Sunday, September 17, 2017

Forgiveness and living


Matthew 18:21-25

(Parable Series - Week 1. See Week 2Week 3 and Week 4)

When I was a kid, I was happily dragged around the country to different camps and church events, where my dad would speak to the grown ups and my mom would lead “creative dramatics” with the kids. Essentially, this meant acting out bible stories from a set of rhyming storybooks she brought along.  Today’s parable is one that I acted out so many times as a kid, with so many groups of strangers, that I can still remember the exact lines that once got me kicked out of the room. 

My mother was reading along, doing the voices of the characters, and fifty children were sitting cross-legged and rapt. We were getting to my favorite part.  I had surreptitiously positioned myself right next to her, almost facing the rest of the kids, and my heart was pounding wildly, as I worked up my courage for a surprise assist.
The moment came, and she read,
”How much does he owe?” The king asked the treasurer, standing below,
And lept up and I roared out the answer at the top of my lungs, “TEN THOUSAND!”
She was supposed to continue, “The treasurer’s answer was loud!
“Ten thousand!?' Exclaimed everyone in the crowd…”
But instead the energy in the room turned electric and all eyes swiveled to me, wide and worried. My mother pointed a stiff and shaking arm at the door, finger pointed like a sharp arrow, and said, “OUT!”
And, horrified, I stood and slunk out to the hallway where I wept bitterly.  

So, suffice it to say that I grew up really familiar with this parable, often called, “The Unforgiving Servant.”  Hearing this story maybe 100 times in my childhood gave me plenty of chances to either feel mildly convicted that I wasn’t more forgiving to my sisters or classmates, or smug that I wasn’t like this total fool of a servant who couldn’t appreciate what he’d been given.  We like to turn parables into morality tales and either smack ourselves with them or pat our own backs, and I bounced back and forth between both with this one.

But I never really heard the context of this story.  I never heard that this parable was Jesus’ response to Peter, when Peter asked Jesus how many times we should forgive another member in the church who has hurt or offended us.  Jesus had just been talking about conflict in community, and Peter was left mulling this question.
I have some empathy for Peter – it’s a great question. Peter thinks to himself, over, and over and over again I go through the work of forgiving someone who hurts me. Who among us has not asked this question? I certainly have.
So when is enough? He thinks. When can I stop? How much am I expected to put up with?
So then, maybe stretching to the outer limits of his capacity, he suggests a number, a good, large, and even holy-sounding number, and ventures, How about seven times? Surely that is a beyond generous amount, right Jesus?

And Jesus tells him – try seventy times that.  In other words- infinity times, Peter. Just keep on going till you lose track. There is no end to forgiveness. No point at which you’ve reached the limit.  No strikes or chances, no lifetime maximum out of pocket amount.

And then he tells this parable. And to be honest, if Jesus was going for some parable to talk about forgiveness’ limitlessness, surely he could have thought of something better. Because the king gives this guy exactly one chance and then sends him to eternal torture. Which kind of goes against what Jesus just said about forgiveness. So… what’s up with this story, Jesus?

 “The kingdom of heaven is like…” he says, “a king, who forgives a slave more than he could ever possibly repay. To put it in perspective, this is the equivalent of 200,000 days wages. This man is trapped under unfathomable debt with no future ahead, even if the king sells him, all his possessions, and his family he wouldn’t even begin to recoup what he’s owed. 
But the king forgives it all. All of it. He requires nothing of the man, doesn’t ask him how he got to be so in debt, doesn’t set up a reasonable interest-free repayment plan. He wipes the slate clean. He shows him mercy.  In one fell swoop, everything changes for the servant.  

Biblical scholar Craig Koester says, “Forgiveness is the declaration that the past will not define the future… It is not acceptance of the past… Forgiveness opens up a future that the past has closed off.” 

No matter what this man has done, no matter what he deserves or owes, all that is over now.  Instead of living his whole life trying to get out of debt he will never begin to make a dent into, the King hands the man a life that begins in mercy, in forgiveness, in the possibility of freedom.  A new future is opened to him. He is freed from the old story, the old identity, to step into this new future as a new person. The former slave is invited to live in the fullness of his forgiven-ness.  

