When, in Sunday School so very long ago, some of us memorized these verses of our Second Lesson, the translation then being used told us that we're supposed to forgive other folks' sins "seventy times seven"—that's 490 times. Wow! But in most all of the modern English translations, we're now being told that we're to forgive others "seventy-seven" times. Oh well, whether the correct translation of the Greek number is "490" or "77," the task that Jesus here assigns us really doesn't get any easier. For the point of Jesus's saying has nothing at all to do with arithmetical calculation anyway. No, whatever the literal number may be, Jesus's metaphoric point about our needing to forgive others remains quite the same. And that point is this: throughout our lives we are to practice a "measureless mercy"—or, as one commentator has put it, a "forgiveness without frontiers." [John P. Meier, Matthew, New Testament Message 3 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1980), p. 208]
Still, the fact is that the literal number actually employed by Jesus probably was, as the modern translations have it, "seventy-seven." For he could use that particular number in order metaphorically to cancel out a well-known cry of vengeance found in one of the opening chapters of the Bible's very first book. In Genesis 4:24, a man named Lamech proudly boasts to his two wives that if anyone should dare to attack him he will avenge himself not just "sevenfold" but "seventy-sevenfold." So Jesus's use of "seventy-seven" in contrast to Peter's suggestion of "seven" serves metaphorically to present "forgiveness" as the antonym and antidote to "vengeance." So Jesus is here calling upon his followers to renounce revenge and to become Lamech's polar opposites.
And today's First Lesson, coming from the last chapter in this book of Genesis, provides us with an example of one who actually does stand as a polar opposite to Lamech, of one who does respond to attack not with vengeance, but with forgiveness. I speak of Joseph.
Joseph is the eleventh and favorite son of a man named Jacob. Young Joseph is the one among his siblings who seems to have everything, who seems always to get his own way, who seems possessed of an undue influence over their father. And he is also the one who taunts his brothers by recounting dreams of his own greatness, a greatness that comes at their expense. Well, his brothers are finally overtaken by a murderous envy. "Come now," they say, "let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him" (Genesis 37:20).
"Fortunately, one of the brothers intervenes, and convinces his siblings not to take Joseph's life. Instead, they strip him, throw him into a pit, and sell him into slavery.... Joseph is carted off to Egypt, where he becomes a slave of one of Pharaoh's officers.
"[Now, f]ast forward [with me] to the end of Genesis. [Over the years,] Joseph [has become a much humbler and wiser person, he] has risen to power in Egypt, and has become second-in-command to Pharaoh himself. A famine hits his homeland, and his brothers travel down to Egypt to buy grain, not knowing that Joseph is now the governor of the land. [There, a]fter a series of tests and negotiations, Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers, and they are relieved that he does not...slay them for their previous offenses. [In the end, t]hey fall down before him and say, 'We are here as your slaves' (50:18).
"They did the crime, so they expect to do the time. It only seems fair." [They'd sold him into slavery; now he'll make slaves of them.]
"But Joseph goes in an entirely different direction. 'Do not be afraid!' he says to them. 'Am I in the place of God?... So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones' (vv. 19-21).
"What a jaw-dropping response this is, from a man who had been betrayed by his brothers, tossed into a pit, and then sold into slavery. We might expect him to be angry, but he's not. We would sympathize if he was bitter, but he's not. We would understand if he felt a need to pursue revenge with all the shock and awe of [the] Egyptian military might [to which he has access]...but he doesn't go this way at all. Joseph focuses on reconciliation, not revenge." (The above-quoted narrative summary of the Joseph story comes from Homiletics, September-October 2005, pp. 16-17.)
Now, today is a time when we're remembering 9/11, and our lectionary texts surely have set for us a very hard task: the task of focusing not on hatred and revenge, but on forgiveness and reconciliation.
September 11, 2001—four years ago today—a day burned into our brains by "a series of heart-breaking images that will stay with us forever. [The planes attacking.] The Twin Towers falling. The Pentagon exploding. Flight 93 crashing... A fire-fighter carrying away a flag-draped victim. The twisted rubble of Ground Zero." (Homiletics, as above, p. 16) Friends—dead, or horribly wounded, or crippled by "survivor's guilt." So what kind of sense can we make out of Jesus's call to forgive, when what's been done to us seems so utterly unforgivable. Isn't forgiveness for wimps? Don't we need to stand tall?
I mean, there was nothing at all righteous about those attackers and the networks who stood and stand behind them. They certainly weren't freedom fighters who simply went a little too far in their quest for justice. No, they were ruthless terrorists, motivated by a perverted religious fundamentalism—people who blaspheme the name of God by committing their deeds of violence in the name of religion, people who would destroy democracy, people who would repress women, people who would persecute anyone who disagrees with their oppressive vision for the world.
Yes, all of that's true! And yet, despite that, I firmly believe that had our nation after 9/11 aimed at reconciliation with the world rather than at retribution against those who oppose us, our world would today be a far, far better place than it is.
You see, I believe that the position of America among the nations is very much like that of the young Joseph among his brothers. Our prosperity, our influence, our claims to greatness—our being #1 at others' expense—triggers in many hearts a resentment and jealousy that can ignite into a murderous rage.
So I believe we can learn a lot from the Joseph story. I believe our challenge is just like that of Joseph—to become humbler and wiser, so that we use our power and influence not for self-aggrandizement but for the well-being of others and "their little ones," so that we use our power not for avenging ourselves against those who hurt us but for achieving a reconciliation based on forgiveness.
