But I would suggest that we need to give Peter a break here. I mean, to be fair to him, it looks like he actually gets it. Jesus has been teaching Peter and the others about the kingdom of God and what is expected of those who would long for it, and Peter has been listening. Listening to Jesus talk about how if one member of the flock runs off, the good shepherd leaves the other 99 behind to go out and search for it and bring it back safely. Listening to Jesus tell them that they are not to put stumbling blocks in front of the little ones, in front of those with less faith, lest they stumble – they need to help one another out. Listening to Jesus tells them that if one member sins against another, they have to do something about it, have to try and reconcile, have to work it out, not just stew in their own sense of victimhood or self-righteousness. Peter gets it. And so, recalling that the rabbis taught that one should forgive another person three times, Peter asks Jesus for his opinion. And Peter doubles what the rabbis advised, and adds another shot of forgiveness on top for good measure. What do you say, Jesus, we should forgive seven times?

No, Peter, Jesus replies, not seven times. Seven times seventy times.

You can picture the scene, can’t you? Peter’s jaw drops. He fumbles in his robe, and pulls out his Texas Instruments graphing calculator. He does the math – seven times seventy equals – 490?!

Matthew is writing down his gospel for a young church that has known conflict and dissension and argument since its very founding. As offspring of Judaism, they struggled to know what to keep from that tradition and what no longer fit. As followers of Jesus, they argued about what he wanted of them and how they should live together. As a minority group in an often hostile Roman culture, they debated about the extent to which they could accommodate Roman customs and traditions. They are desperate to learn about how they might be a living, vibrant, sustainable community in difficult times.

We might pause for a moment to consider how little things have changed. We here in West Barnstable have known no small amount of conflict and dissension and argument. In the short ten years I have been your pastor, we have faced passionate debate about the proper relation of the Family School pre-school program to the rest of the church, about the working relationship between the West Parish Memorial Foundation and the church, about whether and to what extent our fellowship should be open to all persons, regardless of sexual orientation and social and economic background, about whether we should bring in a second hymnal, about the diversity of music for our worship services, about how a Tag Sale is really, really not the same thing as a Rummage Sale, about, even, whether the portrait hanging on the hall outside the Guild Room should be “Seaweed Jesus” or “The Laughing Risen Christ by the Sea”, and on and on.

Matthew, passing down the words of Jesus, tells the church that the glue which will hold them together for the long haul, the epoxy which will keep them united as they journey on down the road together, the caulking which will seal the seams of their tiny ship, is forgiveness. Forgiveness.

Folk often like to say that our church is like a family. This is what Annie Lamott, author of Travelling Mercies (Some Thoughts on Faith) says about families. She writes:

“I tell you, families are definitely the training ground for forgiveness. As some point you pardon the people in your family for being stuck together in all their weirdness, and when you can do that, you can learn to pardon anyone. Even yourself, eventually. It’s like learning to drive on an old car with a tricky transmission: if you can master switching gears on that, you can learn to drive anything.” (pages 219-220).

This, Matthew is telling us, is at heart what the church is all about. He envisions the church as a sort of laboratory where we can learn to forgive, the place where we can hash out together those things which would divide us, the training school for growing up into mature people of God equipped to go out into the world and make it a little bit more of an outpost of heaven. In church, we are constantly, or so it is to be hoped, keeping our eye on the prize, on things that matter, on matters of eternal consequence, on things that are so important that of course we care passionately about them. And so of course there will be times when we offend one another, times when we speak in tones we later regret, times when we let our feathers get ruffled by something we heard or that someone else did. The opportunities for forgiveness and reconciliation are, quite literally, endless.

490 times, Peter asks, and we ask, 490? Jesus just nods his head, and Peter knows, and we know, that it is time to put away the calculator. That forgiveness is not a matter of keeping track of the numbers, that forgiveness is a matter of the heart, of orientation, a way of life. Forgiveness is the constant, unfinished business of the church and every Christian, now and forever, amen.

And yet, we know this. In our heads. The Bible is constantly drumming into us that we ought to forgive. It’s right there in the Lord’s Prayer which we pray each Sunday. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” We know, intellectually, that we ought to let go of our cherished hurts, and yet we still find it so hard to do so.

Enter the parable of the king who forgives the unimaginably large debt of a servant, who in turn is unable to forgive a comparative trifle by a fellow servant. What does that have to say to us about forgiveness?

The first point, of course is that any ability we have to forgive is rooted in divine forgiveness. The king forgives the servant a debt that is impossibly large – 10,000 talents is the equivalent of 150,000 years of wages for a day laborer. The point is this – there is no way to measure God’s generosity to us. Put away the calculator – neither 490 nor 10,000 will limit God’s forgiveness of us.

But then the parable takes a turn. The first servant just doesn’t get it. He has just attained the equivalent of winning the Megabucks lottery, but does he celebrate? Does he share the good news with his wife and kids, does he offer a thousand thank-yous to his benefactor, does he sing praises for the freedom he has been unexpectedly granted? No, nothing. The only thing he does, on the way out, is to refuse to hear the pleas of the one who owes him some money, throwing him in jail. The first servant just doesn’t get forgiveness. He thinks only along the lines of justice – it was there in his plea to the king, where he offers to pay back everything, as if he ever could. Mercy is a foreign concept to him.

Forgiveness, then, is not about justice, it is not some sort of zero-sum power game where you can get out the calculator and tally up the hurts and measure out the appropriate amount of response.

Forgiveness is about mercy, it is about understanding who, at bottom, we all are – forgiven sinners. God does not deal with us justly – thank God! – but by extending to us mercy beyond all bounds of accounting and merit. Which means we are all forgiven debtors, living with and among other forgiven debtors. On the scales of distributive justice, the differences between us might be measureable – in comparison to the mercy extended to us by our loving Creator, those differences are, well, insignificant.

Who is that you cannot forgive? Who is it that hurt you so badly that you still toss and turn at night running through the past again and again, wishing you could change, hoping that there was some way they could feel the hurt you feel? Who is it, even if they are now dead, that can still spoil your day when they come to mind, still make your stomach church and the bile rise in your throat? Who is the one that continues to harm you even as you, who hold the key to your own freedom, refuse to hear Jesus whisper to you, not seven times, seven times seventy times?

The story is told that when the Civil War ended a group gathered outside the White House and President Lincoln came out to say a few words. A band was there as well. The President talked briefly about the horrors of the war, and then joked a bit, as was his custom, with his keen sense of humor. The crowd was overjoyed that the struggle had finally ended, and Lincoln talked briefly about the need for the country to reunite, that old wounds be healed, injuries bound up. And then he said, “In a few moments, I want the band to play and I am going to tell them what I want them to play.”

Everyone expected that it would be “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, but Lincoln wondered aloud if, with the war now won, that might be inappropriate, and then said, “Now this is what I want you to play – I want you to play Dixie.” And everyone just stared at one another, open-mouthed. Dixie had not been played in the north for half a decade – did the band even remember it? And at last they struck up, and there was not a dry eye to be found.

This is forgiveness. It’s not of the head, it’s of the heart, its more poetry than prose, it’s a music that when we get it right allows us to sing songs we thought we might never sing again. Not seven times, but seven times seventy times, the constant, unending work of forgiveness, the distinguishing mark of the church.

490 times – do the math, and then, start singing.