and our salvation
Proper 19A | Matthew 18:21-35
Peter’s asking the question we’re all thinking.
Jesus is talking about restoration, healing, bringing people back together. Forgiving sin. He offers his followers a process, right? [We heard about that last week.] And the point seemed pretty clear.
If someone in the church sins against someone else, try to bring them back in.
That’s when Peter asks it:
“Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?”
I can imagine Peter saying I get the twenty-thousand foot view—what we’re supposed to do in the abstract—if somebody sins, I forgive. Sure. Got that. And if they sin again, I get that I’m to do that forgiving again. But…we can’t really keep that up forever, can we?
I know that’s exactly what we’re thinking. Because I hear variations of this all of the time. It’s why we talk about “teaching a man to fish” or how we “can’t help them for the rest of their lives.”
There has to be a line for us because clearly there’s a line for others.
And then, when we start digging into all of the different sins…let’s just say that our capacity can seem quite limited.
Seven Times
I’m particularly fond, though, of how Peter wrestles with it. Because he doesn’t ask if he needs to forgive more than once. He isn’t acting like forgiveness is one-and-done. He assumes it is a repeatable process. And he rightly assumes Jesus wants him to keep at it.
What he’s asking about, and, again, I know a lot of people are right there with him, is this: Jesus, tell us the upper limit. How much forgiving the same stuff do we need to do?
Is seven times enough?
He picks a number that seems like a lot. A week’s worth of forgiving.
We also know that seven is an important number for our tradition. Because it is on the seventh day that God rested. It is the Sabbath.
And in this tradition, the Sabbath applies, not only to everyone, but everything. Livestock get a Sabbath. The fields get a Sabbath.
We all get a break. And we give a break to our property.
So, in a sense, Peter is not only asking about the limits of forgiveness. He’s asking for a break from it. When can I stop forgiving the person who hurts me?
And Jesus’s response amounts to “never.”
Habits
Not only is seven not enough, but we’re going to make the base number so many more times that number, your brain can’t even comprehend it.
If you’ve ever tried to make yourself remember to do something over and over again, you know how time works against your remembering. We don’t really have a sense of it.
Think about something you may want to start doing. Like going to the gym. More people have gym memberships they don’t use regularly than people who actually do show up. Not because we want to pay for something we don’t use. But because we want to use them. And we think we will. Just not today. Every day we say “just not today.”
Nobody who goes to the gym everyday got there by waking up each morning and saying “You know what? I might like going to the gym today!” That’s nobody’s daily lived experience.
But we do get up, see a reminder that we need to work out, and make the decision to do something we have plenty of excuses for not doing.
Nobody just starts a habit. Not without intention, a plan, and the support to keep it up.
So, to take this example a tiny bit further: say we’ve got our plan together, we’re hitting the gym every day, and we’re feeling pretty comfortable. How long do researchers believe we need to do something before it becomes ingrained? A real habit? Do you have a guess?
About seven weeks.
Seven weeks with seven Sabbaths. That’s the Jubilee.
7 x 7 = Jubilee
In the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, where we get the commandments, we also get a command people really, really don’t want to do. We never have. And one way more important than abstaining from shellfish and wearing cotton blends.
God commands that every seven years, we give a Sabbath to everything. Everything needs a rest. Then, every seven Sabbath years, we have a special year, the Jubilee year, when everything and everyone is restored. All debts are forgiven. All slaves or prisoners are freed. And all property goes back to its original owners. Every fifty years, we’re commanded to do this.
The native land we’re currently on, was supposed to go back before this church was built. So, when we talk about starting our blank slates now, we’re forgetting the back taxes we owe an entirely different nation and people.
The heart of this command, however, is not just about figuring out who owned what fifty years ago. Or throwing open the prison doors, expecting the world to just make do. Though these things are part of the deal.
The Jubilee, like Sabbath and like Jesus’s Way of Love, is about freedom, restoration, wholeness. It is a command to embody Shalom. In our lives, our churches, and our communities.
It is an ordering of society that wouldn’t allow Europeans to slaughter native populations and keep their land. And if they do that, it is an ordering to correct that abuse, that sin. To restore things. In sum: it is to discourage future abuse and correct present abuse.
And if we imprisoned people with a heart toward restoration (and not just punishment), we would be preparing prisoners and the community for restoration. We’d plan for it. We’d do the work to make restoration an actual thing.
Which means we care enough for our neighbor that they can return to our neighborhood.
We wouldn’t actually fear other people’s freedom. Because we’d ensure they could thrive in it.
Forgiveness is the given
With Jesus, forgiveness is the given. We don’t get to hate, punish, or lock someone up and throw away the key. Not really. Or faithfully. This is a truth in which every exception proves the rule. Proves how we have let people down, destroyed their opportunities, and made their lives unforgiveable and unredeemable.
We produce sickness and division, rather than address inequality, or wrestle with the command to give things back. Free people of their shackles. Help restore all people.
This, too, is the underlying assumption of the parable Jesus tells. That forgiveness is the given with God. With people…not so much. So he tells a story of a debtor whose debts are forgiven. And rather than forgive the debts of others, he exploits them.
This is a striking parable. In many ways. But it is designed to assume our struggle with forgiveness. The assumption that we love being freed and loath freeing others. Not because this is natural to the human condition, but because the will to exploit is a cancer endemic to powerful communities.
And Jesus knows that we won’t see our love and loathing of freedom as connected. Just as connected as our love for God and for our neighbor is connected.
God’s love is freeing. And our work is freeing.
Remember last week I said that we have too high a view of sin and too low a view of mercy? This is why that matters.
Because we don’t get to imprison others and refuse to restore them. And this idea, this command, doesn’t remain theoretical. It’s our work.
Not just pre-clearing the small sins as if they’re nothing, calling the most heinous sins “unforgivable,” and leaving traffic violations to God. Nor are we forgiving before repentance or claiming restoration before the work is done.
This dream of God’s is much simpler than what we do now! Love and forgive. And order our lives to make forgiveness that much easier. It’s a good habit to make.
This is our work. And it is for us now.
Our work, then, is in our prisons, our health centers, and in our schools. In homeless shelters and the halls of congress. It is rehabilitating those who have hurt people and it is changing the law to restore lives rather than condemn them.
It is about our past, present, and future. We are restoring. And we are giving new life.
That’s the big work for us and our community. For us here, in the church, it is in seeing every person as neighbor. And every neighbor as recipient of the reconciling love of Christ.
We can be so fixated on the capacity of sin and the limits of mercy we forget that our job isn’t to collect the sins of other people. Many are convinced that we are to be case managers of sin, cataloging every mistake—but we’re not! We are agents of restoration. Builders of beloved community. Calling people in.
We open ourselves to the capacity of grace. And we rebuild our community to support the transformative power of grace. So the broken may be mended and the mended may help other mend.
Making the improbable more probable and the grace of God real. Here. For everyone.
Forgiving easily and helping others be more easily forgiven. Forgiven and free.