 Rev. Jeff Nelson |
Don't Do the Math
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I Do you remember the name Todd Beamer? Todd was one of the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, the ill-fated flight that went down over the fields of western Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. On that day, Todd Beamer and the other passengers and crew members aboard United Flight 93 proved that everyday people can be extraordinary heroes. Todd will long be remembered as the American hero who said “Let’s roll” as he and others attempted to take down their hijacked plane, preventing it from becoming another weapon of mass destruction. Approximately ten minutes before the flight would crash in the hills outside of Pittsburgh, Todd called Lisa Jefferson, his supervisor at the GTE Customer Center in Oakbrook, Illinois. After a couple of moments of explaining to her about the hijacking, Todd said, “I don’t think we’re going to get out of this thing. I’m going to have to go out on faith.” Lisa Jefferson tried to comfort him. “Todd,” she said, “you don’t know that.” Beamer asked her to promise to call his wife if he didn’t make it home. He told her about his little boys and the new baby on the way. He asked Lisa to pray with him. He began:
Our
Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. “Jesus help me,” Beamer said. He recited the 23d Psalm. Then Jefferson heard him say: “Are you guys ready? Let’s roll.” In her book, Let’s Roll, Todd’s wife Lisa writes: Although I’d never before heard of Todd reciting the Lord’s Prayer in pressure situations, I wasn’t surprised to hear he had quoted it. Recently our pastor had taught a 12-week series of lessons on the Lord’s Prayer. Todd had known the prayer since childhood, but each line of it had become more special to him as he discovered how fraught with meaning it really was… Part of the prayer that intrigued Todd was the line in which Jesus taught us to ask God to forgive our trespasses or sins, as we forgive those who trespass against us. When Lisa told me Todd had prayed that particular prayer, I felt certain that, in some way, Todd was forgiving the terrorists for what they were doing. II Do you recall one of the most famous photos to come out of the Vietnam War—a small girl running naked down the road with an expression of unimaginable terror, her clothes burned off, and her body scorched by napalm? The man who coordinated the raid on this child’s village in June 1971 was a 24-year-old U.S. Army helicopter pilot and operations officer named John Plummer. The day after the raid, conducted by South Vietnamese airplanes, Plummer saw the photo in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes and was devastated. “It just knocked me to my knees, and that was when I knew I could never talk about this.” The guilt over the raid had become a lonely torment. He suffered periodic nightmares that included the scene from the photo, accompanied by the sounds of children screaming. The girl in the photo, Pham Thi Kim, survived 17 operations, eventually relocated to Toronto and became an occasional goodwill ambassador for the United Nations. In 1996 Plummer heard that Kim would be speaking at a Veterans Day observance in Washington, not far from his home. “If I could talk face-to-face with the pilot who dropped the bombs, I would tell him we cannot change history, but we should try to do good things for the present.” Plummer, in the audience, wrote her a note, “I am that man,” and asked an officer to take it to her. At the end of the speech, he pushed through the crowd to reach her, and soon they were face-to-face. “She just opened her arms to me,” Plummer recounted. “I fell into her arms sobbing.” All I could say is, “I'm so sorry, I'm just so sorry.” “It's all right,” Kim responded. “I forgive. I forgive.” III Perhaps you remember the autobiography written by Corrie Ten Boom entitled The Hiding Place. In this powerful book, Corrie Ten Boom, who had been imprisoned by the Nazi regime for her hiding and protection of Jews, tells of her experience of preaching at a church service on the very subject of forgiveness after the war was over and she had been released from prison camp. As she left the pulpit and came down to the center of the sanctuary, she noticed a man coming toward her with his hand extended and a bright smile on his face. She recognized him as the chief guard in the concentration camp where she and her sister had been incarcerated and where her sister had died. The guard’s face was beaming that night after the church service. “Oh, Fraulein,” he said, “How grateful I am for your powerful message. To think that Jesus washed my sins away.” Corrie Ten Boom found herself paralyzed as the guard thrust his hand out toward hers. She could not raise her hand from her side. She writes, “Even as the vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them…and yet I could do nothing about it. I could not feel even the slightest spark of love or charity. And so I breathed this silent prayer. ‘Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Please give me your forgiveness.’” And with that prayer, she was able to lift her hand from her side and touch the hand of the man who had persecuted her. “From my shoulder,” she writes, “along my arm and through my hand passed a current from me to him…and in that moment, I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing depends. The world’s healing depends on God. When our Lord tells us to love our enemies, he gives us, along with the command to do it, the love itself.” IV Peter came to Jesus one day with a question. You see, Peter had been a part of the very first disciple class. He understood that, from his teacher’s point of view, there was no way one could overdo the importance of forgiveness. Time and again Jesus had emphasized its indispensability in the Kingdom of God. