No Limits

a Sermon for Proper 19A
Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Where we've been
Ten years ago today, about this time, 4 hijacked airplanes were used as projectile missiles to cause dramatic and traumatic devastation. Three of them reached their targets and one was sent into the countryside. Many, including those aiding the victims of violence, died. Nearly 3,000 in all.

One of our favorite ways to pay homage to this tragedy is to play the “where were you” game. At approximately 10:50, we were no doubt still scrambling for information; still looking to make sense out of what seemed so senseless. I was working in a bookstore. One of our managers sat all morning in his office, coming out onto the book floor to give us updates. I remember the confusion, the fear, the corporate anxiety. We didn’t know anything.

So what did we do? We responded. Actually, we went hunting—to use former President Bush’s language. We went hunting with guns and dogs. We invaded two countries, rounded up and imprisoned thousands. Death tolls at the conservative end count well more than 100,000 Iraqis killed in the last decade.

We changed the way we treat each other, becoming a culture of suspicion. We changed our expectations for air travel, of what we can expect of one another, what we will consent to, even what we expect will bring us security. 

All of this, the past 10 years has been motivated by that moment, that fear, and those accusations. Those suspicions, that willingness to enter into the human desire for revenge.

It's about forgiveness
If you doubt the place of providence—the place of God’s interaction with us—then look at our readings. Look at our gospel. A gospel about forgiveness and torture on this auspicious anniversary. Perfect isn’t it? Notice that Peter’s question of Jesus that kicks off this gospel passage isn’t truly elementary. He isn’t asking whether or not to forgive a transgression—a personal transgression no less—but something more. For those new to faith, this is the starting place. His teaching has gone out elsewhere in this way:

If I’m hurt by someone, do I forgive them or kick them out? Do I retaliate? 

Jesus says

forgive. 

The next question becomes more specific:

Who must I forgive? 

And Jesus elaborates:

Forgive. Not just your friends, but your enemies also. 

So now we get to that graduate level question. The one that is for all followers that get that this is all about forgiveness; that the entire deal of following Christ, of loving God is about forgiveness. Peter asks

"Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" 

Peter’s question may as well be

When is enough enough? Where do we draw the line?

Jesus’s response, a reference to Lamech in Genesis (4:23-24) is to say

Draw it out here—where you will never reach it.

Then he tells Peter this parable about a slave who owes a debt that is impossible to pay off. The slave, looking for some small mercy, hopes to be given an opportunity to give it a shot anyway. Instead, the debt is completely forgiven. Now the slave turns around and abuses another slave indebted to him. The first slave locks him away with no hope of repaying his debt.

At this point, the other slaves sell the first slave out to the lord who turns around and punishes that slave who was once shown incredible mercy, torturing him and putting that impossible debt back onto him.

Forgiveness is not just about GOD.
This gospel is really troubling because Jesus even connects the dots at the end saying

This is what God will do to all of you if you don’t forgive.

Full stop.  Forgive, period.

Remember that this parable deals with Peter’s question: what are the limits of our forgiveness? And Jesus tells him there aren’t any. This whole deal is about forgiveness because the world around us wants retaliation and revenge. Jesus says to forgive without limits.

 Many Christians can connect these dots easily: the lord in the parable forgives an unpayable debt, so the Great Mystery we call God forgives us of our indebtedness through sin. I’m pretty cool with that reading, except Jesus is much more concerned with what we do with that forgiveness. That we don’t indebt others, that we forgive, and that our forgiveness knows no limits. It isn’t just about being forgiven, but also forgiving others. Jesus knows this is hard. He knows that his hearers were raised in a world of retaliation and evil. And He knows that many will hate to hear this because the human mind lusts after revenge.

And yet, the heart loves love.

This message of forgiveness isn’t about a program like paying it forward or random acts of kindness, though these methods are good. It is about recalibrating our hearts to forgiveness. Rejecting our brains’ meticulous revenge fantasies and focusing on our broad, forgiving hearts.

Sharing forgiveness
So here we are on September 11, 2011, ten years later, and we have a gospel message of forgiveness. I’m reminded of the hymn:

There's a wideness in God's mercy
like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in his justice,
which is more than liberty. 

We’re being called to this radical forgiveness like a conviction. We haven’t been in a forgiving mood. As a country, we haven’t had one day in 10 years in which our operating mood was forgiveness. But anniversaries give us the chance to get rid of all that. To exercise old demons; to let go of our own blood lust and forgive from our hearts.

 Don’t we feel it? That corporate and personal need to forgive? Don’t we feel the need to seek forgiveness? To ask God to forgive us? Hasn’t the last 10 years been Hell? The anger, the infighting, the bitterness. That is the stuff of Hell. But we can be forgiven. If we ask for it, God will forgive us.

 Right now, in this assembly, we can ask God and our neighbors for forgiveness. So are we up to it? We can forgive and be forgiven. We can wipe the slate clean and begin to heal this broken world with our no limits forgiveness.

So in a moment we will pray, confess, and receive God’s absolution. And as we do so, I ask that we offer up all the grudges and evil we carry and ask for our own forgiveness—that the grace of God will make it possible for us to forgive—so that when we share the peace, we do so with the wideness of God’s mercy. We’ll prepare the table eat together as one. Then we will throw open the doors to love everyone and let our forgiveness pour out from this place.

