HOW MANY TIMES?

Nathan Attwood

Pastor, Marianna First United Methodist Church

Then Peter came to him and said, "Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how many times should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven times." Matthew 18:22-23.

How many times? In a passage well-known to any Christian with a passing acquaintance with the teachings of Jesus, Peter asks Jesus how many times to forgive a person who wrongs him. We have all been hurt by someone and felt the tension between forgiveness and self-protection. We tell ourselves, "OK, I'll forgive this one time, but if it happens again, that's it. I'm not going to be a doormat. Maybe, maybe, I'll let it slide a second time, but after that, I'm done."

Throughout Matthew 18, Jesus teaches his disciples how to live with each other even though human relationships necessarily involve offenses. He teaches how to address concerns directly and constructively, how to avoid sweeping things under the rug while still staying in relationship with people. He teaches about the foundation of forgiveness for others being the forgiveness God has offered each of us. Perhaps, most notably in the greater context of what follows, he tells his followers that if they want to enter God's Kingdom, they will have to change.

Part of the beauty of scripture is that it is often extremely fruitful even when read on a surface level and has even deeper and more helpful meaning when we discover its deeper context. This is certainly true of Jesus's response to Peter, that we must forgive not seven times but seventy times seven. On the surface, Jesus's saying is a wonderful statement of our need to show no limits in the grace we offer others even as God has shown no limits in the grace he has offered us. 

I believe there's more, though. I believe when Jesus said this to Peter, he was referencing something from the book of Genesis. In Genesis 4, after the first family came to pieces through the murder of Abel by Cain, the first city is plagued by violence. The story goes that Cain's descendents create cities, music, metalwork, all the good things that come through technological advance and shared community effort. What also comes through people living in proximity with a growing population? Crime, violence, depersonalization, mistrust. Cain's descendent, Lamech, sings a song of retribution to his wives. He says, "I have killed a man for striking me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times."

How do we respond to threat and harm? Anytime people come together, there will be someone who does harm to someone. How do we live with the benefits of society while also being safe from one another? Lamech represents the coping strategy of avoiding danger through the threat of extreme retribution. It's a way of being safe from others that says, "If you mess with me, I will get back at you twice as bad, seven times as bad, seventy-seven times as bad." We all have this instinct. The problem with it, is that if we have a safety protocol of multiplied retribution, we may think it will cause others to leave us alone, but it will just as often cause a culture of multiplied retribution. Pretty soon, everyone will be defending themselves with a "Don't mess with me or else" philosophy, resulting in a world where offenses and retributions spiral out of control. Everyone will feel justified in their attacks on everyone else because everyone will be protecting themselves from the spiraling chaos. Everyone will have good reason to protect themselves and feel that the harm that they gave to others was only because others had provoked it. And they will be right. But they will also live in fear, chaos, and violence. Being right while living in a world where everyone is afraid, everyone is on edge, everyone is grieving is no way to live. 

What's the option? The option Jesus offered in his teaching and example was to love enemies, to turn the cheek. He offered an exact opposite teaching of Lamech's horrific song prescribing a world that became so awash in violence it took a worldwide flood to wash it away. Jesus said to forgive seventy-time seven. He became the pioneer of a movement of spiraling forgiveness, reconciliation, and non-retribution.

We obviously have a lot of violence in America. America seems stunned by the horrific and brutal public murder of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. In these polarized times, when a brutal act of political violence happens, it has become all too predictable that people on the side of the victim grieve the victim and blame the whole other side of the political spectrum for the crime. The people on the other side of the political spectrum tend to focus on the crime being the act of one person and not representative of their people as a whole, and they tend to minimize the grief and horror of the violence and compare it to other acts of violence. I've seen this sad reaction play out in the response to Charlie Kirk's death, Melissa Hortman, President Trump's assination attempt, Paul Pelosi's attack, and many more. 

Of course, people on the right will grieve Charlie Kirk. Of course, people on the left will say, "Well, why didn't you cry when Melissa Hortman was killed in her bed." And vice-versa. That's the nature of the sickness that fuels our violence and makes us all afraid. One of the most hopeful reactions to Charlie Kirk's murder came from progressive influencer Dean Withers, who learned of Kirk's death while he was filming. His live reaction was to weep uncontrollably. He had a truly human response of authentic grief for Charlie Kirk's wife and children. I don't know if Dean Withers is a Christian or not, but weeping over the death of a person who is supposed to be an enemy is as Christ-like as it comes.

When Jesus was faced with violence and the threat of violence, he did not respond with violence. He absorbed the violence and multiplied forgiveness and reconciliation seven times seventy fold. He reversed the curse of Lamech's self-defeating plan of self-preservation. By giving his life away rather than following the natural tendency to spiraling retribution, he created a counter-movement of grace and healing, of peace and unification. 

True Christians are not only people who bear the name of Christ, they are the carriers of the movement that reverses the death spiral of a culture of retribution. They are people who love their enemies and weep as much for the others as they weep for their own. They are people who see the humanity in the other side not because they agree but because they know each person is made in God's image and every life is precious and so every act of violence is a sacrilege, no matter who does it or to whom it's done.  

They are people who understand, fundamentally, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "We will live together as brothers or we will die together as fools." I pray that the horrific and senseless death of Charlie Kirk might be a wake up call for a nation to walk back our escalating culture of violence. If we can choose Jesus's seventy times seven over Lamech's seventy times seven, perhaps Charlie Kirk's death might not be in vain.