But, the parable continues. And he goes out and grabs the first guy he sees that owes him money, this fellow slave who owes him about 100 days wages, (that’s 199,900 less, ½ of 1%, of what he owed to the king) and demands that the guy pay up immediately.  
There is no solidarity or shared humanity. No, hey! Guess what just happened to me! kind of sharing.  No passing on of the mercy he’s just received. There is only transaction and owing, competition and self-protection. It’s as though this thing with the King had never happened.
And so, the story goes, upon hearing of his actions, the king summons him back and furiously heaps back onto him his entire debt, and the full and terrible consequences of non-payment. 
And then, just to make sure the message hit home, Jesus tacks onto the story “so my heavenly father will do to all of you if you don’t forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.” 

Oh, Peter, what did you do?
You just got yourself in deeper!  Now not only do you have to forgive seventy times seven times, but you have to do it from your heart. You’ve got to mean it, Peter. Every time.

Forgiveness is a tricky thing for us. We get all tangled up in it – sometimes we see it as letting someone get away with someone, being a doormat, like “I forgive you” really means,  “Oh that’s ok, what you did to me isn’t so bad.”  Sometimes we feel loyal to our pain – we stroke it and stoke it, longing for our injury to be recognized as unjust and wrong, and act as though forgiving someone else is to somehow to betray ourselves.

Our culture at the moment is particularly brutal when it comes to forgiveness or mercy. Mercy is defined as, “compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.”  These days it seems we want to punish all those it is in our power to punish. And it’s so easy. With technology and social media, to ruin someone’s life or reputation as payback for something awful they’ve done – and regular folks can get in on the action, and do, every day!  
We are a nation of vigilante justice-seekers, ready to right wrongs by tearing down the bad guys, (who are bad, by the way, because they tore someone down) so they got what was coming to them!  From a distance, though, it’s awfully hard to tell the difference between “right and justified” dehumanization and “wrong and evil” dehumanization. It all just looks like people denying one another's personhood and degrading others for one reason or another.  We will hold accounts and never release you from your past wrongs.  
We are all for Forgiveness, most of the time. But some people, we like to tell ourselves, don't deserve forgiveness.
But that's just the thing.
'Forgiveness' doesn't belong in the same zip code as 'deserve' - they are completely different languages, contradictory accounting systems. Forgiveness and deserve are more like opposites, since forgiveness frees us from a system of gauging and measuring, and puts us instead into the realm of God's own inner life - bundles and unlimited love.  


When forgiveness enters in, it sweeps our souls out and announces to all who will listen that past suffering, pain, betrayal or burdens, don’t get to entrap us or shape our future. Those who have injured us don’t get to redefine us forever by their actions. Forgiveness means our identity is shaped by our belovedness, instead of by our woundedness. 

Jesus loved to use parables to take some point to an absurd extreme to highlight the contrast between the way of fear and the way of God. This whole conversation – even before Peter’s question, but in it too, has its basis in how do we treat each other in the church. If someone in the church sins against me… Peter asked. 
How do we live together as those who have chosen to embrace and be defined by the way of God? A way of life that where we begin in grace and abundance instead of earning and proving, in generosity and care for one another, instead of self-preservation and isolation, that sees each other as brother and sister instead of competition.  It begins in the very being of the One who embraces us and claims us, a God whose very nature is love, spilled out on us and lived out through us in the world. 
In this way of life, this reality we choose to see and abide in, forgiveness is the currency, it’s God’s own lifeblood. It’s how how we remain free, how we receive the grace we’re given and how we go deeper toward the hope to which we are called in God. 

It doesn’t achieve the end of making you right, or settle a score. It isn’t something people get to deserve or work toward or lose. That’s the old way of talking and thinking. No, forgiveness is how we experience our true humanity, and how we live into it as children of this God whose being is love.

The slave in our parable was forgiven more than he could repay in fifteen lifetimes, and then immediately and violently demanded someone repay a debt to him. This is like celebrating sobriety with a drinking binge, like running back into the burning building you were just rescued from, like scrapping the Ten Commandments for the golden calf and pining for the slavery of Egypt.  He sticks with his old identity instead of the new one offered him by the king. He says, “Thanks, but no thanks” to a life of freedom and generosity, and chooses to live in the way of debt, and indebtedness, where people keep track, and there is no forgetting, no forgiving, no freedom.

Choose, then, which currency you wish to live in, which way you want to define you and shape your life.  If you choose a world without forgiveness, you choose to be chained to the suffering of the past.  You choose to repeat old hurts, to live them current, to nurture and tend the pain, with no chance of release.
If you choose this reality, for yourself, you choose it for those around you – you practice it and welcome it and spread it, and this will be the reality you will live in.

