• Genesis 50: 19-31

The “angel of God” and the “pillar of cloud” that had been in front of the Israelites as they escaped slavery now moves behind them, coming “between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel.”   It lit up the sky all might.  When they approached  the Red Sea, “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.”  And. “the Lord drove the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided.”  The Israelites walked through the riverbed on “dry land” as the water formed a “wall for them on their right and on their left.”  The Egyptian army pursued them.  “At the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and cloud looked upon the Egyptian army, and threw the Egyptian army into panic.”   The Lord “clogged their chariot wheel.”  When the Egyptians saw what was happening, they said, “Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”  The Lord told Moses to stretch out “his hand over the sea,” and “at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth.”  As the Egyptians tired to flee, “the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea.”  The sea covered over “the entire army of Pharaoh.”  Not one survived.  “Thus the Lord saved Israel….”  Israel saw the great work the Lord did….”  And, “the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and his servant, Moses.”

• Psalm 114

Without any sort of introductory petition or address, the psalmist plunges into a re-telling of the spectacular escape of God’s people from slavery and their subsequent establishment in Judah, their “Sanctuary.”  He then references two occasions, forty years apart, when God parted water so that they walked to safety on dry land– when God parted the Red Sea with Moses leading and they fled slavery in Egypt and when God parted the Jordan River under Joshua’s leadership and they went into the promised land.  The psalmist asks rhetorically: What is going in with such bizarre disruptions of nature?  Dance, he says, twirl, spin, whirl “before the God of Jacob,” who turns rock into water [Exodus 17]!

OR

• “The Song of Moses and Miriam” (Genesis 15: 1b-11, 20-21)

Moses and Miriam, his half-sister and the sister of Aaron, lead Gods people in singing praises for God’s deliverance at the Red Sea due to the Lord’s direct interventions.  The Lord “Blew forth a mighty tempest/and the sea swallowed them up.”  Miriam raised her tambourine and “all the women danced with ther tambourines, repeating the victorious refrain: “Sing to the Lord, the Exalted One/who hurled horse and rider into the sea.”

OR

• Genesis 50: 15-21

The saga of Joseph and his brothers concludes.  Their father, Jacob/Israel, has died and been taken back to Canaan for burial, as he requested.  The brothers, suspecting that Joseph might now “pay us back for all the evil we caused him,”sent a message to Jacob saying it was their father’s last wish that he “forgive… the offenses of your brothers of your brothers for the evil they caused you.”  Then his brothers came to him in person, “flung themselves before him” and offered themselves to him as “slaves.”  But as he had done when they were reunited for the first time, Joseph assures hem that, although they “meant evil toward me, God meant it [their selling him into servitude and deportation to Egypt] for good….”  This was the way God’s people survived.  Joseph promises his brothers once again, his personal protection.

• Psalm 103: (1-7), 8-13

The psalmist addresses his own soul: “Bless the Lord, O my soul;” never forget the Lord’s “generous acts.”  The Lord forgives, heals, redeem and “Crowns you with kindness and compassion… and sates you with good….”  The Lord performs “righteousness” and “justice.”  The Lord took the initiative to to make the Lord’s ways “known to Moses” and the Lord’s “feats” known to all Israel.  “Compassionate and gracious… slow to anger” is the Lord.  The Lord does not deal with us as we deserve.  As high as the heavens, as far as east is from west, that is how far God’s “kindness” distances our “transgression.”  As a parent for a child, so “the Lord has compassion” on us..

• Romans 14: 1-12

Paul addresses controversy over the variety of customs in the early church regarding fasting and feasting and the appropriate days of observance.  These differences, Paul  writes, are trivial.  What matters is the common purpose to honor and serve the Lord.  Rather than focusing on differences with others, focus on yourself, because “each of us is accountable to God” not for others, but for ourselves.

