Seventy-Seven Times

The sermon preached by Fr. Ernie on September 17, 2023.

Forgiveness can be hard. Sometimes very hard. So, Peter’s question is a good one. “If someone sins against me,” he asks Jesus, “how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Peter had clearly picked what he thought was an impossibly large number. And yet what is Jesus response? “Not seven times,” Jesus replies, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Essentially, Jesus was saying, “Don’t even ask. Just keep doing it.” This is how God forgives us, after all. Why should we expect to do any less for others? That’s the point of the parable that follows.

Jesus is correct, of course. Forgiveness is the basic survival tool of any long-term relationship. How long would any marriage last without forgiveness, after all? A few weeks perhaps, but not much more. Not as something living and loving, at least. Take any couple that has been together for more than ten years. Are they still talking to each other? Are they still in love? If they are, then without doubt, they have each forgiven each far, far more than seventy-seven times. I guarantee it. Think of all the countless slights that have occurred in those years, the thousands of times when they each have snapped at each other, ignored the other’s concerns, or let each other down in some way. Every successful marriage that ever was, every close friendship, every loving relationship of any kind is only able to get past all the countless failures we bring to it by jumping from one stepping stone of forgiveness to another.  Love only survives among people who are willing to forgive each other. Love may make a relationships possible, but forgiveness keeps them alive. 

So, yes, how often do we need to forgive each other? Not seven times but seventy-seven times. And that’s probably just in the first month. This is forgiveness as reconciliation, and reconciliation is what holds relationships together. It is necessary because all relationships between human beings are flawed, because human beings themselves are flawed. We all slip up. We all have bad days. In order to reconcile we have to recognize this. We acknowledge that no one is perfect — I am not; you are not; no one is — which means that there will be times when we hurt or offend each other. By being willing to forgive such things in another person we recognize that they are doing the best they can, as we are too. By forgiving those in our lives we treat them as we hope to be treated ourselves.

The thing is, not all forgiveness aims at reconciliation. I mean, what do we do with someone who does something truly vicious? Someone who consciously sets out to hurt us? Someone who commits an act of intentional and malicious harm?  This is not someone who’s just having a bad day, someone who simply slips up. No, this is someone out to do something genuinely cruel and destructive, and does it. Someone who does something that can only be described as evil. Think of the people who open fire at children in a school yard, or who come into a prayer group of an African-American church and start shooting. What are we to do with a people like that? We all fear encountering such warped individuals, but they do exist. What do we do with them? Are we expected to forgive them too? 

Are we? Let me tell you: I’ve come to suspect that this is not the sort of forgiveness that Jesus is talking about.

Let me tell of something that happened to me once. I have to say that I tell this story with real reluctance, partially because I hate to say bad things about anyone, even someone who hurt me, and partially because in the greater scheme of things this incident is really quite minor. It’s not even in the same universe as the acts of horrendous evil I just named. Still, it offers a case in point. 

This happened years ago during my first ministry position. I was a Roman Catholic at the time and had just earned my Master of Divinity, but since I was married with three small children I could not be a priest, for course. Instead, I was hired by a Roman Catholic parish in Boston to be a fulltime, paid lay minister. The parish had over 2000 members so we had a full pastoral team, three priests — the pastor and two assistants ­­— a full time nun, and myself. My job was mainly to work with the 150 or so teenagers that formed the youth group as well as overseeing many of the adult services, things like baptism preparation, marriage preparation and outreach to the sick. It was a great job and I loved the work. I also really liked all the members of the ministry team. It was a fantastic group.

I had there for three years when one of the assistant priests left to take his own parish. He and I had been particularly close, and I was sorry to see him go, but I looked forward to getting to know his replacement, a priest a little older than me who I’ll call Bob. Fr. Bob seemed friendly enough, at least at first, but I soon began to sense a subcurrent of hostility towards me. It wasn’t obvious, and I kept telling myself I was imagining it, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that Fr. Bob really didn’t like me. I noticed that he avoided me, for one thing. Furthermore, whenever we did end up together, he always adopted a slightly sarcastic, needling tone that often carried little barbs, which often made subtle hints that I was an imposter in ministry, a phony imitation of a priest, because I was married with children. Looking back on it, I have come to believe that this was much of the problem. I now suspect that Fr. Bob was jealous of me because I was doing much of what he was doing even though I had a wife and family — the very things that he had given up in order to become a Roman Catholic priest.

