September 11, 2011 – Exodus 14:19-31; Matthew 18:21-35
Exodus 14:19-31; Matthew 18:21-35
Forgiveness
13th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 24) – Sept. 11, 2011
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
How much destruction and death are necessary for life to flourish?
I’ve been wondering that this week.
And all summer I’ve been thinking about the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,
Part II.
It’s the final Harry Potter film and it’s a very dark film.
But it’s a wonderful film, and it’s very moving.
The short version of the story is that Harry, a teenage wizard,
must kill the powerful evil wizard Voldemort in order to keep the world safe.
And in this final film he finally succeeds.
Voldemort not only is evil and wants to subdue the world,
he also killed Harry’s parents when Harry was still an infant.
A prophecy warned that the only thing that could stop Voldemort was a child born
at a specific time: Harry.
So Harry had to be put of the way, but when Voldemort attempted to kill the infant,
Harry’s mother threw herself in the way of his deadly curse.
Protected by the love of his mother Harry lived, but both his parents died.
Now, it seems, he is the only one who can face and subdue the evil wizard,
and in this film he does.
There’s a lot of death, and a lot of destruction along the way.
But in the end Voldemort dies.
So much death and destruction seemingly necessary for life.
It’s a similar story in the Exodus this morning.
The Egyptian army is routed and drowned by God so the Israelites can live.
We rightly celebrate that we worship a God who is interested in justice,
in freeing slaves, in bringing them to a place where the kind of life that
God intends for us – a life of mercy-giving and manna-sharing –
can flourish.
This is a God of love we worship, and God’s love for the Israelites is manifested in
the story of the Exodus.
But, as many commentators point out, what about God’s love for the Egyptians?
I did a little thought experiment this week.
In my head I took the scenario of Harry Potter and recast it in terms that
Jesus might this week.
What if Harry had confronted Voldemort with forgiveness for killing his parents?
I wonder. I can sort of imagine Jesus telling a parable like this,
that turns our expectations on their heads.
Instead, vengeance seems to consume Harry and the only way he thinks he can be free –
and that the world can be free – is by taking revenge in death and destruction.
Certainly the terrorists behind the World Trade Center attacks 10 years ago this morning
thought as much.
In their minds they were taking revenge on an America whose foreign policy was
anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim, maybe even anti-God, and
disrespectful of Muslim Holy Places.
Today we remember with deep sorrow the death, the loss, the pain, the anger, and
injustice that those misguided actions gave rise to in the lives of
hundreds of thousands of people.
But today, as Jesus reminds us so clearly and so plainly in the Gospel reading,
today is also a day to remember not just human ways with one another,
but God’s way with us, with all of us.
Jesus tells an unusually straightforward parable whose meaning is abundantly clear.
A slave owes a king an unimaginable debt.
The sum is astronomical, truly out of this world.
In today’s money, the slave would owe the king about 3 billion dollars!
At the rate of the average daily wage,
it would take this slave about 10 thousand lifetimes to pay back this debt.
The king forgives it, because the king’s forgiveness is extravagant.
Once forgiven lavishly, however, the slave cannot even forgive a relatively small debt.
The debt in this case is only worth about a hundred days of labour.
But he can’t do it, even though he’s been lavishly forgiven.
The point is clear enough: we are to forgive over and over again because God does.
Yeah: it’s tough to forgive like this, but it’s also humbling to reflect that
God forgives us – each of us – the same sins over and over and over again
minute by minute by minute our entire lives.
But it’s still hard.
It’s hard because forgiving means giving up your power over someone.
If Harry forgave Voldemort he’d have to give up the power he has to harm Voldemort.
And it is not easy to give that up.
When I was on internship many years ago, I counseled a married couple who were
trying to put their marriage back together after the husband had been unfaithful.
There were things each of them was going to have to do:
he was going to have be trustworthy, and she was going to have to forgive him.
If she didn’t, their future together was going to be doomed.
But she couldn’t do it, because that would have meant giving up the power that
she now held over him, the guilt that she could use to manipulate him with.
So there was no healing, and no moving forward into the future.
But it’s helpful to remember, on the other hand,
that while forgiving means giving up your power over someone,
It also means letting go of the power they have over you.
John Buchanan, the Editor of the Christian Century magazine, wrote an article
a few months ago about a fellow church member of his named Nancy.
In 1990 Nancy’s 25 year-old pregnant sister and her husband were shot and killed.
Nancy was against the death penalty before this incident,
and she remained against it after.
Even though the killer has shown no remorse, she has forgiven him.
“Killing [him] doesn’t close anything, certainly not my grief,” she wrote.
Rather, the way forward into a future without being consumed by hatred and anger and
Bitterness can only come from forgiveness.
I forgive Nancy’s killer . . . not because he has an excuse – he has none whatsoever.
I forgive not because he asked for it; he has not.
I do not forgive for him. Rather I forgive for the One who asked me to and taught me too.
And, she might have added, the One who has lavishly forgiven her.
How many times have we been slighted or hurt by family members or friends or
co-workers or clients or people at school,
and how many times have we found ourselves not being able to stop thinking about it,
being consumed by it, and worrying over it, and brooding on it,
and lying awake nights replaying it over and over in our minds?
There’s no life in that. It’s all-consuming and destructive. It’s unhealthy.
And we know – Harry Potter and the Exodus notwithstanding – we know that
no good will ever come of our lashing out and seeking retribution and revenge.
We know the way forward: the way of grace, the way of forgiveness.
The way God has chosen to deal with us in all our waywardness and all our infidelity and
all our sinfulness:
our inattention to the plight of the poor, the sick and the hungry.
Today we think about the Exodus and the destruction and death that the Israelites
thought were the price of freedom.
And we think about Harry Potter and the death that we so often assume is the cost of
abundant life.
We think about the events of September 11th ten years ago when four planes inflicted
such long-lasting damage to countless lives.
We think, too, about our own lives, and the hurts we have borne and
the grudges we have nursed and the pain we can’t seem to let go.
But today – on this day, and I’m reclaiming the date of September 11th for God now –
on this day, September 11th, 2011, on this day we will also remember above all
the events of 2000 years ago when Jesus, looking down from a cross on
world that thought it could wrest life from death and destruction,
when Jesus chose to call down from heaven not a flood of water
or the fire of wrath but forgiveness,
not catastrophe but clemency, not vengeance but love.
The new day comes not from killing – the new day will never come from killing –
the new day comes from forgiveness.
That is how God has chosen to deal with us, with an ocean of forgiveness,
that it might trickle through the streams and creeks of our lives to those
whom God would have us forgive. Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
