The Church of St.
Paul and Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
September 13, 2020
Year A, Proper 19:
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 14:19-31
Psalm 114
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-25
The Power of Forgiveness
As
you can tell from the gospel lesson I just read and from the title accompanying
the service, today’s theme is forgiveness.
But,
before I get into that, I want to begin with a disclaimer.
Forgiveness
is very important – but it’s not the most important thing – and it’s definitely
not as important as wellbeing, as personal safety.
It
is a tragic fact of life that many people suffer from physical, psychological,
sexual abuse. The odds are that includes some of you.
If
it does, I hope you will reach out for help from someone you trust.
And, please know
that Jesus’ call to forgiveness is not a call to tolerate an abusive situation.
As
Jesus says elsewhere, “I came that you may have life, and may have it
abundantly.”
Amen.
I’m going to let
you in on a little-known fact about the Episcopal Church: just like Roman
Catholics, we offer sacramental confession.
It’s
true!
And, if you don’t believe me, you can look up
the service in the Prayer Book. It’s called “Reconciliation of a Penitent” and
it starts on page 447.
For
Roman Catholics, there was a time not so long ago when many people went to
confession very regularly, in many cases they went once a week, making sure
they were in a state of grace, which was necessary to receive Communion at
mass.
In
the Episcopal Church the attitude toward confession can probably best be summed
up as “all may, none must, some should.”
I
don’t know how many Catholics make confessions these days, not too many, I’m
guessing. But, I can tell you that, based on my experience, almost no Episcopalians
ask to make a confession – which is not surprising, but also too bad, because I
know that a lot of us carry around some pretty heavy guilt, guilt that may
require something a little more personal than the general confession and
absolution that we offer here each week.
Anyway,
in my almost thirteen years of priesthood, I can count on one hand the number
of times I have heard a confession. I mean, people tell me lots of stuff, of
course, but only rarely do they ask for the formal rite.
The
first time was not long after I had been ordained. I was serving as the
assistant at Grace Church in Madison. One day, someone (not a parishioner, not
someone I had ever met) called and asked if there was a priest who would be
available to hear her confession.
I
said yes and we set up a time to meet.
Since
at Grace a lot of people cut through the church to get from the parking lot to
the office, I suggested we meet in my office, where it would be more private.
As
we sat across from each other I explained the service and then asked if she would
like to tell me what had been burdening her.
One
of the interesting things about this experience is that I have absolutely no
memory of what this person told me. I couldn’t and wouldn’t tell you if I did
remember, but I actually don’t.
And,
for me that forgetfulness is a little taste of what God promises – not only to
forgive our sins, but to forget them.
Once
this woman was done unburdening herself, we said the prayers and she made her
formal confession and then…as I said the words of absolution and made the sign
of the cross, something remarkable happened that I will never forget.
It
was like all of the muscles in her face suddenly relaxed.
It
was like her eyes suddenly came alive.
It
was like the light around her suddenly grew brighter.
Somehow
the lifting of shame and guilt didn’t just have a spiritual or an emotional
effect, but it actually changed her physically.
The
person who left my office was not the same as the person who had entered.
The
power of forgiveness.
If
you were here last week, you may remember that we heard Jesus lay out a
procedure for what to do when one person in the church sins against us.
Jesus says, first,
go and speak to the person alone.
If that doesn’t
work, take one or two others with you.
If that doesn’t
work, tell the church.
And, if that
doesn’t work, Jesus says, “Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax
collector.”
Which sounds a lot
like this unrepentant person is to be cast out of the church forever – except
that we know that Jesus has a special love for the outcasts of the world – and
that we are commanded to share the Good News with absolutely everybody, to the
ends of the earth – very much including the people the world sees – and
sometimes we see - as not worth the trouble.
And now, we pick
up right where we left off last time.
And, interestingly
enough it’s Peter – who, as we know has a kind of hit-or-miss record – it’s
Peter who realizes the implication of the plan that Jesus has laid out.
Peter realizes
that Jesus’ plan is going to require a whole lot of forgiveness – and so he
wants to have a better idea of just how much forgiveness he will be required to
give.
Peter asks Jesus,
“Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I
forgive? As many as seven times?”
Now, let’s be
honest, depending on the person and depending on the offense, forgiving someone
seven times already sounds kind of above and beyond the call of duty, doesn’t
it?
