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“Seizing Him by the Throat,” Jeff Wright, 9/14/14

“Seizing Him by the Throat”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church

(Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, Colorado

September 14, 2014

A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe,” a part limited in time and space.  One experiences oneself, ones thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task is to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

Text: Matthew 18:21-35

In one of our Sunday school classes, we’ve been talking about how, when Matthew, Mark, Luke and John sat down to write their Gospels, each had a large collection of writings about Jesus to pick from.  Some were just snippets.  Others were more well-developed accounts of the things Jesus said and did.  At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, Luke says something about the process of picking and choosing in order to write what Luke calls “an orderly account.”  You can tell, in reading the four Gospels, that each of the writers had their own agenda.  I don’t mean this in a negative way.  The Gospels aren’t just historical documents.  They’re theological documents, too.  And practical, because each wrote to address questions and concerns in the particular community he was addressing.

In this chapter, the 18^th chapter, Matthew keeps coming back to the same theme.  As Barbara Brown Taylor writes,¹ nothing is to get in the way of the believers’ bond of love.  “Not their quarrels with one another, not their rivalries, not their tendency to put each other down, not even their blatant sins.  If one of them goes astray, they are to leave the rest of the flock and go find the lost one; if one of them does wrong and separates himself from the community, they are to go and try to bring him back.”  If one of them is completely defiant and her behavior is affecting the health of the church, the community is to expel her in the hope that her longing to return will lead to reconciliation.

Matthew illustrates the length to which the church is to go to maintain this bond of love by turning to a question that the disciple Peter asks Jesus, and Jesus’ response.  I’m guessing that somebody’s really hurt or offended Peter.  Maybe repeatedly.   It’s the boss who takes advantage.  The child who has crossed every line in the sand.  The spouse who accepts forgiveness and then uses it as excuse.  It’s something devastating, something heartbreaking.  How many times do you forgive another of something devastating, heartbreaking?

Peter’s wondering how far he’s supposed to go in the relationship.  “How many times must I be willing to be devastated, heartbroken?”  Peter knows we’re to be forgiving.  But he knows that, sometimes, forgiving seventy times doesn’t make the relationship any better.  There’s nothing academic about his question.  Peter doesn’t ask, “In case somebody asks me some day, Lord… you know, if I’m going to be an apostle and somebody asks how many times must a follower of yours forgive another?”  No, Peter uses the first person.  “How many times must I forgive?”  Peter’s asking for all of us.  “What is expected here?  How many times must I forgive?”

“Without end,” Jesus says.  That’s what Jesus’ answer, seventy times, means.  It means we’re never to stop forgiving.

Before we go on, I want to make sure we’re all on the same page.  There’s a lot that passes for forgiveness that has nothing to do with the real thing.  For example, finding excuses for our behavior or excusing the behavior of another, and calling it forgiveness.  Or covering our feelings of hurt in order to avoid conflict.  We say, “It’s okay, no problem, never mind, no big deal”, and call that forgiveness.  Or feigning forgiveness to appear to be the bigger person, but we’re still holding a grudge.  You know how it works.  I know you do, because the real thing, forgiveness, can be so hard at times.  But when it comes to truly forgiving, our actions speak louder than our words.  We slowly begin to dismiss the other, have less to do with them, and call our indifference forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not indifference to wrong, or permissiveness.  Forgiveness is not lying down and playing the part of a doormat.  Forgiveness is not setting aside ethical standards.  To the contrary, forgiveness, the real thing, is a meaningless gesture apart from ethical expectations and values.  The real thing takes the violation, the violator and the violated very seriously.  This is why the real thing is so hard to do.

And why the real thing has such an amazing potential to literally recreate life – and when we fail to forgive, to take it.  To demonstrate, Jesus tells a story about a king who is settling accounts with his servants.  When one who has an unusually large debt is brought before him and can’t pay, the king orders him to be sold along with his wife and children and what few possessions they have.  The king is going to recoup something of his losses.  But when the servant falls to his knees and begs the king to give him more time to repay, the king does an amazing thing.  He doesn’t simply extend the deadline for repayment.  He forgives the servant’s obligation.  He writes it off his books.  He releases the servant from his debt.  That’s the word Matthew uses to describe the act of forgiveness: The king released his servant.

We’re talking lots of money here.  A talent was worth about fifteen years wages for a laborer, and the servant, probably a trusted steward in the king’s household, had run up a debt of 10,000 talents.  The king is willing to write the whole thing off.  Then he takes one further royal step: he frees the slave and his family.  Unbelievable.  Sheer grace.

I have no way whatsoever to explain what happens next – except to point to that inexplicable place in each of us: broken, irrational, nasty, self-absorbed.  Jesus says that the servant, forgiven and released, no sooner leaves the king’s presence when he comes upon a fellow debtor.  The guy owes him a few thousand dollars.  He seizes him by the throat and demands payment.  When the fellow can’t pay he has him thrown in jail.  Unbelievable.  Sheer ingratitude.

