Standing Under the Scriptures
September 21, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Jonah 3.10-4.11: The Lord answers Jonah’s objections to the mercy he has shown to Nineveh.

Matthew 10.1-16: The owner of the vineyard defends his rewarding the last-hired equally with the first. Thus this parable also deals with the question of theodicy.

Last Sunday both our passages were concerned with forgiveness, indeed forgiveness without limitation. They did so in differing yet harmonious ways.

Our Genesis passage (50.15-21) was a kind of replay of chapter 45, wherein Joseph, after having put his brothers through severe tests, reveals himself to them amid abundant tears of reconciliation. This time the brothers come to him in the wake of the death of their father Jacob/Israel and ask his forgiveness for their crime against him (selling him into slavery in Egypt), almost as if suspecting that his previously expressed forgiveness had been out of respected for their father and not whole hearted. Another way of accounting for the doublet, as biblical scholars term such repetitions, is that separate versions of the Joseph tradition came down to the redactor of Genesis (another technical term, this one meaning compiler/editor). And instead of deciding between them he used both. (There are other instances of this in Genesis. For example, in chapter 7, verse 2 has Noah taking seven pairs of all animals into the ark and verse 8 has him taking two pairs.)

Whatever the explanation in this case, it is last Sunday’s passage which contains Joseph’s profound saying, “You meant it for evil against me, but God meant it for good” (verse 20; the RSV rather than the NRSV truly renders the Hebrew here). This is the basis for his wholehearted forgiveness of his brothers: God was able to take even their dastardly deed and use it, through his promotion from prisoner to viceroy of Pharaoh, to preserve the life of his brothers and their families and indeed to set in motion the history that followed from them. In effect, through taking evil up into a larger framework, that of redemption history itself, God transformed it into good. And this has implications extending beyond forgiveness. It points to God’s ability to take not only intentionally evil actions but unintended evils, including natural catastrophes, and use them for his purposes. The ultimate example of this would be Jesus’ death on the cross, the supreme evil, and its transformation into the supremely saving event of his resurrection. In the face of afflictions besetting those around us and ourselves, we need to keep in mind that God has this power.

Our Gospel reading, Matthew 18.21-35, was also about forgiveness without limitation. This is the upshot of Jesus’ response when Peter asks how many times he is to forgive “my brother” who sins against him. The seventy times seven that Jesus cites may be taken as infinity. To be sure, the primary application of it is within the church, brother being equivalent to member. But in the New Testament context it extends outside as well.

In our Genesis passage what enabled Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers was apparent: what God had done for and through him and his recognition of this. In the Matthew passage the reason why Peter, and also we, should forgive is different, though complementary. Jesus does not state it directly. Nevertheless he makes it sufficiently clear in the parable of the wicked slave, which immediately follows. Two things may be noted about it at the outset. The protagonist is a king rather than just a man or a householder as in many of Jesus’ other parables. This points up the fact that he represents the Lord. Secondly, the sum of money involved, 10,000 talents, is enormous. A laborer would require many lifetimes to earn it.

In brief, the king wanted to settle accounts with his slaves, in particular the one to whom he had advanced this enormous sum (it would seem that masters engaged in financial transactions with their slaves). On the slave’s inability to pay the king orders him and his to be sold. The slave then pleads for time to repay. And in response the king not only calls off the sale but forgives the debt, going beyond what the slave asked for. But the slave, instead of being inspired to do likewise, seizes a fellow slave who owes him a relatively trifling amount and casts him into prison pending his payment of it. The other slaves report this to the king, who is appalled and turns the first slave over to the torturers. The application of the parable is evident. Our debt to the Lord through our sins is enormous; as in Calvin’s and Luther’s concepts, we are miserable offenders. Nevertheless he has freely forgiven us. This obliges us to be similarly forgiving of our own debtors. And if we fail to discharge this obligation, the penalty, a just one, will be severe. Hence Jesus’ injunction to Peter, and us, to forgive seventy times seven.

Missing from Jesus’ injunction is any mention of gratitude on the part of the recipient of forgiveness or of any effect at all. Instead it is in terms of what is incumbent on us in view of our having been forgiven by God (which does not preclude our forgiving out of gratitude for this). And as with the “you meant it for evil but God meant it for good” in our Genesis passage, this points to an important wider principle. The New Testament and the biblical tradition generally are not devoid of the language of reward. Indeed, much is said about rewards, as when in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus speaks of the rewarding of almsgiving, praying, and fasting (Matthew 6.1-18). But the reward for these acts is to be looked for from God, not from people or any person. In fact, those who perform them only publicly lose their reward.

Thus we are to forgive because God has shown us, indeed has put it in our hearts, that it is the right thing to do, not because of any expectation of the effects that it will have on the person we forgive. If it is on the latter basis, when our expectations are disappointed, as inevitably they will be in some degree, out of our resulting disappointment and frustration we are liable to act harmfully, more than offsetting any good that we may have done. Thus a suggestion that forgiveness is an ex opere operato affair, producing of itself the human result we are looking for, should be regarded as dangerous.

Given the limitations of our humanity, do we then have any basis on which we can extend the unlimited forgiveness that Jesus enjoins on us? As I said in last Sunday’s class, I believe we do. It lies in the sober, unromantic assessment of human fallenness, others’ and our own. Through this we come to the recognition that the offender is probably acting out of having been similarly offended him- or herself, that the offense against us is largely a knock-on effect. We recognize also that we ourselves have offended against the offender, likely to an even greater degree. Such recognition is not a human possibility. In our humanity it is too great a burden for us. But God has enabled us to bear it, and even to rejoice in it, by redeeming and forgiving us through the sacrifice of his Son on the cross.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted