(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Mar 6, 2016, Lent IV)
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“I’m Sorry”
The little girl gets up from the dollhouse to fetch another toy. When she returns, a bona fide horror confronts her eyes. A boy has commandeered the dollhouse. And just like that, the tranquil domestic scene that she had worked on so painstakingly has been overturned. Now there are dinosaurs stalking the living room, Batman is cooking up some kind of trouble in the kitchen, and the master bedroom is so acrawl with soldiers it resembles Gettysburg more than it does a bedchamber.
The little girl lets out a scream of dismay and points a trembling finger at the offender. “Look what he’s done to my house.” The teacher takes stock of the situation, and after a moment’s pause, addresses the boy, “Jonathan, what do you say?” The boy quickly realizes there’s no way out. He replies sheepishly, almost inaudibly, “I’m sorry.” “Don’t say it to me. Say it to Emily.” The boy raises his eyes toward the little girl, and says again, “I’m sorry.” The little girl’s suspicious eyes appraise the boy’s face. “He doesn’t mean it.” The teacher allows herself a quick roll of the eyes, before addressing the boy again, “Do you mean it, Jonathan?” The boy repeats his line, this time adding a little extra for insurance, “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” The girl begrudgingly sighs, turns, and gets to work on the gargantuan task of renovation. But only for a moment—because the teacher is there, now, tapping her shoulder. “And what do you say, Emily?” Emily turns and mutters, “I forgive you.”
Before I go any further, allow me to clarify: I am not the holy terror of this story. Even so, I have lived through countless iterations of this encounter, as I’m sure you have, as I’m sure countless children do every single day, whether out on the playground or inside the classroom or out back in the backyard. This scene is as old as Adam and Eve, as old as the first couple—I’m sure of it—for how else can a relationship survive if not for the words, “I’m sorry,” and equally, “I forgive you”?
The Finance of Forgiveness
This ancient, time-tested exchange of “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” has deep roots in religion. We can find it in the practice of Temple sacrifice. The sacrifice effectively says, “I’m sorry,” and provided that it’s done in the right spirit, God is near-obliged to respond, “I forgive you.” We can find it in the prophets, who implore the nation of Israel to repent, to say, “I’m sorry,” for then, who knows, God may respond, “I forgive you.”[1] And even today, in a world that is fast losing religion, at least in its traditional forms, we find this logic of forgiveness all over the place. In fact, it might be better called a financing of forgiveness, for there is a certain exchange going on in it. Whether it is brokered by priests and rabbis, or by folks on the street, it operates like a financial transaction. The offender “pays” for his crime in order to “earn” forgiveness. Because he’s shown adequate remorse and made reparations, he is “owed” forgiveness.
Think about the little girl who complained, “He doesn’t mean it.” What she’s actually protesting is the insufficient funding of forgiveness. To “earn” forgiveness, a person must meet the asking price, which commonly involves the following: to (1) acknowledge the wrong, (2) say “I’m sorry,” (3) mean “I’m sorry,” and (4) resolve not to do it again. The little boy may have admitted his wrong and may have verbalized as much, but in the little girl’s judgment, he fell short of the asking price: he hadn’t meant it, nor had he yet indicated that he wouldn’t repeat his offense.
In this sense, then, forgiveness follows “the logic of banking, which tries to keep risk to a minimum.”[2] To forgive someone means to strike a worthwhile and perhaps even profitable deal, to insure yourself against future loss and perhaps even grab an extra bit of compensation on the side.
Only for the Non-Sinners?
I imagine that it’s this business of forgiveness that gives today’s scripture its wheels, that sets it rolling. Because everything gets started when the pious religious folks grumble about Jesus “welcom[ing] sinners and eat[ing] with them.” In other words, Jesus wasn’t gathered around the table with repentant sinners, with sinners who had sufficiently funded their forgiveness. He wasn’t hanging out with sinners whose debts had been cleared by the bankers of reconciliation. Jesus was eating and drinking with sinners, plain and simple.
