Someday, I’m going to run out of tales about my little brother that intersect with the day’s lectionary readings. But today is not that day!
My brother and I grew up on a leafy street of modest houses in the South. Kids played outside almost all year long, and were frequent visitors to each other’s backyards. My brother’s best friend and playmate was a little girl of the same age who lived at the end of our street. Her name was Lisa, but Barry had trouble pronouncing the letter L, so he called her Gee-sa.
One day in the late fall, just after I had started the first grade, my mom was doing housework when my little brother burst through the back door, crying inconsolably. My mother ran to see what was the matter. She tried quieten him down so he could tell her what was going on. As she hugged and caressed him, she checked for blood and broken bones. But it wasn’t a skinned knee or fractured tibia that was troubling my brother.
Finally, my brother calmed down enough to answer my mother’s repeated question of ‘What’s wrong??” “Jesus doesn’t love me anymore!!!” he wailed, and collapsed into her arms.
Parents are often our first theologians. They are on the front lines of teaching us how to live the life of faith. It’s an awesome responsibility. And like most theological quandaries, my brother’s crisis of faith would prove to be pastoral in origin. My mom knew just what to do. “Barry, Barry!” my mother assured him, “Jesus does too love you!”
Then as the light began to dawn on her, my mother asked, “Barry, who told you that Jesus didn’t love you??” Filled with righteous indignation, my brother condemned his playmate, “Gee-sa did!” he said. My mother thought for a moment and then asked my brother another question. “Barry” she said, “What did you do to Lisa to make her say that to you?” “I spit on her!” my brother said.
My mother said, “Barry, you go right back up the street and tell Lisa that you’re sorry you spit on her.” Off my brother went. My mom called Lisa’s mother and told her to keep an ear out for a diplomatic envoy from down the block. My brother returned to his friend Lisa’s backyard and said, “Gee-sa, I’m sorry I spit on you – and Jesus does too love me!!!!”
Amends was offered and accepted. God’s peace was restored to neighborhood and the afternoon passed without further incident.
Our readings today might lead us to believe, as my brother’s playmate Lisa seems to, that God has a problem with anger. I don’t think that’s quite accurate, that’s not quite the whole story. The God of the Hebrew Scriptures shows his anger on plenty of occasions. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, threw the moneychangers out of the temple and cursed a fig tree for being out of season.
No, the problem is not anger per se. But what we do with it. Ecclesiasticus tells us that anger and wrath are abominations, “yet a sinner holds on to them.” It is the holding on to rage that causes us problems. When our rage, however righteous, takes root in us, then we become consumed with our anger, and vengeful. Anger is like a great and mighty tree. It can grow tall and wide, it can darken everything around it. But the real story of the tree of anger is at the roots. What does it take to feed such a mighty oak of anger? When wrath and rage put down roots in our hearts, there is little else that our hearts can support.
In July someone whose heart had been consumed with anger and hatred burst into a Knoxville church and killed two people and wounded six others. Pastor Chris Buice of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church describes the incident this way, “The man who walked into this sanctuary on July 27th was armed with a gun but he was also armed with hatred, he was armed with bitterness, he was armed with resentments, he was armed with indiscriminate anger. He was armed in body and spirit.”
The shooter, Jim David Adkisson, was fueled by a hatred of liberals, and he targeted the Knoxville church because of its social justice ministries and its outreach to gay folk. He acknowledged as much in his statement to police. For Adkisson, anger had squeezed out of his heart any room for tolerance or understanding of those who are different or who see things differently. He had come to despise his brothers as sisters.
Paul, in today’s passage from the Epistle to the Romans, is trying to settle a dispute within the Jews and Gentiles in the struggling church at Rome. There is disagreement over which day should be reserved for worship. As early Christian worship developed, it began to supplement the Jewish Sabbath observance with a celebration of the Lord’s Day on Sunday, the day on which rose from the dead. Much of Paul’s writing is about these particular kinds of disputes – how to meld a church out of those with theological and cultural differences and practices. Paul tells us that whatever we do – observe one Sabbath or another – as long as we do it to the honor of God, then God will be well pleased with us. There can be and often are faithful people on either side of an issue.
