Empowered to Do the Impossible

 Matthew 18:21-35
Empowered to Do the Impossible

James Sledge                                                                                       September 13, 2020

Two young children are playing together in a park. Their mothers sit nearby, drinking coffee and chatting with one another. The toddlers are regular playmates and usually get along well, but of course there is the occasional scuffle that their moms have to break up.

That happened on this particular day. One child had a toy the other wanted. “Let me have it,” and “No! I had it first” escalated to grabbing, a brief tug-o-war, and then shoving. Finally one child shoved the other to the ground and made off with the prize, leaving his friend crying in defeat. By then, all the fussing had attracted their mothers’ attention so that they witness the shoving and final victory.

The moms rush over, each grabbing her child by the hand, fussing at them and demanding they apologize to each other. Neither wanted to do any such thing, but they had learned that the moms would eventually win this battle. And so, begrudgingly, not looking directly at each other and not meaning it at all, both uttered, “I’m sorry.” But the moment their moms’ gazes were diverted, they stuck their tongues out at each other.

Even if the moms had seen that, they might not have said anything. We don’t really expect small children fully to understand apologies and forgiveness. We just hope that with enough repetition such practices will take hold over time.

As we grow up and become adults, we do get better. Often we are genuinely sorry when we hurt someone, and we know that forgiveness is necessary for relationships to work. But saying you’re sorry can be hard, and we live in a day when people regularly offer apologies that don’t sound much like apologies. “I’m sorry if anyone was offended by what I said.”

Real forgiveness can be equally hard. I suspect that most all of us nurse a grudge now and then. There is someone, maybe several someones, who rubs us the wrong way, who’s done something to us that we just can’t let go of, who’s hurt us too many times to be forgiven again. That may make Jesus’ words a little unnerving.

Jesus says we must forgive seventy-seven times, or it could be seventy times seven; either translation is possible. Even more disturbing, Jesus says we must forgive from the heart. Nothing forced or done just because you’re supposed to. No “Okay, I guess I’ll forgive you,” but genuine, heartfelt forgiveness, even to that person who has hurt us one too many times.

There is a famous and perhaps true story about the German poet Heinrich Heine on his deathbed. Supposedly an attendant priest promised Heine that God would forgive him. To which Heine quipped, “Of course God will forgive me; that’s his job.”

While probably not be as flippant as Heine, many Christians seem to share this sentiment that God is in the forgiveness business and more or less has to forgive. Dietrich Bonhoeffer referred to such easy, assumed forgiveness as “cheap grace,” and I wonder if cheap grace notions of forgiveness may cause us to misread what Jesus says to us today.

That and the fact that our reading is ripped out of context. I’ve mentioned many times the problems inherent in chopping up scripture into manageable bits for reading on Sundays, and today’s passage is a perfect example.

When Peter comes to Jesus and asks how often he should forgive a church member who sins against him, he is responding to words Jesus has just spoken that aren’t part of our reading. “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. ¹⁶But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. ¹⁷If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

This puts a whole different spin on what Jesus says in our reading today about forgiving seventy-seven times from the heart. This is not a generic command simply to forgive. Rather it is one component of the radically different community Jesus expects the Church to be, a community of unlimited forgiveness, but also of real accountability.

That latter part is almost completely absent in most of American Christianity. In America, faith is generally considered a private thing between me and God. But Jesus doesn’t think that. For that matter, neither do the official statements of our denomination which include a long list of responsibilities for church members such as participation in worship and ministry, studying scripture, contributing money, time, and talents, working for peace and justice in the world, praying for one another, demonstrating a new quality of life, and more.

Along with these, the responsibilities of a congregation’s Session include, and I’m just going to quote this one, “reviewing the roll of active members at least annually and counseling with those who have neglected the responsibilities of membership.”[1] In my  twenty some years of pastoral ministry, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Session do that one.

In my sermon last week, I wondered if we hadn’t lost something when the metaphor of church as a family fell out of favor. Again this week, I’m wondering if the example of family, at least a healthy, loving, well-adjusted family, might not be instructive for what a church community should look like.

In healthy families, membership in the family is never in question. No matter how badly someone messes up, love remains. The parents of murderers visit them in prison. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t expectations about behavior and consequences when those are ignored or willfully violated. The parent who never corrects or disciplines a child has a misguided sense of love.

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 where there was correction, even loving discipline, when people failed to do so.

Perhaps that seems a fantasy, even more difficult that 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 impossible things.

Come, Holy Spirit, come.

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[1] Book of Order, G-3.0201c