24th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A - Hearts Burning Within

The Lectionary and Scripture Interpretation for Ordinary Time

Sirach 27:30—28:7

Around 132BC, a man named Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira translated into Greek a book of maxims written by his grandfather about 50 years earlier. The grandfather had written these wise sayings in Hebrew or Aramaic. The grandson was living in Alexandria, Egypt and translated them to Greek so they could be more widely read since Hebrew and Aramaic were languages largely lost in his culture. The Jews in Alexandria had been displaced there during the Babylonian exile almost 500 years before this book was translated.

The purpose of the grandfather’s writing was to demonstrate that the Jewish way of life is superior to surrounding Greek culture, that true wisdom resides in Jerusalem, not Athens or even Alexandria. The irony of translating this book into Greek is that the translator was using the language and style of the Greek culture to pronounce judgment on that culture.

The genre of Sirach is wisdom literature which gives rules of proper conduct, maxims to guide the daily living out of a well-ordered and fruitful life, pithy insights, words to live by. It is largely a black and white view of the world, showing the way things are and the way things should be. Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes and the book of Wisdom are also this genre. The goal of wisdom in this context is to live the good life here and now, marked by length of days, prestige and prosperity.

The lectionary has more readings from the book of Sirach than any other wisdom book. It is also sometimes called Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes) from ecclesial (church); it was a book that could be used to instruct catechumens – those coming into the church.

Today’s reading is from a section 27:22-28:26 Malice, Anger, Vengeance, Evil Tongue.

Verses 28-29 just before this passage probably refer to Haman’s plot to kill the Jews as told in the book of Esther. Ultimately Haman becomes the victim of his own plot. The Jewish Feast of Purim still celebrates this today

Verse 20 references wrath and anger, which are often instinctive responses to what goes on in our lives. These emotions are not necessarily bad in and of themselves. They are “abominations” when they become permanent dispositions of heart and mind. They are a problem when we cling to them as the default response.

28:1 is a reminder that God takes note of our sins. Verse 2 seems to foreshadow the Lord’s Prayer.

Verses 3-4 pose some hard questions: can we expect to receive what we ourselves refuse to give?

Verse 6 reminds us that we will all someday die. This was written about 2 centuries before Christ when they were just beginning to develop a belief in any sort of afterlife. So they weren’t necessarily sure what impact this life might have on the next but it was a good guess that there was some sort of relationship!

Is there an area in your life right now where you are holding on to anger?

What’s something you have asked or are asking God for that perhaps you are not willing to give to others?

Matthew‌ ‌18:21-35‌

During Ordinary Time, I’ll cover the Old Testament and then the Gospel readings as a pair so that we can better see the connections.

For background on this passage, see last Sunday.

Last week was a challenging reading around the issue of confronting sin in our communal life. We don’t get a break this week; if anything, this reading is even more challenging.

Having heard Jesus speak about confronting sin in the community, Peter steps up to demonstrate his immense generosity. The Jewish tradition was to forgive something up to three times. If you did it that many times you must be a saint but you didn’t have to do it beyond three times. Peter decides to double that plus one, since seven was seen as the number of perfection.

Our human response is to laugh at Peter but we only do so in light of what we know Jesus will say next. Take a few moments to sit with verse 21. Give Peter a bit of a break – try to feel his generosity here. Try to be with him as he attempts to grasp Jesus’ teaching and apply that somehow. Feel his willingness to want to go above and beyond what his life has previously taught him to do.

Now read verse 22 in light of that. Hear Jesus take Peter’s desire to be magnanimous and stretch that beyond imagination. In ancient Greek, numbers were not nearly as precise as we would like them to be. The words used here can be interpreted as 77 times but they can also be interpreted as 70 times 7 which is another translation you might have heard. The difference between 77 and 490 seems like a lot to us but this verse is not about precision or even keeping count. This verse is hyperbole – exaggeration. It’s a big number, a lot; you need to forgive over and over and over again is what Jesus is saying.

Perhaps Peter wanted to play the game of keeping score… how many times can I make a mark and get brownie points for it? Jesus refuses to engage on that level. Instead he shifts the conversation to where it really hurts. He takes it from the surface of keeping points over petty things and goes right to the heart of the matter – about why we forgive in the first place.

Verse 23 begins a parable in three acts that tells us about the kingdom of heaven.

