24 November 2017

Sermon Proper 19, Year A, Exodus 14:19-31, Matthew 18:21-35, 17 September 2017

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

©2017

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