The Peril of Forgiveness
David C. Myers
September 14, 2008
Matthew 18:12 - 22
Text: "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven." . . . Matthew 18:2
Note: As a prelude to this sermon, a word of introduction needs to be said. This morning's Scripture less from Matthew deals with the problem of divisions among the members of the early faithful community - not entirely unlike those that might emerge in any local church. On first glance the three parts of the text appear to be somewhat contradictory, out of place. How does one reconcile:
1. the shepherd who searches for the one lost sheep gone astray; with,
2. the treatment of a brother or sister as "a gentile or tax collector"?; with; and,
3. the clear command to limitlessly forgive?
This sermon is my struggle to reconcile the three parts, also exposing some of the extremes the Scriptures evoke in us. I have purposely prepared this sermon in a way that will, I think, help us to see how important it is to study the Scriptures in total and not in chopped-up passages. There will be times in this sermon that I am speaking as sort of a devil's advocate; other times I will be speaking as a preacher. Hence, you will be able to say today that the "preacher spoke with forked tongue." I have also asked Carol Armstrong-Moore to help me in its delivery by reading portions of the Scripture lesson, sometimes rather loosely paraphrased.
"Lord, how often shall my brother or sister sin against me, and I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say seven times but seventy times seven."
There are few Scripture that I encounter that reveal my problem quite as bluntly as this one. You see, I have a tough time seeing anybody getting away with anything. It just goes against my sense of fairness. You do something wrong - you gotta pay for it! I expect that to happen in my life, therefore it oughtta happen to others. I am all in favor of forgiveness, mind you, as long as it is appropriate. Mercy is fine, as long as it is not an excuse for indifference to wrong. Let us have no weak-kneed, syrupy moral ooze passing as Christian grace and mercy. Let them ask for forgiveness, grovel if necessary. Forgiveness is fine, as long as it is not a means for somebody getting off scot-free. There are penalties for broken rules. Such are the mathematics of justice. This reminds me of a cartoon that came out years ago. It dealt with the prodigal son. The father was going down the road to meet his boy and the caption reads: "I'll be glad when this boy grows up; this is the sixth fatted calf I have had to kill." Oh! - and, while I'm at it, don't try to cover up sloppy moral thinking with sentimental stories about lost sheep.
"A shepherd has a hundred sheep," says Jesus. "One goes astray. The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes out to look for the one lost sheep and, when He finds it, rejoices more over that recovered sheep than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. It is not the will of My Father that one of these little ones should perish."
The one we call the Good Shepherd has this thing about lost sheep. God just loves to go looking for the lost, and doesn't want any sheep to stray from the fold. Such a sweet thought. But, . . . say we're not talking about little lost lambs, but a goat like . . . say, a drunk driver. Do you still think its sweet that the Good Shepherd is out beating the bushes for the lost? Some of you know that I serve on the Board of Trustees of West Virginia Wesleyan College. I want to share this letter I received this past Thursday morning that was sent to the Trustees from the president of the College, Dr. Pamela Balch:
I want to bring all of you up to date on the services and the campus response to the death of Daniel Duncan who was killed while riding his bike by a hit and run drunken driver on Route 20 past the high school. The police have arrested and placed the driver in jail. They had found his truck and later found him intoxicated and asleep. Daniel was an outstanding new freshman from Ohio, who became involved immediately with the Concert Chorale, Jazz Ensemble, Honors, and Cycling club. His family is very religious (his father is a minister) and their reaction to all of this is hard for any of us to imagine. The mom and dad actually went to the jail this afternoon to forgive the driver. They also went to the accident scene to get closure.
I want you to think of the worst thing anyone has ever done to you. The lie that was told about you, the betrayal by a friend, the time you were falsely punished, the person who gave you the shaft. Focus on that act and the person behind it. Now, picture yourself extending your hand, forgiving that person who so terribly wronged you. Will you agree with me that there is nothing as tough as forgiving someone?
Now, few would accuse the gospel writer of Matthew of ethical permissiveness. Matthew's Gospel is full of rules and regulations, standards for, and stress upon righteousness, higher righteousness for Jesus' people than even the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. This makes all the more perplexing the sloppy way in which Matthew records this story of the Lost Sheep, especially when you compare it to the Gospel of Luke's version. When Luke tells the same story (remember, Jesus told the story in Luke when His critics attacked Him saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them" - Luke 15:2), Luke has the Shepherd say:
'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost. . . . I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents (get that, repents) than over ninety-nine righteous person (like all us good people of the church) who have no need of repentance." Now, wouldn't the story of the good Shepherd make more sense in Matthew if he were Luke's Good Shepherd out looking for repentant sheep? Forgiveness is fine - as long as the forgiven grovels first. There have got to be limits.
Unfortunately, Matthew's Shepherd is out looking for strays, whether they are repentant or not.
OK - we have heard the story about the family of the music student; and a few years ago we heard the story about the Amish community that forgave the man who burst into their school and shot and killed several students. But . . . some of us have also studied Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian who determined that Hitler was so evil he must be killed. No forgiveness there. And what about . . . well, this is the anniversary weekend of 9/11 . . . Osama bin Laden? What does a good Christian do when dealing with a non-groveling Osama bin Laden who not only isn't repentant, but continues to terrorize the world? The sweet sheep story sort of disintegrates, doesn't it, when one of the sheep the Shepherd shows up with is the leader of, or at least perpetrator of world terrorism? So maybe that's why Jesus catches Himself, after that sweet little story about the Shepherd taking back the lost sheep, and follows it with some more sensible, more realistic advice.
