I’m just marveling at the beauty of Excel from Microsoft. It makes keeping track of all those who have sinned against me so easy. Yes, I would hazard to say that we love our Excel sheets with its wonderful way to keep track of those detailed hurts and micro aggressions so that we can relive them over-and-over-and-over again. It is so luscious to taste the hurt and savor the planned retribution. Excel really helps to keep all of those hurts alive and real, raising the pressure point.
Don’t get me wrong, I know Matthew 18:21-35; I know that I need to forgive those sins, and I do. I have even chosen to be generous. Instead of the lower limit of seventy-seven, I have chosen to be magnanimous and interpret the limit as being seventy times seven, making it four hundred and ninety. Nicander is now up to 408; Bernice 470’ Nicholas, maybe my favorite sibling, is at 349; Nicole, still cute as a pinky, 222; and Eunice, the most opinionated of us all, is at 489. I can’t wait for the time when I don’t have to continue this program of forgive-forgive-forgive.
It's not that I harbor any great hostility towards any of my sibs, but really, they need to be held accountable for some of the things they have done, and my Excel sheet really helps me remember each detail over the years. I really do love my statistics.
For instance, here is the time that Nicander slipped into my room while I was sleeping and put my paw into a pan of lukewarm water. Suddenly, my bladder let go, and I peed in my bed. It was a mess. It wasn’t just the mess, but the humiliation (I was well past bed wetting days), and the chore of washing my linens, remaking my bed, and the laughter of everybody. They thought it was funny. I was not amused.
Then there was my 11th birthday present. I was given what I thought was the largest block of cheese ever. I was overwhelmed and promised to share it with everybody there only to discover that it was just a thin veneer of some well-aged Swiss melted over LEGO bricks.
This is the time Nicholas took the set screws out of the doorknob to my room so when I ran up to change my clothes before everyone went out for pizza, the doorknob fell off in my hand when I tried to come out. And everyone went to Pizza Hut without me because, “We thought you were being anti-social.” As if.
Here is the time that Eunice and I got into a squabble over who was to wipe the dishes, and she snapped me with the towel. When I chased after her she pulled the door half-closed so that I ran into the edge of the door and got a concussion. Okay, I remember I put peanut butter and jelly in her shoes for that. I think I was really clever because, in return, I took the in-soles out first and then put them in after smearing the peanut butter and jelly. Her feet were fully in before the stuff squooshed out, and she couldn’t get the ants to leave her alone for weeks.
I mean, without my Excel sheet I might have forgotten some of these things. See here? This was the time I had gotten my blow-up kiddy pool with the great air wall bumpers. It was so wonderful to lay in the pool with my head on the air cushion pillowed rim and dream of what it would be like to be an only child. Then Bernice poked it with her fingernail file, and the air whooshed out, and the water ran all over the yard, and I was left with a soggy spot in the yard and no place to relax. Okay it was in the middle of the tent the girls had planned to play in that afternoon, but after all, I was the oldest and entitled to some quiet time by myself, wasn’t I?
Yes, I believe that Peter (the disciple) has the right idea and asks the right question, “How many times must we forgive?” What? There’s more? You mean I have to read on?
Oh yeah, there’s that unjust servant thing, but that doesn’t have anything to do with me. I have rarely sinned against anyone. Certainly, I have not accrued any debt that can’t be paid off in the next month. I certainly would not be forced into involuntary servitude because of risky financial investments. Although there are some interesting issues that provide for debt resolution in this passage, those might be better addressed another time.
Enough is enough. It is time to fess up. I really love my brothers and sisters and have forgiven those slights against me. I also hope that they have forgiven me. I know that I was the perfect brother to them all, but still ….
I know that this passage in Matthew is connected to earlier texts. I have also read the parable that responds to Peter’s (the disciple) question including the last line of this passage, “So my heavenly father will also do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother or your sister from your heart.”
It is time to recognize that we all live in that wonderful world of simul justus et pecator (simultaneously saint and sinner), that is, always justified by Christ and in a state of grace while always needing to be forgiven and restored by grace. If God is willing to hold us in this relationship of undeserved love and forgiveness, then can we refuse to share that love and forgiveness with those around us?
But this relationship of forgiveness we are called to live out challenges us greatly. We love our spreadsheets, and the use of these spreadsheets seems to be on the rise. We need only read the newspaper or listen to the news to understand how much we love our spreadsheets.
We are so embroiled in the hot mess of finger pointing, blame game politics that we have lost our way to that place of cooperative collaboration. There is no longer space for forgiveness and reconciliation; everyone wants only to get even. Instead of seeking peaceful propitiation, we aspire to be “paragons of the paperclips”, bean-counting petty people, seeking points in a pointless system. We assume pusillanimous postures of proportional privilege putting the onus of our body politic on the peons in poverty for the problems of our world.
We pray the words of the Lord’s prayer without listening to them, “Forgive our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us”, or, in more familiar parlance, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”, or, for some, “trespasses”. We are keen to plea for our own forgiveness and state that we live by grace alone, but we are particularly penny-pinching when it comes to forgiving those who sin against us. Yes, we love our spreadsheets, but God forgives even that when we in pious penitence cry out for relief, “Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.”
Your pal, Nicodemus
Editor, Theologian, Counsellor, Mouse AND Statistician
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