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Proper 19

Exodus 15
3 The LORD is a warrior;
the LORD is his name.
4 Pharaoh’s chariots and his army
he has hurled into the sea.
The best of Pharaoh’s officers
are drowned in the Red Sea.[b]
5 The deep waters have covered them;
they sank to the depths like a stone.
6 Your right hand, LORD,
was majestic in power.
Your right hand, LORD,
shattered the enemy.

21 Miriam sang to them:
“Sing to the LORD,
for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
he has hurled into the sea.”

Matthew 18
21 Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church* sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ 22Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven* times.


Where else, other than TIFF, can you see a movie at 9 am? Attending films through the years, some stand out more than others, and the film Buffalo Soldiers is in that group.

Now, I tend to follow two simple rules when selecting a film for the film festival. The first is to avoid films that will be released widely in the weeks that follow the festival. The current price is in the neighbourhood of twenty-five bucks a ticket, so why see it at the festival when it will come out at ten bucks in the near future. The second rule, choose short films, follows from the first. If I’m paying nearly twenty-five dollars, why not see six or eight films instead. Call it the Scottish-Dutch approach, I won’t be offended.

Back the film Buffalo Soldiers, I broke both rules, or so it seemed, by choosing a film starring Joaquin Phoenix and Ed Harris. I guess I couldn’t wait. The film is set in West Germany, circa 1989, and follows a US Army Specialist (played by Phoenix) as he overcomes Cold War boredom through a combination of theft, black-marketeering and the production of various opiates.

After the movie, my brother and I retreated to the nearest restaurant to share a bite and discuss the film. Before eating, I stepped out to wash my hands and heard on the radio that all domestic flights in North America have been cancelled and all overseas flights forced to land. When I sat down a moment later I said to Andrew ‘what could possibly happen to shut down North American airspace?’ The person next to us leaned in and said ‘you haven’t heard?’

I recall telling Andrew, either the next day, or the day after, that Buffalo Soldiers, and it’s negative portrayal of the US military, would never see the light of day. Sure enough, the release came two years later, on a very limited number of screens.

Ten years is a long time, and as we reflect on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, it is hard to separate out the original events and all the subsequent events down to the recent killing of Osama Bin Laden and the ‘credible threat’ on New York today.


And I’m not the only one trying to do this from the pulpit. CNN featured a story on Friday that looked at pastors trying to prepare sermons for September 11th. And just to prove that the US is a far more religious country, the article even referred to the lectionary readings for Sunday, Jesus saying forgive seventy-seven times, and the irony that such a motif would appear on the anniversary of the attacks.

What the article didn’t mention was the full tension built into the readings for the day, readings that end with forgiving seventy-seven times, but begin with Exodus 15:

3 The LORD is a warrior;
the LORD is his name.
4 Pharaoh’s chariots and his army
he has hurled into the sea.
The best of Pharaoh’s officers
are drowned in the Red Sea.[b]
5 The deep waters have covered them;
they sank to the depths like a stone.
6 Your right hand, LORD,
was majestic in power.
Your right hand, LORD,
shattered the enemy.

21 Miriam sang to them:
“Sing to the LORD,
for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
he has hurled into the sea.”

Few Sunday readings, and few Sundays, live with such tension. The Lord is a warrior, shattering the enemy, while God says, in Jesus, that when someone sins against you, the appropriate response is to forgive them not seven times, but seventy-seven times. And we are left to sort it out. We enter the tension, not to resolve it, (since it may never be resolved) but to live in it, and allow it to speak to our life together.

Let’s take another look at Exodus 15. It describes the key moment in the liberation of the Hebrew people. Pharaoh has suffered various plagues, including the death of his first born, and in his great despair decides to release the Hebrew enslaved in Egypt. Moses and his people march away, and the scriptures tell us that God hardens the heart of Pharaoh and compels him to change his mind.

