Five-hundred-twenty-five-thousand moments so dear / Five-hundred-twenty-five-thousand-six-hundred minutes / How do you measure, measure a year?
Perhaps you recall those lyrics from the Broadway musical Rent. The musical tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists in Lower Manhattan’s East Village in the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
The lyrics go on: It’s time now, to sing out, / Though the story never ends. / Remember the love, / Measure in love.
There is a lot to measure, but rarely can you measure love. We measure ingredients when cooking. We measure our weight or waist. We measure our lives compared to others. Churches try to measure their “success” by how many people are in worship or the amount of money in the bank.
There are some things which make it really hard to measure.
2,977 victims (plus the 19 hijackers) died in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Thousands more people suffered injuries on that day, and over 6,000 additional deaths have since been confirmed from toxic dust and health-related exposures at Ground Zero. Loss makes it hard to really understand all the names, the deep hurt — the evil of what is dubbed the largest attack on American soil.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 9,106 homicides, murders, and unintentional gun deaths, along with 16,866 injuries and 327 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year. It is hard to measure one life lost. It is difficult to measure love.
In our Gospel lesson, Peter comes to Jesus and asks a measurement question. “Lord, if someone sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”
An ancient rabbinic tradition said that a person should forgive another who has sinned against them as many as four times. Peter tries to be even more extravagant, and he adds three more times. He asks, “Should I forgive a person even up to seven times?” Seven times seems pretty generous, after all. If you have forgiven someone seven times in a row, it is a lot. Our modern California American law gives three strikes.
Jesus turns and says, “No, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” New Testament scholars debate whether the Greek text means “seventy-seven times” or “seventy times seven times.” The point is not measuring 77 or 490 counts of wrongdoing. The point is Jesus is holding up an enormous number. In the book of Genesis, Lamech, one of the descendants of Cain, who feels generational family violence in his body, makes a promise to revisit any violence done to him “seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:24). The number in the Biblical sense is not a quantifiable limit but a limitless response. Lamech threatens that any wrong done to him should be met with limitless violence, while Jesus asserts that the pardon extended to the one who sins is without limit.
Peter wants a rule, a measurement, so he holds wide his hands and says, “This much, Jesus? Should I forgive even this much?” And Jesus says, “No, much more than that. You’re not even using the right scale. As far as the east is from the west, that’s how much you should forgive.” It’s such an enormous amount of forgiveness— senseless to calculate.
Social science has measured forgiveness in recent years, and forgiveness is good for your health. Guilt, resentment, and animosity can be like drinking poison. According to the National Institutes of Health, forgiveness improves your social, mental, and physical health. People who forgive have lower levels of anger, anxiety, and depression, and it boosts happiness as well as chemical and emotional regulation in the body.
One tool on the internet to assess or measure forgiveness is called the “Forgiveness Likelihood Scale”. It gives ten scenarios of wrongdoing and then asks you your likelihood to forgive on a scale from very unlikely to very likely.
Here are a few of the questions on the survey:
•You tell an acquaintance about a job that you hope to be hired for. Without telling you‚ the acquaintance applies and gets the job. What is the likelihood that you would forgive?
•A stranger breaks into your house and steals a money from you. What is the likelihood that you would forgive?
•You accept someone’s offer to attend an event. However‚ this person breaks their commitment to take you and goes to the event with someone who they find more attractive. What is the likelihood that you would forgive?
How are you doing in your forgiveness capacity?
Forgiveness is something we know is good. Jesus urges us. Yet, forgiveness in practical terms can be really difficult and messy.
Peter’s question, “How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” is like asking, “How many times, on a scale from 0-7, must I forgive someone?” Jesus’ answer, as we have seen, is literally off the scale: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
Jesus tells of an unforgiving servant where the numbers don’t add up. In the story, a servant owes the king ten thousand talents. Given that a single talent represented more than a decade of salary. Like the use of “seventy-seven times,” ten talents signifies a debt too large to ever be repaid. It was more than several gazillion dollars — more money than ever possibly be made or repaid. And the king forgave him — wiped the debt clean.
Jesus urges the need for forgiveness as a way of life — an entire climate and atmosphere – God’s realm of love and mercy. If anyone tries to keep a record of wrong, none of us can stand a chance.
It’s almost as if when we are merciful, we create a kind of micro-climate around us, within which we experience mercy with others. Just as if we are stingy, vengeful, judgy, or what have you, we will experience the same from others. If we live in an atmosphere full of mercy, we’ll experience mercy. If it’s judgment, we’ll experience judgment. Forgiveness, it turns out, is an environmental issue: the world we make is the world we inhabit.
The extreme generosity is a call for us to do the same with one another. We are made to be merciful. We forgive because God forgives. We will pray the petition in worship shortly: forgive us our sin as we forgive one another. Or in the Maorist culture: “in the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.” We learn our need for forgiveness as others need our forgiveness.
Joseph, who had been sold by his brothers into slavery, ends family violence that runs throughout the book of Genesis in forgiving his brothers and says, “What you intended for harm, God intended for good. “
Joseph, just three chapters earlier, leverages Pharaoh’s wealth, for which he had become an advisor, during a time of famine to structure a deal that landed the Egyptians in slavery and intergenerational debt (Genesis 47:13–26). In severe famine and poverty, planted seeds and the land itself restores the people.
The systemic empire’s power is violent and extractive. Greed, ego, and the desire for power bring pain on creation and our own lives. This was true in the Ancient Near East, and it remains true today.
The escalatory nature of violence meets the limits of forgiveness. Paul describes it as the wages of sin being death and the cross showing the limitless nature of God’s mercy and forgiveness of meeting hope and love even in death.
Peter’s measuring tool for forgiveness falls short because God’s love, forgiveness, and mercy are beyond measure.
Jesus calls each of us to leave the quantities behind and embrace forgiveness in our mind and heart. Forgiveness is something more than what we do. Forgiveness is who we are, givers and receivers of mercy. Children of God, by the grace of God.
How do you measure a year in the realm of God? Measure in love. Measure in forgiveness. Measure in the mercy received from the Holy One–five-hundred, twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes–every. single. year. of your life.
