Matthew 18:21-35
Absurd Community
James Sledge September
17, 2023
When I served a church in Columbus, OH, I
was the chair of our presbytery’s Committee on Ministry or COM. The COM
oversees the relationship between pastors and churches. This includes
everything from searching for a new pastor to approving the call of a new
pastor to dealing with conflict that sometimes arises between churches and
their pastor.
As a part of my duties as chair, I was one
of several people notified when the presbytery received an allegation about an
inappropriate relationship between a pastor and a church member. Making matters
worse, this adult member was someone with a significant developmental disability
with limited capacity to enter into a consensual relationship. The mother still
provided a significant level of care to this individual, and she was the one
who had brought the allegation.
As things began to go forward, good
communication with this individual proved difficult. Meanwhile the pastor was
adamant that nothing inappropriate had occurred, but there was enough to
warrant appointing an investigative committee. Per presbytery protocols, a
lawyer was provided for the pastor in question at the denomination’s expense.
At this point there was no involvement from police or the courts, and the
investigation was strictly to see if there was grounds to remove this pastor,
revoke his ordination, and so on.
The investigation went on for some time
with the pastor regularly insisting on his innocence and expressing anger
toward the presbytery for the way his good name was being damaged. In the
meantime, COM had greatly overrun its budget for legal help.
Then, at the last possible moment, the
pastor suddenly changed his tune and confessed. At this point I was not
directly involved in process, so I don’t know details, but suffice to say there
was a great deal of anger toward this pastor over how he had wasted so much
energy, time, and money, not to mention the behavior that spurred the
investigation. I shared in this anger and frustration, and I was glad this
individual would no longer be allowed to pastor any church in our denomination.
This case popped into my mind as I read
today’s passage from Matthew. When Peter asks Jesus how many times he should
forgive a church member, suggesting seven times, Jesus responds, “Not
seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” I should add that
it’s also possible to translate Jesus’ response as seventy times seven. Either
way it’s a whole lot.
So how does this apply to that pastor in
Columbus? His sins were particularly bad ones and they were many. In addition
to the abuse itself, he had lied over and over and cost the presbytery lots of
money. But I don’t know that if you added them all up you’d get to
seventy-seven and certainly not to seventy times seven. So we’re simply to
forgive him. That seems almost absurd.
Of course Jesus tells a pretty absurd
parable to illustrate his big numbers, although the absurdity of it may be lost
on us because of a monetary amount that is totally foreign to us. According to
some scholars, a talent was worth fifteen year’s wages for the typical worker
in Jesus’ day, so let’s update that to our day.
The minimum wage in Virginia is $11.00 an
hour which works out to $22,880 per year for someone who is full time. So we
could say that a talent was worth $343,200, and the parable Jesus tells says
the slave has somehow run up a debt of 10,000 talents or around 3.4 billion
dollars. I can’t imagine how anyone could incur that level of debt, but I think
the parable is supposed to contain an absurd, impossible level of debt. That
makes the slave’s plea, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you
everything,” beyond absurd. He would need to live 150,000 years to make
that much. Yet the master forgives the debt.
But the parable is not done with
absurdities. The one who has been forgiven a 3.4-billion-dollar debt then
encounters a fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii, or around $6000. But even
thought he has been forgiven an impossibly large debt, he won’t show the least
bit of leniency to his fellow slave who would likely be able to repay him in
time.
The parable seems to put the hearer in the
position of the first slave. It reminds us that we have received love and grace
and forgiveness in absurd, extravagant amounts, and so we are expected be
extravagant in our own forgiveness of others. The Lord’s Prayer says as much.
“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Or perhaps better
translated, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”
But at this point I need to say that there
is something missing from this sermon. It is missing from our scripture reading
as well, and that is context. When Peter asks his question about how many times
to forgive, he is responding to Jesus’ teachings on correcting members of the
church.
Jesus has just explained that when a
member sins against you, you are to go to that person privately and point out
what they’ve done. If that doesn’t work, you are to take two or three other
members with you to talk to the person. If that fails, you should bring the
matter before the entire church, and if that doesn’t work, the church is to
shun the person, presumably in the hope that the person will eventually repent
and ask for forgiveness. Peter is responding to this teaching when he asks
about how often to forgive.
Jesus’ words on absurd levels of
forgiveness are connected to an expectation of accountability and repentance.
When someone has been admonished and then asked for forgiveness, they are to
receive it repeatedly. This is not blanket forgiveness that is simply offered
no matter what. Instead Jesus is describing a community of believers where
there is real accountability and correction, but endless grace as well.
I’m not sure we in the church do a very
good job of this. Faith has become so privatized in the modern US that any
notion of correction and accountability is largely absent. Even so, one of the
responsibilities of the Session outlined in the Presbyterian Book of Order is
“reviewing the roll of active members at least annually and counseling with
those who have neglected the responsibilities of membership.”[1]
(I imagine some elders are getting a little nervous.)
It was once common for churches to speak
of themselves as a family. That metaphor has its liabilities, but to some
degree, what Jesus describes looks like family when it functions as it should. Love
and grace are always there. A child is never beyond the love of family. But
there are expectations that a child behave in certain ways and consequences
when they don’t. What if church looked more like that?
I wonder what it might take, and what it
might look like, to become the sort of community Jesus envisions the church to
be. What would it mean to be a congregation where all were welcome, where being
a part of the community had nothing to do with being good enough or
accomplished enough, but at the very same time there were clear expectations
that everyone would engage in work and study and ministry that deepened their
faith, that helped them become more committed disciples, and helped give the
world a glimpse of the new day Jesus envisioned when he spoke of the Kingdom?
And there was correction, even loving discipline, when people failed to do so.
Perhaps that seems an absurd fantasy, even
more difficult than forgiving from the heart over and over and over, seventy
times seven. But then again, the scriptures insist that the Holy Spirit can
empower the church to do miraculous, even absurd, impossible things.
Come, Holy Spirit, come.
