15th Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 50:15-21 Psalm 103:1-13 Romans 14:1-12 Matthew 18:21-35 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who forgives and calls us to forgive. Amen Our lessons for today deal with forgiveness, this complex action that rests at the heart of Jesus’ ministry and the way of life to which he calls his disciples. all throughout his teachings he has reinforced the idea that forgiveness is key, even to the point of teaching them to pray, “forgive us our debts as we forgive the debts of others.” now Jesus and the disciples are talking about what happens when relationships in community are broken, earlier in the conversation Jesus has detailed a path to reconciliation with specific steps So now seems like a good time to clarify once and for all what Jesus expects and our friend Peter jumps into the breach. “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Once again by opening his mouth Peter shows that he has missed the point, Jesus responds “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Forgiveness is not always a one and done thing, it is a continual action, a process, a way of life and often has more to do with the one doing the forgiving than the one being forgiven. The best definition of forgiveness that I have come across came from a speaker I heard when I went to Israel/ Palestine in seminary, she was a part of a group of families who had lost loved ones to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, families from both sides came together to share their grief and to work for peace, so for this presentation there were two speakers, a Palestinian woman whose husband had been killed by Israeli defense forces during a random traffic stop and an Israeli woman whose son had been killed by a Palestinian sniper while he was on patrol as part of his monthly army service. It was the Israeli mother who tried to define forgiveness, and while I’m sure it is not original to her, I always associate it with her. She said that for her, her working definition of forgiveness was giving up the right to revenge. This definition rings true to me for a couple of reasons, first it is from the perspective of the one who has been wronged, and it acknowledges that in many cases the wrong would understandably be cause to seek revenge, the old an eye for an eye justice, which according to Jesus makes the whole world blind and Revenge has a way of consuming the individual seeking it. In the movie the Princess Bride, the character Inigo Montoya has spent his whole life seeking the six fingered man who killed his father. His waking hours have been practicing sword fighting and he knows exactly what he will say when he meets the man “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.” In the course of the movie the six fingered man is killed and then Inigo reflects “I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I do not know what to do with the rest of my life.” In seeking revenge Inigo allowed the six finger man to take his life as well as the life of his father. Forgiveness as giving up the right to revenge also allows space for anger, often the words forgive and forget are paired together, but more often that is not possible, nor is it practical and it is right for the one wronged to be angry. Forgiveness does not mean that the wrong done to a person is okay, it means that the person who has been wronged has chosen to stop the cycle of violence, and to move forward with their life and this takes time, not seven times but seventy-seven times, committing again and again to moving forward with life, working for peace in community and sometimes when the one who has sinned is repentant, relationships are able to be repaired. Our reading from Genesis is one such example, the scene is the culmination of a long and tumultuous relationship between Joseph and his brothers. Remember Joseph is the youngest brother, the favorite Daddy’s boy who gets the fancy coat. His brothers are jealous so they sell him into slavery and fake his death to their father to cover their tracks. Joseph ends up in Egypt and after much hardship rises high in the ranks of advisors of the pharaoh. When the brothers come to Egypt seeking food during a famine Joseph recognizes them and pulls a couple of tricks on them before revealing who he is, forgiving his brother’s and sending them home with food. Now we have another forgiveness scene, Much time has passed and Jacob dies, Now Joseph’s brothers are worried that Joseph only forgave them while their father was alive and now that he is gone he will take revenge on them, so they plot to secure their safety, through inventing a final wish of their father, that Joseph forgive his brothers and once again they fall before their brother weeping and seeking forgiveness Joseph’s response is remarkable he says “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.” Over the long arc of his life Joseph has not only given up the right to revenge but he has been able to see how God was able to make the best of a bad situation, to bring good out of evil, Joseph has made it to a place where he and his brothers can be in relationship, even without their father. This didn’t happen overnight, it took a lifetime. When Peter asks Jesus how many times he must forgive he’s missing the point of forgiveness, he’s looking to see how many boxes he must check off to be right with God before moving on. Jesus’ reply shows that forgiveness is a way of life and that God expects us to be changed by both the giving and receiving of forgiveness. And Jesus practices what he preaches, making forgiveness a way of life, constantly offering us grace and mercy, setting us free in our relationship with God and turning us back out to the world to forgive others, and Jesus knows this is not easy, that we will need some encouragement and strength along the way, which is why at the last supper with his disciples he promised to come to us in bread and wine, body and blood, forgiveness tangible in the crumbs between our teeth and the wine sliding down our throats, forgiveness becoming a part of who we are, all because of the grace and mercy of God. Amen
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AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
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