Mercy
Scripture: Matthew 18:21-35
Well, this is one of those passages of scripture that seems to call for starting at the end. Jesus lets fly with a few real doozies in the gospels, but the one that ends this exchange in Matthew 18 is among the most startling. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” And the image of jailhouse torture he’s referring to is not easily forgotten.
The irony reads a little rich off the surface. Is God really like an angry king who tortures people to teach them a lesson about mercy? There are many of these discomfiting corners of the Bible that don’t necessarily square so well with the God and the faith we have otherwise experienced. Sometimes we tuck the unpleasant bits under the rug or try to explain them away. And sometimes we just leave them there in all their uncomfortable strangeness to be whatever they are.
I don’t know quite what to say about this one, except that somehow my experience as a parent has me sympathizing a little with Jesus here. As I read Matthew 18, I get the sense that Jesus is perhaps a bit exasperated by the end of the chapter. His disciples are not unlike a bunch of children squabbling amongst themselves and almost willfully missing the point. Actually, Jesus says it would be better if they were children. In fact, children are exactly what we need to be like!
Chapter 18 opens with a tone-deaf question that Jesus gets from his disciples a whole bunch of times in the gospels: “Who will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” they ask? And Jesus has to patiently start again to explain it. The greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the one who becomes as humble as a child. If you’re talking about greatness, you’re already on the wrong page.
So it wasn’t a great start to the whole conversation that leads up to the story about the unmerciful servant. One of those first interactions that makes you a little grumpy for the rest of the day. This happens to all of us, I think, and not just to parents either. Once you get off on the wrong foot, it’s hard to get back right again.
But Jesus rallies and goes on to share an important teaching about accountability in the community of his followers. What do we do when someone in the church, say, behaves badly or hurts someone else. Well, Jesus says, there’s a process that you can follow. I’m not sure if he ever wrote it out for the policy manual, but it sure would fit in one of those. Many of us are probably familiar with the procedure. The first thing you do is approach the person privately, just the two of you. Let them know what happened and how it felt, and see if they’re ready to respond and try to heal the rift. Best not to go straight to the top, Jesus says, because most things are better dealt with on a level playing field. But if that doesn’t work, then you try again with a couple more people. Expand the circle a bit, bring in a couple of other witnesses. See if the person will engage in a process of reconciliation. And if that doesn’t work either, then you get the whole community involved. Now it becomes a big thing. Probably leadership is there, there’s a public conversation. And if you still can’t find any readiness to apologize and make the situation right, then you acknowledge that there’s become a rift in the community and we’re no longer in fellowship with each other.
Admittedly, this is a pretty weighty bit of instruction that Jesus offers. Takes some mulling over and thinking through. And you can almost see the wheels turning in Peter’s head as he approaches Jesus with his question of clarification – these are the first verses that Daryl read for us a few minutes ago: “Ok,” says Peter, “so let’s say someone does me wrong, but then does finally make amends and change their ways when I confront them. If they hurt me again, how many times should I forgive them? Maybe seven?”
Woops, Peter – sometimes there is such a thing as asking the wrong question. Jesus just looks at him. Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times. Perhaps Peter thought he was being pretty generous with seven, but Jesus pulls things into a whole different gear.
The number seventy-seven, or seventy times seven, however it gets translated, is mostly just a way of telling Peter to stop counting. It’s just a big number, more than anyone could keep track of. But 77 is also an interesting figure if we look back at a story from early in the book of Genesis. In Genesis 4, one of Cain’s descendants Lamech swaggers around for a couple of verses thumping his chest and flexing for his wives. Look at me, he says, I’m so tough I have killed a man just for hitting me. Forget about avenging myself seven times, Lamech will be avenged seventy-seven times!
Interesting parallel. From vengeance not seven but seventy-seven times, to forgiveness not seven but seventy-seven times. Jesus is flipping the script. But Peter has stepped in it on a bunch of levels here. It’s not that he didn’t suggest a big enough number. It really was the wrong question. You can imagine Jesus having to stop and collect himself for a minute, try to keep from saying something he’ll regret. Because Peter is right back to where the disciples started at the beginning of Matthew 18. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? How about the magnanimous Peter, who will outdo all others by bestowing the great honour of his forgiveness no fewer than seven times?
Jesus changes tack at this point, as he so often does, and tells a story. And not a story that really answers Peter’s question either. It answers a different question, perhaps the one Peter would have been better off asking. And that questions is: how much will God forgive me? In other words: what makes you think, Peter, that you’re the one who’s going to be doing all the forgiving? Whatever you might have to forgive in the life of your community, you are first of all someone who has received the vast and wondrous mercy of God. Don’t forget that you are first the forgiven. And then live accordingly by showing mercy to others.
We heard Daryl read the story itself, and perhaps it is already familiar. A king who forgives an astronomical debt owed by one of those managing his affairs. But then this newly freed servant violently demands payment from a fellow who owes him a vastly smaller sum. The king in the story is not much impressed with this forgiven and yet unrepentant and unmerciful servant. He receives a pretty severe sentence, which Jesus then extends to all who might fail to forgive after being the recipients of mercy themselves.
Whatever else we might say, it’s not Jesus in one of his softer moments. And a soft Jesus may not be what we need in any case. But I can’t blame him for being a little testy by this point. It’s been a hard go with these disciples. So he offers them this parting shot, and then marches off. “When Jesus had finished saying these things,” begins chapter 19, “he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.” His companions no doubt mulling things over in their minds as they followed him on the road.
So how does this all fit into our exploration of Shalom through these weeks of the fall? How does Mercy interact with those siblings Truth, Justice and Peace to create a space of wholeness, completeness, and common flourishing? It seems to me that taken as a whole, Matthew 18 provides a great image of how these things might be held in balance. We start with a reminder about humility – about becoming like children and letting go of our power struggles and our jockeying for position. And then Jesus talks about Truth and Justice – how we confront the realities of our wrongdoing and failures with each other and make things right in community. But this justice has to be rooted in a compassionate heart, because we are first of all a people who have received the mercy of God. We have been forgiven much, and so we forgive much too. Not seven times, but seventy-seven. From exponential revenge to exponential mercy.
And it works the other way too, as Shalom’s children play their part together. We are called to mercy without limit, but not without truth or justice. Not without accountability. Not without appropriate boundaries and expectations of each other. And not without concrete practices that actually move us towards healing and wholeness again.
In a minute I will be joined up here by our current Refugee Sponsorship Committee as we take the time to report back and share with all of you about the past year of walking with the Shehadeh family. Sponsoring refugees is certainly a work of mercy. And it is rooted in that prior sense of having received mercy ourselves. Some of us have a more recent family memory of being immigrants or even refugees, arriving in a new place and receiving the support and welcome of those already here. But even if we don’t, we who live in this community have found a place of home and belonging for ourselves. We have received the mercy of this land, and of the infrastructure and relationships built on it. And so we share this mercy with others who are also seeking a place of home. A place to live and be, a place of peace and shalom. And as we enter into these new relationships we make shalom in ways that bear us up too. Learning again what it means to live with truth, mercy, justice and peace.
Let’s sing, and then we’ll share some of these stories together.
VT 156 There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy