“Another Word Kids Need to Hear”
Rev. Dr. Scott Field
Matthew 18: 21-35
Date: 6/19/2016
Last week, while we were here on Sunday morning to celebrate our ministry partnership with Pastor
Charles and his family, while he reminded us of the ministry of caring for one another and the
celebration of the church’s 175th anniversary as a community of worship, compassion, and service,
about 1,209 miles southeast of here, families were contending with shocking personal losses after a
shooting rampage at the Pulse Nightclub.
The City of Orlando, Florida, sometimes referred to as the happiest place on earth because of its theme
parks, was overwhelmed by tragedy. And our nation was again plunged into the darkness of mass
violence perpetrated by a lone gunman. 49 patrons of the Pulse nightclub died. 53 were injured. The
perpetrator, Omar Mateen, was killed, too.
Predictably, and sadly, the personal tragedies became a social jump ball.
The politicizing and the punditry, the condemnations and retributions flew fast and furious. The
Orlando Tragedy became Exhibit A in all manner of causes: the need to secure the borders against
immigrants, the volatile virus of fundamentalist religion, the debate over guns, gun violence, mental
health, homophobia, discrimination against LGBTQI persons, conjectures about the psychological
dynamics of the perpetrator’s own sexual orientation, and how far we want to go in restricting
freedoms in order to protect our public safety. The loss of a family member or friend is tragedy
enough. I can’t even imagine the second grief of having your loved one turned into a political talking
point.
In the tidal wave of media attention to that shocking event in Orlando, perhaps you missed the
anniversary on Friday of a similar tragedy that occurred one year ago. It was just one year ago this
past Friday, on June 17, 2015, that a young man showed up at a Wednesday evening Bible Study at
Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. I’m not sure
about you, but if I had been at that Bible study, been a member of Mother Emmanuel Church in
Charleston, an historically and predominantly black church, and a white young man came in, I would
have a little lump in my throat of joy that perhaps the barriers of race had, in the name of God, been
breached – at least in that one precious soul. Oh, how wrong, how tragically, ironically, foolishly wrong
I would have been. The situation was precisely the opposite. At the end of the Bible study, that young
man opened fired and killed nine people, injuring a tenth. The perpetrator, Dylann Roof was arrested
and later confessed that he committed the shootings in hopes of igniting a race war.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting)
These shocking events – and many others – trample all over the trip wires and boundaries of the
cultural, political, and pragmatic debates that run through our evolving North American culture.
Everybody is asking, “What shall we do?” Build a wall to keep immigrants out? Enact stricter controls
for gun control? Increase funding for mental health resources? Be more vigilant of anybody law
enforcement suspects might become radicalized? Declare war on fundamentalist Islam – and maybe
fundamentalist Christianity, too. Issue an Executive Order or pass an ordinance that nobody can hate
anybody anymore.
That last one sounds so foolish – issue an order that nobody can hate anybody anymore – because we
know that hatred is a matter of the heart, not the law. And this is precisely where we can engage this
whole heartbreaking mess powerfully and productively.
Let me add, just briefly, that this is an important focus for our attention on Fathers’ Day. Actually it
would be for Mothers’ Day, Grandparents’ Day, and a lot of other days, too. It deals with the thorny
question of how children grow up to be so hate-filled and so prone to violence against others and,
more importantly still, what we can do about it. Because, sisters and brothers, we do have the power
and possibility of changing the next generation.
God has a radical way of converting the way we think about ourselves and about others so that the
animosity is overcome and replaced with mercy, compassion, and concern.
It comes out in one of the parables of Jesus, but is a consistent theme throughout the Scriptures from
beginning to end.
Let’s focus on one of the stories Jesus told to sketch out the anatomy of a changed heart.
Here’s the alternative to our suspicious, angry, violent ways:
Read Mt. 18:21-22
21
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when
he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
22
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times
Peter’s question:
Jesus has been giving instruction on overcoming offenses and affronts between people – particularly
within the community of his followers. His instruction is not about divine absolution, but about
personal forgiveness that reconciles wounded and alienated and angry believers with one another.
Now Peter, always a master of the obvious, asks the question that might have been on the mind of
most of the disciples.
