Goodness is Stronger than Evil

Yesterday in our worship, we heard Jesus call us to the difficult task of forgiveness.  I imagine that for many of us, these words were hard to hear as we remembered the tragic attacks of ten years ago.  Yet Jesus' call to us as Christians remains the same.  Our lives are infinitely valuable to God, and on account of Christ we are forgiven all our sins so that we may live free from their power.  We are invited to share this forgiveness with others, opening a world of possibilities in our relationships as God's children.  This goodness of God's love and forgiveness is indeed stronger than evil and the seemingly endless cycle of violence and retribution.

13^th Sunday after Pentecost (Year A) – Sunday, September 11^th, 2011

Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA

Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Were you listening to Jesus' words today? Let's back up and we'll set the scene. In last week's reading, Peter heard from Jesus all about how to reconcile with a brother or sister, and now he asks, “well, if my brother, or sister, sins against me (a reasonable scenario) well how many times should I forgive him, as many as seven times?” Did you hear his answer? Because he was pretty clear about it.

Not seven times, but seventy-seven times. Seventy-seven! Seven was often considered the number of perfection in the first century. Jesus here isn't saying that 76 times isn't enough. He's telling us that we must always forgive if we want to live the life of the kingdom of heaven. Always. 

 

Always forgive. Every time. Sounds like a tall order. If my wife takes the last cookie in the package, I think I can forgive that. If she drinks the last of the coffee, different story. What about you? Can you forgive that guy who cut you off on the way to church? Might be hard, but most of us can do that. But Jesus says, always forgive. Every time. What about the person who smashed your car windows and stole the stereo? The friend who betrayed you? What about the spouse who broke your sacred trust? What about the murderer of your loved ones? 

 

By some movement of the Holy Spirit, these hard words from Jesus come to us as we remember that ten years ago today, a group of terrorists crashed three planes into buildings and one into a field not far from here, resulting in 2,996 deaths, thousands more injuries and untold sorrow, anger, fear and loss.

I would imagine that someone who has lost a spouse, or parent, or child, or friend in those attacks might have something to say to Jesus. Something about who, and what was taken from them on that day and the audacity of Jesus to ask that they give up something more. Something about their dearly-earned right to hold the attackers' sins against them.

Jesus has some more hard words for us. He tells us of the mercy of a master who forgave his desperate slave a debt of ten thousand talents. This is an utterly ridiculous amount, equal to what one scholar has figured as “150,000 years worth of income” for a typical worker, or what you would make in 3,000 lifetimes. This same slave in turn will not forgive a fellow slave 100 denarii, worth about 3 month's wages. Not a small debt, but it does not compare to what he had already been forgiven. 

 

Jesus has told some complicated parables, but this is not one of them. The meaning is clear. We are the wicked slaves whose very lives have been pardoned and granted back to us, and yet we will not let go of the relatively tiny sins of our brothers and sisters. We grasp our hands around our right to retaliate until our fingers turn white and go numb, unable to feel the damage our “eye for an eye” philosophy does to ourselves, to innocents and to the world. We pretend that the sins of others are somehow so much greater than our own that we are owed something.

But we're all in this muddy world chained to sin together. We don't stand on the moral or religious high ground. We're not far above those who wrong us. In fact, we have no ground to stand upon at all except the rock of our Savior Jesus Christ. On the cross Christ broke the chains of our sin by forgiving us. It's been said that forgiveness is giving up any hope of a better past. Every day, Christ accepts us and our pain and anger and our thirst for revenge and lets go of the hope that we had acted the way he would have wished. Every day, Christ relieves us of ten thousand talents and more, so that the future doesn't have to be the same as the past. Christ's grace and love make it possible for us to forgive. In Christ, God has done something no one else can do – he has made possible a wide future that is not pre-determined by our sin, but open to be shaped by the grace, love and hope of God.

None of us, least of all me, can look into the eyes of those who lost on 9/11 and tell them they must forgive. We don't have the right. Forgiveness cannot be forced. Archbishop Desmond Tutu knew this, that forgiveness can be granted only from the heart of the one wronged. Archbishop Tutu was a leader of the freedom movement in South Africa alongside Nelson Mandela. If anyone had been wronged, it was the people of South Africa who for decades had been subjected to the inhuman system of racial hierarchy known as apartheid. Lawless killings in the night, beatings by the police, years of being denied simple recognition as a human being – these were sins that could have resulted in a blood bath of revenge once the white regime fell from power. But South Africa was for the most part spared these years of retaliation, because Desmond Tutu and others knew that there was no future without forgiveness. He led the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a forum that placed former oppressors (police officers, government officials and the like) face to face with those they had oppressed. Amnesty, forgiveness in a sense, was granted in exchange for the truth. Those who had been beaten and raped, the loved ones of those who had been murdered, they were able to confront their brothers and sisters who had sinned against them. They could tell them their stories. They chose whether or not to forgive. The tragic past was not forgotten but solemnly remembered. Nevertheless, these past wrongs were not allowed to define the future. Truth and reconciliation paved the way for a new beginning that was not doomed to end with revenge, and more revenge. The cycle of violence and hatred was broken.

God has forgiven you, and me, an unimaginable debt. This is a precious gift of love from God. None of us have lived so well that we are entitled to pay back, or to hold ourselves higher than those who sin against us. Because of Christ, human relationships are no longer a game where the “winner takes all.” Tutu put it like this, “forgiving means abandoning your right to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin, but it is a loss that liberates the victim.” All we lose in forgiving our brother or sister is the burden we have placed over our own shoulders. No matter what evil is done to us, we do not lose in the end. On a cross outside Jerusalem, in Jesus Christ God won the final victory for all of us. In forgiveness we have nothing to lose because Christ has won, once and for all.

In a few moments during the offering, we're going to sing a song that Archbishop Tutu wrote, called “Goodness is Stronger than Evil.” When we remember the wrongs and the evil done to us, forgiveness may seem impossible. But Jesus does not ask of us what he has not first given to us. From this cross, forgiveness pours out. A forgiveness that opens up our future. The goodness of Christ's cross is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than darkness. Life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, victory is ours, through God who loves us. Amen.