And that was scandalous. Because for the religious leaders, and for many of us, “forgiveness is [actually] reserved for non-sinners,” for folks who have said sorry and made amends and cleared the sin from their name, while for all we care, “the sinners can go to the devil unless
and until they shape up and stop sinning.”[3]
The Parable of a Reckless Father
And so, as Jesus is wont to do in moments of conflict and confusion, he tells a story. An incredibly rich story, a story that I’m afraid to touch lest it lose its passion and punch. Any interpretation, I’m afraid, would only water it down. So allow me to say only a few words, and perhaps you’ll want to go back later and sit with the story on your own, to ponder its many gaps and questions.
The story is familiar to many. A reckless son—tradition calls him “prodigal”—demands his inheritance from his father. He then liquidates his inheritance, and travels abroad, recklessly spending all he has. When he comes to his senses, he decides to return home. Like most of us, the son holds an economic understanding of forgiveness. He rehearses what he will say to his father, and it includes every requisite payment: the confession, a genuine show of remorse, and a sizable penance fee (he will forfeit his status as a son and become as a slave!).
But his anxious rehearsal comes to naught. As Jesus tells the story, “While he was still far off”—in other words, before he even had a chance to say, “I’m sorry”—“his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and puts his arms around him and kissed him” (15:20). Then the son begins what he’s rehearsed, but it’s as though the father isn’t listening, because before the son can finish his lines, his father is already orchestrating the servants to prepare a feast. For the father, forgiveness is not a financial transaction, an exchange of freedom for remorse. For the father, forgiveness is a gift, pure and simple.
Of course, that’s not how the older brother sees it. The older brother cannot make heads or tails of this exchange, cannot balance these crazy accounts. He has been working all his life and never gotten a party, and here is his wasteful, reckless brother, who has done absolutely nothing to merit a party…and his father is throwing a grand celebration. And herein lies the beauty of Jesus’ parable, I think. This father is no banker. He’s no accountant. He is a father. And he loves his children, gives them good gifts, and desires to see them alive and happy. He is a reckless man.
Forgiveness Is Reckless
If the parable that Jesus tells today is any indication, the ancient and venerated exchange of “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you” is not the whole story of forgiveness. In fact, the “I’m sorry” may obscure the story of forgiveness, because according to Jesus, to forgive someone is not about getting the teacher to extract an apology from the domestic intruder, nor is it about insuring yourself against future home invasions. It’s not about changing another person’s heart, but about changing your own, opening your own heart to the possibility of a different future. To forgive is to give a second chance, a chance over which you have no control. Forgiveness may desire transformation, but it never demands it. Such a demand would deprive forgiveness of its heart; it would freeze forgiveness into a cold calculation, a heartless logic, make it more like a piece of accounting software than the warm, full-blooded heart of a loving parent.
Forgiveness is reckless. It is not for the faint of heart. In a world that is all about winning, forgiveness is foreign. It guarantees not winning but weakness—the kind of weakness that carries a cross, that crosses out unforgivable sins. Forgiveness foregoes power, gives up control over what will happen next. It is not a good deal.
But it is gospel, good news. And like all gospel, it is risky, but well worth the risk. If the world turns solely on what people deserve, is balanced solely according to a never-ending account sheet of wrongs and mistakes, then we will never be free. We will remain captive to cycles of hurt and resentment. We will never step foot into kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God, the only currency of exchange—if we can even speak of such a thing—is precisely that which frees us from an economy of exchange: forgiveness.
The Table: God’s Ministry of Reconciliation
Today’s scripture begins and ends in the same place: a table. Jesus welcomed sinners, repentant or not, and ate with them. The reckless father welcomed his wayward son before he could even say a word and ate with him. It is fitting, and no coincidence, that all of this happens around a table. For we too will gather, in just a few minutes, around the table.
The table, it seems, is the centerpiece of God’s reconciliation. Bread broken and a cup passed: these are perhaps the simplest signs that we are welcome just as we are. There are the table we are recklessly forgiven. And there we hear the call to go and do likewise.
Prayer
God of compassion,
Who runs to us while we are still far off:
Open our hearts to the reconciliation
You are weaving in all things.
Guide us through our resentment and anger and hurt,
To discover deeper desires, desires for reconciliation.
Stir our spirits to join yours.
In the name of our forgiveness, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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[1] See, e.g., the mechanics of the sin offering described in Lev 16:15-19, or the prophet Ezekiel’s outline of repentance and forgiveness in Ezek 33:14-16.
[2] John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), ebook loc. 4433.
[3] Caputo, Weakness, loc. 4429-4430.
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