The Balance Sheet

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

02.22.15; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Matthew 7:1-12

LISTEN TO AUDIO VERSION HERE

Here, we come to that point in the prayer when things get really hard.  Or, rather, harder.  It’s hard enough to want only necessary things.  But hardest still is that portion we get today: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

This whole “debts and debtors” issue is a strange and difficult one, one that goes well past the difficulty Christians have figuring out whether it’s “debts,” as we Presbyterians say it, or “trespasses,” as those who aren’t as smart and wise and humble as us put it.  It’s debts, of course.  Opheilemata and opheiletais, go the words in Matthew and Luke’s original Greek, and they refer specifically to a financial obligation owed.  But we forgive those who trespass the other way, so we’re cool.

Honestly, though, that little translation quibble is meaningless.  This section of the prayer has to do with any way in which we personally are offended by another, or harmed by another, or owed something by another, or when someone crosses a boundary they’re not supposed to in an act that might conceivably be called trespassing.  Conceivably.  

How good are we at forgiving such people?

We might think it’s straightforward and exact.  How do we get to forgiveness?  We think, oh, all we need to do is get things just so.  There must be just recompense, and then forgiveness will come.  We want the balance sheet to line up perfectly, where every little thing I’ve done and every little thing you’ve done come out even.

It’s one of those things you work your way through with kids, particularly when they were little and you’re meting out scoopfuls of New York Super Fudge Chunk Chip.  If the servings didn’t come out exactly just so, you’re going to hear about it.  

If everyone doesn’t get exactly the same amount of time on their screens, you’re going to hear about it.  Amazing, how even though everyone’s got a smartphone and a 3DSXL and a Vita and a tablet and a laptop and a desktop and a 30 incher in the kitchen and a 50 incher in the living room and a 75 incher in the rec-room, so many screens that our homes have started to look like sports bars, we still manage to not get that balance exactly right.

It’s hard, making things come out exactly right.  When human beings try, we make a mess of things.

I was reminded of this, often, as I read my way through a peculiar and fascinating book recently.  It was a biography entitled The Faithful Executioner, inspired by the real-life journal of a man who’d dedicated his life to being an instrument of justice.  His name was Franz Schmidt, and he lived back in the sixteenth century in Nuremberg, Germany.  He was, by profession and trade, a Master Executioner.  It was a trade he’d learned from his father, who’d prepared his son to learn the family business, which was nothing more and nothing less than the art of killing other human beings in the service of the state.   Dad was really, really committed to making his son the best at their trade.  How committed?  Generally, when we buy our eleven-year-old son a dog, it’s not so they can use it to practice chopping off heads with swords.  

“Yay, Daddy, a puppy!”  “Son, don’t get too attached.”

It’s a strange, strange story about a very odd life, about a time that is so different from our own that it’s a little hard for us to even process.  Here, at the beginning of the modern era, was a culture in which justice was understood as a carefully structured retributive process.   Every punishment was exactly measured out to match the crime, carefully calculated to inflict a certain amount of pain, or induce a certain amount of fear.  Steal once, and you’d have to pay it back, plus a specific number and level of whippings.  Steal again?  You’d be hung from the gallows, and your corpse left to rot.  Worse crimes?  They had worse punishments, which I will not recount in detail because they’re both creative and unspeakably horrendous.  He records several examples in his journal of prisoners being told they were going to be beheaded, and them saying, “Oh, thank goodness.”  This was a time where having your head chopped off with a large two-handed sword was the “merciful” outcome.  It was the 16th century equivalent of getting your sentence reduced to community service, only, you know, with death.

What was most peculiar about this story was the matter-of-fact way in which Franz went about his trade, convinced that he was simply an agent of justice.  He was the sword that set things back in balance, or so he assumed, as he meticulously recorded every one of the almost four hundred souls he personally killed, not to mention those he chopped, hacked, maimed, and tortured.  Franz, you see, was a devout Christian, a teetotaler, and he saw this all as completely necessary to set things right and make things just.  

All in the name of balance.  All in the name of setting everything straight.  Which, of course, it didn’t.  Crime continued, and within a hundred years, the city-state of Nuremberg had collapsed.  All that pain, all that death, all that trying to create the balance on the sharp edge of the sword?  Useless.  It made nothing better.  It healed nothing.  

Which Jesus came to do, through his life and his teachings, in a way we haven’t quite figured out yet.

In Matthew’s Gospel today, we hear how Jesus wrapped up the Sermon on the Mount, which stands as the highest and most significant of all of Christ’s teachings. It’s why our adult ed class has been working our way through it, bit by bit, over the last couple of weeks, weather notwithstanding.  It’s hard stuff.  Throughout this heart-of-his-message teaching, he makes a point of consistently challenging the way his listeners thought about the world. Throughout his teaching, he constantly told all who heard him that what mattered most was how we responded to the knowledge that God’s kingdom was at hand. He reminded his disciples and the crowds that gathered to listen that what mattered was that perfect fusion of faith and action. That means going above and beyond the demands of the law, and living a life  of radical love, up to and including loving one’s enemies.  That means being humble, and refusing to be hypocritical or judgmental.

Judgmental?  

That last part is hard, perhaps the hardest thing of all, which is why when Matthew’s Gospel gives us that prayer, the forgiveness part is the part that Jesus doubles down on.  “Forgive us our debts as we forgive debtors,” he says in the prayer, right there in Matthew 6:7-8.  And then, in case we missed it, in the verses right after the prayer he says, “If you forgive others, God will forgive you.  If not, you’re outta luck, buddy.”  

Then, in case we’ve missed it, in case we’ve spaced out and managed not to register what he was talking about, we get Jesus right back on us in chapter seven.  “Do not judge, or you will be judged.  With the judgment you give, you will be judged, and the measure you give is the measure you will get.”  Three times in two short chapters, Jesus says it, first, and then again and then again, because he knows how dismally terrible human beings are at really and truly forgiving others.

But perhaps the oddest spin on this whole thing?  Jesus asks us to pray for that to be so.   Here we are, offering up this pure and simple and straightforward prayer to our Creator, and we are *ask* to be forgiven as we forgive.

Does this really register as we pray it?  Here we are, addressing the fount from which all Creation flows, the terrible Numinous I Am that I Am, and we say, “Hey, you know all those angers and resentments that burn like a carefully tended fire in our hearts?  You know the way we grumble to ourselves whenever we’ve been slighted and offended?  You know how we take sides, how we attack people who we disagree with socially and personally and politically?  

That is the standard by which we are hearby, officially, through this holy Jesus prayer, asking You, the Almighty God, to judge us for all eternity.”

What amazes me, as I pray this, is that my throat doesn’t involuntarily close or my larynx seize up as part of some existential defense mechanism.

This is what Jesus tells us to ask for.  Do this to us, God.  Yikes.

Why would we want this?  Honestly, I think a more likely prayer would be: Please don’t do that, God.  Judge us by some other standard.  Maybe our SAT scores.  Yeah.  Use those.  Just...not by the reality of who we have been as we stand in relationship with others.

But Jesus gets us to pray this, because this is the way God is.  We are judged according to our hearts, and according to how our hearts guide us to act towards all the rest of God’s children.

That’s a reminder we need, desperately need, every single time this prayer tumbles from our lips like a recorded message.

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.