• Matthew 18: 21-35

Jesus has just given instructions for settling disputes within the church (Matthew 18: 15-20, which was last Sunday’s gospel), when Peter (only in Matthew’s narrative) asks for clarification: “Lord how often should I forgive?”  In Matthew’s narrative only, Jesus throws out an extravagant figure, “not seven times (as in Luke’s version; 17:40), but “seventy tomes seven.”   Then follows a comparison parable, also unique to Matthew, about one who had been forgiven a sizeable debt but did not forgive others who owed him much smaller debts.  Then the one who had been so generous to him heard about it, he had the man put in jail until he paid all the original debt.  “So my heavenly Father will also do to everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

God’s initiative to miraculously rescue God’s people from slavery, even turning nature on its head, prompts an invitation to uninhibited praise.  Joseph’s unmerited forgiveness of his brothers occurs twice; once when they are reunited for the first time and again after their father dies and the brothers worry that Joseph might now get his revenge.  Both times, the brothers throw themselves on Joseph’s mercy and both times Joseph goes out of his way to assure them he will not treat them as they deserve, but with kindness.  Both times, grown men weep uncontrollably.  The psalmist (103) strings together all the expereinces of God she has known that cause her such gratitude and joy– God’s forgiveness, healing, kindness, compassion along with all of life’s  sheer abundance.  Only Matthew’s narrative includes a story told by Jesus that makes this unambiguous point: forgive others as freqeuntly and as completely as you already know you have been forgiven; oh, what about 70 X 7! 

In The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event, John Caputo quotes Jacques Derrida as he considers the power of forgiveness:

“Forgiveness is the gift in which I give away the debt you owe me….  That is why, when someone owes us something, we say we ‘have something on them,’ which means that in forgiveness, I give up what I have on the other.  I release them, dismiss their debt, and let it go.”  

Caputo then quotes the other “famous deconstructionist,” St. Thomas Aquinas: “…a gift is literally a giving that can have no return, i.e., it is not given with the intention that one can be repaid and it thus connotes a gratuitous donation.  Now the basis of such free giving is love….” (p. 210)

Consider an insight from Hannah Arendt drawn from her dramatic life.  She was a student of Heidegger, Husserl and Jaspers and a classmate of Gadamer.  After she finished her gradute education, she was put in a Nazi concentration camp beucase of her Jewsih birth.  She escpaed, came to the USA where she lectured and taught in some of the most prestigious  universities.  She also wrote for many years for The New Yorker  magazine, including covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann.  Her articles were published as a book, The Human Condition, which has a subtitle of A Report on the Banality of Evil. As the trial for the “architect of the Holocaust” unfolded, she confronted the concrete, actual, ruthless depths of which human depravity is capable.  But she also discovered something else, something quite redemptive and another force of which human beings are also capable.  While epic evil and crime are rare, she says,

“trespassing is an everyday occurrence which is in the the very nature of action’s constant establishment of new relationships within a web of relations, and, it needs forgiving, dismissing, in order for life to go on by constantly releasing men from what they have done unknowingly.”  [Here she quotes Luke 17: 1-5]  “Only through this constant mutual release from what they do to each other can men remain free agents, only by constant willingness to change their minds and start again can they be trusted with so great a power as that to begin something new.”  (p. 237)

This secular Jew then writes:

“the discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affair was Jesus of Nazareth.”  “…[I]t is not true that only God has the power to forgive….”  This power to forgive “must be mobilized by man toward each other before they can hope to be forgiven by God also.  Jesus’ formulation is even more radical.  Man in the gospel is not supposed to forgive because God forgives and he must do ‘likewise,’ but ‘if ye from your hearts forgive,’ God shall do ‘likewise’.”  [Here she cites the last verse of today’s appointed gospel] (p. 350)

In biblical texts, forgiveness has a very practical, essential role to play; forgiveness is the means for starting over, for preserving life, for allowing re-birth,  for renewal.   Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers allows their relationship to continue and even for God’s people to thrive into new generations.   The miraculous  rescue of God’s people from slavery was not performed by God because it was deserved in any sense, but because  that is just the way God elects to behave.  In Matthew’s narrative, Jesus tells an unforgettable tale about one man who was forgiven a considerable debt, but did not forgive those who owed him much less to imprint on our imaginations an illustration of the fundamental importance of forgiveness in God’s relationship to us and, as importantly, our relationships with each other!  How often should forgiveness be used in human relationships?  Does the answer “70 X 7 ” make the point? 

With this passage from Matthew’s gospel in mind, John Capto continues in The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event:

“Sinning is a lifelong state of affairs, and sinners are those who have had their sins lifted by God as many times as they sin, even if they sin seven times a day, or seventy times seven.  In the kingdom, there is no son that can overtake God’s love, no sin that can best the Good, no sin that God cannot wipe away.  For the kingdom is where God’s love rules, where nothing can resist his love, which is beyond seventy times seven, that is, beyond calculation….”  (p. 225)