"FOOLISHNESS & FORGIVENESS"
a message by Rev. Dr. Bruce Havens
Coral Isles Church, U.C.C.
July 21, 2024
Matthew 5: 21-26 NRSV
21 “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
Foolishness and forgiveness. Is it foolish to forgive? Not according to our prayer or the Scripture passage we just read, especially if you have called someone a fool! But what about bread and trespasses, you ask? Well, let’s see what we can talk about, hm?
Start with bread. “Give us this day our daily bread,” reminds me it isn’t just about MY bread. It’s about OUR bread. Our culture worships individualism. It is easy to think that everything we have we got by our own abilities, intelligence, or hard work. It may have taken all that, but those abilities come from our Creator. For me, when I ask for OUR bread, I remember I am asking for everyone, not just myself. While the Lord’s prayer is one we can pray as individuals, to me it is a relationship-focused prayer.
Our faith teaches us that we are all siblings, all family, even with those who we would rather not be. We live in a media culture determined to tell us why we should hate each other. When we pray for “our” bread we are asking for bread for others as well as ourselves. I often wonder why people are so angry? Many are because they have no daily bread. Of course we strive as a congregation to change that reality. Our weekly invitation to bring food for the food banks and our monthly dinners at Burton Methodist are ways we try to live this truth out. Many of you do more on your own.
Remember how much Jesus talked about bread? Before he began his ministry, after 40 days of fasting Jesus was tested by the Tempter: turn stones into bread. Jesus refused, reminding himself and his Tempter that we humans “do not live by bread alone.” Bread is never just bread. Even for all our angry fellow citizens. Remember when Jesus fed thousands with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish? More than once, Jesus warned the crowd that following him for magic miracles and signs did not equal real faith. Jesus told his disciples that he was “the Bread of Life.” Some critics of the first Christians claimed they believed in cannibalism because of that metaphor. But Jesus was talking about relationships. Our relationship with him and our relationships with others.
I am not minimizing that real bread is a real need. Jesus came to a people who lived hand to mouth mostly. They were a subsistence level people. Daily bread was often a life and death issue. Some of us here face food insecurity at times. I don’t want us to lose sight of just how important real bread is, and how important daily bread is to life. Millions of people around the world live in food scarcity. But for most of us that is not the case. The key again is remembering for some people this is an issue of desperation, not spiritual reflection. When we pray “give us our daily bread,” it should remind us of our relationships with our siblings everywhere for whom that is a prayer often unanswered. Healthy relationships require responsibility - responsibility means being able to respond. I hear this prayer inviting me to consider how to respond to the hunger for more than bread all around us?
Let me turn to our second phrase. It starts, “forgive us our - trespasses, debts, sins, or whatever word you want to use.” But look where it goes: “as we forgive those who trespass against us, are in debt to us, or sin against us.” Perhaps “trespasses” and “sins” have similar meanings. Let me take a minute to talk about “debts” and “debtors.” Did you know that the economic system God originally gave the Hebrew people was quite unique?
In Leviticus God gives commands about Sabbath. They are to rest on the seventh day and not plow or work the fields. Plus, every seventh year is to be a Sabbath for the land itself. No crops planted or reaped. The land and the people are to rest. And whatever grows on its own or is left from the sixth year is for the animals and the poor. Now, here’s the real revolutionary part. Every 50th year is to be a Jubilee year – when all DEBTS shall be released!
“The Jubilee is a time of Sabbath rest, … of homecoming, and …of liberation. Each Israelite is to return to his ancestral land and to his clan. Debts are to be forgiven, Israelite slaves are to be set free, and land is to be returned to its original owners or their descendants. In other words, if a person falls on hard times and is forced to sell his land or himself to pay off debts, the sale is not permanent. Both land and people are set free in the Jubilee.
