WEBVTT 1 00:00:03.390 --> 00:00:08.970 When the spring of 1933, with the United States at the absolute bottom of the Great 2 00:00:09.060 --> 00:00:14.941 Depression, FDR stood up and gave his first presidential address and issued what 3 00:00:14.970 --> 00:00:20.640 is his most famous line, that the only thing we have to fear is what? 4 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:27.480 Fear itself. Well, this morning in our lectionary, whether it's Genesis, our Psalm, 5 00:00:27.870 --> 00:00:32.506 the Gospel with the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, God is saying to us that 6 00:00:32.520 --> 00:00:38.310 that's not exactly true. That this morning, whatever we fear or whatever we 7 00:00:38.401 --> 00:00:43.380 face, perhaps the thing we should most fear is unforgiveness. 8 00:00:44.820 --> 00:00:49.051 Unforgiveness for us, but also unforgiveness in us. 9 00:00:49.620 --> 00:00:52.051 And so first, unforgiveness for us. 10 00:00:52.950 --> 00:00:57.180 Because in Jesus's parable, we meet a slave who stands before a king owing an 11 00:00:57.240 --> 00:01:00.901 impossible debt, 10,000 talents. 12 00:01:01.455 --> 00:01:07.170 And so how much is that? Well, in those days, one talent was the equivalent of 13 00:01:07.530 --> 00:01:12.555 6,000 denarii, and one denarius was the equivalent of one day's 14 00:01:12.660 --> 00:01:18.000 wages. So I was an English major, and therefore this math is really going to 15 00:01:18.120 --> 00:01:23.760 stretch me. But if the slave owes the king 10,000 16 00:01:23.850 --> 00:01:29.370 talents, then that means he owes him 60 million denarii. 17 00:01:29.850 --> 00:01:34.950 Meaning that to pay off the debt, he would have to work for the king roughly 60 18 00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:40.410 million days, or approximately 164,000 19 00:01:40.500 --> 00:01:41.130 years. 20 00:01:43.590 --> 00:01:49.080 Jesus is revealing to us what one theologian has called our chronic indebtedness. 21 00:01:50.370 --> 00:01:56.220 That what it means to be human is to be perpetually and chronically in 22 00:01:56.310 --> 00:02:01.141 the red. And we are not going to get in the black by trying harder. 23 00:02:01.875 --> 00:02:06.301 When the servant says to the king, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you 24 00:02:06.420 --> 00:02:07.230 everything." 25 00:02:09.810 --> 00:02:15.046 That's a farce. He and us could try to work harder and be a good person the rest of 26 00:02:15.060 --> 00:02:17.700 our life, but our life simply is not long enough. 27 00:02:18.210 --> 00:02:23.505 At best, we will live 80 or 90 or 100 years when what we really need is 28 00:02:23.700 --> 00:02:26.070 164,000. 29 00:02:27.300 --> 00:02:32.550 And so we do not need the king's patience so that we can slowly climb our own way 30 00:02:32.671 --> 00:02:38.580 out of the hole, but we need God to wholly and completely forgive the loan. 31 00:02:40.200 --> 00:02:45.900 And the good news of the Christian gospel is that is what God does, and he does 32 00:02:45.960 --> 00:02:47.490 it by dying. 33 00:02:48.750 --> 00:02:54.345 Because think about it. If the king in our story is owed 164,000 years of labor, 34 00:02:54.720 --> 00:02:59.910 and that is just from one slave, then that means by forgiving even this one slave's 35 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:05.730 massive debt, he is effectively bankrupting himself and his kingdom. 36 00:03:06.601 --> 00:03:11.400 He's finished. His rule, his kingship is over. He is dead. 37 00:03:13.139 --> 00:03:18.210 And that's what God does. In order to forgive us, he dies. 38 00:03:18.990 --> 00:03:24.870 Knowing that we cannot pay 164,000 lives, he 39 00:03:24.900 --> 00:03:30.750 gives up his own life, the life of his son, to completely forgive our debts. 