Hilton Head Island, SC – April 9, 2020
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 18:15-22; Matthew 18:23-35
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Then Peter came up and said to Jesus, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times.?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”
The word “bygone” has two meanings, only one of which gets into the dictionary. “Bygone” literally means “gone by,” which means “in the past.” A bygone therefore is something that happened back then, however far back that is.
Initially we will be thinking about that meaning in this sermon, at least in the first couple of minutes. But the rest of the sermon will be about what the old aphorism “Let bygones be bygones” means, or at least what I have always taken it to mean, and that is that we should get over the past if it is impeding us or we should forgive people for their past offenses against us. I may have misinterpreted the folk saying for my entire life, but that’s what I think it means, and that’s what this sermon will mainly be about.
First a word about things that have happened in the past which we need to leave in the past. If you ever had a romantic attachment to someone and it didn’t work out, you need to put it behind you, especially if you have been bearing the pain of that loss your whole life. You gain absolutely nothing by dwelling on it on a regular basis, if there’s nothing you can do to change it.
If you lost a pile of money on a bad investment, get over it. It’s done. It’s a bygone. It has gone by. If you made a bad mistake, keep it in the past, and don’t repeat it in the present or future.
But those are not the bygones upon which we shall be focusing today. As I said, even if I am incorrect in how I interpret “Let bygones be bygones,” here is what I take it mainly to mean: Don’t hold grudges against people who wronged you in the past. Especially don’t hold it against them in the present or future. It is not only foolish to hold grudges, because it does harm to you spiritually and psychologically to do so, but it is morally wrong to do so. God and Jesus command us to forgive others for their sins or misdoings against us. Neither God not Jesus merely suggest that we forgive others; they command us to forgive them.
And why would we be given such a command? It is for at least two reasons. The first is that it benefits others, and Christians should always be in the business of benefiting others. Secondly, and of equal importance, when we forgive others, we automatically lift a burden from ourselves. When people hurt us in any way, we bear the pain of that injury within ourselves until we forgive them. Thus not to forgive others for the hurt they inflict is to add to our pain by letting it gnaw on our innards and on our mind forever, unless the sin is forgiven. Grudges are self-inflicted wounds which pile up on the past wounds from inflictions we have already received. Let bygones be bygones, for the good of others and for your own good.
I’m sure if you put your mind to it, you can recollect things your parents or siblings or your mean neighbor Mr. McGregor or your former friend Benedict Arnold did to you way back when. But what’s the point of dredging it up? It doesn’t change what happened, and it only makes it harder for you to find room to continue to store it in your memory bank. Those are banked memories you don’t want or need.
Another famous aphorism is this: “Forgive and forget.” If you concentrate on the first part, forgiveness, it’s much easier to do the second part. But if you never forget, and you refuse to let go of the slights you have received from others, you may preclude yourself from ever becoming a wise forgiver. People who store up bad memories tend to be unhappy people.
“It’s an ill wind that blows no good.” (I am on a regular aphoristic avalanche here!) For me, one of the few benefits of the Virus Slowdown is that I have been able to read many more books in a month’s time than I normally would read in six months. In the last two weeks I read two new best sellers which became best sellers even before their publishing dates. (For better or worse, Amazon can accomplish that. And for whatever it’s worth, I strongly lean toward the latter.)
The first book was written by John Bolton, Donald Trump’s resigned (Bolton said) or (fired, Trump said) National Security Advisor. It is entitled In the Room Where It Happened. I have followed John Bolton’s very successful career in the executive branch of the federal government with the same degree of enthusiasm that actress Joan Crawford watched the successful long acting career of Bette Davis. Mr. Bolton is a very intelligent, astute, cunning, shrewd, decisive observer of all matters political and especially military. In addition, no one is a more dedicated warmonger than he. No doubt he has often been the smartest person in lots of rooms, and he without question he would resoundingly second that observation in his own ever-humble way. But he also can be a very mean, sarcastic, spiteful, imperious little chap with an unusually large and fulsome mustache which may need some psychoanalysis --- which is a mean and sarcastic thing to say. But I’m not publicly saying it to his face, although if I ever had the proper opportunity, I fantasize that I would like to.
Anyway, John Bolton has a fantastic memory for details of his lifetime of government service, and he loves to skewer people and decisions of which he highly disapproves. Having read his book, I think he undercuts his usefulness as a high-level advisor. He seems so often to disapprove so unrelentingly of nearly everyone he cites in the book, and especially his most recent boss in particular, that he renders himself a man whom it would be hard to trust for any extended period of time. He appears to be utterly dismissive of human weaknesses, foibles, and fallacies. Had he ever given testimony in the presidential impeachment in the House of Representatives, or had he appeared in the Senate impeachment trial, things might have turned out differently, but he didn’t, so they didn’t.
The other best seller was written by Mary Trump, the niece of the president. She is a Ph.d. clinical psychologist. Her book, Too Much and Never Enough, is a pained and painful summary of four generations in the family of Fred and Mary Trump, their five children, their children, and to a much lesser degree, their children. The most senior Trumps, Fred and Mary, were the parents of the president. Young Mary’s carefully sharpened pen mainly pierces her Uncle Donald and her grandfather, Fred Trump. It is a sad story about a sad family whose mistakes and missteps are chronicled in details that are probably at once clinically objective and personally tragic.