Gotta Have Faith

a Sermon for Proper 22C
Text: Luke 17:5-10

GOD of Hope and Wonder, open our minds to your generosity and love, that we may be transformed by your faith. Amen.

Our gospel contains a word that I don’t like very much: Faith. Funny, right? I don’t dislike the word itself, and I don’t have an unreasonable problem with the concept. It’s just…I don’t think we get it.

When I was younger, I hated the way some would use certain ‘churchy’ words, like faith, belief, and all that because I never felt like I really understood what they were trying to say. One particular time in college, this one woman was going on and on and I counted the number of churchy words she was using and about the time she got to 40 or so, I decided to give up. It’s why I try to push people to express their beliefs (spiritual foundation?) with non-churchy words: because we need to be adept at expressing ourselves, not parroting church words.

We also seem to have the wrong idea about faith, because we want to quantify it. Because if we quantify it, then we can compare each other. We act like we have a gauge that measures our faith: “I’m only a four today; maybe we should go to church so I can raise it to seven or eight.” Or as if we had a faith thermometer: “Hmmm. 98.6; average faith, today!” But really its that we see people using the churchy words and we think they have more faith. Rick Warren must have more faith than I since he talks about it so much! Or we look at people doing stuff that we don’t want to do and we assume it is because they have more faith: Mother Theresa amongst the people with leprosy: I certainly don’t have enough faith to do that.

Mustard Seed Extract
This is where the disciples are at: they ask Jesus to increase their faith. Jesus has given them all of this stuff to worry about and do, so they certainly don’t have enough faith to accomplish it all. And how does Jesus respond? By blowing up this notion. He teaches them this about faith: if you have the smallest speck of faith, you could throw a tree into the sea. In Matthew, it’s move a mountain, but here, it’s a tree. If we think about what the disciples were asking, Jesus’s response doesn’t make sense:

Jesus, we only have X amount of faith, but what you are asking for requires X+Y!

The system they are operating from is this: if you have a little faith, you can get a little action; middle faith—middle action; big faith—big action; but Jesus says if you have the teensiest, weensiest bit of faith, you can do the most amazing miracle: apparently a type of spiritual telekinesis.

He seems to be saying:

“It isn’t about how much, and it certainly isn’t about the quality, either. You’ve got the faith you need.”

GOD and the slaves
Then Jesus seems to shift gears and starts talking about slaves. It goes something like this: Let’s say you are a landowner and your slave comes to you after a long day to see what you want for dinner. Would you invite the slave to sit down? No! Of course not! You’ll send him into the kitchen to make dinner, serve you, clean it up, then he can eat! Do you expect a pat on the back for doing what’s told of you? Now think of it this way: GOD is the landowner and you are the slave. Would you expect any different treatment?

There is something about this that doesn’t compute. I read it over a bunch of times and I couldn’t make sense of it. That doesn’t seem like the picture of GOD that we’ve been working through in Luke. That seems like GOD, the micro-manager.

Jesus begins by saying “Would you say [this]”? As you are—in the world as it is.

How does the story Jesus tells change if we do,
not what we would normally do,
but what he hopes we will do?

Because as I was reading it, I really wanted to say “yes!” I want to be a person that does invite the slave in to sit down. So I re-imagined the story this way.

A different story
The slave comes to you to ask what you want for dinner and you say “sit, please.” And because he is a good slave, he will follow your instructions, though he is confused by your behavior. You notice right away that he is hot and sweaty and that he has been in the field all day, so you offer him a drink. You walk to the kitchen and pour two glasses and place one in front of him and one in front of you. Since he does all of the cooking, you are afraid to offer him anything to eat, but you can make a sandwich, so you go back to the kitchen, make some sandwiches and place one in front of him and one in front of yourself. And then you eat.

While you are sitting there, you ask him a question. You want to get to know him better. And you realize quickly that you don’t really know him all that well. So you keep asking questions and he begins to open up, telling you about his life and his beliefs and his dreams and his hopes for the world and as he is about to take the last bite, you run to the kitchen for some chips because you don’t want the conversation to end, so you open the bag and put it in front of him and he keeps going. And about the time that you are content and happy, he stands up and clears the table. He returns with a pitcher to fill your glass and he says this:

“Thank you. You didn’t have to do that. You are so generous. This meant a lot to me.”

And then you respond by saying “The pleasure was all mine. Let’s do this again soon.”

“OK.”

Doesn’t that feel right? Doesn’t that fit better with what Jesus has just been saying? And just as Jesus changes the characters over here, we can change these characters around. God is that landowner and we are that slave. How does this match the previous chapters of Luke? It was only a chapter ago that Jesus told the three parables of the lost things: the sheep, coin, and son(s). In that, we get a picture of GOD that comes to us in our weakness and out of ridiculous generosity. Does GOD really expect us to meet the minimum requirements to receive generously? Is GOD that obsessed with minimum standards? The GOD that runs out to greet the ungrateful and rebellious younger son and then the ungrateful dutiful one?

In fact, by giving us the question, Jesus invites us into this thinking. “Would you do [this]?” And we say “Yes!”

So what does this have to do with faith? Everything.
Because faith changes us.
Because faith makes everything new.
Faith is found in generosity and hope and love and devotion.

May we be a people of love and generosity and GOD’s transformative grace. And may we be so changed by GOD that we can move mountains and throw trees into the sea.



NOTE: The actual sermon was preached from very simple notes. This is a recreation posted on October 13th.