Act 1 v24-27
Center stage is a debtor owing a “huge amount.” Remember how I said that Greek doesn’t have a very precise numbering system? The Greek phrase here is “myriad talents.” Myriad was the number that came just after the number 10,000. In ancient Greek, you can count up to 10K. Once you get there, you can go higher but it’s very cumbersome to write and, quite frankly, they didn’t have a lot of use for it. In that culture, 10K was big enough to express pretty much anything they wanted to express. So, 10K, and then myriad for anything bigger.

10K talents was more money than was in circulation in most kingdoms of the day. Herod the Great’s annual tax revenue was about 800 talents. This is myriad talents which is another way of saying, it was a huge amount that could hardly be imagined, let alone expressed.

The king wants everything settled out so he orders the man to be sold, along with everything he owns, which would include, of course, his wife and children. This would be as close as the king could get to “settling” the debt.

But in verse 26 the man throws a curve ball: he falls down in homage – he prostrates himself before the king. “Homage” is key word in Matthew. Elsewhere in the gospel, this action is always directed at Jesus so it’s symbolically significant that Matthew uses it here.

This seems to have the desired effect: the king forgives the debt outright because he is “moved with compassion.” This is another key phrase in Matthew that is only ever applied to Christ besides this parable. By the way, if you want a good Bible study project, read the gospel of Matthew and circle “homage” and “moved with compassion” and meditate on where and why they appear and what they have to say to you.

If we stop here at the end of Act I, we have a beautiful picture of God’s mercy towards us. Take a while to sit in that mercy and see what it has to offer you.

But Jesus isn’t going to let us off that easy: we need to understand what are the practical implications of that picture of mercy.

On to Act II – this covers v28-30. Here it talks about a much smaller amount: a hundred denarii; maybe a millionth of what the man owed the king or a couple month’s wages. In verse 29, the one who owes the money says to the man exactly what the man had said to the king. But verse 30 presents a wholly different response.

Here at the end of Act II, the servant imprisons another servant for failure to pay a debt. If we were to extract these verses and ask them to stand alone, we might think it’s not so bad, right? Someone owes something, they need to pay it! Yes? Except that this is Act II of a longer narrative and we can’t take it out of that setting.

Take some time to sit with Act 2, asking God to bring to mind a time when you have exacted payment for some sort of debt.

Act III covers v31-34. In verse 33, the word “pity” is better translated “mercy.”

We might ask of verse 34 – what does torture have to do with it? In that culture, torturing someone might extort money from their friends.

This last Act tells us that divine patience is not infinite. There may be limits to mercy.

Remember back at the beginning of this passage, Peter’s question was “how often shall I forgive?” Jesus’ answer in verse 35 appears to address the question “how much shall I forgive?” Two sides of the same coin. How are we able to forgive someone once, much less 7 or 77 or 490 times? How are we able to forgive someone who has hurt us so badly the cost can’t be counted? Jesus says we are to do that because we know how much has been forgiven us.

I want to go back to what I think is the key idea of this whole passage because it’s really easy to miss.

Remember that this is a parable. The theologian C.H. Dodd defines a parable as “a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt of its precise application so as to tease it into active thought.” It’s a story that the audience can readily identify with but there’s something “off” by just enough to trip us up and make us think. And for today’s parable, the key thing is something that would have stood out as extremely odd to the original audience.

Look back over this parable. What stands out as odd or off-kilter?

Verse 25 Selling the man into slavery – seems odd but that was the common practice. That would have been expected in this situation.
Verse 27 forgiving the loan – we’re an economy based on money. To wipe away a debt and not get our due – that’s seen as failure and loss. In Jesus’ culture, it wasn’t about money but rather honor and shame. For someone to be in a position where they can forgive a debt and they do so – that brings them honor. The higher the debt, the higher the honor. By forgiving the debt, the king actually comes out ahead because he has more honor. So that’s not the off-kilter thing about this parable.
The man being forgiven and then accosting someone else for a debt – again, honor and shame. The king got the honor which means the servant lost face, he was shamed. One way to recover honor is to call in debts and demonstrate that other people are in debt to you. He chooses not to get honor the same way the king did. Rather he chooses to get honor by exerting power over someone else. As much as this doesn’t sit right with us, it was an acceptable way to act in that culture and the audience would have been nodding “yes – perfectly fine!’

The key idea is found in verse 26 ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ The servant does not ask the king to forgive the loan. He does not ask for forgiveness. And, in fact, his attitude might even seem to indicate that he does not want the loan forgiven. He might rather save face by trying to pay back the debt even though that’s impossible. I think the key point of this parable, beyond supplying a motivation for forgiving others, is that we extend forgiveness before it’s asked for or even where it’s not wanted.

How does the process of forgiveness work? Most of us believe and operate such that it is the offender who must repent and then the offended will forgive. Jesus asks us to look at things a different way. The question becomes: can I forgive someone who shows absolutely no leanings toward repentance? And that is the much harder question.

Sitting with Peter’s offer to forgive seven times, feel his willingness to want to go above and beyond what his life has previously equipped him to do. Notice that Jesus does not rebuke him for his effort. How does this relate to your own life?

Verses 24-27 give us a beautiful picture of God’s mercy towards us. Take a while to sit in that mercy and see what it has to offer you.

Verses 28-30 challenge us. Take some time to sit with these verses, asking God to bring to mind a time when you have exacted payment for some sort of debt.

The question is “can I forgive someone who shows absolutely no leanings toward repentance?” Think of a situation where this might be true in your own life. Express to God your feelings about the situation in light of this question.

Old Testament / Gospel Connection

How are the Old Testament and Gospel readings connected? Each week I will offer my views on this but I encourage you to first read the passages and look for your own connections!

Anger can be a gateway to refusing to forgive. Sirach grapples with this in a way that challenges and leaves us a bit uncomfortable. Jesus then comes along and knocks the comfort level out of the ballpark. These readings, if truly engaged, call us to examine potentially long-held attitudes of anger and lack of forgiveness and invite God’s mercy to work within us.

Romans 14:7-9

See detailed background on Romans here.

This is the last reading from the book of Romans. Next week we’ll pick up with Philippians.

Chapters 14-15 deal with how to act towards those who think and behave differently. These chapters deal with the age-old problem of the scrupulous vs the enlightened conscience. Or, in today’s terms, the conservative vs the progressive.

Paul gives principles based on conviction (14:1,22,23), love (14:15), the example of Christ (14:9,15, 15:3, 7-8), and loyalty to Christ (15:13). The section ends with a plea for unity.

The situation he was addressing was that the “weak” pass judgment on the “strong” and the “strong” pass judgment on the “weak.” For the church in Rome, the issues centered around food and observance of holy days. One group thinks it’s okay to eat anything and to observe all days as holy. The other group thinks they have to be very careful about what they eat and observe certain days as holy. Ironically, each group sees the other as being the “weak” ones.

Paul makes a dual appeal: don’t belittle and don’t pass judgment. He also calls on our status as a slave to Christ: a slave has no real right to pass judgment on a fellow slave.

A better translation of verse 1 reads like this: welcome anyone who is weak in faith but not with a view to settling matters over which there is dispute. The Greek is hard to translate but what Paul seems to be saying is that there is no need to achieve oneness of view about absolutely everything. In theology we call this “unity in diversity.” There are many views but we can still be united in Christ.

In Paul’s view in verses 2-4, the “strong” are those who can eat anything while the “weak” are those who have scruples about the food. Mosaic law was hugely concerned about what could and could not be eaten. I’ve mentioned before Paul’s message that the Mosaic law has been done away with – we don’t have to observe that as Christians. Rather, we’re called to something much deeper. But that deeper calling doesn’t concern itself overly much with rules about food.

And then v4 – who are you to pass judgment on someone else’s servant? I can’t judge you because you are someone else’s servant – Christ’s servant. It’s up to Christ your master to decide. We are answerable to Christ alone

Verse 5 says it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about food or holy days, or any other rules for that matter – we need to each be persuaded – our conscience needs to be formed – and then we need to let others form their own conscience as well.

Verses 7-9 are probably from an early hymn or statement of faith. They tell us that Christ’s death and resurrection has set us free to live for God. They also tell us that through his death and resurrection, Christ reigns over both life and death.

We no longer live or die because we no longer truly belong to ourselves; we belong fully to Christ. Everything must be judged and determined in relation to this belonging in Christ. This demands much; we live by something deeper than the Mosaic law but it also places us in a climate of freedom that no ethical legislation could create. In fact, Paul says in verse 9, Christ died to give us this freedom of living in Christ.

This passage relates to both the other readings: Jesus talks about forgiveness and Paul supplies the background reasoning: because God is God of all – both life and death. Paul also reminds us of our freedom. We are not bound by some written law to forgive; rather we are free to forgive because of all that Christ as done for us.

Think about the “strong” and the “weak” in your own community. How do you view and treat those you consider “weak”? How do they view and treat you? How might you welcome each other without imposing your views on each other?

In what practical ways do you form your own conscience?

Questions to ponder

What do these readings say about how to live day in and day out as Christians?