In Genesis chapter 4, Lord says that whoever kills Cain will
suffer a sevenfold vengeance. The violence has escalated. Cain killed Abel and now the Lord knows it
will only escalate. The Cycle has
begun. And later in the same chapter,
Lamech (the sixth or eighth generation after Adam—depending on which chapter of
Genesis you are reading) Lamech escalates the violence even further---vowing to
seek vengeance seventy by seven
fold! Whew! That’s a lot of violence.
Syria. Iraq. Israel. Palestine. South Sudan.
300 girls in Nigeria kidnapped by a terrorist group.
On an average day in the United States of America, there are
308 acts of shooting and 86 deaths due to gun violence.
In American schools, 71% of students say that bullying is an
ongoing problem and more than 1 in 3 students have received threats online.
Just within one week, the Nigerian government reported that more
than 6,000 people fled their homes after Boko Haram militants stormed at least
four villages and killed hundreds of people.
On average in the United States, 24 people per minute are
victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner— more
than 12 million women and men over the course of a year.[i]
Are you thinking---enough already? It is overwhelming. And hard to know what to do. We can begin to figure out how we might help
when it is an individual in front of us (although even that is difficult and
complex), but when we hear these huge numbers that are nationwide and
worldwide---we don’t know where to begin.
And the uncertainty of not knowing where to begin can cause us to kind
of become paralyzed or numb to the problem---we feel we can’t fix it, so we
ignore it.
Understandable. But
as people who follow Jesus, we cannot ignore it. What does Jesus have to say about this? What is Jesus’ answer for all this
violence—this escalation of seventy by seven fold of human cruelty and
injustice enacted upon humanity?
“Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member
of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I
tell you, seventy-seven times.’” Another
way this is proclaimed in Scripture is: seventy by sevenfold times.
Clever Jesus. Do you
hear what he just did there---talking to these people who know the Old
Testament, the stories, the trajectories.
Where Adam’s 6th or 8th generation descendent,
Lamech, escalated human violence through vengeance---seventy by seven
fold,----Jesus turns that on its head and says: Nope, that’s not how humanity,
that’s not how God’s Created, God’s people are meant to act. Instead of seventy by sevenfold vengeance, we
are to live and move and have our being through forgiveness---seventy by
sevenfold----forgiving over and over and over.
As Jesus has shown us---even when people don’t request it or earn it or
deserve it. Forgiveness, God says,
Forgiveness, Jesus shows---is the answer to the world’s problem of violence and
brokenness.
Maybe you’re thinking---“Well, I don’t know how my forgiving
that rat-fink Donald is going to do anything about the violence in
Syria…..” But, let’s just take a closer
look at this forgiveness and see what we find about how it works.
First of all, forgiveness isn’t about the other person. I used to think forgiveness was kind of a
gift or a reprieve I was giving someone else.
Silly me. Sure, sometimes
forgiveness helps the other person to feel released and free---but forgiveness
is all about releasing and freeing me.
Releasing me from my anger and bitterness. Freeing me from my despair and despise of
others. Healing me from the wounds that
have come from others’ hands and words---but also the wounds that have come
from my reliving and replaying the injustice or violence I received.
Forgiveness is all about a changed heart---my changed heart---regardless
of the status of the heart of the person I am angry with or the person who hurt
me. It’s about my heart.
When I was teaching, I would see students fill their
backpacks with every book, folder, and notebook needed for the day---they always
declared there was not enough passing time to get back to their locker. So, they carried it all in the their
backpack….all day long. And by the end of the day, they hurt. Their face was weary. Their bodies were bent. But, still, they carried it all around. Even after the passing time was
lengthened. They continued to declare
that it was “easier” to simply carry it all rather than to take things out of
the pack until they were needed. The joy
and the energy they had in the morning was sucked clean out of them by the end
of the day.
In college, a friend asked me to be a part of a “science”
experiment. Again, silly me, I said,
“Sure!” She gave me a class of cold,
pink liquid and asked me to take a drink.
I made her assure me that it was harmless. I drank a long drink. Yum!
Refreshing. It was so pleasant
and it quenched my thirst.