40 00:03:32.490 --> 00:03:37.980 I want to sit for a second in this glorious moment in time, five seconds, 10 41 00:03:38.041 --> 00:03:43.140 seconds, however long it lasted, when you have this slave kneeling before the 42 00:03:43.201 --> 00:03:48.900 king and hearing these amazing words of pardon and out of 43 00:03:49.020 --> 00:03:54.990 pity for him, the Lord of that slave released him and forgave him his debt. 44 00:03:57.240 --> 00:04:02.805 164,000 years of labor gone. Imagine the relief and the 45 00:04:02.851 --> 00:04:03.870 liberation. 46 00:04:05.430 --> 00:04:07.620 And so that really takes care of our first fear. 47 00:04:07.921 --> 00:04:13.500 In the end, there is no unforgiveness for us, no matter what we have done. 48 00:04:15.031 --> 00:04:19.080 But the parable does leave us with a second fear, which is what about the 49 00:04:19.110 --> 00:04:22.740 forgiveness in us, unforgiveness in us? 50 00:04:24.210 --> 00:04:29.039 Because no sooner does the slave hear these words of unthinkable relief and pardon 51 00:04:29.400 --> 00:04:33.630 when he gets up from his knees and immediately goes out and finds someone who owes 52 00:04:33.690 --> 00:04:39.074 him a debt. And compared to the debt that slave number one owed to the king, the 53 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:43.890 debt that slave number two owes to slave number one is, of course, a joke. 54 00:04:44.970 --> 00:04:50.490 100 denarii, which if you remember the math, is only 100 days of work. 55 00:04:50.520 --> 00:04:56.220 In other words, if slave number one owed 164,000 lifetimes of labor, 56 00:04:56.850 --> 00:05:00.630 slave number two owes a summer internship. 57 00:05:01.994 --> 00:05:07.560 And yet, slave number one turns violent. It says he seized slave number two. 58 00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:13.830 He literally grabs him by the throat and chokes him, screaming, "Pay what you 59 00:05:13.951 --> 00:05:14.281 owe." 60 00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:19.860 Immediately, slave number two falls to his knees and begs for mercy. 61 00:05:19.875 --> 00:05:24.360 And you would think that in that moment, slave number one would see in the face of 62 00:05:24.420 --> 00:05:30.300 slave number two his own face and hear his own voice 63 00:05:30.360 --> 00:05:36.135 and see his chronic indebtedness that was erased literally minutes before. 64 00:05:38.070 --> 00:05:38.730 But he won't, 65 00:05:40.110 --> 00:05:45.960 or he can't. He refuses to forgive him, but instead throws 66 00:05:45.990 --> 00:05:47.281 him into prison. 67 00:05:48.510 --> 00:05:54.315 And in doing so, slave number one paves his way towards a place that can 68 00:05:54.360 --> 00:05:56.010 only be described as hell. 69 00:05:58.531 --> 00:06:00.990 Because suddenly the whole town turns against him. 70 00:06:01.470 --> 00:06:05.550 The people tell the king what he's done, and when the king hears it, it says in 71 00:06:05.610 --> 00:06:11.400 anger, the king handed slave number one over to be tortured until he would pay 72 00:06:11.460 --> 00:06:16.440 his entire debt. Handed over, tortured, hell. 73 00:06:16.845 --> 00:06:21.240 And because that is what unforgiveness is. It is hell. 74 00:06:23.220 --> 00:06:28.439 It's the surest way to cut ourselves off from other people, the surest way to cut 75 00:06:28.470 --> 00:06:32.910 ourselves off from the mercy of God, and the surest way to cut ourselves off from 76 00:06:32.970 --> 00:06:33.990 our own hearts. 