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy,” Jesus had preached. “Love your enemies,” Jesus said. “Pray even for those who persecute you.” “But come on now, Jesus, we know this forgiveness stuff is important. We understand, but let’s not let this get out of hand. How much is enough? Is seven times enough?” You see, Peter would have known that the contemporary orthodox thought on the matter was that a person should forgive his brother three times. So Peter wanted to know, “Really, how many times should I be willing to forgive someone who has sinned against me? Give me a formula, an equation, that will allow me to fulfill my obligation to that other person and keep me in good standing with my God. Is it three, perhaps even seven?” Like Peter, we often walk around with a notebook—a notebook that keeps track of all the times we have been wronged and all of the people who have wronged us. We carry this notebook with us, waiting for the opportune moment to collect on what we think others owe us. Sure, we know our Christian faith calls us to be forgiving. It even asks us to go the extra mile—more than the culture around us might. But there must be a limit. Even Jesus must set a standard at which enough is enough. So isn’t seven times enough? That is why Jesus’ reply catches us so off guard. “Seven times! When it comes to forgiveness, try seventy times seven.” Seventy times seven—that’s 490 times. Can’t you just see Peter scratching his head? “Four hundred and ninety times. Wow! That’s a lot, Jesus, but if that is how many times I am supposed to forgive someone, then that’s how many times I’ll do it. But what about the 491st time? They’re all mine, right?!?” Peter, like so many of us, is always looking for a loophole. When it comes to forgiveness, in saying “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven,” Jesus is telling his disciples that forgiveness is not a quantifiable commodity—it is a way of life. When it comes to forgiveness, Jesus suggests that we simply don’t do the math. V “Don’t do the math.” It is often uttered to teenagers or young adults who are working long hours for minimal pay at some summer camp. It is usually said when, after five or six weeks of 24-hour-a-day work, a young person says something like, “You know we really only make $1.25 an hour.” To which some well-meaning adult counsels, “It’s best not to do the math.” That statement, “Don’t do the math,” is important. It usually reminds the person “doing the math” that the short-term benefit is not the only important thing. For young persons who spend their summers working many hours for minimal pay, there is a hope that they discover that their pay will be measured more in memories, experiences, friendships and the knowledge that they have made an impact on others. “Don’t do the math” suggests that the immediate reward may not be as valuable as the long-term benefit, and that the tangible may be outweighed by the intangible. I think it is the same with forgiveness. We just should not “do the math” with forgiveness. Forgiveness sometimes just seems so one-sided in the moment. “You cannot expect me to forgive so and so…you know what they did to me, don’t you?” Forgiveness is hard because to forgive is to give away any entitlement to what we think we are owed. “I can’t possibly get over this until so-and-so pays me back what she owes me.” Forgiveness means that we have to recognize that it isn’t just about us. “Do you have any idea how much these people owe me? They couldn’t get it done if it weren’t for me.” The math of forgiveness means that the sum, the whole, is greater than the parts. Forgiveness looks to the common good and provides a new future. When it comes to forgiveness, we simply cannot “do the math.” Forgiveness recognizes that short-term pride will be outweighed by long-term relationship. Forgiveness cancels today’s debts so that people can invest in a better tomorrow. Fredrick Buechner puts it this way: To forgive somebody is to say, one way or another, “You have done something unspeakable, and by all rights, I could call it quits between us. Both my pride and my principles demand no less. However, although I make no guarantees that I will be able to forget what you’ve done and though we both may carry the scars for life, I refuse to let it stand between us. I still want you for my friend.” …For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in each other’s presence. When it comes to forgiveness, it is just best not to “do the math.” VI Jesus tells a story. He is always telling stories. There is just something about a good story, isn’t there? Jesus says, “Do you want to know how the Kingdom of Heaven works? It is something like this.” Once upon a time there was a king. This king had quite a kingdom and in it he had many subjects. He took good care of his subjects, lending them money from time to time to help them get by. But one cannot run a kingdom on loans alone, so there came a time when the debts had to be collected. So when one man, let’s call him George, was summoned to see the king, he was not surprised. George climbed a flight of stairs, went through the double doors, was ushered into the inner chamber of the king and stood there waiting until the king made his appearance. George bowed dutifully. Just then, an aide carried out a huge ledger and opened it to the page where this George’s name appeared on the upper right hand corner. The King looked at the bottom line on the ledger sheet, and said, “Servant, it says here you owe me a lot of money.” “Yes, sir.” “You owe me ten thousand talents.” “Yes, sir.” “I want my money.” “Yes, sir.” “I want my money now.” “Oh, yes sir. Uh, no sir. I mean, I don’t have ten thousand talents.” The king turned to the aides who brought in the book, and they began a discussion about selling George, his wife and children into slavery, and disposing of their personal property to recoup what little they could of the huge debt. When the king turned around, he found the servant down on the carpet on his knees. George looked up at the king and said, “Sir, have mercy on