Mary Trump, like John Bolton, also has a hard time letting bygones be bygones. Both authors wrote their books from quite different perspectives, and they both wanted to help their readers better understand the context behind their writings. But I came away from both with almost always bad feelings, and virtually no good feelings at all. That is because I felt bad for them that they could not release some of the baggage they obviously have been carrying for so long. If I could, I would wave a magic wand to remove their burdens, but alas, only they can do that.
King David was one of the greatest grudge grippers there ever was. Some of the Psalms ascribed to him show him to be a man who seemed frequently paranoid, imagining that he had more enemies than Carter had little pills. (That, by the way, cannot classify as an aphorism.) In our responsive reading from Psalm 90, David wrote, “When my enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before thee (before God)….The enemy have vanished in everlasting ruins, their cities thou hast rooted out; the very memory of them has perished” (Ps. 90:3,6). Well if the memory has perished, then why are you reminding us about it, Your Highness? David was singularly deficient in allowing bygones to be bygones. He never met an enemy he remotely liked, nor did he ever forget the nasty things they did to him.
Half of the 18th chapter of Matthew consists of sayings of Jesus about forgiveness. He began these observations by saying, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.” If that doesn’t work, said Jesus (said Matthew), you should tell a couple of other people to see if it can be ironed out. And if that doesn’t work, then – quote – “tell it to the church.” This is, incidentally, one of only two times in any of the four Gospels that the word “church” is used by Jesus. They both occur only in Matthew 16 and Matthew 18. Furthermore, Peter is closely associated with both passages, and Jesus makes identical statements in both passages: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Mt. 16:19 and Mt. 18:18). It may be that Jesus never said either of those things. They were added by whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew, and he, not Jesus, inserted the words “church” and the exact same sayings in both chapters. There likely was no concept of “the church” among the earliest of Jesus’ disciples.
In any event, when Jesus had talked about working out problems with someone, Peter asked him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” To that Jesus replied, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” In other words, Jesus was telling Peter – and us – that we always must forgive everyone of everything they do to hurt us. We must always let bygones be bygones, and thus shall these sad events become erased from to our memory banks
Then, to underscore his point, Jesus told a parable. A king decided to collect the debt owed him by one of his highest-ranking courtiers. The man owed the king ten thousand talents. The footnote says that a talent was a measurement of monetary value which was worth about a thousand dollars. Ten thousand talents thus would equal ten million dollars. Since that footnote was written in 1952, I would guesstimate that means ten thousand talents would now be worth about fifty million dollars. And in 32 or 33 CE, when Jesus told this parable, that would be an incomprehensibly immense amount of money. The servant couldn’t pay such a huge amount, so the king said he and his family should be sold into slavery, and the monarch should be given whatever was the selling price. The servant begged the king not to sell him and his family into slavery, and the king relented, completely forgiving the debt. But then the forgiven servant of the king went out and demanded that a man who owed him a hundred dollars or so should pay immediately pay him his debt. When he couldn’t pay, the servant refused to forgive the debt, and he had the man thrown into prison.
Other courtiers of the king told him what had happened, and the king was enraged. He had his chief servant thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. Then, so that no one could not miss the point of the parable, Jesus said, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Sometimes the Jesus of Matthew is soft-hearted, and sometimes he is incredibly hard-hearted. He doesn’t get any more hard-hearted than this. I find it impossible to believe Jesus ever made that concluding statement, Matthew 18:35. It was Matthew who said he did. There doesn’t seem to be much or even any forgiveness from the king for his heard-hearted chief servant. Therefore I believe that the essential part of these two passages, which Matthew connects, is Matthew 18:22: “I don’t say you must forgive someone seven times, but seventy times seven.”
The grudges we often carry the longest are those against a spouse or other relatives or long-deceased parents. But there are also others who desperately need forgiveness.
This past Thursday marked the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the first nuclear weapon ever detonated in warfare, on Hiroshima, Japan. Today is the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, with the second of the only two nuclear weapons ever used against human targets. We as American citizens need the forgiveness of the Japanese people for those atrocities. Harry Truman needs the forgiveness of all total pacifists for ordering the only two atomic weapons ever utilized in warfare, but which also swiftly ended World War II.
In another arena for forgiveness, if you were an unusually conservative Catholic, you would need to forgive Popes John XXIII and Francis I. If you were an unusually liberal Catholic, you would need to forgive Popes Pius XII, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI. Since you’re not a Catholic, but a Protestant, if you’re a conservative Protestant, you are commanded to forgive Harry Emerson Fosdick, William Sloan Coffin, and Jim Wallis, with none of whom you may be familiar. If you’re a liberal Protestant, you are commanded to forgive Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell (Sr. and Jr.), and Franklin Graham, all of whom I presume you do know.
But there are also other kinds of forgiveness we are commanded to offer. If you’re very conservative in your politics, God is telling you to forgive Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. If you’re very liberal in your politics, Jesus demands that you forgive Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. If you’re a well-informed, historically-normal voter, Jesus is telling you to forgive Donald Trump.
Everyone is free to have strong opinions, but no one is free to hold grudges. Grudges coagulate the human spirit. They are a coronavirus that infects civil society. Forgiveness is the only antidote to a grudge.
“Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Let bygones be bygones.