In my last congregation, I had a woman come into my office with two notebooks full of charges against others – things that family, friends, even strangers had done that had hurt or offended her.  It was amazing.  Two notebooks-worth.  The list had gotten so out of hand, she didn’t know what to do.  She said, “What can I do?”  I’ll tell you what I was tempted to tell her.  I was tempted to say, “Okay, here.  The only way you’ll get through this is to write every single person in each notebook, explaining in detail what they did to hurt you – specifics, dates, that kind of thing – then tell each what they have to do to earn your forgiveness.”

But that’s not what I told her.  I actually gave her what I thought would be an easier and truly transforming task.  I said, “Here’s an idea.  Simply forgive everybody you’ve written up, burn the notebooks, and move on unburdened.”  I wish you could have seen the look of horror on her face.  It was as if I’d ask her to jump out of plane without a parachute.  Most of us don’t keep a notebook.  We’re a little more subtle, but we still keep score.  We hold others accountable for that for which God has said, once and for all in Jesus, that he has forgiven in us.  That’s what Jesus is talking about here in this parable of the Unforgiving Servant.

I’ve said it before.  You may get tired of hearing me say it again and again, but this is how we get into the kingdom God is creating: we accept the invitation, we receive the forgiveness, we let Jesus pay the price.  Oh, there’s a cost to forgiveness.  I don’t mean to imply that it’s easy, that there isn’t a price.  Something has to die.  That’s what horrified the woman clutching those two notebooks to her chest.  Imagine what she had to give up to let go of those notebooks.  Jesus has paid the price.  This is such a critical part of the Gospel.

The reason I’ll keep repeating this is because it’s so very difficult to believe – that we’re already in, that we’re already accepted, that we’re already forgiven, that the debt has already been paid.  God has thrown away his notebooks.  One of my favorite theologians, Robert Capon, says, In Jesus, God got out of the accounting business.² There’s another reason I keep repeating this core belief in the Christian faith – perhaps an even more critical part of the Gospel.  Wiping the slate clean allows us to get on with the business of God’s kingdom, God’s vision for the church: Loving God. Serving others. Changing  lives.³

It’s hard to look up and stretch out our hands in love when we’re busy writing in our notebooks.  Here’s what refusing to forgive looks like.  [I had arranged for someone to come to the chancel and kneel in front of me; then I wrapped by hands around the person’s throat as if choking her.]  It’s troubling, this picture Jesus has drawn.  It’s life-threatening: refusing to forgive – not just for the fellow in debt.  For the servant exacting payment, too.  Observe the expressions on both of their faces: fear on the one, his gasping for breath, anger on the other; and behind the anger, hurt; behind the hurt, confusion; behind the confusion, pain.

I’m not asking you to pity the forgiven servant who doesn’t forgive in turn.  I want you to see what the unforgiveness, the grabbing, the anger, the hurt, the confusion and the unresolved pain are doing to him.  It’s killing him, not just spiritually – emotionally and physically, too.  Something physical happens when we withhold forgiveness, when we refuse to receive it, when we will not forgive others and ourselves.  Something happens to our senses.  We quit feeling.  We quit seeing clearly.  We quite hearing and smelling and tasting even.  We lose our appetite, or eat voraciously to fill the void.  We pull our hand, our body, back from touch.  We withdraw from the community that has nurtured us, the community – God’s community, be it family or a circle of close friends or the church – the very circle of love that has the potential to help us heal.

Awhile back, my wife Janet attended a workshop in Denver.  The training was for mental health therapists.  The topic was Forgiveness.   Janet said that the trainer, Janice Abrams Spring, described research showing that the failure to forgive poisons us physically, emotionally and spiritually.  “It cuts us off from life.”  That’s what she said.  “It cuts us off from life.”  She said, “Nursing a grudge has a physiological impact on the body.  By refusing to forgive we make ourselves sick.”  She said there’s evidence that refusing to forgive diminishes the body’s immune response and can lead to a build-up of plaque in the arteries.  Abrams Spring said, “Giving up the grudge is good for us.  It’s the core of health.”

Forgiveness isn’t just a religious experience, something spiritual people are supposed to do.  It’s something that’s written into human being – for the sake of our health and wholeness in a broken world full of broken people like you and me.  This is why forgiveness, the genuine thing, has such an amazing potential to recreate life.  Forgiveness is resurrection, here and now, in this life.

It was one thing for Jesus to tell Peter, “Seventy times.”  It was something else for Jesus to have drawn this picture.  Did Peter see himself in the story?  There he was, forgiven so much.  God’s unconditional love meant new life and meaning and purpose for Peter, and there he was, trying to calculate how often and how much he’s supposed to forgive another.  “Seven times?” he asks Jesus.  Grace isn’t about mathematics, adding and subtracting and keeping books.

Jesus wants Peter to see what setting limits and not forgiving looks like.  It’s more than a religious thing, Jesus says.  It’s a matter of life and death.  Our unwillingness to accept forgiveness, to let it work its way within us, to transform us into a forgiving people, lands us in prison, in a hell of our own making, like the servant in Jesus’ story.  Jesus can’t build a healthy, purposeful community of folks who are walking around in their own little prisons.

—Jeff Wright

¹ The Seeds of Heaven, p.92 (Westminster John Knox)

² I’m indebted to Capon for his treatment of this parable, The Parables of Grace (Eerdmans)

³ This is our congregation’s Vision statement.