“This vision of liberation is based on two theological claims. The land belongs not to the one who buys it, but to the LORD: ‘The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants’ (25:23). Likewise, Israelites may not be anyone’s slaves, ‘For [you] are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt’ (25:42; & 25:55). Both the land and the people belong to the LORD, and so both are released in the Jubilee from any other claim on them [enterthebible.org/passage/ leviticus-25].
So here’s my question. Did Jesus mean by whatever word we have translated in a variety of ways, “debts” in the sense of Leviticus? After all, last week we read the passage that said he “had not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them?” Was he asking us to pray for God’s economic system to be reinstated? We have always struggled to put God’s purposes into practical things like politics, economics, or wars. But God’s way always puts our connections, our dependence on one another, above all else.
Now, I don’t want to diminish the importance of trespasses and sins and forgiving them or being forgiven. These are keys to setting our relationships on right paths. We all have relational disconnects, disruptions, and dysfunctions. We all know how much those haunt us, hurt us, and even humiliate us in some cases. Whether we are the ones who were wronged or the ones who need forgiveness because we did wrong, our trespasses and sins can weigh heavily on us.
In the Scripture we read this morning Jesus brings up the Law and its prohibition against murder. But then he connects it with simply being angry with a sibling or calling a sibling a “fool.” And remember, when I say sibling, I don’t just mean your birth family or stepfamily. Every single person is our sibling in the eyes of God. Jesus warns us that we are in danger of “the hell of fire” if we do not reconcile with someone we need to forgive or be forgiven by. Whether you believe in a literal hell or not the point is the same: it ain’t good to be unreconciled with others.
Ooh! I have called a lot of people fools and worse - of course not to their face! So does that let me off the hook, Jesus? Here’s the thing. There are times when Jesus speaks descriptively, not prescriptively. By that I mean he isn’t saying “The poor you will have with you always,” is something to aspire to. He is describing the economic injustices of history. When he speaks about “not getting out until you pay the last penny of your debt,” if you owe someone, he is not saying that’s the way it ought to be. He is saying that was the economic system of his time.
In Jesus’ day “debtors’ prison” was a real thing. Many farmers had to sell their property to a wealthy landowner, and become basically sharecroppers. Then they would have to go back to that landowner to borrow to buy seed, and then sell the crop back to the landowner. Often this became a debt trap that increased until the landowner would throw him in prison. Then, of course, he couldn’t earn the money to pay back his debt, so it became a life in hell. There are still ways we turn the poor into prisoners for life today.
Today our for-profit prison system charges prisoners for everything. Many who have “paid their debt to society” for their crime still owe such a debt they cannot repay it and make a living on the outside. Our current governments are passing laws to punish these people further. Is that fair and just? Maybe you think so. I don’t know. I do know many of our siblings continue to be punished because they are poor debtors to the system that imprisoned them. What does forgiving trespasses or sins mean in that context?
Whether we think this is fair or just, here’s what Jesus is saying: reconciliation is essential. We are incomplete without it. In essence we condemn ourselves to hell if we do not actively work to reconcile when we have hurt someone. I don’t have time to address the psychology of a situation where someone has chosen to be hurt rather than hurt. Sometimes someone is mad at us because we did something with malice of intent. But if we did something and they took it as a slight or a hurtful thing that is not necessarily all on us. But we still need to try. Neither can I take time now to give a caveat for when we do all we can to reconcile but the other person refuses to forgive. These are beyond our power or our responsibility. But we must do what we can if we are responsible for hurting someone else intentionally and that is the point of Jesus’ words.
The truth and importance of the prayer continues: Forgive us, O God, for our trespasses, our debts, and our sins as we forgive those who have harmed us in any of these ways. God’s forgiveness is assured, complete, and perfect. Ours may be limited by our humanity. But I believe our goal should be to work for relationships that bless and heal and bring us life. That is what I believe this prayer is all about. And the good news is God is always working with us to answer prayer and to bless our relationships with love and forgiveness. To me, that is the Bread of Heaven. AMEN.
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