Then she took out a dropper with clear liquid in it. She told me she was going to put one drop in
the glass and have me take another drink to report if there was any change. Again, I asked if it was harmless; she said,
“Of course.” She put in one, small
drop. Stirred. I drank.
Nasty. Ruined. What had been pleasurable and quenching was
now disgusting and bitter. The very
character of the beverage had been transformed.
With one, small drop.
Anger.
Bitterness. Resentment. Woundedness.
These are our overloaded backpacks and that small drop of clear liquid
to our hearts, our spirits. When, like
my students, we are determined to carry them around instead of letting them go,
they change us. They make us tired,
hurt; our faces and words become ugly; our hearts become hardened. Our very characters change. Where we were once pleasant, we become
bitter. Just one drop can change how we
see and live and choose.
We avoid people. We
avoid situations. We avoid places. We would rather carry around our anger, our
bitterness, our woundedness, our disappointment than to have the conversations
that are necessary for reconciliation and healing---the face to face
conversations. Rather than to confront
“our enemy” (whom Jesus calls us to love), we plan our days, our routes, and
our calendars so we can pretend that they no longer exist.
Or, worse yet, we decide since we’ve been hurt---we can just
hurt them right back. Ratcheting up the
violence---seventy by sevenfold---ignoring the call to forgiveness because we
have our righteous indignation to keep us warm at night.
You know, forgiveness is hard work. It’s messy.
It often takes quite a bit of time.
And the other person may not be interested. But, whether the other party decides to
become engaged in the act of reconciliation or not---it is still our work to
do. Because forgiveness is about our right
relationship with God. Forgiveness is
about our heart---our Spirit----our being.
Bishop N.T. Wright put it this way: "Forgiveness is like the air in
your lungs. There's only room for you to inhale the next lungful when you've
just breathed out the previous one. If you insist on withholding it, refusing
to give to someone else the kiss of life they may desperately need, you won't
be able to take any more in yourself, and you will suffocate very
quickly." – (Matthew for Everyone)
Still, what does any of this have to do with Syria or
domestic violence or gun violence or Nigerian schoolchildren? We make a difference in the world by how we
live in the world. When we live and love
and move from forgiveness, then we see the world differently and we respond to
what’s happening differently. We ask our
politicians to respond in certain ways; we elect people who will respond in
different ways. We use our resources and
gifts in different, life-giving, forgiveness-centered ways.
And, perhaps most importantly, we live differently with
others---creating a small circle of reconciliation. Which ripples out into the
community---creating a slightly bigger circle reconciliation---which ripples
out into the surrounding people of that community….and so on and so on and so
on. Seventy by seven fold.
Remember, we are the light.
The light that is lit from Christ’s light. And light can be reflected
and shared and spread. It all begins
within us. How each one of us chooses to
live. When each one of us chooses to
live forgiveness---it cause a wrinkle in the fabric of life---a wrinkle that
softens our hearts and the hearts of others---changing hearts of stone into
hearts of flesh.
In her book Seeking
Enlightenment; Hat by Hat, author Nevada Barr reflects on hearing the
passage we heard last week when Jesus reminds us that whatever we bind or let
go of on earth is also bound or let go of in eternity; she writes this;
To me it sounded not
as if a power to forgive or not forgive was being bestowed but rather the
apostles were being reminded, perhaps warned, that every transgression they did
not forgive would be retained. Retained
by them, by us, by me. Carried by me,
fed, watered, and hauled from place to place by me. Or I could forgive and be free.
The evildoer would
continue to exist doing what he does, repenting or not.
I would continue to
exist.
But the evil itself
would be over, gone, done, history as in no longer is, not happening. I realized what had been alive and biting was
not the original evil but my oft-rehearsed, dearly held memory of evil.
My definition of forgiveness
is a sigh, very like a sigh of relief, on which the memory of evil is breathed
out.
With letting go of the
memory, discontinuing the incessant replaying of pain, and instead feeling the
unmitigated overness of the evil, the evildoer looks quite different: flawed,
like me; a child of God, like me.
Forgiven. Like me. (page
21)
Beloved, God invites us to a life of forgiveness---a life of
letting go of anger, bitterness, hard-heartedness—a life of freedom, of large
hearts, and clean spirits---Say yes! For
God’s sake, for Creation’s sake, for your heart’s sake: Say yes!