The pursuit begins, and the Hebrew people cry out to Moses ‘were there not enough graves in Egypt that you have brought us out here to die?’ But Moses cries out to God on their behalf, and God instructs Moses to part the sea and lead the people to freedom. Of course it follows that the sea returns over the army of Pharoah, and every one of them drowns. The passage, our passage for today, concludes with the Song of Myriam:

“Sing to the LORD,
for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
he has hurled into the sea.”

Some scholars have suggested that this may in fact be the oldest verse in the Bible, and certainly among the oldest, a song that records the liberation of God’s people and the celebration that follows. And once again, it creates tension.

The tension it creates is in the celebration of the death of Pharaoh’s army. We, in our day, are accustomed to celebration of victory in way, but we moderate it to remember the lives lost the sacrifice of so many young lives. We might mark a particular battle like Vimy Ridge or the cessation of conflict, such as VE Day or VJ Day, but we don’t sing about the death of our enemies. We don’t describe the details of their death, horse and driver hurled into the sea, an enemy shattered by the right hand of God.

So we’re uncomfortable, but the Exodus remains at the heart of our story, the story of the people saved by God and set on a path that would lead to the full-flower of the Jewish religion and the eventual birth of Christianity. The liberation is our story, because we cling to the idea that God will save those who cry out, and God will hear the suffering of God people, and God will act to redeem them.

We could be bold and say Jesus is the new Moses, leading us to freedom from sin and death, redeeming our sinfulness and setting on a path to new life through him. In troubled places around the world, believers imagine that their suffering is the suffering of Jesus, that Christians persecuted in places like North Korea are on the cross with Christ, waiting for a release from suffering and death. They await liberation, and turn to the stories of the Exodus and Calvary as proof that God hears their suffering and will respond.

This is the very same warrior God that Myriam celebrates, and the very same God that says in Jesus “forgive seventy-seven times.”

So which God do we turn to on the tenth anniversary of 9-11? Which God do we call on, or heed, as we enter the tension between seeking victory or following the way of radical forgiveness? And what would the latter mean, anyway? Why all that forgiveness?

It is Peter who makes the suggestion that maybe sevens times is adequate when the question of forgiving the transgression of the fellow believer comes up. Not seven, Jesus says, but seventy-seven, or some translations seven times seventy, or even seventy-seven times seven. Either way, forgive a lot. And to make this lesson perfectly clear Jesus shares a parable, painting a Kingdom lesson on a canvas large enough for the twelve to understand.

A king wants to settle his accounts. He calls his first servant, the manager of a vast fortune, and discovers a shortfall. Immediately he orders that the servant and his family be sold into slavery, which leads the servant to fall on his knees and beg for mercy. Feeling compassion, the king cancels the debt and the man leaves. Just then, another man passes by, a man that owes the newly forgiven manager a small sum. He grabs the man by the throat and demands repayment. The king is alerted to this act of ingratitude, and punishment follows.

It is really the story of every believer. God has forgiven our sins, and we can respond by “paying forward” this forgiveness or operating like that forgiveness we received was somehow deserved while the forgiveness we might extend is not. In some ways it is a restatement of Matthew 5, ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ God loves us when we are at our most unlovable, and we are called to extend this same love to those we find unlovable too.

Someone is thinking ‘yes, preacher, but we live in the real world.’ We live in the world of ‘credible threats’ and the ‘war on terror’ and have been told by no less than the Prime Minister himself that we have definable enemies and we need to remain on our guard. We want to imagine that nearly ten years of war in Afghanistan was worthwhile, and that the fallen Canadians we mourn died to overcome an enemy and did not die in vain.

It seems the tension between the liberating God and the God of radical forgiveness cannot be resolved. Maybe the only way we can come close to a resolution is to add to the list, to add to the list of things God is doing in our midst and give thanks.

God continues to hear the cries of those who suffer, those who cry our in grief and those who suffer.
God continues to act in history, to comfort those who suffer under repressive regimes, to urge on those who struggle for change.
God continues to insist that we forgive, not just those closest to us, but also our enemies, and in doing so to reflect on why we imagine them enemies, and maybe change our mind.
God continues to walk with us each day, to guide our thoughts and prayers, to help us live in the tension that lies at the very heart of every believer, Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 12:04 PM