In time word got back to me that Fr. Bob was spreading malicious rumors about me behind my back. The pastor of the church, the priest in charge of the parish, was a man named Frank. I really admired Fr. Frank, and loved working with him. For the first three years Fr. Frank and I had been very close, and he was very complimentary of my work, but soon after Fr. Bob arrived, I felt Fr. Frank’s feeling gradually begin to cool towards me. I did all I could to counter this. I began to work extra hard to keep the lines of communication open between us so that he would know exactly how things were really going, but the more we talked, the more Frank pulled away. 

Then one day it happened. Fr. Frank called me to his office and told me that Fr. Bob had informed him of a number of ways that I had dropped the ball and that I needed to look for another job. I listened with open-mouthed amazement as he told me what Fr. Bob had told him I had done. None of the things were true. They had never happened It wasn’t just that Fr. Bob had seen things one way and that I had seen them another. Bob had accused me of things that had simply never occurred. What is more, Fr. Bob had himself been present at the events when he claimed I had done these things and so must have known very well that what he said was false. I made a few feeble, astonished objections, but Frank’s mind was made up. I was devastated. I went home that night and thought about it then decided that I needed to talk with Bob to find out what was behind this.

We met the next day. Fr. Bob seemed unusually buoyant.

         “I hear you’re going to leave us soon,” he said in the same tone as someone might say “I hear it’s your birthday today.”

         “Bob,” I said. “You’re going to have to explain this to me. You told Frank that I did things that never happened.”

         Fr. Bob crossed his arms and his mouth twisted into a smirk. “Is that right?” he asked.

         “Yes, it is Bob,” I said, noting that he had said nothing to deny it. “And not only that, you know very well that none of this is true. You were there.”

         Instead of answering, Bob simply leaned back in his chair and gazed at me as a broad, malicious grin spread slowly over his face. Several moments passed. Fr. Bob never moved. His eyes were cold and steady. His smug, self-satisfied smirk never wavered. After a full minute of this I realized that Bob did not intend to answer me at all. Only then did I acknowledge the truth. This was no misunderstanding. Not only had Bob been lying, but he was fully aware that he was lying. This was a planned deceit. Fr. Bob had intentionally set about to methodically frame me. Now it was simply his word against mine, and Frank had decided to believe him.

 In the long run, it all worked out for the best. I ended up with what turned out to be a more rewarding job as a hospital chaplain which led eventually to a graduate program and my conversion to the Episcopal church and later the Episcopal priesthood. I felt like I had finally come home. And yet for years I was haunted by the memory of that cruel, self-satisfied grin on Bob’s face, a grin that basically said to me, “Yes, I’m lying, and I know I’m lying but I don’t care because I want you out of here, and I’m going to get my way.” I had seen a glimpse into the face of evil and it was chilling.

Of course, evil can be so much worse this, and in fact I have wondered what else Fr. Bob may have done, what else he was capable of. Frankly, I hope I never find out. But what was I supposed to do with all my feelings of betrayal, anger, and disgust at Bob? Are we really supposed to forgive unrepentant evil too?

 Frankly, I no longer believe we are. Certainly not in the same way that we forgive those who we are part of our community, our family, and our circle of connections. Confronted with unrepentant evil, our goal is not to seek reconciliation. It is to seek safety. It is to seek healing. Forgiveness draws people closer, but when it comes to evil, we do not want to get close. Instead of trying to reconcile with such people we need to get away from them. Such people are not simply toxic, they are dangerous. We need to distance ourselves from them. We need to protect ourselves from being pulled into their deadly orbit. We need, first, to shake their dust from our feet and keep them as far from us as possible. Then we need to turn them over to God. If there is forgiveness to be had, God will forgive them. If there is judgment to suffer, it is God who will judge them. Finally, then, we must let go of them completely. If necessary, we need to forgive ourselves for being unable to forgive such evil, even though such an action is not expected of us. People like Fr. Bob are deeply troubled and deeply malignant. They are drowning swimmers who only God can save. The more we hold onto them the more they pull us under too. Not only do we need to keep out of their path, we also need to get them out of our head. I can tell you it took me years to do this — years to stop clinging to the anger, the hurt, and the betrayal I felt for Bob — and finally put him completely in God’s hands. Once I did so, I found peace.

That’s what forgiveness gives us. It gives us peace. When we reconcile to those who are close to us we gain the gift of a loving relationship and the peace and deep satisfaction that gives us. By simply separating ourselves physically and emotionally from someone like Bob and turning them over to God, we get something more basic. We get the peace of knowing that God will deal with it. Any encounter with evil is terrible, but in the end, evil will not win. Love will, because God will. And that’s all we need to know. AMEN 

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