Now, here's a tricky thing about the Bible. In it, there are found two really quite different—one could say incompatible—portraits of God. One is God the Holy Warrior, who lashes out against enemies and destroys them with fiery might. And the other is God the All-Compassionate One, who at the Last Supper led Jesus to take the cup and say, "Drink from it all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:27-28); the God who also in the Garden of Gethsemane led Jesus to choose not the sword but death on a cross (Matthew 26:51-54); the God who also on that cross led Jesus to say as he died, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34) . Two portraits of God!
Well, since 9/11, President Bush has clearly been leading our nation down the path of anger and vengeance, of shock and awe—the path of God the Holy Warrior—rather than down the path of forgiveness and reconciliation—the path of God the All-Compassionate One. And traveling down that path of Holy War has led us, I think, to be quite worse off than we were before, caught up as we now are in a ferocious cycle of violence and vengeance that seems to have no imaginable endpoint.
So isn't it about time to try something totally different, to try responding to the evil of 9/11 by renouncing vengeance and by seeking to become polar opposites to the Lamech who called for seventy-sevenfold revenge? Isn't it about time to turn to the path shown to us by Joseph and walked for us by Jesus himself, the path of the God of the Last Supper and the Cross, the path of the God who forgives, and commands us to forgive, without limit?
So, if we were to undertake such a complex process as political forgiveness, what kinds of initial actions would be required? Well, political forgiveness would certainly not begin with forgetting the evil that was done on 9/11. No, it would begin precisely with remembering that evil. For you see, forgiveness does not entail the suspension of moral judgment or of punishment. It simply demands the abandonment of vengeance, the acknowledgment of our enemy's humanity, and the search for a kind of justice that will repair and restore political community rather than destroy it. [See Donald W. Shriver, Jr., in The Living Pulpit, April-June, 1994, pp. 16-17]
And the action of political forgiveness would also entail our willingness humbly to examine why it is that there are so very many in the world who are so very angry at America's policies, and it would entail our openness to changing policies that hurt other peoples.
So, on this anniversary of 9/11, "we are challenged to follow [both] Joseph [and Jesus] in working for reconciliation instead of revenge.
"[And you know, t]he approach that Joseph [and Jesus took] is not [nearly] as ancient, otherworldly and unrealistic as you might [at] first assume it is. During World War II, the Russian philosopher Semyon Frank wrote in his notebook: 'In this terrifying war, in the inhuman chaos which reigns in the world, the one who first starts to forgive will in the end be victorious.'
"[Frank's words seemed incredibly idealistic at the time, with bombs falling and millions dying, but in the end his words came true. At the close of the war, some members of the Allied camp wanted to pursue revenge against Germany, but others remembered how the punitive nature of the Versailles treaty after the First World War had created bitterness, and led to the rise of the Nazi party. So, instead of pursuing revenge, the Allies worked for reconciliation. The coal and steel industries of France and Germany were brought together, and their resources were pooled. A center was established in [Caux,] Switzerland to work for European reconciliation. On top of this, a generosity of spirit was at work in the United States, and a massive amount of money flowed into Europe through the Marshall Plan. Because the focus was on reconciliation instead of revenge, age-old enemies quickly became friends."
"An example of the depth of change in individual Europeans (after World War II) was the experience of a French woman, Irène Laure, who attended the Caux conference (on reconciliation) in 1947.
"She had been in the Resistance when the Germans occupied her country during World War II. Her son had been tortured, her comrades executed. At the end of the war she had wanted Germany wiped from the face of the earth. She became a member of parliament and leader of the Socialist women. She was invited to the Swiss conference and was horrified to find Germans there.
But "[s]he was challenged with the question: How can you rebuild Europe without the Germans? She retired to her room and for several days and nights thought about whether she would give up her hatred for the sake of the new Europe. When she came out, she asked if she could speak. [And s]he did so.
"She turned to the Germans in the hall and said, 'Please forgive me for my hatred.'
"A German woman came up from the hall and took her hand. Irène said it felt like 100 kilos being lifted from her shoulders."
"Peter Petersen, later ... a senior member of the German Parliament, [was] in the hall that day when Irène Laure spoke. Her words did for him, he says, what no finger-pointing or blame had ever done... He decided then to be fully honest about his past.... One sees in this an example, which has been repeated many times over, of how an apology for hatred can actually inspire repentance in another person." For as Alexander Solzhenitsyn once observed ever so perceptively, "The frontier between good and evil does not run between states, not even between people, but straight through the heart of each one of us."
Yes, "The one who first starts to forgive will, in the end, be victorious. [That statement by Semyon Frank is] as true today as it was after World War II, and [as it was] in the times of Joseph [and Jesus]." [The above-quoted material comes either from Homiletics, September-October, 2005, pp. 18-19, and directly from the article by Michael Henderson, "Forgiveness: A Dilemma of Democracy": The Way, January, 2004, or www.michaelhenderson.org.uk.]
As we come to the table of the Lord's Supper, let us recall that this is a place where we remember Jesus's innocent death on the cross. And this is a place where we also remember the innocent deaths of 2,749 other persons on 9/11.
To this table we are not to bring an appetite and thirst for Holy War. Absolutely not, for this is a place where our anger at the evil of Jesus's death and at the evil of 9/11 is to be transformed by God through the bread and the wine offered here—the bread and the wine of forgiveness, of reconciliation, and of newness of life. It is by dining and supping at this table that we are sanctified, that we are led to lives of measureless mercy and of forgiveness without frontiers—the only firm foundation for a genuine and lasting peace.
Let us pray:
O God, as we come to this table in remembrance of Christ's death and in remembrance of 9/11, help us to become polar opposites to Lamech. Transform our appetite and thirst for anger and vengeance into an appetite and thirst for forgiveness and reconciliation, so that we may be part of laying the foundation for a genuine and lasting peace. In the name of Christ Jesus, who embodied forgiveness without frontiers, we pray this. Amen.