But, for Jews, the
number of seven carried a sense of abundance and fullness. So, it seems that
Peter has almost gotten it right,
realizing that he and we are called to lots of forgiveness.
Which is hard
enough. So, we can imagine Peter’s surprise and maybe even dismay when Jesus
gives his answer, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
Which can also be
translated as seventy times seven times – and in Judaism the number seventy
embodied infinity.
We are called to
an infinite amount of forgiveness.
We are called to
forgive because God forgives us.
In fact, we are
called to forgive the way God forgives – over and over and, though it’s
challenging, maybe even forgetting the particulars of how we’ve been wronged.
And, the final little kicker from Jesus is
that if we choose not to use the awesome power of forgiveness then God
will not forgive us – which is truly something dreadful to contemplate,
isn’t it?
And, just in case
we still don’t get the point, Jesus offers a parable about an unforgiving
slave.
We’re told that
the slave owed his master ten thousand talents – that doesn’t mean anything to
us today but back then it was an almost comically huge amount of money – kind
of like saying he owed a gazillion dollars. Obviously, the slave has no hope of
ever paying that back and so the master is ready to sell him and his family and
his possessions but after the slave begs for forgiveness, the master relents
and releases him from his enormous debt.
But then, in such
a disappointing but so very human twist, this same slave who has received such
great forgiveness refused to offer forgiveness to those with much smaller debts
to him. And, when word of this un-forgiveness gets back to the master, he
throws the formerly forgiven slave into jail where he will remain until his
debt is paid, very bad news for the slave, since it will take forever.
And, Jesus issues
one last, kind of chilling, warning: “So, my heavenly father will also do to
everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from the heart.”
The
power of forgiveness.
I
want to tell you that I’ve had a hard time with today’s sermon.
It’s
not just the disclaimer I had to issue at the start.
Today,
more than usual, I’m preaching to myself at least as much as I’m preaching to
all of you.
Because,
the truth is, I’m not really in a forgiving mood.
Maybe
you can relate.
I’m
finding it hard to forgive leaders who clearly do not have our best interests
in mind.
I’m
finding it hard to forgive so many in our country who have ignored decades of
loud and clear warnings about the damage we were doing to our planet – and now,
look, the West is burning. And, what is yet to come?
I’m
finding it hard to forgive the people I see every day who stubbornly refuse to
wear a mask, who won’t social distance, who still think Covid is a hoax, and
now, look, we’re still losing on average somewhere between 800 to 1,000 people
every day, and so many of our teachers and students are stuck trying to teach
and learn through screens, and we know that, as usual, it’s the most vulnerable
who will suffer the most, falling even farther behind.
And,
maybe because now I spend more time than usual by myself with more time to
think about the past, I find it hard to forgive myself for my own mistakes and
poor decisions.
So,
the other day I was stewing about all of this – wanting to think about almost
anything other than forgiveness - when the news broke about Bob Woodward’s new
book on President Trump.
Woodward,
of course, became famous nearly 50 years ago for his investigative reporting on
Watergate, the scandal that led to the President Nixon’s resignation.
Anyway,
thinking about Woodward got me thinking back to that scandal. And, I remembered
Nixon’s farewell talk to members of his administration, just before he left the
White House.
Understandably,
considering the occasion, it’s kind of a rambling stream of consciousness, a
mix of gratitude, defensiveness, and self-pity – but there was one haunting,
very revealing, line in there.
You may remember
that Nixon was notoriously unforgiving and vindictive, famous for keeping an
enemies list.
But, as he ended
his presidency in disgrace he said, “…always remember, others may hate you, but
those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
It’s up to us to
use the power of forgiveness – or not.
If not, Jesus says
that God won’t forgive us – which is certainly bad enough.
But, it’s not only
that.
If we choose not
to forgive, the power of forgiveness doesn’t just somehow evaporate inside us.
No, instead, it curdles into resentment, bitterness, hatred, maybe even cruelty
– and, ultimately, self-destruction.
Just think of the
ungrateful slave in today’s parable, locked up forever, paying a debt that can
never be paid – think of Richard Nixon, losing the most powerful job in the
world, forever stained by disgrace.
Think of so many
unforgiving people we have encountered – maybe even ourselves, sometimes.
So, whether we’re
in a forgiving mood or not, the stakes are very high.
God has given us the power of forgiveness - may we use it wisely.
Amen.
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