Author: John Drymon

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It seems to me that it’s pretty misguided, if not positively dangerous, to base one’s worldview around a cliché. This may strike you as non-controversial, (who would do that?) but let’s consider some examples. “I’ll forgive, but I’ll never forget!” or a second, which is like unto it, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!” I think some people really do live by these aphorisms, which seem more likely to produce resentment than anything approaching actual mercy or forgiveness. Thank God that God does not seem to live by these aphorisms or every one of us would be doomed.
One cliché my father-in-law mentions sometimes that I think he heard from a radio evangelist when he was a kid sounds a little better, but only until you scratch the surface. “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything!” Well, sure, it’s important to have convictions (particularly as it pertains to Christian doctrine), but taken to an extreme and applied to every possible controversial topic this leads inevitably to rigidity and an inability to grow in one’s understanding of the world.
And, one more bad aphorism: I hope I need not belabor the point that “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the bible. Neither is it borne out in reality for countless folks who seem to persistently strive for success but just can’t seem to get there, whether out of some personal problem or as a result of being born with the deck stacked against them. Worse, at least as far as I’m concerned, is this particular adage implies a sort of Pelagianism, or “works righteousness”, which can lead us to believe in a God who will only love us and show us mercy if we work hard enough for it.
For what it’s worth, we 21st Century Western Christians are not the first people ever to be in danger of adopting the religious ideology of a hallmark card or motivational poster. It seems the exiled Jews of the Sixth Century B.C. were prone to the same problem of taking folk wisdom clichés and turning them into an all-encompassing worldview. “What do you mean,” the Lord said to Ezekiel, “by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, “the Fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?” In other words “why do you keep saying, the parents’ sins will be visited on their children?”
Now the question about whether or not this is how God operates is found throughout scripture, and the biblical witness is complicated. Some would disagree with me here, but I don’t think scripture is actually self-contradictory on this issue, but there is a tension in the text that would take more time to tease out than we have today. It should suffice to say that while there is good evidence, particularly in the deuteronomistic books of the Old Testament, to believe that the results of wickedness in one generation can certainly negatively affect future generations, the overwhelming message found in both the Old and New Testaments is that God does not directly punish people for sins their ancestors committed.
So there is a distinction here between the generational effects of sin and what God does as judge and avenger. Apparently Ezekiel’s people, however, were not so keen on clarifying this distinction, instead assuming a pithy adage from Poor Richard’s Babylonian Almanack as sufficient basis for a coherent theology.
It’s a shame our Old Testament lesson skipped 21 verses, because those verses make the point even more explicit. If somebody is an idolater or an adulterer or a robber or commits usury or sheds blood, that person is in trouble. But that person’s parents and children are not. God may punish the wicked, but he doesn’t take it out on their families. End of story.
You’d think the response to the clarification by the Lord through the prophet Ezekiel would elicit some gratitude and relief. But how does the house of Israel respond? “That’s not fair!”
This is such a human response. Last week we saw the flip side of this coin, as it were, with the laborers in the vineyard who wanted to be rewarded for their hard work more than the people who didn’t do as much, even if we got ours. Just as it is with reward, so it is with retribution. “Sure, I’ll take my lumps so long as the other guy, the one who did me wrong, really gets it… and his family, too.”
We can understand where this impulse is coming from; Ezekiel’s audience was suffering; they were in exile in Babylon. They wanted to see God’s vengeance. I am reminded of just how powerfully they felt this on the 28th day of every month in the psalms appointed for Evening Prayer. So, tomorrow evening, I will, with great discomfort, recite once again for about the 300th time since I started praying the daily office in earnest about twenty-five years ago, “Happy shall he be who takes your [Babylonian babies], and dashes them against the rock!” This is not a godly sentiment; that’s not why it’s in scripture (and it is scripture; we don’t get to pick and choose). It’s not normative, but it gives us a powerful sense of how exactly God’s people felt when they were in Babylon.
Ezekiel is calling his people, and, indeed, he is calling us to a better way. On the one hand he is just stating a fact about God’s justice, which is not ours, but he’s also speaking a word to us, to convict us of our anger and hatred and desire to see retribution done against those who may not even be personally responsible for some harm done to us. God alone is judge of both hearts and actions, and he judges us as individual moral and spiritual agents, not as representatives of some clan or class of people.
Now this last statement is controversial. It cuts against a particular orthodoxy embraced by both fundamentalists and religious liberals and by both the left and the right in the political sphere. It is essentially the same lie, though of course neither “side” would much appreciate being compared to the other, and it is especially difficult because like all good lies there is enough truth in it to be believable. All the problems of the world are caused either by some evil or communal guilt borne by “that group over there” which is an inherently sick class of people or all the problems of the world are caused by our privileged group which is inherently sick and collectively guilty. Both of these responses is present at both ends of political and religious spectrums, depending on the issue in question. So, your two choices are victim blaming or performative, self-indulgent confession. Pick your poison.