me. Have mercy, and I will pay you everything. Give me a little time.” You know what the king did? He did better than just give George a little time. He reached into that ledger book, took hold of the page, and ripped it out. He ripped it into shreds, turned to the servant on his knees, and said, “I forgive you the debt. You are now free and clear. Go in peace.” George owed ten thousand talents, roughly equivalent to ten million dollars. What is interesting, though, is that nobody could owe ten million dollars in the days of Jesus. Jesus is telling a joke here. I’m told that the entire annual revenue into the Roman coffers all over the globe was approximately $850,000. And so here is poor George, down on his knees, begging for a little more time. Do you know how much time he would need? Based on the wages of the time, George would need 125,000 years to pay it all back. The king knows this. The king realizes that poor George would spend the rest his of life struggling to pay his debt back, to make amends. George would never be free to live if the debt were not forgiven. So the king does the math of forgiveness and erases the un-payable debt. And in doing so, he gives George and his family their lives back. Therein lies the very root of forgiveness. We can forgive because we are forgiven. We must realize that there is no way we can ever pay God back for the gift of life and forgiveness we have been given. We are not expected to pay it back, but we are asked to pay it forward. Forgiveness is “pure gift.” The scripture tells us three things about the one who forgives. The king had compassion on George. He canceled what was owed him and then released him. Has someone ever accepted your apology but not released you? Held it over your head? Kept bringing it up? Never letting it, or you, go? The amazing thing about God’s forgiveness is that it truly frees us—it releases us—the account is cleared. Well, we know the rest of story, don’t we? We know it because it is too often our story. George left the king’s court a forgiven man. It was then that he bumped into Nelson. Nelson owed George ten denarri, a single day’s wage. George grabbed Nelson, “Pay back what you owe.” “I can’t. I don’t have it. Give me some time.” But George could not do for Nelson what the king had done for him (125,000 times more, to be exact). George could not find compassion. George could not forgive. George could not release Nelson as he had been released. George had Nelson thrown in debtor’s prison. Well, when the word got back to the king, the king was not too happy. “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?” George found himself sitting next to his buddy Nelson, behind the bars of ungraciousness. The parable seems to suggest that not forgiving others lands us in the same place as those we have not forgiven. Each week we say a prayer that dares to ask, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” May we learn to forgive as God has forgiven us. And when we can’t, may we learn to ask God to forgive us for that, too. VII A six-year-old girl named Ruby Bridges taught the world an unforgettable lesson about forgiveness. In 1960, Ruby walked into the William France Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana the first day after a federal judge mandated the desegregation of the New Orleans school district. Ruby was the only African American student in the entire school. Every day she walked through a gauntlet of angry adults who insulted her with racial slurs and foul language. Robert Coles, the Harvard psychologist, interviewed Ruby Bridges in the midst of this pressure-packed situation. Coles had seen the little girl walking through the crowd with her lips moving. He asked what she was saying. Was she talking back to them? “No!” she replied. “Then what were you saying?” Coles asked. “I was praying!” “Praying?” Robert Coles said in a surprised voice. “Why were you praying?” Ruby said, “I usually pray before I go to school, but this particular morning I forgot, so I prayed as I walked into the school.” “What did you pray?” Robert Coles asked. I prayed, “‘God forgive them.’ That’s what Jesus did on the cross.” I don’t know how Ruby Bridges did in that school. I don’t know how she did in reading. I don’t know how she did in writing. But when it came to math—well, let’s just say that little Ruby Bridges was well taught.
Notes: The story of Todd Beamer’s last moments came from the book his wife, Lisa, wrote called Let’s Roll! The second story about Pham Ti Kim came from The Forgiving Self by Robert Karen. Corrie Ten Boom’s book, The Hiding Place, is a spiritual classic and should be considered required reading for any contemporary disciples. The Frederick Buechner quote comes from a delightful, very helpful collection of his writings called Beyond Words. I am grateful to two of my ministry mentors, The Reverend Steve Spina, the campus minister who first introduced me to Buechner, and our own Dr. Bill Ritter who also flavored his own eloquent words with a little of Fred’s best. I was also aided by Eugene Lowry’s work with the parable of the unforgiving servant found in his sermon entitled, “Down the Up Staircase.” I discovered Ruby Bridges’ story in the March 2000 issue of Guideposts. Her story is also the story of Mrs. Barbara Henry, a white school teacher from Boston who was assigned to be the teacher for young Ruby. For the entire year, it was just Mrs. Henry and Ruby working together on their lessons. About Mrs. Henry, Ruby writes, “The people I passed every morning as I walked up the schools steps were full of hate. They were white, but so was my teacher, who couldn’t have been more different from them. She was one of the most loving people I had ever known. The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs. Henry’s class was the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to teach us all. Never judge people by the color of their skin.”
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