What about this God who is so
capricious? What about this God who rescues the Israelites by peeling back the
sea and drowning the Egyptians? IS this the same God who rescues some and
leaves others terrified with clogged chariot wheels and an oncoming wave? We can
wonder. And we can especially wonder about two things today.
The first thing to wonder about
might be some of these words in Exodus mean. It’s those last two sentences in
our Exodus reading. “Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the
Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his
servant Moses.” In particular it’s the word “people” here. In Hebrew the way
it’s used here, it can also mean compatriots or kindred. That makes sense if
you’re thinking about the Israelites only. But what if the compiler of this
story meant to the Egyptians believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses?
Could it be the Egyptians saw their death approaching and believed? Could it be
that the Egyptians, even though the enemy experienced the largeness of God even
in their terror at their approaching death? Could part of this story be about the
conversion of enemies into the believing community?
The second thing to wonder about brings
us to the Gospel reading. Jesus tells Peter how much he needs to forgive.
Various translations have the number of times as seventy, seventy times seven,
and seventy seven. Whichever translation you prefer, even seven is a ridiculous
amount.
In the Gospel a “talent” is a
unit of money, and ten thousand talents would equal about 130 pounds of silver.
That means it would take the slave about fifteen years to earn, and about
150,000 years to pay back with his labor.
On the other hand, a “denarius”
was a day’s wage for a laborer. It would take about one hundred days of labor
to pay back. The contrast here is that although a denarius would be difficult,
although possible, to work off, those ten thousand talents would be impossible.
It’s the difference between impossible and possible, or largeness and smallness.
And, in the same way, Peter
encounters the ridiculous demand from Jesus that he forgive and keep on
forgiving beyond what he thinks he can possibly do. Somehow Peter finds that in
various ways and in unusual places that he can radiate kindness and forgiveness
in his own special bumbling way.
I don’t believe either or Hebrew
scripture or our Gospel are so much about forgiveness as they are about
largeness and smallness. God gives abundantly and generously the forgiveness we
need and crave. And God offers us through our own forgiveness the way to
forgive others. This gift is enormous. We might even compare it to that huge
wave on the cover of this morning’s bulletin. It’s a powerful mass of water
that can be both devastating as it has been with Hurricane Irma and for the
Egyptians. And, it can be life giving as it was for the Israelites and can be
for us.
So if these stories are about
largeness and smallness where does that put us?
Perhaps each of us is the slave who was forgiven and
couldn’t forgive in return. When faced with the incredible largeness of the
forgiveness he was offered, he was only capable of giving back petty smallness.
But it is also possible we may be the capricious king who reneged on his
promise to forgive by throwing his slave into outer darkness.
I am convinced the king referred to in Jesus’
parable is our behavior, not God’s. And the king represents the way we end up
punishing ourselves if we cannot forgive. When we – who are the forgiven
slaves of Jesus – do not forgive in return, we cast ourselves into
torture. When we are unable to accept God’s loving and continual forgiveness,
we are tortured by our inability to forgive others. And, when we cannot forgive
others, we suffer.
In our anger and our inability to get rid of the
pain and forgive, we build a place inside ourselves to hold what we are
feeling. And we tour that place daily. It’s by our own smallness of actions
that we throw ourselves into daily darkness and torture
Suppose
instead we built a place inside ourselves for the largeness of God. This would
be a place of forgiveness.
The Jewish
tradition teaches that there are two seats in the Ark of the Covenant that was
kept in the Temple. They are the Judgment Seat and the Mercy Seat. On the Day
of Atonement, when Jews ask for forgiveness and healing for their sins, God
moves from the Judgment Seat to the Mercy Seat. The Day of Atonement is when
God brings together and reconciles that which has been separated. As a nation
and a people, God can do that for us when we open ourselves to the largeness of
God’s loving forgiveness. A forgiveness that is so large we cannot contain it
within us but must share it by forgiving others.
What shall we do with both of these
stories? (Pause) Suppose we imagine that it is always possible for us to believe
something different or grow in some way, even when we see death coming at us
like the Egyptians did. And this change can take place not because we are
threatened but because like the Egyptians may have, we see God revealed in all
God’s largeness. AMEN.
The
Rev Nicolette Papanek
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