None of this is to suggest that one ought not be aware of how one might have benefited from the sins of one’s ancestors or attempt to make some restitution based on that reality. That is another issue entirely, worthy of careful consideration, and moral theologians shouldn’t cede that issue to secular activists and technocrats. It is worth addressing as the church. It is to say, however, that each of us inherits precisely the same guilt as everyone else, Adam’s sin, and we needn’t start some complicated accounting to see if you were born more guilty than I based on what your great-grandparents might have done versus what mine did. We are all equally stained by original sin, and some complicated accounting of past transgressions doesn’t change that. Indeed, this only leads to an endless, generational cycle of blame and violence. If we start down that dark path, we get the Hatfields and McCoys or the Greek and Turkish Cypriots or the Hutus and Tutsis.
It is significant, I believe, that the same prophet who spoke God’s word in today’s Old Testament reading, later mediated God’s word which provides the solution to this horrible cycle of blame and shame and unending violence. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” May God be swift to remove that stony heart from our breasts, the heart which delights in enmity and rage and retribution, and implant within us the heart of flesh, that we may be merciful and kind, slow to anger and quick to forgive. Just as God’s wrath is slow to rise and ready to abate, may we in our efforts to become more Christlike have the same spirit, for the sake of our souls and for the sake of the world.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid.” Thus the prophet Micah presents the vision of the Kingdom as the comfortable possession of a landowner at his ease. Likewise, from the prophet Zechariah, “In that day, says the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor under his vine and under his fig tree.” Stability, permanence, comfort. These are the promise of the life to come, but not, as the Prophet Jonah discovered, the reality of the present age.
Jonah’s short-lived shade tree was meant to encourage in the prophet a sense of empathy for the penitent inhabitants of Nineveh, but it only made him feel sorry for himself. That didn’t have to be his response, but he had already shown himself the most callow and craven of prophets in his attempt to escape God’s call. Thank God for the reminder, yet again, that God can use the most imperfect of instruments to carry out his will (as I mentioned with regard to St. Peter a few weeks ago). Perhaps a more self-possessed prophet wouldn’t have required God’s explanation, but we can also be grateful that Jonah’s imperfection meant that God made the point clear for our sake. The experience of hardship can lead us to sympathize with and provide support for others when we take them as an opportunity for spiritual growth. If we don’t, we might become bitter instead, just like poor Jonah.
I have been very fortunate in life. I’ve had some hardships like anyone, sure, but my own life has been relatively free of precarious situations. So I can only report on what I’ve observed in others, which may not be the whole story, but it seems to me that people who have experienced real, serious hardship in life and have come through it tend to come in two varieties: those who recognize that it is only by God’s provision that they have come to a better place and those who believe that they have come to a better day entirely by their own efforts. The former are some of the kindest, most generous people you’ll ever meet, and the latter tend not to be so, acting as if they believed that their sheer force of personality is what made the shade-tree grow. This is all grossly over-simplified and entirely based on anecdotal evidence, but I’d be willing to bet it may ring true with your experience, too.
In the parable Jesus told about the day laborers in the vineyard one thing is held in common by those who worked all day long, those who barely worked at all, and everyone in between. Their very lives are all defined by a precarious financial reality. Maybe there will be work today and maybe there won’t. Maybe I can buy my family’s daily bread and maybe not. But at some point during the shift, those who’d been at it all day long forgot to be grateful.
Now the parable is about the Kingdom of God, not the labor market. You could try to use it to support “right to work” laws or you could try to use it to support a universal basic income. You could get proponents of both of those diametrically opposed positions together, give them the parable, and see who comes out on top. I don’t think either is the point, though. I think the point may be just as simple as this. We know, I hope, that the Kingdom of God when it comes will not be a reward for our good efforts, but rather as a gift from God. Likewise, all that we enjoy this side of paradise is a gift from God, and we can only truly enjoy those blessings when we realize that and are grateful.
