[Sermon delivered at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona, the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 17, 2023]
✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.
People get very uneasy about passages like this one we just heard from St. Matthew’s Gospel.[1] St. Peter has just asked Our Lord how many times we are to forgive being wronged by someone, obviously to try to impose a reasonable limit on Jesus’ teaching to forgive freely those who wrong us. After all, we all know at least one constant offender, someone whose very existence may be an existential blot on the cosmos, and St. Peter quite understandably wanted to know how long we should put up with said difficult people before shunning them or more satisfyingly smack them into next week. He starts, as any good negotiator would, with a low-ball number, seven to be exact. Seven is the number of completion, it is the number of days of creation including the day when God rested from His work. Jewish timekeeping and reckoning makes a heavy use of seven. Seven chances are much more charitable and generous than two, which often is more chances than most are willing to give a repeat offender. Peter may even have been expecting Our Lord to highball the number back, perhaps at ten.
Imagine how hard St. Peter’s jaw hit the ground when Jesus came back with seventy-seven; some translations say seventy times seven, but regardless, the number is high enough that most would lose track or interest in keeping track. Not only did Jesus give what to St. Peter was an insurmountably high number, but also attached a powerful caveat in the form of a parable that indicated that the number was not up for negotiation.
Now, before the truly obsessive compulsive take this statement and start keeping detailed records in infringement/forgiveness ledgers, we must remember that the number itself, while high, is also highly symbolic, a number that anyone familiar with rabbinic teachings would recognize, as it was the number symbolic of the pride of the second murderer in Israel’s tradition, Lamech, a descendant of Cain.
Let us take a moment to remember this story. In Genesis chapter four we have a genealogy of the descendants of Cain, and five generations removed from Cain was a man named Lamech, not to be confused with Lamech the father of Noah.[2] He had a lengthier mention than most of the pre-flood patriarchs, having taken two wives, accomplished children, and a very ancient song, which I will read here:
“Lamech said to his wives:
‘Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
You wives of Lamech, hearken to what I say:
I have slain a man for wounding me,
A young man for striking me.
If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
Truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.’” [3]
The Haggadah on this passage is a bit conflicted,[4] some authorities claiming this is Lamech expressing remorse, others stating it was reassurance to his wives that they need fear no retribution, and others attributing this to the pride and arrogance that became commonplace before the flood, but the explanations all tend to the same conclusion, that the number is hyperbole for the ultimate level of indebtedness for a wrong committed. St. Hilary of Poitiers’ analysis, for example, takes the rabbinical commentary on this passage and makes the connection that such a level of indebtedness is for the greatest of crimes or the greatest of offenders.[5]
In referring to Lamech, Jesus just told St. Peter that forgiveness is total, across all time, across all peoples, and across all offenses. For each vengeance for a fault claimed by Lamech, a corresponding forgiveness is to be issued. The greatest guilt someone can assume must by us be met by the greatest forgiveness that we can muster to equal it. To put this in perspective Our Lord tells us a parable. We know the parable, after all, we just heard it, but it bears some interpreting. First, we need to put the amounts in perspective. The first amount, ten thousand talents, if you suppose today’s Arizona minimum wage of $13.85 an hour, comes to something like $6.7 billion.[6] The other owes a measly 100 denarii, and if one uses the same scale, that would be something like $11,800.00. Next, we need to attribute these amounts to the relationships they symbolize. The $6.7 billion refers to the gulf between God and each of us which must be overcome to restore relationship between each of us and God. The $11,800.00 refers to the gulf between each of us which must be overcome to restore relationships between ourselves.
Before we start breaking out our checkbooks or negotiating payment plans, however, we must remember these are symbolic figures, just like the seventy-seven forgivenesses are a symbolic figure. We also may not interpret these as chits for individual sins, offenses, or insults. We are not talking a dollar for each cookie stolen, or $100,000.00 for every illicit affair, or $77,000,000.00 for each murder, or $10.00 for every insult. That is not the intent of the parable. The intent of the parable is to illustrate that the gulf between God and Human effected by sin and corruption is more profound than the gulf between people effected by even the most heinous crimes. This is not to lessen the depth of the hurt we inflict on each other, but to illustrate that even our most hurtful divides are nothing compared to the gulf between us and God.
