Text: Matthew 18:21-35
The English word, 'against', has at least two connotations—it can mean, "in opposition", as in for instance a political contest. One candidate runs 'against' the other.
It can also mean, "into", as in "lean against me."
One is a kind of opposition, and one is a kind of joining.
When we read the words, "Sin against me," we might be thinking of someone who is in opposition to us. But in fact, the word that is translated, "against" is actually the Greek word for the preposition, "into." The word we translate, "Sin" is actually literally, "missing" as in, missing the bull's eye, or missing the mark. We could literally translate the sentence,
"How many times can I let someone miss into me?"
So, another way to think of Peter's question is to imagine someone 'sinning against' someone else, to think of that someone aiming an arrow in one direction but instead of hitting in the bulls' eye, the arrow sticks right into a person and injures them. When someone hurts us, or we hurt someone, we become linked by that trauma. Something is broken, while something is connected. Neither is a healthy situation.
Peter is willing to forgive, or literally from the Greek, 'afe-imi', seven times —this word has been translated in many ways. It can mean to divorce or banish; it can mean to dismiss; to abandon. Here it is used to mean to pardon, to forgive.
The unifying theme in all these different translations is this: Each sense of the word means to utterly abandon the current reality, AS IF IT NEVER HAPPENED.
This word, afeimi, has contradictory definitions—more on this later.
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How many times should I pardon someone who shoots an arrow into me? I think seven times is a lot. Peter was right; if you can pardon someone seven times, that is a truly large accomplishment.
But Jesus adds—no, seventy times seven.(Or, 77 times in some translations.) Take your original seven, times ten, then multiply it again by seven.
Because even forgiving seven times brings an important question. What happens on time 8?
Jesus is trying to help Peter understand that grace goes in many directions—Peter was generous to want to grant someone grace seven times. But Jesus wants Peter to understand that Peter, too, is in need of grace.
So, Jesus launches into a parable about someone whose debt was wiped away, yet that same person was unwilling to forgive a much smaller debt that was owed to him.
Of course at the end, we see the servant thrown into debtors' prison along with his wife and children…
Ok, I want to say—we get the message!! We're supposed to forgive, literally to divorce ourselves from the desire to punish the 'mark misser'; but really, when we are living in the consequences of sin, how then shall we forgive as if the injury never happened?
I'd like to suggest two pathways today, but before I get there, I want to remind each of us that as we are sinned against, so have we shot a few arrows through others (whether we've meant to or not.)
The first pathway I'd like to suggest is a kind of mental and spiritual pathway, and it is perhaps somewhat counter-intuitive. That is to say, that in order to forgive FIRST we have to fully own that we've been injured, are dealing with the consequences of that injury, and whatever that injury has done to us… but we can't stay there.
Often I've wanted to forgive, said I'd forgiven, only to find that actually, I needed more of a process than simply relying on my will.
Since I've read the parable, since I want to live as a Christian, I attempt to forgive asap. But then, I take it back. I'm still angry. Still hurting. Still wishing for ugly things to happen to that other person… So, I say I forgive, again. Then I take it back. And so on.
Sometimes you just have to live where you are for awhile, as you go through a process of learning to forgive. The important thing, I think, is to keep forgiveness as the destination.
Last week we talked about the steps of reconciliation; the ways we can work to restore community. However, there is a point of no return, and remember, this lesson on forgiving comes right after that lesson in the book of Matthew.
FORGIVENESS doesn't mean you act as if a dangerous person is safe; it's not an opportunity to pretend that someone who habitually causes harm should be allowed to carry on. It doesn't mean you have to be 'nice' to someone who is challenging you, and ignore the danger.
The second pathway I'd like to suggest is a physical one, and it comes to us from brain science—as recently as the year 2000, neuroscience has found a way to map what happens in the brain when a person experiences trauma. I spoke of this a few weeks ago, but I bring it here in a slightly different context. It's important to realize why the first path—the mental and spiritual path— must not be considered the only path.
Not all of our hurts are kept in what we think of as 'conscious' memory. Some are kept in a different part of the brain, one which informs our reactions, our ideas, and even our dreams, but we may not be able to actually remember and tell with words.
Because our memories are contained in parts of our brains that don't even use language, we have to first try to articulate our hurts to someone who cares about us. We have to be able to TELL the story, not just live in it, in order to heal and begin a process of forgiving.
Forgiveness is a complicated process—
I can give you easy platitudes, and sometimes following those platitudes works.
But sometimes banishing the person from your life and your thoughts works at first to allow an injured person to build enough of a base of strength from which to review their injuries, recover, then forgive. This would be one meaning of afeimi—to simply banish the person utterly.
I think the most important part of forgiveness is just what I said last week— Listening.
To one another's stories. To one another's assumptions. To one another's pain. Forgiving someone who has caused us pain isn't always something we can do alone. We need someone to listen to us. We can help others by listening to them.
In sharing our stories with someone who listens to us, we can actually move our memories from trauma to narrative; we can release our desire for revenge or even, for justice. We can move on without allowing the trauma to turn us into someone who injures others.
Finally, in listening to others, we can understand how our actions have injured someone else, (whether we believe something is 'our fault' or not!) and if we can receive forgiveness and allow hearts to be made whole, we have not only restored that relationship, we have allowed our brother or our sister to find a new story in the world—a more authentic and connected way of being. This would be the second meaning of 'afeimi'- to act as if the original injury was never committed. Forgiven, not banished.
If it's true that sin, "missing the mark", is what breaks us apart from God and separates us from each other; then it's the complicated process of forgiveness—forgiving and being forgiven—that reconnects us and helps to realize the Realm of God—the Beloved Community—in the here and now. Something so simple, and yet so complicated, as that, is our sacred duty to pursue.
Amen.
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From Dr. Bruce Perry, of childtrauma.org:
"All experiences change the brain – yet not all experiences have equal 'impact' on the brain. Because the brain is organizing at such an explosive rate in the first years of life, experiences during this period have more potential to influence the brain – in positive and negative ways. Traumatic experiences and therapeutic experiences impact the same brain and are limited by the same principles of neurophysiology."
And from USA Today:
"Once viewed as genetically programmed, the brain is now known to be plastic, an organ molded by both genes and experience throughout life. A single traumatic experience can alter an adult's brain: A horrifying battle, for instance, may induce the flashbacks, depression and hair-trigger response of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And researchers are finding that abuse and neglect early in life can have even more devastating consequences, tangling both the chemistry and the architecture of children's brains and leaving them at risk for drug abuse, teen pregnancy and psychiatric problems later in life…
Yet the brain's plasticity also holds out the chance that positive experiences--psychotherapy, mentoring, loving relationships--might ameliorate some of the damage. Much remains unknown. But if scientists can understand exactly how trauma harms the brain, they may also learn much about healing broken lives…
Trauma's toll on a child's brain begins with fear. Faced with a threat, the body embarks on a cascade of physiological reactions. Adrenalin surges, setting the heart pounding and blood pressure soaring and readying the muscles for action, a response called 'fight or flight'. At the same time, a more subtle set of changes, called the stress response, releases the hormone cortisol, which also helps the body respond to danger."
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