77 00:06:35.250 --> 00:06:41.220 Unforgiveness is the surest way to turn our children against us, our spouse, 78 00:06:41.370 --> 00:06:45.660 our friends against us, our fellow church members, our 79 00:06:45.750 --> 00:06:51.331 coworkers. The surest way to bring about our deepest fears, 80 00:06:52.320 --> 00:06:56.670 to be alone, to die alone, is to be like slave number one. 81 00:06:57.690 --> 00:07:02.880 To so quickly forget the mercy of God, to so quickly 82 00:07:02.910 --> 00:07:08.250 ignore our chronic indebtedness, to imagine ourselves as somehow 83 00:07:08.311 --> 00:07:13.245 superior to other people, standing above them, somehow more righteous than them, 84 00:07:13.260 --> 00:07:15.270 when in fact, we are all slaves. 85 00:07:16.591 --> 00:07:20.430 To stand before others with our little scorecards and our ledgers. 86 00:07:20.760 --> 00:07:25.050 We're counting everyone's most petty mistakes, docking points. 87 00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:31.095 Unforgiveness is hell because, as the author Anne Lamott says, 88 00:07:31.785 --> 00:07:36.630 "Unforgiveness is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to 89 00:07:36.660 --> 00:07:41.610 die." In judging other people, we judge only ourselves. 90 00:07:42.210 --> 00:07:45.345 In choking other people, we choke only ourselves. 91 00:07:45.885 --> 00:07:50.940 And when we throw them in prison, through our daydreams and fantasies about what we 92 00:07:50.970 --> 00:07:55.831 would do to them and what we would say to them if only we had the chance, the only 93 00:07:55.951 --> 00:07:59.730 one that is imprisoned and tortured is me. 94 00:08:02.100 --> 00:08:07.230 In the moment, let's be honest, withholding forgiveness really can feel like 95 00:08:07.290 --> 00:08:12.480 heaven. It feels so good. But in the end, it is only hell. 96 00:08:13.320 --> 00:08:18.165 But the opposite is also true. In the moment, forgiving others, 97 00:08:18.451 --> 00:08:23.581 releasing them, really can feel like death and like hell. 98 00:08:23.610 --> 00:08:26.190 And yet in the end, it is always heaven. 99 00:08:28.845 --> 00:08:34.711 The best movie I know which captures this paradox of forgiveness is the 2014 100 00:08:34.770 --> 00:08:40.410 movie Calvary, which tells the story of an Irish Catholic priest named Father 101 00:08:40.561 --> 00:08:46.440 James. Father James enters the priesthood after his wife dies, and he 102 00:08:46.500 --> 00:08:50.100 takes a small parish off the coast of rural Ireland. 103 00:08:50.925 --> 00:08:52.995 And the movie begins rather shockingly. 104 00:08:53.370 --> 00:08:57.990 In the very first scene, the priest is sitting in the confessional booth on a 105 00:08:58.050 --> 00:09:03.390 normal Sunday afternoon when suddenly a man comes to give his 106 00:09:03.420 --> 00:09:07.770 confession. And the man walks into the booth on the other side of the wall where we 107 00:09:07.800 --> 00:09:10.710 cannot see his face, but can only hear his voice. 108 00:09:11.760 --> 00:09:13.950 And the man begins to tell the priest his story. 109 00:09:14.895 --> 00:09:20.445 How he suffered horrific abuse and trauma as a child, and now as an 110 00:09:20.505 --> 00:09:26.325 adult, he's just done. He feels like he has no option but to do 111 00:09:26.385 --> 00:09:29.056 something about it, and so he's decided to take vengeance. 112 00:09:29.655 --> 00:09:34.575 And he feels like the most terrible and shocking thing he could do is to kill a 113 00:09:34.605 --> 00:09:39.104 priest. And so he tells Father James, "I'm going to kill you, Father. 114 00:09:40.035 --> 00:09:44.625 Meet me on the beach next Sunday afternoon, one week from today." And that's the 115 00:09:44.655 --> 00:09:49.276 first scene of the movie. So Father James leaves the booth and begins what is his 116 00:09:49.335 --> 00:09:53.835 Calvary. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday pass. He goes home. 117 00:09:54.135 --> 00:09:57.915 He puts his affairs in order. He tidies up his bedroom. 