9/17/17 Contagious Forgiveness

Sermon for 9/17/17                                                                                Contagious Forgiveness             
Genesis 50: 15-21, Matthew 18: 21-35                                                             Jennifer M. Ginn
 
    Boston Globe columnist Linda Weltner describes sitting in a park watching children at play. Two kids get into an argument, and one says to the other, “I hate you! I’m never going to play with you again!” For a few minutes, they play separately, and then they are back sharing their toys with each other. She remarks to another mother, “How do children do that? How do they manage to be so angry with each other one minute, and the best of friends the next?” The other mother answers, “It’s easy. They choose happiness over righteousness.”  
    Rabbi Harold Kushner simplifies the idea: children choose being happy over being right. For adults, making the choice for happiness means that a instead of remembering every time someone hurt us and never letting them forget it, we give other people and ourselves the right to be human—sometimes weak, selfish, or careless.
    Choosing happiness also means trusting that God loves us enough to make up for the disappointments we feel. And if we act on that love by forgiving the ones who disappoint us, forgiveness will spread. It’s contagious.
   
    Forgiveness isn’t a no-brainer, however. Take today’s Gospel story…forgiveness did NOT happen the way it was supposed to there. Forgiveness should be contagious, but the servant who is forgiven so much debt doesn’t catch the ‘forgiveness bug.’ He WAS right—the other servant did owe him money— but he is so obsessed with being right that he can’t even take time to be happy about what’s just happened to him—he’s been forgiven a debt astronomically greater than what he himself is owed!
    What he owed was 10,000 talents. A common laborer would have had to work 15 years to earn one talent. So this guy owed 150,000 years of labor! In other words, he would never, ever have been able to pay back this huge debt, for which he was totally forgiven. His friend, on the other hand, owed him 100 denari. A denarius was worth only about a day’s wage, which meant that the second servant owed him a hundred days of labor. A tiny sum by comparison. But even after the huge forgiveness he received, he cannot forgive that debt. 
    He is an extreme example of how NOT to live.  

    But then there’s Joseph. I love the Joseph story. You’ll remember Joseph and his coat of many colors, from his father. Favored by dad and envied by his 11 brothers, he is tossed into a pit to die and then sold as a slave to Egyptian traders. However, his quick thinking and ability to interpret dreams help him rise in Egypt to a position of renown. Joseph is not perfect—he gets caught up in his own power and struggles with temptation. But in the end he is able to forgive and forgive again the brothers who wronged him.
    He has not forgotten the wrongs. In fact, in today’s story he names the intent of his brothers—you intended to harm me, he tells them. But God brought good from what you did.
    Joseph knows that God can use even bad things for good ends. And he sees God at work in his own misfortune, to preserve the people of Israel. He understands that God’s big story wraps around his smaller story. The graciousness of that big story is contagious. It ‘rubs off.’ Joseph ‘catches it” and is able to choose forgiveness over condemnation, happiness over rightness. 

    This week I thought of another story that involves a choice for forgiveness—a David Lynch movie from 1999 called "The Straight Story." It’s about Alvin Straight, a 73-yr old man who decides it’s time for reconciliation with his brother Lyle, from whom he’s been estranged for 10 years. Alvin has bad hips, congested lungs, poor eyesight, and no driver’s license. He makes the crazy decision to drive his riding mower across Iowa, over the MS river and into Wisconsin. Pulling a small trailer behind him with his supplies and bedding, Alvin heads off to find his brother.
    The trip is full of encounters that invite him to share his hopeful and forgiving spirit. That spirit is contagious. It draws others to him and opens his own eyes to see God at work in them.
    One in particular is a young girl he finds hitchhiking. She sits by his campfire, eating a hot dog roasted over the flames. She is hungry and alone. “You running away from home?” he asks. No answer “Where’s your family?” After a moment’s pause he asks, “How far along are you?” She answers, “Five months.” Sensing that she fears condemnation from her family, Alvin tells her about a game he played with his children—giving them each a stick and challenging them to break it—easy for them. But then he tied several sticks together in a bundle and issue the same challenge. “Of course, they couldn’t break them,” he says. “That bundle? That’s family.”
    Nothing more is said, and she sleeps by his campfire that night. In the morning when he comes out of the trailer looking for her, he finds instead, on the ground by the smoldering fire, a small bundle of sticks, tied together. He knows she is gone—back to her family.
    He offered her hope out of his own forgiving spirit, and then watched it go to work in her life.
    Alvin chose the path of forgiveness and reconciliation. So did Joseph. And both were able to catch the broader view of what God was doing in others through their situations. Bravo for the choice they both made!

    But it didn’t happen quickly. It took Alvin 10 years and the news that his brother had had a stroke to make the choice for forgiveness. We are not told how long it took Joseph.
    And let’s be honest—we know how that process goes. When we get hurt, we want to ‘get back.’ And choosing forgiveness can take a long time. That hurt can happen even in the church, between brothers and sisters in Christ. We may feel taken for granted, or not listened to. Or we might feel just plain run over. Forgiveness may seem impossible. But if being in relationship really is more important than being right, shouldn’t we be able to forgive?  
    The ‘should’ doesn’t make forgiveness easier. But God does. Because even when forgiveness doesn’t seem possible for us, it is ALWAYS possible for God. So your inability and mine do NOT have the last word. God’s the expert in forgiveness, and God’s ability to forgive is broad enough to draw you and me into its energy. It IS contagious.
    If you want to catch it, if you pray to catch it, if you step out on a limb to try it, God will draw YOU into the energy of forgiveness. And God WILL be faithful to bring it about in your life.
    And for that we say, “Thanks be to God.” Amen.