you have to forgive him so you can get
on with your life.” And sometimes, abused women follow this advice, only to
return and suffer more abuse.
This kind of forgiveness as an intellectual exercise,
forgiveness without repentance, this is what the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer
called cheap grace:
Cheap grace means grace
as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed
as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of
God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to
secure remission of sins.[3]
That is, if you or I
offer forgiveness as a general principle, if we offer grace simply because we
heard this parable and thought, “my salvation depends on me offering forgiveness
to everyone who has harmed me,” then we’re missing the point. It’s not about
us. We can’t work our way into God’s grace.
This doesn’t let us off the hook when it comes to
forgiveness; what this means is that we’re not supposed to use this text from
the Gospel of Matthew to browbeat another Christian into forgiving every
offense that person has suffered. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that
holding onto anger and pain is a good thing.
Unresolved pain and anger can get in the way of truly
following Jesus. Holding on to the hurt can lead us to seek revenge, even
though we know that vengeance belongs only to God. Holding on to the hurt can
prevent us from living into the fullness of God’s love. And holding on to the
hurt can also poison those we love.
So how do we get past that kind of anger, that fire of
judgment that consumes us? Bonhoeffer urges us to pursue costly grace for
ourselves:
Costly grace is the
gospel which must be sought again and
again, the gift which must be asked
for, the door at which a person must knock.
Such grace is costly because it calls
us to follow, and it is grace because
it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.
It is costly because it costs us our life, and it is grace because it gives us
the only true life.[4]
Bonhoeffer reminds us
that our true identity is in Christ; our true life is in Christ. Jealousy,
hatred, and revenge are things of the world. We can’t focus on those things and
also follow Christ. These things are burdens; these things are stumbling
blocks, yet it is difficult to let go of the hurts we have received and the
hurts that have been done to our loved ones. Let’s not pretend it’s easy to
forgive. Instead, let’s give our burdens over to God and to one another. Let’s
pray for the hurts and let’s pray for those who hurt us. Forgiveness is a
process, and it follows repentance. Let us use the witness of Scripture
carefully; not as a club, but as a way to the costly grace of following Jesus. Thanks
be to God. Amen.
Benediction
Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that
we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world, the world
today. We are called to go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and
love and reconciliation. Do not return evil for evil to any person, but know
that we are all loved by God, and that we are called to reflect that love to
everyone we meet. Go forth and be the salt of the earth and the light of the
world. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!
[1]
Maria Mayo, The Limits of Forgiveness:
Case Studies in the Distortion of a Biblical Ideal. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press (2015), pp. 14-15.
[2]
Mayo, p. 15.
[3]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Cost of Discipleship,” reprinted in A Testament to Freedom: The Essential
Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson,
eds. New York: HarperOne (1995), p. 307.
[4]
Bonhoeffer, p. 308.
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