Matthew 18:21-35
Imagine two children sat in the back of the
car, setting off on a long journey.
The
chances are that it won’t be long before the chanting begins of
‘are
we nearly there yet, are we nearly there yet?’.
But it probably also won’t be long
before
this refrain is replaced by more anguished cries:
‘MUM, she’s over my side’
leading
inevitably to ‘DAD, he’s hit me’,
in
turn eliciting ‘but she started it’
followed
by ‘but he was asking for it’.
And so on until journey’s end,
or
until a frustrated parent intervenes
to try and bring some peace back to
the car,
by
reminding the children
that,
‘Two wrongs don’t make a right’
This scenario could easily be a parable for the
world we find ourselves in,
as
this week we mark the one-year anniversary
of
the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Our screens have been full of coverage
of
the horrific taking place on the edge of Europe
as, once again, death and destruction, and
fear and tragedy
are
played out in widescreen in our living rooms.
None of us who have witnessed these scenes
can
remain unmoved by them
and the emotions they stir within us
are
deep, profoundly upsetting,
and
for some intensely personal.
Of course, the offensive in Ukraine
is
not the first time punches have been exchanged,
and
neither will it be the last.
From the great war to the cold war,
from
Palestine to Afghanistan,
from
Iran to Iraq,
from
crusade to jihad,
from
London to Madrid,
from
Bali to Sharm el Sheikh,
the cycle of punch and counter-punch
has
defined the relationship between East and West
for
over a thousand years.
Those of us who live in the Western world,
and
who enjoy and laud all the many benefits
and
freedoms which it grants to us,
cannot
escape the troubling fact
that
our so-called ‘free world’
is
also locked into a destructive cycle
of
violence and counter-violence.
Whether in defence of honour, or territory,
or
wealth, or freedom,
or whether in search of justice or
retribution,
we
all find ourselves complicit, willingly or unwillingly,
in
the spiralling world of retribution, violence and unforgiveness.
The question before us,
is
what on earth are we to do?
Indeed, we might ask,
what
on earth can be done?
Who on earth has the power to intervene, to
bring peace,
to
a world which seems hell-bent on fighting its way to journey’s end?
The situation was not so different in the
first century.
The Jewish nation had been trading punches
for centuries.
From
Assyria to Babylonia, from
from
the Seleucids to the Maccabees.
Conquest, violence, terrorism and revolution
had
become an inescapable part of what it meant to be Jewish.
Then, as now, the world was inextricably
wedded
to
the myth of violence and counter-violence.
And it was to people all-too-familiar with
the vicious cycles of retribution
that
Jesus told a parable,
not
about two children fighting in the back of a long car journey,
but
about two servants and a king.
His parable provides a perfect example
of
the destructive nature of the cycles of retaliation and unforgiveness.
Let’s spend a moment with the first servant
in the story:
he
is both a debtor and a creditor.
He is owed money by someone who is below him
in the social hierarchy,
but
he also himself owes money to someone else
much
higher up the ladder than he is.
He’s a middle man, and he’s in all sorts of
financial trouble.
He
owes an unpayable debt to his king,
far
more than he’s ever likely to earn in his lifetime;
but
he’s also owed a much smaller debt by another.
He is, by the laws of debt and justice,
entirely
within his rights to demand repayment
from
the one who owes money to him.
He’s entirely within his rights to extract
his just dues,
and
if he chooses to do so by exercising violence
against the second servant
he
is, by the law of his day, entitled to do so.
But, and here’s the catch,
he
is also in a position where the king has every entitlement
to
do exactly the same to him,
but
more so, because the debt he owes the king
is
so much higher than the debt he is owed.
Think about it for a moment:
If Jesus’ had simply told a story
about
a servant who was owed some money,
and
who then took his payment by force,
the chances are that we would say – well, fair
enough.
Some might speculate that he was a bit harsh,
throwing
the man into debtors prison,
but some might also reflect that the man clearly
had it coming
and
that he shouldn’t have got into debts he couldn’t repay.
The real power of the parable
comes
from the fact that the servant’s actions
are
contrasted with the treatment he himself received
at the hands of the king.
In the light of the forgiveness he received
for his own unpayable debt,
his
imprisonment of his debtor
suddenly
appears both hypocritical and shocking.
He is, it turns out, a man who is happy to receive forgiveness,
but
is unwilling to offer it.
Of course, the twist at the end of the story
is
that his decision to withhold forgiveness comes back to bite him,
and
he ends up tortured for his lack of forgiveness.
In the gospels, and particularly in Matthew’s
gospel,
where
this story of Jesus is recorded,
the language of debt and the language of sin
are
presented as two ways of talking about the same thing.
Sins are not personal moral failures in
Matthew’s gospel,
rather
they are debts, or obligations, that
cry out for repayment.
So if I were to say to someone that they had
sinned against me,
I
would be saying that they owed me,
and
that they must therefore be made to pay.
We still use the language of sin and debt in a
similar way today:
Imagine the gangster whose honour has been
slighted,
leaning
forwards in a sinister manner
and
pronouncing in a deep voice:
‘you’re gonna pay for that’.
So much of the violence we encounter in our
world,
both
at an interpersonal and international level,
is about making the other person ‘pay’
for
some actual or perceived sin or injustice.
From terrorist bomb, to punishment beating,
to tactical invasion
-
violence and ‘repayment for sins’ are intertwined.
We even meet this language of sin and debt in
the Lord’s prayer.
The version most people know best says,
‘forgive
us our trespasses,
as
we forgive those who trespass against us’;
or if we’re using the more modern version,
‘forgive
us our sins,
as
we forgive those who sin against us’.
But if we turn to the version of the prayer
recorded in Matthew’s gospel,
we
meet not the language of sin and trespass, but the language of debt.
Matthew 6.12 reads, ‘forgive us our debts,
as
we also have forgiven our debtors.’
And in Luke’s gospel,
the
only other place the Lord’s prayer appears in the Bible,
the language of sin and the language of debt are
intermingled:
Luke
11.4 ‘forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone
indebted to us.’
We might say, therefore, that sins committed
against God
are
debts to God that cry out for repayment.
And that any forgiveness we receive for these
debts owed to God
is
inextricably linked to the offering of forgiveness
to
those who in turn owe debts to us.
This is the point of the parable told by
Jesus:
The
servant has not learned the lesson
that
if his own debts have been forgiven,
he
must also forgive those who owe him a debt.
He has forgotten the debt he owed to the
king,
and
has become fixated with justifying the debt owed to him.
Or, to put it another way, he has forgotten
that he is himself a sinner,
and
has become fixated with the fact that he has been sinned against.
In this servant’s action,
we
see clearly the violent and destructive outcome of non-forgiveness.
The consequence of his actions to extract of
his just reward
is
that he himself ends up a tortured soul,
unable
to pay his own debts,
unable
to justify his own sinfulness,
even
though forgiveness has been offered to him.
We live in a world that is so often dedicated
to the extraction of just dues:
You
hurt me, I’ll hurt you.!
You
bomb my city, I’ll bomb yours!
These cycles of violence and counter violence
are so ingrained within us,
and
appear so seductively just and righteous.
Like children in the back of the car we cry:
‘she’s
over my side’, and ‘he hit me’ and ‘she started it’.
All too often there is seemingly no way out
of
this spiral of punch and counter punch,
which
can only ever end in mutually destructive results.
And yet Jesus points us to the intervention
of the loving parent.
Our own desire for justice and retribution,
however
righteous it may be,
needs to be set against the forgiveness
offered to us
by
the one to whom we ourselves owe an unpayable debt.
When others sin against us, either
individually or nationally,
as
they do, sometimes in terrible ways,
we need to measure our response
by
the response of the loving God
to
those who have sinned against him
Before we jump on our high horse and start to
demand justice
from
those who have sinned against us,
we need to recognize that there may be others
who
might well be entitled to do the same from us.
I’m not just thinking here about the
international response
to
terrorist actions or aggressive invasions,
I’m also thinking that each of us, as
individuals,
will
have incurred debts from others,
each of us has, in different ways, sinned
against others,
just
as others have sinned against us.
So when we pray, ‘forgive us our debts, as we
forgive the debts of others’
or
‘forgive us our trespasses
as
we forgive those who trespass against us’,
we are praying that a new way of being human,
and
new way of relating to others,
will come into being in our midst
and
by our actions.
In this place we speak of the forgiveness
offered to us by God,
and
we say that we are those who are forgiven.
So in the wake of those moments
when
others do to us a great wrong,
rather than automatically biting back,
punching back,
might
we not instead be those who will seek an alternative response?
Might we not be those whose lives will bring
into being
the
new way of relating to others that Jesus talked about:
a
way of relating built on forgiveness, rather than retribution?
So what is the just and righteous response at
such times?
What is to be said today, one year after
Russia invaded Ukraine?
Is it to ask ‘how can we stop this terrible
thing that is happening?’
- possibly.
Is it to ask ‘who is responsible, and how can
they be brought to justice’
- possibly.
