FORGET, FORGIVE AND FORGET
Texts:Exodus:14:19-31 and Matthew 18:21-35
My grandfather was a Southern Baptist pastor who served for many years in Kansas City, Missouri. He was involved in creating a number of churches, a seminary and a Baptist Retirement home. I went to the dedication ceremony at the retirement home where they honored him for his contribution. I was sitting next to one of the resident's and realized that even with my nametag, she didn't connect me to my grandfather. So I asked, do you know who I am? Well, she said, if you don't know who you are, just go ask the nurse over there and she can tell you.
Yes, don't forget who you are. Remember. Remember. Jesus calls us and commands us to `do this in remembrance of me.' To be a Christian is to remember over and over again—day by remember the life, death and life again of Jesus, the Christ of God, Lord and Savior, hero and leader, our judge and our justification. We gather to fill our souls with personal and communal memories of who Jesus was and is—of who we are and who we shall be.
The Hebrew Bible text is the story of Exodus. We remember Charlton Heston and the inverted waterfalls where the Israelites walked through on dry land and then Pharaohs army was drowned in the mighty flood of the waters of God. Hear O Israel the Lord thy God is one. And remember especially who this God is—the mighty God of hosts, the warrior God, who brought your slave ancestors out of Egypt, the God who tore them from Pharaohs' bloody hands and made them into God's people. And remember you were once slaves in Egypt.
How we remember our story and what stories about ourselves and our people we remember are crucial to our identity. How do you tell the story of your life? What stories of the people of God speak deeply to you of your identity? When you think of America, what stories, what images dominate your consciousness and mine?
Because you see that is of course what is at stake here. Memory shapes consciousness—out of our consciousness of who we are, we make choices about friends and careers and partners and money and politics and religion.
Memory is the lifeblood of our soul.
Now as we think about forgiveness we come up against this peculiar but popular phrase—forgive and forget. But since you already know the sermon title—we are going to forget about it. We are not going to forget—what has happened to others or to us. We are going to remember.
We are not to be about remembering to the point to bitterness—we seek healing for ourselves of some of the pain of past evil done to us. William Blake's poem Poison Tree describes our soul's dilemmas. We will come to that, but let us now turn to parable of our Lord. Some of the details of this parable are not quite realistic. How could a servant accumulate such an enormous debt, the rough equivalent of $100,000? In 1st century Palestine, families couldn't be sold into slavery for the debts of one person. So we have to stretch our minds to discern what Jesus is saying to us.
The debt is enormous—this is an incredible amount of money. We are called to identify with this unforgiving servant. This is our story—even though it is one we would rather forget. The wealthy master represents God and so the image is that we owe God this huge debt.
So we hear the words of the Lord's Prayer—forgive us our debts, but also in other more powerful translations, forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
The image then is telling us that we come before God—on the day of reckoning—with an enormous debt, an enormous weight of sin. Is this just fundamentalist theology? After the Renaissance and especially after the enlightenment didn't we chuck this kind of nonsense? We are rational beings—check out Michelangelo's statue of David. Great bodies—well, some more beautiful than others. Watch this—we human beings can control nature in dramatic ways. Aren't we wonderful? This week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the computer chip and started up the Hadron Cyclotron.
Yes, yes, we are. Certainly, reflections of the glory of God. Created in the image of God—male and female created God them and us.
And yet Calvin wrote about total depravity. Freud had that catchy phrase saying that human beings were polymorphously perverse.
Four weeks ago, Gail and I were walking the grounds of Dachau prison camp. Dachau was opened shortly after Hitler took power in 1933. Being there, and remembering the story of us human beings, of our cruelty and barbarism, we know that there lurks a deep, deep capacity for evil in the human soul. This is beyond everyday normal sin and selfishness—we all battle this. No, this is what the Bible would call demonic possession or what Paul might call the principalities and powers. At any rate, would you acknowledge with me that there is within us human beings, potential for great evil? And so we carry a great burden, and we owe a great debt.
And the parable say that God is prepared to forgive us—when we come in deep remorse and when we change our ways of relating to others. The deeply indebted servant is in fact himself forgiven—but he turns to squeeze his fellow servant who owes him a piddling amount compared with the million dollar debt. When the other servants hear of his heartlessness, his unforgiving nature, they turn him in. The parable ends with a painful punch. The unforgiving servant is turned over to the jailers or in some translations to the torturers.
Auden's great poem September I, 1939 includes a line that says, we have been silent witnesses to evil deeds. In our most painful spiritual clarity we can acknowledge our capacity for evil and I daresay all of us have done things that at the very least we are ashamed of. We are not that far from Dachau or Wounded Knee or the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory or My Lai.
But we remember who we are and whose we are and we hear the Lord Jesus invite us, all of us to the table. He says something like I know you my sister, my brother, come in remorse and in true repentance, receive then the Holy Spirit—be washed and cleansed in Baptism and refreshed and fed at the Table. Now—forgive one another as I have forgiven you. Remember this—your life depends upon it. Remember. And forget, forgive and forget. Brooks Smith
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