In our gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus relates the parable of the unforgiving servant. Now, If you do the math and calculate the exchange rates in the parable, you get a feel for the magnitude of mercy that is being described. A talent was the largest denomination of money. It equaled 15 years of wages for the average laborer. Ten thousand was the largest number in the number system. In Greek, the word for ten thousand is myrias, from whence our word ‘myriad’ comes. So, ten thousand talents is an impossibly large sum, one that could never be repaid. The smaller debt owed to the unforgiving servant of 100 denarii is not insignificant; it is about 100 days’ wages for a laborer. But the contrast is what is startling. The unforgiving servant refuses to forgive a debt that is 1/600,000th of the debt that was forgiven of him by the king.
We are, all of us, sinners in need of God’s grace. How can we be less than tolerant and forgiving of our brother and sister sinners? For our God, of his mercy, has forgiven us all. Our sins and shortcomings have been redeemed upon the cross; by the atoning death and resurrection of God’s only son -- a very high price indeed. What can we not forgive when we have been forgiven so much? Who is it that we can deign to punish when so many of our own crimes have been wiped away? Why do we hang onto grievances in the face of the immensity of God’s mercy to us?
How can we condemn those we “know” are wrong, when those who “knew not what they did” were so readily pardoned from the cross itself?
My little brother Barry was clearly in the wrong when he let his anger get away from him. And his playmate Lisa was also wrong to play the Jesus card in a backyard dispute. But the point is Barry apologized. He, like the unforgiving servant, pled for forgiveness. And Lisa gave it most willingly. A dispute was ended, a fracture mended, anger was abated before it became destructive. Two children who loved each other were reconciled.
Would that such a healing had come to Jim David Adkisson. Would that we could all be so quick to forgive as our children often are as was our Savior from the cross. . Would that we were just 1/600,000th as forgiving as God our father -- who through his son Jesus Christ -- has pardoned the sins of all the world.
My brother and I grew up on a leafy street of modest houses in the South. Kids played outside almost all year long, and were frequent visitors to each other’s backyards. My brother’s best friend and playmate was a little girl of the same age who lived at the end of our street. Her name was Lisa, but Barry had trouble pronouncing the letter L, so he called her Gee-sa.
One day in the late fall, just after I had started the first grade, my mom was doing housework when my little brother burst through the back door, crying inconsolably. My mother ran to see what was the matter. She tried quieten him down so he could tell her what was going on. As she hugged and caressed him, she checked for blood and broken bones. But it wasn’t a skinned knee or fractured tibia that was troubling my brother.
Finally, my brother calmed down enough to answer my mother’s repeated question of ‘What’s wrong??” “Jesus doesn’t love me anymore!!!” he wailed, and collapsed into her arms.
Parents are often our first theologians. They are on the front lines of teaching us how to live the life of faith. It’s an awesome responsibility. And like most theological quandaries, my brother’s crisis of faith would prove to be pastoral in origin. My mom knew just what to do. “Barry, Barry!” my mother assured him, “Jesus does too love you!”
Then as the light began to dawn on her, my mother asked, “Barry, who told you that Jesus didn’t love you??” Filled with righteous indignation, my brother condemned his playmate, “Gee-sa did!” he said. My mother thought for a moment and then asked my brother another question. “Barry” she said, “What did you do to Lisa to make her say that to you?” “I spit on her!” my brother said.
My mother said, “Barry, you go right back up the street and tell Lisa that you’re sorry you spit on her.” Off my brother went. My mom called Lisa’s mother and told her to keep an ear out for a diplomatic envoy from down the block. My brother returned to his friend Lisa’s backyard and said, “Gee-sa, I’m sorry I spit on you – and Jesus does too love me!!!!”
Amends was offered and accepted. God’s peace was restored to neighborhood and the afternoon passed without further incident.
