Luther
Seminary professor and theologian Rolf Jacobson has this to say about what’s
happening in the entirety of Matthew chapter 18, which Pastor Mark reminded us
last week has to do with discipleship. Jacobson says this:
In
Matthew 18, Jacobson said, “Jesus is painting a picture of a community that is
so frightening, that I don’t think I want to be a part of it.”
And
that community is the church.
Now,
hopefully Jacobson is speaking with his tongue at least a little bit in cheek,
but if you look at all of chapter 18 here’s where he’s coming from:
·
To be the
greatest you have to be humble more like a child and less like an
oh-so-certain-you are right adult.
·
And boy
oh boy, woe to you if you trip someone else up in their belief in Christ.
·
Also rejoice
more over the person that was lost and then found, than the 99 who stayed and
did what they were supposed to, you know, cleaning up after the church picnic,
serving on committees, visiting the homebound, singing in the choir...
·
If you
have a conflict with someone in the church, go work it out with them face to
face, first one to one, and then if necessary, with others. You don’t get to
just ignore them – and not listen to them - and think the problem will go away.
·
If you
can’t make peace with someone, there is a way to put someone outside of the
boundaries of the community.
·
And
today, forgive over and over again. Because since you’ve been forgiven, your
forgiveness of others is expected.
And
that, says Rolf Jacobson, is frightening when you really think about it.
Because really…we all know we aren’t really good at following all of these
discipleship rules from Jesus. If we were, we wouldn’t have had all the temple
talks on conflict here in the past several weeks.
Or
there wouldn’t be arguments between sisters and brothers in Christ about what
kind of worship is best…or whether politics has a place in church or whether to
add on to the church building or not. Or the many other myriad of things church
folk have gotten into arguments over in the past 2000 years.
So
if we aren’t a little bit anxious when faced with Jesus’ idea of a community of
disciples, then maybe we should be.
Or
at the very least, it should give us pause.
If
we approach Matthew 18 as a series of rules Jesus is giving us to be the right
kind of disciples, then put me firmly in Rolf Jacobson’s camp. It scares the
daylights out of me because I know I don’t always do it right.
But there is another way to look at this. In
Matthew 18 why is Jesus giving all these rules about discipleship? What is it
he’s aiming for?
Somewhere the answer is in that idea that
where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name, community is formed.
What if Matthew 18 isn’t so much about the
rules of discipleship, but instead about the kind of relationship God is
offering through discipleship? About the kind of community that can form in
Jesus’ name?
Now admittedly we all know that relationship
is also hard – just as hard maybe as following rules can be.
And one of the things that can trip
relationship up more than anything is lack of forgiveness. Can any relationship survive without it?
But, oh, yeah…forgiveness…that’s hard too.
So while it gives some hope that maybe
Matthew 18 is more about relationship than rules, it sure doesn’t make it all
that much easier since relationships and forgiveness are still really difficult.
And just in case we forget this, Jesus provides
this parable about forgiveness that just seems kinda terrifying.
Matthew has a few parables that don’t appear
in the other gospels, and this is one of them. Now here it might be a good idea
to take a step back to remember just what parables are and what they are not.
They are not a clear-cut line by line
representation or allegory where every character has a direct counterpoint to
someone in our life.
So, just lining up God as the king and the
ungrateful servant as that person who we are arguing with in our life right
now, isn’t really what Jesus is going for.
Instead, parables – especially parables like
this one – are meant to disrupt our oh-so-very-certain adult way of knowing we
are right to teach us a little humility. Parables introduce us to – shock us
into seeing - an alternate world-view or way of living.
They throw us off balance. They jar us out of
our egos. They show us a world that is frankly so unbelievable that we can’t
help but be left wondering how we manage to get things right even some of the
time!
This parable is shocking us to get a glimpse of
what an entirely different way of forgiving looks like. It is saying “what
would a world or community or church or family look like where forgiveness was
as important and as natural as breathing?”
As natural as it is for this king.
One of the things you need to know about this
generosity of forgiveness the king here you can’t grasp unless you know exactly
what 10,000 talents is.
A talent was apparently equivalent to 130 lbs. of
silver. And a first century laborer would need to work for roughly 15 years to
be able to earn that much, so 10,000 talents would take 150,000 years to pay
back!
150,000 years! Not sure about you, but I’m
fairly certain I don’t have that much employment time in me. So in essence,
what the king was forgiving was impossible for anyone to pay back.
That example was helpful for me to know
because honestly, when you think of forgiving in purely economic terms – as in
this parable seems to – for me it is a bit easier to understand forgiveness. I
mean, forgiveness of debt is pretty straightforward.
But forgiveness is much more difficult when
it comes in other terms: in terms of violence or hurt that we do to each other. There are things in this life that quite
frankly, we collectively term “unforgivable.”
But that is exactly what this king does. He
forgives something that is after all, unforgiveable. Who can possibly pay back
150,000 years of labor?
And that is the point that I believe is meant
to shake us out of our way of seeing things more than anything.
We could simply judge the first slave in his
own inability to forgive a much smaller debt and stop there. And certainly he
does fail in that area – as we all have done.
But I think what Jesus wants us to be shocked
by is this: how does someone who is treated to an unbelievable, undeserved,
monumental, completely life-altering gift of mercy and grace remain utterly
oblivious to it? How does it not make him run from his master in amazement and
wonder and gratitude that he can’t help but share that gift with others?
Martin Luther wondered about that very idea
and in that wondering we are now 500 years later celebrating everything that
came out of it.
I love what Pastor and theologian David Lose
says about that. He says:
Luther realized “that righteousness was not God’s expectation, but instead God’s gift.
And once he realized that some of God’s favorite things to do are to forgive those
who seem unforgivable, love those who feel unlovable, and make right those
things that seem so persistently in the wrong, Luther was freed not only from
his fear of punishment, but also freed to love and forgive and care for those
around him.”
Forgiveness is still hard. Relationship is
still hard. Community is still hard, whether that community is made up of two
or three or of over a hundred.
Some things will still seem or feel
unforgivable, where we can’t imagine forgiving them once, let alone 77 times.
But here’s the thing, fortunately we don’t
have the last word on forgiveness.
Fortunately, God’s inconceivable, utterly
undeserved, amazing grace does. God’s mercy, God’s forgiveness comes even when
we can’t seem to muster it up individually or communally.
And that mercy continues to call us out of
our own egos into relationship with people we might not otherwise have anything
to do with, and into community where we keep struggling along to try to work
out what this alternative way of living looks like.
And even when we keep messing up, which
clearly we do, God keeps calling us back to try again. And then when we mess up
yet again, still God calls us and loves us and feeds us to strengthen us for
another try, wanting always to show us how forgiveness is a reality for the
whole community.
During communion, Lyndsey will sing “Please
Come” by Nichole Nordeman which puts God’s mercy for ALL into perspective. I want to share some of the lyrics with you as
I close.
Oh, the days when I drew lines around my
faith
To keep you out, to keep me in, to keep it
safe
Oh, the sense of my own self entitlement
To say who’s wrong or won’t belong or cannot
stay.
‘Cause somebody somewhere decided we’d be
better off divided
And somehow despite the damage done, He says
“come…”
There is room enough for all of us, please
come.
And the arms are opened wide enough, please
come
And our parts are never greater than the sum.*”
I close with her words and hope that as you
come today to this table they will strengthen you, wherever you are in terms of
conflict or forgiveness, so that you can see, taste, hear, smell and feel that
mercy when it comes your way, no…OUR way, as we are gathered in Christ’s name.
Amen.
*From Nichole Nordeman "The Mystery" (2000)
