Friday, September 15, 2023
Meditation for week preceding Proper 19 (Sept. 17, 2023)
The Rev. David “chip” Robinson
A tale is told in the Jewish tradition of the Hebrew people being led to freedom from slavery in Egypt and of their desire to rejoice. But God scolded them and told them to be quiet. “Do you not know that some of my children have died? I am glad to give you freedom – but know that it does not come cheaply.”
One time I took my car into the shop to get the brakes done. I had misjudged the time and realized I was going to be horribly late for an appointment. I asked the clerk when the car would be done, and when she told me, I went into a rage.
“This is ridiculous!” I screamed, all the while knowing it was my miscalculation of the time that was the real problem, not their work. “I’ll never bring my car back here again! You people are irresponsible! This is appalling! The manager will hear about this!”
Frankly, I don’t remember all the things I said, but I know that I railed against the poor clerk, whose fault it most definitely was not. They hurried up, and got my car done, and I paid – still spitting nails – and I got to my other appointment later.
And I felt lousy.
It was not the clerk’s fault. Truth be told, it was not the repair shop’s fault. It was mine, for mixing up my schedule. I thought I should probably just let it go, but I could not.
The next day I went back to the repair shop and faced the same clerk. She looked at me with a combination “bewildered and terrified” look, assuming that I was going to fly off the handle again. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry. Yesterday I got my schedule wrong. It was entirely my fault, and I had no business taking it out on you.” I waited, assuming she would let me know what a jerk I had been.
“I’ve had days like that, too,” she said with a smile. “It means so much to me that you apologized. Thank you.” We chatted a bit, and when I needed work done on my car again, I took it back to the same place. And she and I became friends – well, maybe not friends, but I can tell you that any and all animosity between us went away.
In this coming Sunday’s Gospel, Peter suggests that perhaps he ought to forgive someone seven times. “No,” Jesus responds, “not seven. Seventy times seven.” (Do the math: that’s 490 times. By the way, the NRSV says “77 times” which the original Greek does not support.)
Jesus seems to be suggesting something radically different – that we break the cycle of wrongs and forgiveness. In his biblical paraphrase, The Message, Eugene Peterson translates the familiar statement about forgiveness from John 20:23 (where Jesus says, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained”) in a somewhat different, and I think effective, way: “If you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?”
Maybe that’s the key. We can let them fester and nag at us, or we can find a way to move beyond, to not let them stand in the way of a relationship.
The Rev. David “Chip” Robinson is a retired priest who, with his wife, Cindy, now regularly attends the 8:00 a.m. service at St. John’s.