118 00:09:57.945 --> 00:10:03.045 He makes visits to parishioners and all the townspeople throughout the week, who 119 00:10:03.105 --> 00:10:08.295 are all like us, incredibly broken people. Alcoholics. 120 00:10:08.325 --> 00:10:12.075 He visits prostitutes. He visits people having affairs. 121 00:10:12.345 --> 00:10:15.045 He even visits a cannibal in prison. 122 00:10:16.110 --> 00:10:20.776 And then the weekend comes, and on Saturday, the day before he is to be killed, 123 00:10:21.405 --> 00:10:26.429 Father James decides to flee. He gets in a car, and he drives to the airport. 124 00:10:27.105 --> 00:10:32.056 But while he's waiting on the tarmac to board the plane, he sees some of the 125 00:10:32.115 --> 00:10:36.030 officers loading a coffin onto the plane. 126 00:10:36.585 --> 00:10:42.225 And seeing that coffin and seeing his own death, but also the death of God, he 127 00:10:42.285 --> 00:10:45.825 realizes he must return home and finish his Calvary. 128 00:10:47.445 --> 00:10:53.205 And throughout the movie, you're left wondering how one man could endure so much 129 00:10:53.295 --> 00:10:59.265 pain. His own grief at the loss of his wife, all the pain of 130 00:10:59.295 --> 00:11:04.905 his community, all the suffering, all the mistreatment, and yet keep on 131 00:11:05.085 --> 00:11:10.755 loving and forgiving and loving and forgiving, all the way to the end. 132 00:11:12.405 --> 00:11:16.665 And the clue as to how comes early on in the movie in another scene in a 133 00:11:16.725 --> 00:11:20.385 confessional booth when this time his daughter comes in. 134 00:11:20.925 --> 00:11:24.945 And her name is Fiona, and Fiona is a recovering addict. 135 00:11:25.590 --> 00:11:30.225 And she confesses to her father that she recently attempted suicide. 136 00:11:30.270 --> 00:11:35.085 And she says to her dad, "You'll tell me it would've been a mortal sin, I suppose." 137 00:11:36.105 --> 00:11:40.651 And then she asks him vulnerably, "Would I have suffered eternal damnation, 138 00:11:40.725 --> 00:11:41.056 Father?" 139 00:11:42.675 --> 00:11:48.165 To which Father James pauses and then gently responds to her, "God is 140 00:11:48.195 --> 00:11:53.415 great, and the limits of his mercy have not been set." 141 00:11:56.235 --> 00:12:01.335 Father James can go to Calvary because he believes in a God of limitless 142 00:12:01.425 --> 00:12:06.735 mercy. Joseph can forgive his brothers this morning because he 143 00:12:06.765 --> 00:12:09.945 believes in a God of limitless mercy. 144 00:12:10.695 --> 00:12:15.556 And in all of our passages this morning, we are being invited to believe in a God 145 00:12:16.245 --> 00:12:22.065 who is more obsessed with extending mercy than we are with withholding it. 146 00:12:23.505 --> 00:12:28.306 "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? 147 00:12:28.785 --> 00:12:31.605 Seven times?" I mean, do you hear the limit? 148 00:12:33.045 --> 00:12:38.505 "I tell you, not seven times, but 77 times." No 149 00:12:38.565 --> 00:12:39.045 limits. 150 00:12:40.515 --> 00:12:44.865 "Pay me what you owe. Pay me my 100 denari." Limits. 151 00:12:46.170 --> 00:12:50.640 "And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the 152 00:12:50.715 --> 00:12:56.655 debt." No limits. 164,000 years gone. 153 00:12:57.855 --> 00:13:03.195 As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us. 154 00:13:03.915 --> 00:13:04.786 Unlimited. 155 00:13:06.015 --> 00:13:11.835 God is great. The limits of his mercy have not been set, and so we must 156 00:13:11.865 --> 00:13:13.095 not set them either. 157 00:13:14.385 --> 00:13:20.295 Thou art the same God whose property it always is to have mercy. 158 00:13:22.095 --> 00:13:25.860 In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.