Now imagine the sheer burden of our separation between each other. The second servant is beside himself and knows that it will take him a long time to make it up to the first servant, but the first servant also is desperate and is unwilling to work it out and exacts immediate vengeance. We are not talking about an initial explosion or ranting, we are talking about total, irrevocable, burn-the-land-and-salt-the-earth retribution. Not only has the relationship been sundered, a total disregard of the humanity of the other, a denial of the Image of God, has occurred.
Now imagine the infinitely larger burden of our separation between us and God. How, HOW can we expect God to work with us, to overlook that gulf, to have mercy, and not let the consequence of that gulf run its course? If God is unwilling to show mercy, to forgive that separation, then the sequence of results is that we die, first in body, then our soul, separated from our body, with no anchor in God, withers and dies.
Herein lies the mandate of Our Lord’s teaching. God is willing to show mercy if we are willing to show mercy. God is willing to do what it takes to bridge the gap if we are willing to bridge the gap with others. God wiped out the chasm between Himself and us by the redemption of Human Nature in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is up to us to take on that new Nature, then not only feed it but conform to it, and that means taking on the attitudes and characteristics of God, which Our Lord united to this new Nature. As He healed, so we should strive to heal. As He fed the hungry, so we should strive to feed the hungry. As He loved the unlovable, so we should strive to love the unlovable. As He forgave us, so we should forgive others.
Of all that He has asked us to do, this arguably is the most difficult. It flies in the face of our pride, our sense of self, our sense of worth, our sense of self-preservation. For some of us, that means forgiving some truly unspeakable horrors. The question is whether we are willing like God to do the hard work to let it go. It is up to the other repent to seal the breach, for us to repent of our own sins and seek restitution of our wrongs to respond to God’s mercy, and for others to repent of the wrongs done to us to respond to ours. Will they take it up or not? Will they persist in their behaviour and perpetuate the gulf between them and us, forcing us to keep our distance for our safety? That is up to them. Will we take it up or not? Will we persist in old patterns and behaviours and keep the gulf between us and God, keeping Him distant because Evil cannot exist in the presence of Good, Death in the face of Life? That is up to us.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.
[1] Mt. 18.21-35 [2] Gen 5. 28-29 [3] Gen. 4.23-24 [4] An internet search on the midrash or Haggadah of Lamech will yield as much, and some scholars equate the two Lamechs as the same, just one from the Yahwist list and another from the Priestly list. The article found in the online McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia (https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/L/lamech.html) tries to summarize the divergent traditions. [5] St. Hilary of Poitiers, On Matthew, 18.10, Sources Chrétiennes, H. de Lubac, J. Daniélou et al., edd., Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1941, 258:84-86. St. Augustine make an interesting comment about the number of Lucan generations between Jesus and Adam being seventy-seven, making it an analogue for the totality of Human sin (St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons, 83.5, Patrologiae Latinae, J.-P. Migne, ed., Paris, Migne, 1844-1864, 38:516-517). These references were drawn from Thomas C. Oden and Manlio Simonetti, edd., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Matthew 14-28, InterVarsity Press, Downer’s Grove, 2002. [6] $13.85 x 8 hours = $110.80 in a day’s wages or 1 denarius. Since 1 talent has 6,000 denarii, then 1 talent is $664,800.00. Therefore 10,000 talents are $664,800.00 x 10,000 or $6,648,000,000.00, a staggering amount. Minimum wage amount is from A.R.S. § 23-363(B).
Mosaic of Lamech slaying Cain, 13th Century, Cathedral of the Assumption, Monreale, Italy