And I can’t help feeling like Jesus told this story to Peter, along with its dire warning at the end, with a twinkle in his eye, his words like a shove on Peter’s shoulder, to highlight to him the absurdity of his question:
How much forgiveness is enough, Jesus, before I can stop and be done with it already?
How much freedom from injury do I have to endure, before I get to be trapped in resentment? 
At what point am I allowed to quit living in a future defined by love?
Is seven times a sacrificial and generous amount of forgiveness before it’s appropriate to throw in the towel and go back to hanging onto anger and betrayal?

Peter doesn’t know what’s coming. 
That Jesus will die and take into himself all suffering and betrayal, all pain and injustice. That none of it, ever, goes unseen, untended, unmet.  God himself will bear it all, all that has been and all that will be. And as the last breath leaves his human body, Jesus will look out at his murders and whisper, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
And they will cease being those who are killing God and instead become those on whom God has poured unending love.  He will die in freedom, and release them too, and us as well, taking into the heart of God all the terrible things we think and say and do to one another, everything, every one of us. 
And setting aside deserve and debt, punishment and payback, he will open to us mercy, grace, forgiveness and freedom.  All that is dead, between us, within us, around us, is swallowed up by Resurrection.  Our brokenness is now the ground from which new life is born, green and strong,  beautiful and eternal.

Put down your burdens; let them go. Christ has taken them up. 
In exchange for your woundedness he hands you belovedness.  
This is what defines you now; this is your identity.  
And forgiven-ness draws you into the being of God, and keeps you truly alive.
Amen.


Sunday, September 3, 2017

So, Sing



Sing  a new song. 
Try it.
Something completely new.  
Something you’ve never sung before.
 You don’t know the words, you can barely hum the tune, but sing it anyway.
Try it on for size…no, just jump in and belt it out. 

Maybe you don’t sing with the confidence you would if it were the old song, the familiar song, the song that makes sense and feels easy.  Maybe you don’t feel so comfortable with the instruments, or worry that you’ll be singing alone.

Tell you what – how about if we sing with you?  
And not just us, the whole earth – the chaotic seas will sing too, and they can’t sound more in tune than you do – the floods will clap their messy hands; just make a joyful noise, really, any noise will do. 

But make it loud, ok?  
Because the hills are going to join in on this, and really, the world itself, and all those who live in it.  It will be a song like no other, so get ready to sing. Are you ready?

This song, it means something.  
This is one reason it is a new song and not the old songs.

It is not a song of proper religion.  It is not a song of patriotism, or a song of war.  It is not a lament for how terrible things are, or a song of social consciousness or commentary.  This song simply can’t be sung by ‘us and them’, or played on bandwagons or soap boxes, and it’s not a rally song, a commercial jingle, or background music in an elevator.   It’s not like the old songs in any way at all, so you need to let all those go if you’re really going to sing this song.

This is not a lullaby we’ll be singing, here, this song is more of a wake up and take notice type song.  It is a remember and never, ever, ever forget kind of song.  It is a song for all the times when you were treated unfairly, and not only you, but all of those who were treated unfairly, ever –even by you. 
It is a song for the times you were overlooked and undervalued, the times you were nothing but a number, or a diagnosis, or an accessory, or a liability.  

This is a song for the ravaged and destroyed creation; over the parched, burning and starving earth, it sings crashing seas and clapping floods and quenching rain. And where she’s drowning in sorrow it lifts the ground from waterlogged sludge, and drapes it gently over the line to dry in the tender breeze and warm sun. It’s that versatile and powerful a song.

This is a song for all the times when evil won, and those times were many and great - countless, or so we thought - it sings right in the face of those times, it thrusts it’s wide eyes and unquenchable joy right up under the nose of those times and opens its mouth and belts out with all gusto right into the shocked and startled face of evil, knocking it down on its bottom to stare up in stunned standstill at the wild and mighty sound of the song. 

This is a song of justice that tears through the paper thin fragility of justice and liberty for all, that lifts up all the incidences – every single one – where injustice and oppression were really the rule, where lives didn’t matter as much as money, where people were forsaken for power – the song, you will hear it, has every one of their voices, loud and strong, vindicated and joyful, each forsaken child, every cheated worker, and every single starving, sick, disregarded or devalued human being that has ever been, all the silenced and ignored and unheeded voices will rise together in a sound so great that it shatters glass ceilings into a million pieces, reduces palaces to rubble and grinds diamonds to dust, they will sing out a sound so powerful it drowns out every bomb and bullet and lie and label, and quakes opens the prisons and graves and sets the captives free. 

