In
case you are wondering, my fantasy football team laid a big fat egg yesterday.
Even though I meticulously researched my team and wound up with one of the best
drafts according to projected point totals, my squad of players from around the
National Football League just did not show up yesterday. Fortunately for me,
the team I am playing performed even worse than me. Nothing is final quite yet,
but I may make it out of week one with an unearned victory. Strangely enough,
this light-hearted experience of leisurely fantasy competition has given me an
insight about this coming Sunday’s Gospel lesson.
This
week’s story of the Good News picks up midway through Matthew Chapter Eighteen.
In the previous verses Jesus spoke about lost sheep, how to practice
forgiveness in the Church, and now we get Peter’s question about how many times
we ought to engage in reconciliation with someone before we give up on them.
Peter thinks the over/under on times to forgive a fellow member of the church
needs to be set at seven. Seven may not seem like a lot, but in those days it
was not just a lucky number.
Seven
during the time of Jesus had greater significance than it simply being a prime
number or the number of days in a week. During this time, according to the New Annotated Oxford Bible, “Seven often
symbolizes ‘completeness’”.[1]
Thus, Peter was not just choosing an arbitrary number from thin air. Instead,
this disciple wondered, “If someone in the church sins against me how much
shall I forgive them? Shall I forgive them completely?” As we hear such a bold
statement on the theme of reconciliation upon which this whole chapter in
Matthew focuses, we would presume that Jesus would boisterously agree with
complete forgiveness, and yet, that is not what happened.
For
Jesus, forgiveness by the numbers—even great numbers—does not go far enough. Later
in the week I intend to dive further into the parable of the unforgiving servant—which
comes right after this—and how it challenges us to let forgiveness be our most
common practice; however, just looking at Jesus’ moving Peter’s ideal of seven
times to seventy-seven times gives me all I need to know about what we are called
to do. Jesus invites us to practice forgiveness not only to completeness, but
to the furthest extent of totality (yes, that is a tardy reference to the solar
eclipse). While Mathematics does not typically excite me this much, I want to
take one deeper look at the number Jesus cited.
If in
the days of Jesus seven stood out as the number of fullness we would do well to
notice what number he chose to expand Peter’s understanding. Instead of simply
saying forty-nine, which is seven times seven, Jesus chose seventy-seven or
complete-completeness. Seven in both columns of this two digit number
challenged Peter to see that his view of total forgiveness needed not just a
little more, but a whole column more worth of relational healing. Jesus’
challenge though may leave us feeling a bit dejected, as practically forgiving
someone who has done us harm seven times seems extravagant—not to mention doing
that another seventy times! So what do we do? Let me return to where I started.
My
personality manifests as such that even a loss in a fictional game meant for
fun among friends causes me to believe that I have fallen short of the mark. Said
differently, I have a hard time even forgiving myself. Sometimes I mistakenly
think that I can easily forgive someone else when I do not forgive myself. When
I lose even at something silly like fantasy football and I have a hard time
reconciling with myself, God gives me in this moment an opportunity to practice
forgiveness. For me to learn what Jesus speaks here, I believe I must start
with the practice of living as a forgiven person myself—like the unforgiving
servant whom we hear about later in this lesson. If I cannot freely live into
forgiveness first, then God’s grace seems a difficult gift to pass along to
anyone else. However, Jesus calls us to faithfully jump into this tricky flow
of forgiveness—reconciliation is our home.
Even
if I lose not seven times but seventy-seven times, Jesus tells me not to hold these
failures against myself because no matter how many times I fall short God always
says to me (and to you too), “I love you. You are forgiven.” This eternally
rings true not only in the small, stupid missteps like fantasy football losses,
but in the gigantic, important failures, like when we harm friendships,
marriages, and other relationships with children, grandchildren, other
relatives, coworkers, neighbors, or strangers. As I continue to process this
passage, I feel challenged to actually live into forgiveness—not just saying
the words of the confession, but letting them take hold in my heart. For we are
people who have been forgiven, now Jesus challenges us to take this healing and
reconciliation into the world.
[1] Cousland, J.R.C. "Matthew."
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