Our readings today might lead us to believe, as my brother’s playmate Lisa seems to, that God has a problem with anger. I don’t think that’s quite accurate, that’s not quite the whole story. The God of the Hebrew Scriptures shows his anger on plenty of occasions. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, threw the moneychangers out of the temple and cursed a fig tree for being out of season.
No, the problem is not anger per se. But what we do with it. Ecclesiasticus tells us that anger and wrath are abominations, “yet a sinner holds on to them.” It is the holding on to rage that causes us problems. When our rage, however righteous, takes root in us, then we become consumed with our anger, and vengeful. Anger is like a great and mighty tree. It can grow tall and wide, it can darken everything around it. But the real story of the tree of anger is at the roots. What does it take to feed such a mighty oak of anger? When wrath and rage put down roots in our hearts, there is little else that our hearts can support.
In July someone whose heart had been consumed with anger and hatred burst into a Knoxville church and killed two people and wounded six others. Pastor Chris Buice of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church describes the incident this way, “The man who walked into this sanctuary on July 27th was armed with a gun but he was also armed with hatred, he was armed with bitterness, he was armed with resentments, he was armed with indiscriminate anger. He was armed in body and spirit.”
The shooter, Jim David Adkisson, was fueled by a hatred of liberals, and he targeted the Knoxville church because of its social justice ministries and its outreach to gay folk. He acknowledged as much in his statement to police. For Adkisson, anger had squeezed out of his heart any room for tolerance or understanding of those who are different or who see things differently. He had come to despise his brothers as sisters.
Paul, in today’s passage from the Epistle to the Romans, is trying to settle a dispute within the Jews and Gentiles in the struggling church at Rome. There is disagreement over which day should be reserved for worship. As early Christian worship developed, it began to supplement the Jewish Sabbath observance with a celebration of the Lord’s Day on Sunday, the day on which rose from the dead. Much of Paul’s writing is about these particular kinds of disputes – how to meld a church out of those with theological and cultural differences and practices. Paul tells us that whatever we do – observe one Sabbath or another – as long as we do it to the honor of God, then God will be well pleased with us. There can be and often are faithful people on either side of an issue.
In our gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus relates the parable of the unforgiving servant. Now, If you do the math and calculate the exchange rates in the parable, you get a feel for the magnitude of mercy that is being described. A talent was the largest denomination of money. It equaled 15 years of wages for the average laborer. Ten thousand was the largest number in the number system. In Greek, the word for ten thousand is myrias, from whence our word ‘myriad’ comes. So, ten thousand talents is an impossibly large sum, one that could never be repaid. The smaller debt owed to the unforgiving servant of 100 denarii is not insignificant; it is about 100 days’ wages for a laborer. But the contrast is what is startling. The unforgiving servant refuses to forgive a debt that is 1/600,000th of the debt that was forgiven of him by the king.
We are, all of us, sinners in need of God’s grace. How can we be less than tolerant and forgiving of our brother and sister sinners? For our God, of his mercy, has forgiven us all. Our sins and shortcomings have been redeemed upon the cross; by the atoning death and resurrection of God’s only son -- a very high price indeed. What can we not forgive when we have been forgiven so much? Who is it that we can deign to punish when so many of our own crimes have been wiped away? Why do we hang onto grievances in the face of the immensity of God’s mercy to us?
How can we condemn those we “know” are wrong, when those who “knew not what they did” were so readily pardoned from the cross itself?
My little brother Barry was clearly in the wrong when he let his anger get away from him. And his playmate Lisa was also wrong to play the Jesus card in a backyard dispute. But the point is Barry apologized. He, like the unforgiving servant, pled for forgiveness. And Lisa gave it most willingly. A dispute was ended, a fracture mended, anger was abated before it became destructive. Two children who loved each other were reconciled.
Would that such a healing had come to Jim David Adkisson. Would that we could all be so quick to forgive as our children often are as was our Savior from the cross. . Would that we were just 1/600,000th as forgiving as God our father -- who through his son Jesus Christ -- has pardoned the sins of all the world.
© The Rev. Mark Robin Collins
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