I’m just engaging my imagination with this Scripture, but having lived in a family all of my life and lived
in this community of Christ-followers for the past 36 years, and during that time committed who knows
how many sins -- not the big, scandalous sins I am grateful to report, but you know, the respectable
sins we’ve come to rationalize and justify and expect of each other: like sins of anxiety, frustration,
discontentment, pride, selfishness, impatience, anger, judgmentalism, envy, jealousy, and, of course,
the careless but harmful words, ill-considered decisions, failures of follow-through or follow-up – the
sins of words that hurt… you may be able to add to the list…but, as I said, having lived within a family
and within particular Christian communities and committed these sins as well as been the recipient of
the failures, mistakes, wounds, and sins – both intentional and completely clueless, I can imagine that
while Jesus was talking about the orderly process of how to overcome the wound when somebody sins
against another, that in the minds of everybody listening there was an exception to the rule already in
mind.” Yeah, but what about….?”
In fact, the question might be on your mind today. You have somebody in mind who has hurt you or
who continually rubs you the wrong way or who, when they enter the room, you find your way to at
least the farthest corner away from them or maybe out the back door.
So Peter asks, knowing that there are some people who, no matter what, are apparently beyond the
reach of God’s redemption, “How many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? As
many as seven times?” Now Peter is actually being very generous here. The consensus of the rabbis in
that time was that a brother or sister might be forgiven a repeated sin three times; on the fourth, there
is no forgiveness. Peter volunteers “seven times” as the answer to his own question which, while it
sounds a bit odd to us, was often used as a “round number”; sort of like us saying, “a dozen” or “a
whole bunch of times”.
Jesus responds by saying that the limit isn’t seven times, but 77 times.
Pay attention.
Our Lord was referring to something very specific and showing how radical it is to follow God’s ways.
You see, when Jesus used said “seventy-seven times” it reflected something quite specific. There is
only one other time in the Scriptures the number 77 is used and that is the Hebrew in Genesis 4:24.
And Genesis 4:24 is the taunt of a very scary guy named Lamech. Lamech was the great-great-great
grandson of Cain. And Cain is famous for killing his brother Abel because Cain was angry and jealous.
This is the realm of vengeance, of taking things into his own hands. By the time this way of operating
is passed on a few generations, by the time it gets to Lamech, it is much worse. Lamech, if provoked,
would not hesitate to kill even a child, let alone an adult. His capacity for retaliation is
nondiscriminatory and way out of proportion to the provocation. His taunting song doesn’t refer to
something that he had already done, but to something he would not hesitate to do if anybody
provoked him. Lamech is his own security. He doesn’t wait for God’s protection or God’s justice. He will
take it into his own hands. And his vengeance will be at seventy-seven times the severity of the original
infraction. (See Victor Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17. The New International
Commentary on the Old Testament, Eerdmans, 1990, pp. 240-241).
Jesus contrasts his way with Lamech very sharply. The followers of Jesus are to forgive the repentant
sinner seventy-seven times…and leave revenge in the hands of God. This distinction is exactly the sort
of thing God refers to when he says, as recorded in the words of Isaiah the prophet,
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD. (Is 55:8)
Jesus then went on to tell a story which illustrates just how things operate when God‘s ways are
followed.
Mt. 18:23-34
A king called his servants to account and found one of them owed 10,000 talents. It was a huge
amount…. An impossible amount.
I attempted a rough calculation
The debt is 10,000 talents
A talent is 6,000 denarii
A denarii is a day’s wage
If I run this out using our current minimum hourly wage in the state of Illinois, presume
five day weeks, no vacation, and no taxes, the debt comes to $2.73 billion dollars.
Or 164,000 years wages.
Either way, the deal is completely over the top.
No way to pay.
In fact, the size of the debt seems to indicate that the man in such difficult straits is a high-ranking
official of some sort, not just a household slave. No household servant would be allowed to accumulate
such an enormous debt. This man was used to generally being able to figure things out, to make a
way, to keep at least one step ahead of whatever might take him down. But no more. His situation is
simply overwhelming. He has nothing to say. It is what it is.
So the king orders all that he has – the Lexus, the house, the boat, the summer home, the big screen,
the collection of Cubs memorabilia, the whole geschmutz , as well as the man himself, his wife, and
each of his children sold to meet the debt. Please pay attention: this is not the kind of debt related to
consumer credit with which our culture is familiar. It is different. In first century Palestine, much like
the poor in India or Africa today, it is much more serious. A subsistence farmer is always on the edge
of economic disaster. And if the meager crop fails to come in, due to drought or insects or perhaps his
fields being torched by a rival tribe, he must go to the landowner or, if he himself owns the land, to a
better-off neighbor nearby, to ask for money to get along and plant again the next year. And pretty
soon, since the loan is usually made at an interest rate that is impossible to pay, the man loses his land
and then, eventually, his freedom as he is sold into bond slavery. What Jesus describes in this story
goes on today in large areas of the world where the rural poor seek to survive.
