Forgive Us Our Debts, a sermon preached by Rev. Abigail Henderson at First United Church of Christ in Northfield, MN, on March 16, 2014.

Transcription

1 Forgive Us Our Debts, a sermon preached by Rev. Abigail Henderson at First United Church of Christ in Northfield, MN, on March 16, Matthew 18:15-35 As you have noticed, during Lent we are using a beautiful interpretation of the Lord s Prayer from the New Zealand Prayer Book. Personally, I am a big fan of getting creative with our faith language, especially our gendered faith language. We are less likely to limit God when we employ a wide range of words and images to describe the indescribable. I do admit, however, that the traditional Lord s Prayer holds a special place in my heart. Like many of you, I grew up reciting one version of it or another. Here s a question: are you a trespasser, a debtor, or a sinner? I ve been all three. In my earliest church memories, we recited the Lord s Prayer using the word trespasses, which I found hard to pronounce as a little child. Triss-pusses, I would say. Then, when I was nine, we moved to a church that used sins, and that is the term that is still imprinted on my soul, despite the fact that this and other churches I ve served use debts.

2 Here s a little context: we have three versions of the Lord s Prayer in English because of differences in translation of Jesus words as they appear in the Gospel of Matthew. Technically, debts is closer to the original Greek than trespasses. Sins, which appears in Luke s shorter version of the prayer, is regarded by some scholars as an umbrella term encompassing debts, trespasses, and countless other human errors. Now, despite my personal allegiance to sin as a term! I think debt is a very helpful concept in understanding Matthew s message about forgiveness. But let s back up a bit. What we have in today s reading is evidence that church has never been easy. As tempting as it might be to sugarcoat this life of faith we share together, let s be honest: if Jesus is present whenever two or three or gathered, so is conflict. The scholar Thomas G. Long writes, [The Gospel of] Matthew has no romantic illusions about the church. He knows that the church is not all sweet thoughts, endlessly patient saints, and cloudless skies. In Matthew's church, people no matter how committed are still people, and stormy weather is always a possible forecast. With the words we read today, Matthew seeks to establish a culture of accountability among the early followers of Jesus. According to Matthew, Jesus

3 anticipates friction in the community. He anticipates that people wound one another, and he offers direct communication as a remedy. You ll hear the same advice in countless human resource manuals today. Yet accountability seems to exist in tension with another mandate: forgiveness. Forgive one another. Not seven times but seventy-seven. Accountability and forgiveness. Justice and mercy. Often the most fundamental tensions of civilization, right? How do we begin to wrap our minds around these vast concepts? Jesus does it by speaking in parable, and he chooses an analogy for sin that is as powerful today as it was in ancient Israel: I m speaking of debt. Toxic, unmanageable, insurmountable debt. I get a little edgy just thinking about it. Maybe you do too. After all, according to Federal Reserve statistics, American consumers currently owe trillion dollars in debt. I could read you more statistics about the national debt; the predatory lending disaster; the almost incomprehensible increases in the cost of higher education. Is there such a thing as so-called good debt when people can t even pay the interest on their loans?

4 Whether you are able to pay off your personal debts or not, we are all participating in the culture of extreme indebtedness. We are all, in one way or another, benefitting from or breaking under this system that encourages even insists that we live far beyond our means. In such a climate, it is indeed radical to suggest that all debts be forgiven. If this were to happen literally, I imagine the worldwide economy would collapse. Then there s a flipside. So dependent are we on debt so inured are we to its reality that, in some cases, we don t even take it that seriously. A few years ago, the New York Times published an article about recent law school graduates, who can t get jobs in the current market and therefore can t begin to repay their extremely high loans. One interviewee, a quarter of a million dollars in the red, put it this way: Bank bailouts, company bailouts I don t know, we re the generation of bailouts And like, this debt of mine is just sort of, it s a little illusory. I feel like at some point, I ll negotiate it away, or they won t collect it. I mourn that this young man can t find gainful employment. I mourn that he will probably live out his life in debt. And I also mourn that the very concepts of credit and debt have lost traction in his life, though I don t blame him. We live in a world of unlimited borrowing, constant defaulting, bailouts, and low accountability. Is this the dark side of debt forgiveness? A total lack of responsibility? Surely Jesus would not encourage us to let each other off the hook if he could see how we live now.

5 Here s the thing though: toxic debt is not a modern invention, and neither is the disparity between the rich and the poor. There s a verse in Proverbs that goes, the rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all. I wonder if Jesus had something similar in mind when he dined with the poor and with the tax collectors who exploited them. He understood that unjust systems ultimately don t do anyone any good they only reap calamity. In that light, consider that parable of the unforgiving servant. It ends harshly with Jesus declaring that God will torture us if we do not forgive our brothers and sisters. Ouch. But you know, Jesus might be employing some intentional hyperbole here, as he is wont to do. The parable begins, after all, with the admonishment to forgive not just seven times, but seventy-seven times. Furthermore, remember how the slave owes the king ten thousand talents? That s the equivalent of one modern person being held responsible for our shared 11 trillion dollar consumer debt. In other words, original listeners would have immediately detected that Jesus was talking in extreme terms to make a point. But what is that point? Maybe it s this: when it comes to sharing a life of faith and building the kingdom together, we need to rethink the conventional rules concerning obligation and settlement. It seems to me that in Jesus worldview, being in debt isn t necessarily this terrible, shameful thing we should deny at all costs. For one thing, the wording of the

6 traditional Lord s Prayer implies that everyone stands on both sides of the lending relationship. We all owe someone; and we are all owed something. It is a fact of life together, this steady accumulation of debts. But perhaps we re not meant to keep track of every single IOU it isn t always about balancing the ledger or paying off the bills. It s about interrelationship. Interdependence. In other words, there is such a thing as good debt, but it has nothing to do with getting your money s worth or increasing your own value. Good debt is the experience of receiving grace when you really need it grace freely given, with no expectation of repayment or interest. According to the Hebrew Bible, God demanded that every fifty years there would be a Jubilee a special year when slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven, and the mercies of God would be available regardless of how hard you worked. In Jesus metaphor, the forgiveness of sins means relief; reconciliation; restoration to the fold. Exiled no more. Now, I think there are limits to the analogy, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Life debts are not merely financial or material. Many of us are haunted by debts that cut very, very deep. We ve been hurt trespassed against physically, emotionally, spiritually, sexually. Such debts are not easily paid back, and nor should they be. When I was in social work school, I spent a year as an intern therapist with the state correctional system. I worked with men who had done terrible, unspeakable things to their fellow human beings. I still wonder

7 whether these men are forgivable; whether their debts will ever be repaid. I m quite sure it is not up to me to tell anyone else when, how, or why to forgive. I can only say this: Jesus calls us to acknowledge that we wound one another quite constantly; that we are the bearers of individual and collective liability. Do we want to be forever indentured to our lenders? Do we want to be constant debt collectors? I think we need only look at our broken world to see the calamity of such an approach. A man well acquainted with calamity and community was the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A film about him is being shown in our adult forum meetings. Before his murder in 1945, he watched his country s mainstream Protestant church submit to Nazi leadership. And in the midst of such institutional failure, he wrote a meditation on what it means to be in Christian fellowship. He wrote, The service of forgiveness is rendered by one to the others daily. It occurs, without words, in the intercessions for one another. And every member of the fellowship, who does not grow weary in this ministry, can depend upon it that this service is also being rendered to him by the brethren. He who is bearing others knows that he himself is being borne, and only in this strength can he go on bearing. In Bonhoeffer s vision of community, forgiveness, like bread, is given daily. It s given daily not because it s easy or always deserved, but because it makes us stronger. It is right to have standards of behavior and accountability and expectations; we could not function or maintain safety without these things.

8 But forgiveness even the possibility of it is the real glue that binds our life together. In mutual grace, we find the strength to bear one another, in all senses. Forgiveness (and debt) are exponential; each instance gives birth to more instances, multiplying and expanding and filling up the space. Just like our beautiful bulletin cover this morning: the seven petals radiate out. Forgive: not seven times, not even seventy-seven times, but seventy-seven thousand, million, trillion. Do we want to live in a community of out-of-control debt, or out-of-control forgiveness? As a trespasser, a sinner, and a debtor, I hope for the latter. Amen.