From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
First Thoughts on Year A Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 13, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
William Loader writes:
The amount owed is huge, larger than the estimates of the value of whole economies. Try doing the arithmetic. A talent is around 6000 denarii; a denarius is a day's living wage. It is an absurd figure, so unreal, as to distract the hearer from the literal meaning to the point being made behind the story. God's forgiveness is also massive. 'Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors' is the literal translation of the standard Lord's Prayer as found in Matthew 6:12. Releasing debt was a common image for forgiveness. The rogue in Luke 16:1-7 who went out and forgave his master's debtors may be Jesus' parody on himself: he declared God's generosity and was declared a rogue servant who acted without recognised authority. The saying in 18:21-22 is also making its point by exaggeration: 77 times!
There are really three ideas that strike me about this passage. The first is this notion that the forgiveness of God is abundant. I am mindful that the custom of this time was to collect or sell the person into slavery and that we cannot miss the notion that God's abundant grace instead of slavery is one profound message of this parable.
The second idea that comes to me is that we cannot read this passage without thinking of the course from Genesis, where Lamech wants revenge seventy times seven. (Genesis 4) In this passage, we see the violence that corrupted the ancient Hebrew family before the great flood. We are told that Lamech boasts that he has slain a young man for a seemingly minor offence. He reminds his wives that the Lord had pronounced that anyone slaying Cain in vengeance for his killing of Abel would be punished sevenfold. Lamech thinks that if anyone should try to slay him in vengeance, there will be a 77-fold revenge. We are not told that this proposed revenge is of the Lord, so we must assume that it would be at the hands of Lamech's sons, family, clan, or tribe. So it would appear that we have here an example of what so often is the case in tribal or clan warfare: the supposedly "injured" party wants revenge many times.
This is a powerfully true story, and we can all think of times in our lives when we have taken offence or been angered into wanting such action on our behalf. It speaks to our most basic instinct as creatures. And it is why Jesus' statements about forgiving others are so powerful. We can certainly talk about the Grace of God and how we are exonerated from our sins and slavery to them. Yet, the more difficult part of the passage is the most obvious. We are to act with others as God has worked with us. We must be as magnanimous a forgiving agent as Jesus Christ was upon his cross: "Forgive them for they know not what they do."
This third idea strikes me and brings me up relatively short. As one reads this chapter, what becomes clear is that Jesus in Matthew's Gospel seems relatively unconcerned with the individuals who transgress and more focused upon the person trying to live in the way of Jesus. Be humble, Jesus tells us. Do not despise others. Refrain from allowing anyone to be lost or to stumble. Seek after the one who walks away. If another person sins against you, go and be reconciled with them. You go and find them. Take others and find them. Go out and find them. Be careful what slavery you cast on others, as it will bind you. Receive the forgiveness of debt and likewise forgive others.
Allison and Davies write in their Matthean work (vol II, 804):
...Jesus demands forgiveness without measure. The motivation for such unbounded generosity is imitation of the Father in heaven. As he has forgiven undeserving Christans, so must they likewise forgive others, "Freely you have received, freely give." The appropriate attitude towards a wayward brother is like that of a shepherd seeking a stray sheep. The shepherd does not want to punish the stray but bring it back to the fold.
You and I are to be like the shepherd in the parable; as our Lord Jesus, we seek out those who offend, sin or hurt us. We are to be as forgiving and as loving as our Lord is.
This is a harsh lesson. Over the last decade, 70% have dealt with conflict in churches. Much of that conflict has caused people to leave, and much of that conflict has sought to excommunicate the "other." As a church, we have not modelled with one another what Christ modelled for us, nor what we pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us." As a family of God, we have modelled and shown the world that we do not live by the code we claim. We have not forgiven as freely as we have received. We have not reconciled as willingly as we have been reconciled. We have not gone after our brother and sisters who have left with the same determination as a shepherd who has left his 99.
What must we do? What must the church do?
We must do as Isaiah dreams in chapter two:
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
The real issue is that we as humans want to be the judge, do the arbitrating, and wield the sword of sentencing one another to the outer darkness.
It is difficult because forgiveness requires embracing the other who is most repugnant to you. The fact is that regardless of whether you study meditation or the 12 steps, or you study psychology or the bible, you find that healing means most often coming to terms with the fact that the one you resent actually mirrors your own most despised part. In other words, you must forgive yourself and be reconciled with the details of yourself that are most grotesque to you to make space to ignore the other.
I pray that, as a church, we might actually do this work. I would love to see a day when we, as a church, put down our swords and various kinds and again turned to ploughing and pruning the missionary field. This will make a tremendous, conscious, and prayerful effort on our part to turn to brothers and sisters who, in the heat of argument, have wounded us to the heart and truly forgive us to move forward into the mission field together.
Commentary, Romans 14:1-12, Mary Hinkle Shore, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
Commentary, Romans 14:1-12, Mark Reasoner, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.
2Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. 3Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. 4Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.5Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. 6Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.He then basically says...so what business is it of yours?
In Roman society, it was considered ill-mannered to “pass judgement” (v. 4) on the conduct of another master’s servant; he was answerable to his “own lord” or master. Similarly, each Christian is answerable to “the Lord” and should not be criticized.What is important is that you are responsible for your convictions and answerable for the living and the dying that is your work. You are not to judge others, their conduct, or how they worship. You will be accountable to God. They will be responsible to God.
Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” 12So then, each of us will be accountable to God.Moreover, we should not do anything that might harm another person's faith. Paul writes that we should focus on the best things and "pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding."
All followers of God in Christ Jesus are to live in a manner consistent with one's conscience to be in a relationship with God. Your faith is yours alone and not dependent upon anybody else. The person who is weak in faith believes that how other lives or moves or has their being affects them. One is never made righteous by being better than someone else or demeaning another human being. That was the point of Jesus' confrontation with the religious leaders of the day.
Our mission initiatives would be more robust and see great results if we all started judging less and welcoming the other more.
"Gradual Freedom," Torah Commentary by Wendy Amsellem. Beliefnet.
"Despite being pressed by the weight of slavery on every side, we celebrate that our spirits were not crushed."
Commentary, Exodus 15:20-21, Yolanda Pierce, The African American Lectionary, 2009.
"The God seen in this passage is a powerful god that controls the waves of the sea. This God is stronger than the gods of their oppressors—why should the Babylonians' gods be any different?"
Commentary, Exodus 14:19-31 | Aimee Niles | A Plain Account, 2017.
We have seen Charlton Heston and others re-enact the grand event at the shore of the Red Sea. There are religious jokes about the parting of the Sea of Reeds. Episcopalians have spent hours rehearsing the drama at the Red Sea. We have done so in Sunday School, vacation Bible schools, and summer camp. It is part of our Easter Vigil service in the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer 1979. I had to memorize Miriam's song in Hebrew when I attended seminary. It was a rite of passage for my beloved Old Testament professor, Dr. Murray Newman. It is deeply woven into our baptismal theology and liturgy. In the Jewish tradition, it is recited during the daily morning service and said after the Shema. This passage appointed for today is essential.
As you probably know, scholars today think they crossed the Sea of Reeds (known for its papyrus production), which lies north of the Red Sea. The narrative we have of the event is rendered by two authors. One sees the light of God's nostrils blowing aside the waters. (Exodus 14: 22, 28-29) The second reveals that the wind (thanks to God) drove the waters back overnight. (Exodus 14: 21) One requires the suspension of the laws of nature, and the other requires honouring God for the action of the wind.
People have been trying to reveal how this happened for many years. Cambridge University physicist Colin Humphreys wrote in The Miracles of Exodus (2003):
"Wind tides are well known to oceanographers. For example, a strong wind blowing along Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes, has produced water elevation differences of as much as sixteen feet between Toledo, Ohio, on the west, and Buffalo, New York, on the east . . . There are reports that Napoleon was almost killed by a "sudden high tide" while crossing shallow water near the head of the Gulf of Suez." (pp. 247-48, As cited in Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, "Beshallach (5770) – Miracles" https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-5770-beshallach-miracles/ January 30, 2010.)
I find the whole thing fascinating. However, I believe the discussion about where it happened, if it happened, and how it happened are merely two-way observable spacio-temporal questions that are not useful to us if we wish to get to the bottom of God's narrative and its meaning. So, especially as we preach this, there are two critical points to be made here that move us past the typical questions of observable scientific truth and into a discussion about scriptural and theological truth.
The first truth is this: In God's narrative, we learn that often, our power is not in our exceptional nature but in our apparent weakness. We see this echoed in other stories like David and Goliath (where the smaller David wins the fight) or in the case of the prophet Balaam (who discovers his donkey is a better prophet than he). This is true because the Egyptian strength is in their chariot, which proves their weakness. Likewise, the disadvantage of being on foot is the strength in getting away.
Rabbi Sacks writes, "To put it another way, a miracle is not necessarily something that suspends natural law. It is, rather, an event for which there may be a natural explanation, but which – happening when, where and how it did – evokes wonder, such that even the most hardened sceptic senses that God has intervened in history. The weak are saved; those in danger are delivered. More significant still is the moral message such an event conveys: that hubris is punished by nemesis, that the proud are humbled and the humble given pride, that there is justice in history, often hidden but sometimes gloriously revealed…. The genius of the biblical narrative of the crossing of the Reed Sea is that it does not resolve the issue one way or another. It gives us both perspectives." (Ibid.)
This triumph is also a paradigm of Jesus' own victory. Out of Jesus' greatest weakness, his human death comes his and our most significant victory.
This leads to the second thought of importance. We understand that Christ is continuing the work that God has always done – freeing people from bondage. Our Episcopal baptismal prayer reads:
"Through it, you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it, your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life." (BCP 1979, p. 306)
The power of the image is that it foreshadows Christ's cross, death, and resurrection. It is for those who follow Jesus a fundamental understanding that real bodily resurrection happens for Israel. They are made new people. They pass through the waters of death and are brought to new life. Here is the meaning of our bodily resurrection.
This also speaks to genuine Christian work. It is not a spiritual deliverance we are after. We seek a new bodily present community in this world that speaks to the goodness of the next. Bodies matter, life matters, food, water, clothing, and shelter matter. God brought real people out of slavery. God brings a real person of Jesus out of the grave. We, as Christians, translate this into making an actual difference in the world – one that impacts the bodies of others.
Jesus read scrolls and preached freedom, the loosening of bonds, the feeding and clothing of those with little, and good things for those with none. He spoke of wiping away tears. He said of doing good work and sharing what we have – as did Paul, the apostles, and the earliest theologians. We, as Christians, are invited to make a difference in the world authentically. We are invited to bring people out of the past into their futures – one that promises a different life.
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