So the king has ordered the family split up and sold along with the household goods. The king himself
will then also take possession of the land. The poor man has nothing left. He falls to his knees and
begs for the King to have mercy. He asks for more time, for the patience of the King. “I’ll pay back
every penny I owe you.” Apparently he thinks he can still outrun an avalanche with just a little more
time. This is laughable if it weren’t so tragic. “Even if I expected you to live longer than Methuselah,
you wouldn’t even cover the interest on this.”
Jesus said, however, that the king’s heart went out to the man. The king cancelled his debt and let the
man go…completely free.
This is, of course, another sketch Jesus is making of God the Father related to us.
Our debt is not so much related to money. It is our rebellion, our destruction of the world, our injustice
toward others. The Scripture says that what we owe to God is to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk
in humility with the Lord. Instead, we have built entire local and global systems of injustice, we have
loved competition, winning, the survival of the fittest and fastest and most conniving, clever, and
corrupt; and humility is the LAST of the qualities we seek in our character. We are proud and arrogant.
We are so much more like Lamech than we will dare to consider. The Bible is also completely cleareyed that our ways lead to death. That our way of living, despite God’s love for us, makes us subjects
of his wrath. And that while we may have in mind that God is just crazy about us, the Bible is
absolutely consistent in warning us that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God if we
are continuing to live in decidedly ungodly ways, if our minds are devoted only to ourselves and not to
God’s Kingdom, if we are so in love with ourselves, so fascinated with ourselves, so worried about
ourselves that our hearts have no capacity for compassion and no interest in others.
And the picture of God painted by Jesus gives us the overwhelming truth:
The King takes the cost of the debt to himself – apparently he has such unfathomable resource that
that he can write off a debt being paying and not leave himself on the ropes. That this forgiveness
comes out of love. And that this forgiveness results in unimaginable freedom.
Of course, that is not the end of the story.
The newly released servant, the one whose balance sheet had just had barrels-full of red ink
completely erased, on his way home runs into one of his fellow servants – a guy who owed him 100
denarii (which, in my way of calculating the monies in this story, was about $6,400). Now, of course, if
you owed me over $6,000 I’d likely say something about it. But this newly-forgiven servant grabs his
fellow servant and begins to choke him. “Pay me back, or else!” The request for mercy, for a little more
time, for patience falls on deaf ears. It is revenge. So the newly-forgiven servant has this other man
thrown in jail until the man’s family can come up with the 100 denarii. And, of course, you and I would
say, “How ungrateful can you be! Tsk! Tsk!”
But it is much more serious than that.
As Jesus tells the story, there were some other folks who observed what had gone on. In fact, some of
those other folks might have benefitted by that newly-forgiven servant buying them all a round of
drinks at the local drinking establishment to celebrate with him his unbelievably good news of having
his entire, enormous, debt forgiven. He was on the verge of losing his life, his family, his future and
suddenly, in one sentence from the King – your debt is forgiven and you are free – well, he sure
wouldn’t be with his friends having a drink – that afternoon or ever again ever!
So one of those folks who knew about the big forgiveness and the newly-forgiven servant’s miserly,
cruel ways, got word to the King.
So the king got hold of that fellow again. There is another dynamic of forgiveness. As we experience
the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, God’s provision for our debt, our hearts can also be
changed. Instead of keeping score like Lamech we can erase the score like God.
But this guy, instead of being merciful because he had received mercy, was still keeping score, settling
scores, and taking revenge. So the King, seeing what had happened, rescinds his mercy and instead
unleashes his anger. And it is very sobering. He doesn’t sell the man and his family members, his
household goods and his property. He turns him over to the jailers (the actual word is “tormentors”) to
be tortured until he should pay back what he owed; which, given the impossible size of the debt, I
think meant FOREVER.
This, of course, means that while God’s mercy, grace, and forgiveness are offered to all of us, it carries
a couple of outcomes:



Unimaginable freedom (don’t have to make it up, excuse ourselves, etc.)
Ongoing obligation: be merciful to others
The promise of Jesus in v. 35 is certain: it is a threat.
Where do we learn this?
This, finally, brings us back to the conversion of hateful hearts.
We learn these things at home.
We practice them in the community of believers.
So one of the powerful tools we have as we are sent out for the healing of the world in Jesus’ name is
the unlimited supply of mercy, compassion, and forgiveness to view others as loved by God – so they
cannot be hated by us.
I so much appreciated the Facebook posting by Heather Kinsley this week. Heather is a member of
First Church. It said simply, “If your religion requires you to hate someone, you need a new religion.”
Or perhaps, just get close to Jesus and His way and you will discover that you are loved and have the
power to love others, too. That seems to take the venom of our hearts away.