All that said, this is not a sermon meant to encourage sloth, much less a sense of entitlement. By no means! It is simply to put the cart in front of the horse. Gratitude compels us to contribute our best efforts to the good work God has given us the privilege of undertaking in this life. Most especially this is done in the works of mercy, spiritual and corporal: feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, comforting the afflicted, sharing the Good News of Christ Jesus, and all the rest. “If it is to be life in the flesh,” St. Paul wrote in today’s Epistle, “that means fruitful labor for me.” If you thought he was taking a gloomy, fatalistic turn in that reading, I’d encourage you to take your bulletins home and read that lesson again. I think that there is a great deal of joy in that reading, despite the acknowledgment that the work is hard and unpopular. Joy that the Philippians are holding firm and joy that Paul himself gets in his hope to visit them again and work alongside them. It is nothing compared to the joy of heaven, but it’s still glorious. Maybe it’s because, unlike Jonah and unlike the day-laborers, he’s remembered that gratitude doesn’t just make the work easier. It makes it possible and it makes it joyful.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There is a fascinating issue in source criticism regarding today’s Gospel. (I know that may not be an exciting way to start a sermon; you know me!) The issue is that many early manuscripts simply have a slightly different text and it’s difficult to know which one most accurately kept what Jesus originally said. Regarding how many times one ought to forgive a brother, Jesus may have told Peter “seventy times seven”, as we heard in our translation (the Revised Standard Version) or else he might have said “seventy seven” as he does in the New Revised Standard Version.
Some of you know that several years ago I switched us from the newer back to the older translation, because I find it to be generally more faithful and accurate. Well, in my humble opinion, I think the newer translation is actually better in this instance, and not because I’d rather forgive someone seventy seven times as opposed to four hundred ninety times when I need to. I do not, in fact, believe this is really about keeping score—quite the opposite, as you’ll see in a moment. I suspect (and this is not a theory original to me), that Jesus was here referencing something in the Book of Genesis, which at least some of his listeners must have picked up on.
You may remember the story of the first time a man was said to sin against another. Adam and Eve sinned against God, but it was their son Cain who first wronged another human being by killing his brother Abel. God punishes Cain by making him a wanderer, but he also promises to protect him, the mark of Cain not being a curse but a sign that whoever would harm him would receive a seven-fold retribution.
You may not remember that immediately after the story of Cain Genesis gives us a peculiar story about his great-great-grandson Lamech. Lamech, we learn is harmed by somebody (we don’t know who, nor do we know the circumstances) and Lamech kills him. He then recites to his wives this poem:
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.

I think it is probable that Jesus, in saying that one is to forgive one’s brother seventy-seven times, is making a reference to this story.
I don’t think that the point here is not literally “you must say ‘I forgive you’ exactly seventy-seven times” in some sort of onerous, precise accounting of mercy, and then on trespass seventy-eight you get to destroy your enemy. Rather, I believe this is meant to show us that Christ has replaced a whole system of justification with a new one, that an ethic based on retribution has been replaced by one based on reconciliation.
I talked about this a lot in last week’s sermon, so I won’t repeat myself point by point. It should suffice to say that while our fallen nature and the very culture in which we find ourselves today push us to take vengeance on those whom we believe wrong us, but the Gospel way calls us to try our level best to maintain fellowship by being as gracious and forgiving as we can reasonably (and perhaps sometimes, unreasonably) be, that we might gain brothers and sisters rather than picking sides and demanding satisfaction. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” after all.
Jesus follows this command with a parable. I saw that in sermons I preached previously on this text (which pops up once every three years) I did some math to figure out as close as I could the relative size of the debts in the story. Long story short, they are, I believe, intentionally outrageous. The slave is owed about a third of a year’s wages, so not insignificant. But the debt he was forgiven is the equivalent of literal billions.
Why such an absurd approach then, from the slave who was forgiven? Wouldn’t we behave better? When it comes to the accounting of what others owe us and what we owe others maybe and maybe not. But any lack of will to forgive on our part is precisely the same as the wicked servant, because the debt we owed to God was worth even more than billions in gold. Thanks to sin, we owed him our very lives, and yet he forgave us that debt without a second thought.
I am loathe to stray into anything that smacks of “works righteousness” or to assume that God would place any conditions on his infinite love, grace, and mercy. That being the case, there is a particular phrase that I always wrestle with in a prayer I say at least a couple times every day. I’ve not managed to figure out how to deal with it, and I will probably continue to wrestle with it for the rest of my life, which is okay. The phrase is “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” That sounds conditional. The Greek scholars in the house might counter that the relation between the words “ὡς” and “καί” may be either relative or comparative. I’ll grant you that, while still saying that I don’t want to gamble my soul over a grammatical question with even odds. So, I guess I better try to be as gracious as I can be, even if I have to forgive someone seventy-seven or seventy times seven times.
I think, though, conditional or unconditional forgiveness of trespasses aside, the most salutary and liberating words in the English language are “I forgive you.” Those words free us from all those petty resentments that separate us from each other and, ultimately, from God himself. Actually practicing forgiveness, beyond just saying the words, may be the work of a lifetime, but it is good work, and it is worth it.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.