Is it to assert that ‘we must ensure that the
aggressors are defeated
in
such a way that they will never attempt to do the same again,
either
in Ukraine or elsewhere?’
- possibly this too is a just response.
But will these responses truly break
the
cycle of violence and counter violence?
I very much doubt it.
Difficult though this is,
especially
when someone has intentionally committed a great evil,
to see that atrocity as the latest in a long
cycle
of
violence and oppression,
imprisonment
and subjugation,
repression
and retaliation,
is I think to learn to see it as it truly is.
When we retaliate in the name of
righteousness and justice,
when
we meet violence with escalating violence,
when
we demand our pound of flesh from the other
in
return for wrongs committed against us,
we
are committing ourselves to a spiral of retribution
that
can only end in torture and terror.
Is there another way?
Yes.
It’s called forgiveness.
The title of this sermon is a question:
‘What
good does forgiveness do?’
And here we have the answer:
It
breaks the cycle of violence.
I’m aware that using the language of
forgiveness
when
we are engaged in armed conflict
in defence of an ally and against an
aggressor,
is
a deeply uncomfortable thing to do.
But, at the risk of offloading the blame
here,
I
think Jesus knew what he was doing when he did the same.
Christian living after the pattern of Christ
should
be a continual dispensing of mercy and forgiveness,
mirroring
God’s own character and treatment of his people.
If we pray for God’s kingdom to come on
earth, as it already is in heaven,
then
we have to start living
as
the people of the coming kingdom.
And this means living as people of
forgiveness,
forgiving
the debts of others as we ourselves have been forgiven.
Society will often view such behaviour as
weakness,
and
even in our churches,
forgiveness
and mercy are all too often lacking
in
our dealings with one another.
But as Mahatma Ghandi reportedly said,
‘Only
the strong can forgive.’
The cost of forgiveness should never be
trivialised,
and
when we offer someone forgiveness for their debt of sin towards us,
we
will always count the cost of this action in our own selves.
And there will come a time, hopefully soon,
when
the West has a choice as to how it will respond to Putin’s aggression
and
the people of Russia who are caught up in it.
For some, in some situations,
forgiveness
of the debt of the other will be a step too far.
I have a friend who was abused as a child,
and
she tells of various well-meaning Christians
who
told her over the years that she must forgive her abuser.
Her reflection on this has been
that
the requirement on her to offer forgiveness
has
made worse the abuse of her past,
by
placing her once again in a position of weakness,
with
others demanding of her that which she doesn’t want to give.
However, she has also said that she can see
forgiveness as a goal
towards
which it is worth aiming,
even
if it forever remains out of reach in this lifetime.
Some people within this community
will
also find great difficulty and pain
in
all this talk of forgiveness.
There are those of us for whom the abuse and
sin is too raw,
who
have to live with a range of feelings,
from
anger to injustice, from rage to profound grief.
We must never trivialise forgiveness,
and
we must never abusively ask of the other
that
which they are not able to give.
Forgiveness is not easy, it does not come
lightly,
it
does not come easily,
and for some it remains out of reach.
But...
Jesus’ parable challenges us
to
never give up making forgiveness and reconciliation our goal.
There are many ways in which we can be active
in
forgiveness of sins and debts,
as through our actions and by our prayers
we
bear testimony to the in-breaking kingdom of peace.
So we might consider becoming active
in
supporting those who work for peace
between
those nations caught in vicious cycles of violence.
We might become involved in campaigning to
end torture and oppression
through
the work of organisations like Amnesty International
or
Action by Christians Against Torture
We might build conversations and friendships
with
those from other faith communities,
both
as a church and as individuals,
and by doing so we might play our part
in
bringing together diverse religious and cultural communities
in
relationship and shared understanding
even when so much that is going on in our
world
makes
such relationships uncomfortable or problematic.
We might involve ourselves in campaigning
for
the forgiveness of debts owed to the West
by
countries that can never repay.
We might change our purchasing practices,
subverting
the global system of debt and oppression
by buying fairly trade products,
or investing in ethical funds.
We might choose to become involved in local
initiatives
aimed
at alleviating the burden of personal financial debts
through
the offering of debt advice
or
the establishment of a credit union
We might simply seek lift up those
who
have fallen on our doorstep
in
poverty and need.
Jesus’ parable about forgiveness
speaks
down the centuries
to
the world in which we find ourselves in today,
and it challenges us to be those who find ways of living forgiveness
in
a world which seems hell-bent on violence
Peter asked Jesus:
How
often should I forgive? As many as seven times?
And Jesus replied,
Not
seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times
Don’t count it, just do it,
and
heaven knows what good forgiveness will do.
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