Living in the tension between justice and forgiveness.

 

For the last few years I have been doing my Mom’s tax return.  She is ninety-nine years old and is now living in a Long Term Care facility. Her income is quite small.  She has some pension income and some returns on her remaining investments.  Let’s say she would go bankrupt in about twenty-five years if she kept losing money at the current rate.  She continues to give to a number of charities.  And she can claim a few additional medical expenses.  That’s about it. Last week I received a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency.  It was quite stern as all letters from the Canada Revenue Agency are, saying that they needed to see the receipt from her previous residence and her charitable receipts.  If we did not produce them, she would owe them a significant amount of money and if she did not pay it she would have to pay interest on it.   Of course we produced the receipts and dutifully sent them off.  But I could not help thinking of the stories of large amounts of money owing from the very rich that have not been collected and wondered if they were feeling the same pressure to pay up as my mother.  When I read the gospel lesson about the debtors today, I thought about my encounter with the CRA and had to smile.

The combination of content in the reading from Matthew today brings us into a tension between the demands of justice and the call to forgiveness.  It is a tough one.  Maybe that is why it is suggested for this first week in Lent.  The first part of the reading is about what to do with someone in the church when they are doing something wrong.  Some would say simply that we should forgive.  God forgives us and so we should forgive one another.  But actions have consequences.  Simply forgiving, or “letting go” as the word in Greek indicates, means that people get away with anything, including getting away with murder if we take it to its logical conclusion.  No consequences for their actions and if they do it again, then we must forgive again.  This has been the dilemma for many people who have been abused.  They feel, and many times have been told, that their Christian faith compels them to forgive their abuser.  But the abuse does not stop.  Surely this cannot be right, or good, or just.

Justice demands that we should be accountable for our actions.  If we knowingly do wrong we should have to pay the consequences.  Our whole legal system is based on this premise.   In what is called, “The Book of Forms”, the rule book for the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the section on discipline begins with these verses from Matthew’s gospel.  If someone has done something wrong against you in the church, first meet with the person privately and tell show them what they have done wrong and tell them they need to change their ways.  If that does not work, go with one or two people and confront the person.  If that does not work bring them before the whole church.  If that does not work, then you have to part ways.  This of course all assumes that your charge against the other person is just and true.  Behaviour that harms others or harms the peace and harmony of the community needs to be challenged and cannot be allowed to continue.  Just like forgiveness, this is not easy.  It means confrontation and accusation.  It means having to work through a process of justice that usually involves more than two people.  It means having to deal with the nuances of justice and the shades of grey that colour all our lives and actions.  Sometimes it seems easier to do nothing.  But then the harm or injustice continues and the situation becomes worse.  It seems that the call to justice is an imperative for the community of followers of Jesus.

It is interesting in the passage that this imperative to do justice is followed by Peter’s question about how many times we should forgive.  No doubt Peter thought he was being very generous when he suggested seven times.  That does seem to be quite a lot when we think about people that we are called on to forgive.  Even once is difficult.  But Jesus says, not seven, but seventy times seven.  It seems that in the community of the followers of Jesus there is to be no end to forgiveness.

So we are left with this tension – to do justice and to forgive.  How are we to live in this tension.  Well, Jesus tells a story.  It is set in a time of slaves and kings.  The king decided things had gone far enough with those who owed him money and he started to call in his loans.  One slave owed him a lot of money.  It is hard to believe that a slave could owe that much but there it is.  10,000 talents is like 10,000 times a yearly wage.  That’s a lot of money and of course the slave was way in over his head and could not pay it.  In that time it meant that the slave and his family were going to be sold along with any possessions they had to try to recoup even a small portion of what was owing.  This would be the end for that slave so he begged for forgiveness.  The king had pity and although the man still owed the money, he forgave him.  It was possible to begin again with a clean slate.

Trouble was when the forgiven slave encountered another slave who owed him money, it seems he could not do the same thing.  Instead he had him put into a debtors prison until he repaid the amount.  That just doesn’t work.  Seems some other slaves saw the hypocrisy of the first slaves actions and told the King who was none too pleased and gave the slave his just desserts.  That is a lesson for those who have been forgiven much, that we also must forgive.

Truly we cannot do without either justice or forgiveness.  Our actions do have consequences.  Harming others and doing wrong cannot just be ignored, especially when it is the most vulnerable among us who suffer the consequences of those actions most fully.  The truth must be spoken and we must be held to account.  Yet we know that no amount of punishment can ever undo a wrong.  The debtor prisons and workhouses and systems of indentured labour of the past simply further victimized and never led to new beginnings.  When justice has been done, the possibility of forgiveness and of healing and reconciliation always needs to be present.  Not just seven times but seventy times seven times.  For the few denarii and for the ten thousand talents.  Never easy.  Think of the truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa.  Think of the truth and reconciliation commission here in Canada.  There are many who would say that justice was not done.  That the leap to forgiveness and reconciliation came too quickly.  There are others who would say that not enough time was spent on what a real new beginning would look like when we begin to clear the slate and look to the future.  Never easy to live in that tension.

But that is where we are called to live.  Broken body and shed blood.  The joyous feast of the people of God.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.