"If your brother sins against you go tell him about it. If he listens, great. If he doesn't listen, bring him before the whole church and, if he won't even listen to the church and do right, let him be to you as a Gentile and tax collector."
You, you Gentile! You IRS, tax collecting stoolie, you! As much as we live in fear of the IRS, somehow this insult just doesn't have the same impact that it did in first century Israel. But non-the-less, we still get the idea. Jesus now seems to be saying, "Sure, go out and seek them like the good Shepherd. But no need to overdo it." When you've been wronged, try to settle it on your own. If that doesn't work, go public with your problem. And if that fails, treat him as a Gentile and tax collector. I like the idea of limits. Treating bad people like the religious people of Jesus times they treated Gentiles and tax collectors would be appropriate. They were seen as evil; they were unclean. I take some comfort that Jesus threw this qualification in here. Otherwise, if He had left it with just the story of the Shepherd and the sheep, someone might have justly accused Jesus of irresponsibility, moral permissiveness, or ethical sentimentality. After all, that's why so many of the more conservative and fundamentalist churches are more at home preaching from Paul's letters with its prescriptive set of behaviors for the early churches than they are from the Gospel. And it's about at this point in the Scripture that Peter speaks up. And this time Peter speaks, I think, for most of us as we try to grapple with the meaning of Jesus' ethical teachings. "Lord, did you say there were limits? What are the limits? Three strikes, then you're out? One warning and then you get punished? No, that's right, we're Christians. The world's doormats. OK, let's say, just to show that we are long-suffering, we forgive seven times. Is that what you mean, Jesus?"
"And Jesus replied, 'I'd suggest something more akin to seventy times seven."
And even Peter, who was about as lousy at arithmetic as he was at theology, knew Jesus wasn't kidding. So what about that earlier business of telling them to their face, then to the church, then treating them as a Gentile and a tax collector? I think that business is the key to this whole passage. If it isn't, then these verses are a hopeless muddle; Jesus saying one thing in his parable about the Shepherd and the lost sheep, taking it back with a hard line on the bit of having some limits to forgiveness, then linking it with a complete non-sequitor about forgiving seventy times seven - which means, for all intents and purposes, forgiving without limits. If Jesus was playing this thing straight, about calling our brother or sister a Gentile and a tax collector, then the whole thing is a muddle. But, . . . You have to watch Jesus also because you have to interpret what He says by what He does.
"Tell him to his face," Jesus says, "And then, if he still doesn't say he's sorry, tell it to the church. And if even that doesn't work, treat him like you would a gentile or a tax collector, that'll fix 'em."
It's really a setup. Did you ever reflect on how Jesus treat's Gentiles, tax collectors, and sinners? Lest we forget, let's remember that Jesus is the one of whom it was said,
"Now tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Him. And the Pharisees and the scribes murmured against Him saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." (Luke 15:2)
According to Matthew's Gospel, the first people to show up in Bethlehem to visit the Christ-child were three wise men (translate: Magi - which means astrologers) bearing gifts. Three Gentile Magi, those three. Again in Matthew, one of the first healings by Jesus was of the servant of a Roman centurion (Matthew 8:5-13). Jesus was, indeed, a light to the Gentiles. And one day, when Jesus was hanging out with a bunch of sinners, He called as a disciple one whose name would be given to this Gospel, Matthew. Do you remember Matthew's occupation when Jesus called him. No, Matthew was not a Gentile. Worse than that, Matthew was a tax collector. Are you beginning to get the picture? Jesus told us to treat the unrepentant offender as a "gentile and a tax-collector". And Jesus ought to know, for He had enough first-hand experience with that sort of people. Is that why Jesus says, "Where two or three are so gathered (eating and drinking with sinners and tax collectors?) in My name (the way I gathered unto myself the folk who you exclude) I am there in the middle of them." If we are going to be close to Jesus, we must act toward the world as He acted. And so He taught us to pray like this,
"Lord, because I know that I sin, 'Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us'."
Which really says, "Forgive us our sins as we have already forgiven those who sin against us." (Matt. 6:12) Especially because sometimes, the sins we are so busy binding on those Gentiles and tax collectors (or in this political season, on Democrats or on Republicans) are our own. In the midst of the Gospel reading this morning, Jesus said:
Truly I tell you, whatever you bind up on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Sometimes the forgiveness we pronounce on another is forgiveness for ourselves. There is a link between our self-righteous condemnation of others and dishonesty about ourselves. The worst sort of unforgiveness is to presume we don't need forgiveness. So sometimes the Gentile and the tax collector that we are busy excluding from the fellowship and binding up with condemnation often, and surprisingly, is us. For in the searching moral gaze of God's eyes, we're all Gentiles and tax collectors. The stray sheep that the Shepherd is out seeking may just be us, whether we have strayed from the path discipleship through whom we condemned in thought, word, or deed.
To paraphrase Pogo - and much to our surprise - we have met the Gentiles and tax collectors, and they are us. And today's good news is, that's just the sort of the lost Jesus loves to save.