So get ready, because this is some song.
 This is not just any song, it is the song of the earth for her king, her Creator; this is a song of all things made right.

But you know, this song, actually, is kind of a dangerous song. 
It is not a song for the faint of heart. 
We already discovered you don’t need to really know the words, or even the tune, you don’t have to have practiced or learned this song, in fact, there is really no way to do so, you just sing it. 
But you have to be willing to sing it.
Are you willing to sing it? 

Because if you hear this song you can’t ever go back.
You can’t pretend you didn’t hear it.  You can’t be the way you were before you sang it.  It changes you, but not just you; it changes everything. So if you’re comfortable with how things are, I mean, if you don’t really want to see things too terribly different, than you’d better not sing the song.
 Just to be safe. 

Because there are no secrets once this song has been sung. 
There is nothing hidden that doesn’t get revealed. 
And all the things that look strong, or sure, or important, they might seem kind of silly and stupid once you hear this song. 
So if you care a whole lot about those things, better not to sing it, at least not just yet.  Let them get tarnished first, broken in, disappointing, let the expectations get a little bit dashed and the frustration build a bit, because this song is for everyone and everything, except it is NOT a song for the satisfied. 

It is not a song for the secure and the worthy, for the strong and the powerful, and it certainly doesn’t make you right or tell you who’s wrong.
 It kind of makes a joke of all that, and if that is where you’re at, better to cover your ears and turn away for as long as you can stand it before it overpowers you, because you’re going to be really cut down to size and I can’t imagine that will be a very pleasant experience. 

But once you are, there is a place for you in this song too. 
Actually, it’s kind of the only way you can join in the song, is when you know that in singing it, you pass judgment on yourself, but you sing it anyway.

Because – and this is the most important part, maybe I forgot to say this – the song is not about you. 
It’s actually not really about any of us, or anything we know or have done or ever will do.  It’s about God.  It’s all about God. 
It’s about what God has done and what God will do. 
It’s about God who does things, and doesn’t just watch it all and keep to Godself. 
But God watches too, and doesn’t miss a thing, so there is nothing, nothing that doesn’t get made right in this song. 

It sounds like kind of a lot, and it is, actually.
It’s everything. 
Way more than you or I could ever bear.
Way more joy, and justice, than we would know what to do with in a thousand lifetimes. 
But we don’t really need to worry about it. 
We just need to pay attention.

 The chorus is coming.  And when you’re paying attention, you get to see that it has already started. Here and there it startles you, or makes you cry for no reason, or gives you a weird thrill of recognition and irrational hope.

 We’ve found ways to explain it away, the crazies, the anomalies, the exceptions, the sentimental or insane, but they’re not, really, they’re the song, peaking through the frayed seams, busting through a rip in the knee or a tear in a button-hole of the fabric of our so-called reality. 

The stranger stands and shouts a few notes before helping someone off the bus, the man on the overpass with the sign grips the change in his fist and hollers a bit of the melody into the passing traffic below, Chaplain Amy turns off the lights and walks past the doors of the sleeping or weeping children at Saint Joe’s, and she rings out a tone that echoes in the halls for a split second, the exhausted men and women fishing no longer strangers and their neighbors and dogs from the floodwaters and ferrying them to safety wring poignant harmony from the sweet sound of souls greeting and grasping each other in relief and welcome.

In fact, all over the world, if we just know how to listen, above us, beneath us, before us and afterwards too, we’ll hear that the song has begun; and the very earth itself is humming in anticipation.  Just lift your gaze to the red tipped treetops and breathe, or plunge your hand into some soil for a moment.  Close down the computer, shut off the phone, turn off the tv and lights and curl up at an open window as the day slips into night and crickets and katydids hold steady chorus beneath the city sounds.
The noise is building.

And we, here today, we sing the song. It’s what we do.  
It’s why in the world we come and do this thing called worship that accomplishes nothing at all, as any reasonable person familiar with the old songs could tell you.
We come here together to share song, to remember the truth, to recount the steadfast love of our Lord, the coming and sharing and dying and rising, backwards and upside down, breaking in and spilling out, never ending and always persisting salvation of our God-with-us.
We warm up our voices and pipe out a few notes in defiance of the deafening silence, in far-fetched musical mutiny to the grating discord of the world around us, and really, on its behalf, because like it or not, ready or not, the song is coming. 

So you might as well sing along.

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