Seventy Sevens: the Math of Grace

Matthew 18:15-22

Last Sunday’s Scripture took us north to Caesarea Philippi as Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and began to prepare Peter and the other disciples for what lay ahead. We will go to Jerusalem, and there I will be killed by the authorities, and after three days he would rise to new life. Peter wasn’t having it. No! Absolutely not! It was like Peter’s faith hit a wall when Jesus told them what was going to happen when they got to Jerusalem. He had been following with earthly goals, with political hopes, with self-interested motives. All of a sudden, the wall required leaving all of that behind to get beyond it.

At some point in our lives, we all face a wall. A moment that changes us, changes how we look at life, changes what we thought the future would hold. We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We can’t go around it. We have to go through it. No one gets to skip it. And that wall is held up by people or circumstances, by God allowing the wall in our path – all potential targets of blame, sources of hurt, places of anger.

Jesus here in this Scripture is preparing the disciples, and us, for facing walls in our lives. They have traveled back down to Capernaum, where Peter and his brother Andrew, and their fishing business partners James and John all lived when Jesus called them to be disciples.

The conversation started when they asked Jesus “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And he answered by calling a child over and saying that the humility of a child is the example to strive for. And then he lifts up the example of the shepherd with 100 sheep who will leave the 99 to search for the one. And it is not just the shepherd’s work to keep the sheep all gathered and content.

Jesus says, “If someone sins against you, go and tell them what they have done and how it has hurt you, one on one. If they listen and you are reconciled, you have restored the one who had gone astray. BUT, if that person does not listen, take one or two others with you to address it. And then if that person doesn’t listen, tell the whole community. And if that person refuses to listen, let that person be to you like a Gentile and a tax collector.

Now, I find this interesting because it would be easy to assume that Jesus was drawing on the Jewish culture for how to treat Gentiles and tax collectors. So, this passage has often been interpreted to mean that you exclude the person from the community at that point. But, Jesus didn’t exclude Gentiles and tax collectors: Zacchaeus was a tax collector, the disciple Matthew (his Hebrew name was Levi) was a tax collector, and anyone who wasn’t Jewish was a Gentile – so, the wise men, the Samaritan woman at the well, the Canaanite woman in need of healing, the centurion at the cross are just a few of the Gentiles Jesus encountered and how did he treat them? Rather than excluding them, Jesus approached them with the opportunity to change, to be transformed, and to join the community of his followers.

Jesus is not addressing relationships of marriage or issues of oppression or systemic injustice here. Jesus is having a conversation with his disciples about how the people within the community of Jesus followers are to treat one another. If there is a dispute, handle it one-on-one. If that doesn’t resolve it, bring one or two others in for all of you to address it together. If that doesn’t work, bring it forward to the whole church to address. And, if the person will not hear how their behavior is impacting the community, treat them as an outsider – as a sheep that has gone astray but you are encountering and trying to bring back into the fold, holding out the opportunity for their repentance and restoration.

I’ve shared a couple of stories this Lent that took place at a ministry in Atlanta, called Love Beyond Walls. Their mission is to raise awareness of the needs of those living in poverty or homelessness and to mobilize people to respond.

One of the ways that they have done this is to take a bus that was donated to them and retrofit it to be a mobile makeover unit with hygiene items, clothes closet, and a barbershop. After about a year, they were able to add a shower trailer to the setup. People in poverty don’t have the money to go to the barber or to the beauty shop. They contacted the local cosmetic/beauty/barbering schools and asked for volunteers.

One of the volunteers who responded was Jamil. Jamil was 27 and had just gotten his license. He came to volunteer almost every week. Jamil’s father was unhoused, and Jamil hadn’t seen him in 10 years, since he graduated from high school. Jamil said, “I don’t know where he is, and I’m just hoping that one day I’ll run into him.”

Peter asks Jesus, how many times should I forgive? Seven? It’s not a count on your fingers “7 times” – 7 is the number of wholeness, of perfection, of completeness in the Bible. 7 days of Creation, 7 colors of the rainbow, 7 days of unleavened bread, 7’s are throughout Israel’s sacrifices and worship. Jesus says, this is no count on your fingers mathematics…this is calculus. Seventy-sevens. Jesus isn’t saying 77 times or 70 times 7 times or 490. To add the 0 is to bold, underline and add a string of exclamation points to the 7. Forgive until you reach wholeness, perfection, completeness – with the added emphasis of the 0 and then another 7, another wholeness, perfection, completeness. In other words, Jesus is introducing limits.

Jesus is saying that forgiveness is something we don’t reach. In calculus, if I am trying to account for every possible number that exists before and after 7, I cannot reach 7. Because I could always add another digit, another 9 in a line after the decimal. 6.9, 6.99, 6.999, see, I could keep going forever and never get to 7. Same coming from the other direction, 7.1, 7.01, 7.001, If I keep adding 0’s, I get closer, but I’ll never reach 7. We are always approaching 7…we are always approaching forgiveness, working on it.

Forgiveness is a process. It starts by looking in the mirror – realizing “I’ve done things wrong, and I want to be forgiven.” It requires slipping on the other person’s shoes and trying to walk in them…what would have led them to do what they have done? One of the best ways I have found to bring my anger around to empathy is to pray for the person I need to forgive by name. It starts simple. Lord, I need to pray for [blank]. Then I’ll get to Lord, I pray for [blank]. My heart will start to soften, “Lord, help me understand [blank]/let go of my hurt and anger toward [blank]/forgive [blank].” It is a process. All forgiveness does not lead to restored relationship. Forgiveness is letting go of holding the debt.

Jamil kept coming week after week to volunteer, to offer his services to cut hair of men who were unhoused, who might also have had families they had abandoned. Then, one day, his father stepped into the mobile makeover unit. Jamil cut his hair. It was a turning point for his dad. He entered a program, graduated from it, found work as a chef, and now has his own apartment.
There’s another math problem at work in forgiveness…just as we can never reach the fullness/the completeness/the wholeness of forgiveness…we are always working on it, always more to do to reconcile, to live in community…we can never account for the abundance of God’s grace – there is always more that we can comprehend or hope or even imagine. Thanks be to God. Amen.