Indebted
Exodus 14:19-31; Matthew 18:21-35

September 15, 2002

There are only two stories in the Bible - events actually. All the rest are variations, commentaries, or filling in of the details. The parting of the Red Sea is the story that tells the rest of the Old Testament; while the resurrection on the third day of Easter is the story that informs every other tale of the New Testament and the Christian Church.

Hearing the recitation of the event at the Red Sea has its drawbacks: we can easily get lost in the details for they are so exciting and intriguing. There are some who believe the truth of the story is in the scientific veracity of each detail. But the real truth is in the forest, the forest which is God’s action for us.

The ancient Israelites saw that when God created the world, the act of creation establishes order. The opposite of order is chaos and the prime symbol of this chaos is water or the sea. To make walls of the waters of the sea is to impose order and consistency and predictability to that which refuses to be shaped. Only God can create such order.

Israel, therefore, was snatched from death, but it was never Moses who brought about redemption. God is always the actor who calls the worlds into being, who creates and makes new, who redeems the lost and resurrects the dead.

The Red Sea doesn’t make sense, nor does the Resurrection. No surprise here. The power of these events is not that miracles happen, but that God is alive. Together these events demonstrate the humanly unpredictable presence of God.

In between these two primal stories, the details emerge for you and me. Peter wants details, what are the trees in the forest? How many times should I forgive? Up to seven times, he asks magnanimously.

This was a hotly debated issue during the first century, and the consensus seems to have been three times. The fourth time you sin against me, you’re out. Several first-century rabbis declare this judgment, and we have the repeated offender act which rules that after three convictions of certain crimes, the usual limits for time in prison are waived.

Peter most likely thought that if he doubled the conventional limit of forgiveness, threw in an extra time for good measure, he would be congratulated by his teacher for extraordinary forgiveness. I can hear Jesus responding slowly, “not seven times,” and then a pregnant pause. “But seventy times seven.”

490 times, that’s silly. Have you ever forgiven the same person for the same fault four times? If so, in the first century and the twenty-first, you are a remarkable person - but no saint, simply a beginner in the Christian spiritual life. You and I would lose count of how many times you have forgiven the poor idiot at least by the 100th time. By that time as well, your soul would have made the decision to always forgive the sinner, or otherwise you would have creamed him or her long ago.

What is radically different in Jesus’ forgiveness mathematics is his starting point. Normally, you and I start from the fact that we have been violated, trespassed against, from the position that others have sinned. A little self-righteousness always finds an audience. The Christian act of forgiveness begins from the fact that you and I have sinned and are requiring forgiveness we do not necessarily deserve. As you have been forgiven, you cannot avoid forgiving others. Forgiveness means you are allowed to start life afresh and free. If you do not forgive, you are reverting to a way of life in which the same old grudges and trespasses matter more than freedom.

That unmerciful servant somehow had gotten himself into an incredible mess, owing 10,000 talents, several billion dollars, in a society which probably did not have a name for the number “billion.” He was forgiven of what he could never pay back, and yet he raged against a fellow slave for a debt that could have conceivably been repaid. His own debt he did not acknowledge - it was the punishment he wanted to avoid. The only thing he knew about himself is that he had been wronged.

The Biblical tales are not veiled that much: an unforgiving person who has been forgiven an infinite amount of money by a God with no end to forgiveness; a summons to forgive an unimaginable number of times; the rescuing from death of a lost people by a God who does the unthinkable, a God bigger than the universe, a God for whom numbers do not add up.

Yet, thinking about God is not a spectator sport. We love because God loved us first. We forgive because God has forgiven us and will forgive us innumerable times. Still, we are terribly human.

I am not saying is that there must be something wrong with those of us who have not yet forgiven another over a wrong. Some wrongs do indeed take longer to forgive; time tables for forgiveness are different. Feeling guilty over an inability to forgive usually results from misunderstanding what forgiveness is.

Forgiveness is not forgetting. Remembering what happened will help us to prevent future harm. It is unreasonable to expect that we can stop our memories.

If you were to ask Jesus if he remembered a fellow by the name of Judas Iscariot do you think Jesus would respond by saying, “No, never heard of him”?

Forgiveness is not toleration. If you can tolerate something then you don’t need to forgive it.

Forgiveness is not excusing something. We excuse something because we understand it. If we understood what has caused someone to act toward us with evil or mean intent we would not have to forgive. We would have an excuse for their behaviour. Forgiveness only counts when there is no excuse.

Forgiveness isn’t saying that the offense never happened - it did. Forgiveness isn’t saying everything is OK - it isn’t. Forgiveness doesn’t mean we no longer feel the pain - we do.

I have been forgiven well over 490 times for one of my sins - and I won’t tell you what it is! I cannot comprehend the infinity of God, but I have felt and experienced it. When I have forgiven, I find that my life and the life of the one I’ve forgiven have changed.

That is a starting point - being indebted to God, I forgive the debts of my neighbours and no longer know how to count.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan