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Current Sermon
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Forgive Them Anyway
September 14, 2008
I want to share with you one of my all-time favorite stories. It goes like this: One evening a Native American Elder told her grandson about a battle that goes on inside of people. She said, “Child of our Mother Earth, there is a battle between two “wolves” inside us all. One is Evil. It is envy, jealousy, regret, greed, arrogance, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked the Elder; “Which wolf wins?” The Elder simply answered, “The one you feed.”
In our text for today, the parable Jesus tells is a lose-lose story. Not a win-win; not even a win-lose story. It’s lose-lose. Nobody gets repaid. Two of the characters end up in prison, and the slave-owner is “out” two slaves, not to mention feeling duped by a hypocritical slave. Nobody wins.
The point of this parable is forgiveness. Jesus is asked by Peter how many times he’s supposed to forgive. And in typical Jesus style, he answers with a parable that would leave his contemporaries scratching their heads. The parables that Jesus told turned things upside down, leaving the hearers to wrestle with the meaning, because in their world view, it just didn’t make sense.
This parable contrasts the power of power against the power of compassion. The slave owner and the first slave both have the power to exact payment from the one who is indebted to them. Only the slave owner, at first, uses compassion and offers another chance to his debtor. The same slave then turns around and uses his power over the other slave; and ironically ensures that he will never be paid back. (How can you repay a debt from prison? You’d have to stamp out a lot of license plates to earn that kind of money.) This slave’s refusal to grant mercy after pleading for mercy himself infuriates the slave owner, who then exercises his power over the slave. And another debt will go unpaid. Both of them exercised their power to enforce what they had coming to them, and all of them ended up empty handed. Which wolf did they choose to feed?
The forgiveness that we’re offered by God in Christ is constant. God isn’t going to revoke it, like the slave owner in this parable. God’s covenant, God’s promise is everlasting; and God honors this covenant with us, even when we fail to uphold our end of it. God’s grace, as embodied in Jesus, is about God, not about us. Our response to this open embrace is to WANT to offer this same grace and forgiveness. And in doing so, we extend the kin-dom of God in the world.
We choose which world we live in: the one where power rules; or the one where God’s grace and forgiveness rule. Which wolf do we want to feed?
I would be remiss if I didn’t address the bigger background picture of this text, because how we understand the Bible affects how we hear such texts, and vice versa. This text attributed to Jesus in the Bible holds God up as one who is willing, if not eager, to throw us into the torture chamber if we don’t do what we’re told. I have to be honest and say that, just as I have a hard time supporting a government that engages in torture, I have a hard time worshiping a God who engages in torture. So, how do I wrestle with the words of Jesus attributing this kind of anger and retribution to God?
Again, how we understand the Bible affects how we hear such texts, and vice versa. For many people, this torturing kind of God is rejected. For many people, the God portrayed as a torturer leads them to dismiss the rest of the Bible, lock, stock and barrel; and consequently they reject the Christian faith. What person with healthy self esteem wants to spend her whole life wondering whether, if she slips up just once, God is gonna zap her? To my way of thinking, dismissing the entire Christian story is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
I had the rare privilege of studying the Bible intensely for 3 years. Not everyone has that opportunity or luxury. In my seminary studies, we not only studied the Bible as we read it here today, but we also studied it in its original languages. We studied the cultures in which it was written, and the styles of writing included in the various books that make up the Bible. We studied the politics among dissident factions which formed the Bible’s present configuration.
How we understand the Bible affects how we hear texts. If we understand the Bible to be the inerrant word of God, to be taken literally without question, we are likely to read such texts as this, as being unquestionable. If we understand the Bible to be a record of human experiences of God, reflecting both God’s activity in human history and our human fallibility, we have room to ask questions to strengthen our faith. Having questions and doubts does not necessarily destroy faith. Remember, faith is those things that are hoped for but not yet seen. Faith is NOT knowing all the “right” answers. If that were humanly possible, that would be knowledge, not faith. Faith is trusting God with the questions, when the answers are not yet seen.
There are contemporary scholars and theologians who have looked at Scripture as a whole, and analyze parts in light of the whole. Some scholars suggest that this text, and others ascribed to Jesus, were most likely added at a later date by early church fathers. The intent of the early church fathers was to overwhelmingly convince hearers that you’d better follow Jesus…or else. These early authors appeal to God’s power over us to frighten people into submitting to God’s authority…as represented by the early church. An honest study of church history exposes our human misuse of power and authority, as witnessed by the Crusades, and the eradication of indigenous cultures, like those of Native Americans.
In light of what these scholars contend, the question I ask today is, do we come to God because we’re afraid of God’s power over us, to zap us if we misstep, or fall out of line?
Or do we come to God because of the overwhelming compassion we’re shown in Jesus? The outrageous compassion that pervades the relationships with everyone who comes in contact with Jesus; the compassion exhibited especially in relationships with the least, the last, the lost, the lonely, and the little ones.
I believe that our Christian faith is based on the life of Jesus Christ. I believe that Jesus Christ is central to God’s relationship and commitment to us, that the life and death of Jesus embodies the extent of God’s love and compassion for all humanity. I believe that knowing Jesus is the closest I’ll get in this life to knowing God. I believe that the role of the Bible is to reveal God’s promise to us in Jesus Christ. And where the Bible does not do that, I attribute that to the human factor in telling and recording the story of God’s activity in human history. After all, we are called to believe in and worship God in Christ, not the Bible. As we wrestle with the wolves within ourselves, we wrestle with the wolves in the authors of the Bible, and in history.
We can use the Bible to over-power those with whom we disagree. Or, we can follow the lived example of Jesus, and use the Bible to extend God’s compassion into the corners of the world. Jesus doesn’t need to use fear tactics to instill loyalty. Gratitude for God’s compassion as lived by Jesus is enough to instill loyalty…and faith. We can choose to be part of taking God’s compassionate kin-dom to the ends of the earth.
Of those two wolves inside us, which one will we feed?
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