The Ledger

Seventy-Seven Chances to Let It Go

Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

— Matthew 18

We know this one.

Peter wants to know how often he must forgive someone who sins against him. Seven times? Jesus answers, depending upon the translation, “seventy-seven times” or “seventy times seven.”

Either way, we're pretty sure Jesus doesn't mean that after number 77—or number 490—we finally get to be mean.

The number is supposed to become ridiculous.

Stop counting.

And then Jesus tells a story about debt.

A servant owes his king an enormous amount that he cannot possibly repay. The king forgives it. Then the servant encounters somebody who owes him considerably less and demands payment. The man who has just been released from an enormous debt cannot release somebody else's smaller one.

And suddenly Peter's question and Jesus' parable look remarkably similar.

Peter is keeping a ledger.

How many times?

The servant is keeping a ledger.

How much does he owe me?

Jesus seems determined to get the ledger out of our hands.

I've had several opportunities to practice that lesson on social media lately. Yesterday I wrote about another of Paul's instructions: “Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.”

Welcome. Don't quarrel.

I decided I'd try it.

And promptly got into a quarrel.

I found myself in a spirited exchange with a young woman online. I thought she had made some thoughtful points, but there was one part of her argument that bothered me, and I went after it. Soon she was irritated with me, I was irritated with her, motives were being assigned, and I finally fired off one of those dismissive replies that essentially says, Fine. You're right.

Then I wondered who I was arguing with.

I looked.

She was one of my favorite students from about ten years ago.

Suddenly the irritating person on the screen was a fifth grader I remembered with great affection, now a confident young adult making her own arguments about the world.

Nothing about the argument itself had changed.

I had remembered the person.

I deleted the thread and sent her a note regretting that I had allowed my snark to take over.

But I've been thinking about what happened ever since.

Why did I have to discover who she was before I remembered to extend that kind of grace?

Social media makes it remarkably easy to forget that there is a person on the other end. We see a sentence. An opinion. A meme. A political position. A theological declaration. Sometimes a taunt.

And sometimes we take the bait because, quite simply, our feelings got hurt.

We can dress that up in all kinds of impressive language. I'm defending the truth. I'm standing up for what I believe. I'm not going to let somebody get away with saying that.

Sometimes we really do need to speak.

But sometimes somebody just hurt our feelings.

And now they owe us.

So we open the ledger.

I've had another exchange recently with someone whose beliefs are very different from mine. I could feel the temptation to strike back. Instead, I looked for something in what the person had said that I could actually affirm from within my own beliefs.

There it was.

For one brief moment we weren't opponents. I didn't have to surrender what I believed, and neither did the other person. We had simply found a small piece of common ground.

That's another way of putting down the ledger.

Maybe the person who just irritated you is having a terrible day.

Maybe somebody who mocks Christians was once profoundly hurt by one.

Maybe the comment you read wasn't intended the way you heard it.

Maybe the person is carrying wounds you know nothing about.

Maybe you're carrying wounds they know nothing about.

Maybe that stranger on the screen is somebody's former fifth grader.

None of this means that hurt isn't real. In Jesus' parable, the debt was real. The servant really was owed something.

Jesus doesn't ask us to pretend otherwise.

He asks what we're going to do about the debt.

Are we going to spend our lives collecting it?

Perhaps “seventy-seven times” means giving another human being seventy-seven chances to be more than the worst thing they said today.

And then seventy-eight.

Or 490 chances.

And then 491.

Perhaps it means giving ourselves another chance to look at the person again, after the hurt has subsided, and see something besides an opponent.

We've encountered quite a journey in this week's readings.

Joseph asked, “Am I in the place of God?”

At the Red Sea, God moved from before His people to behind them. They could go forward because God had their backs.

Israel came out of Egypt.

And Israel sang.

Paul told us to welcome people rather than quarrel over opinions.

And now Jesus brings us here.

Forgive.

Again.

Don't appoint yourself judge.

Trust God enough to go forward.

Remember enough goodness to sing.

Welcome people instead of looking for a quarrel.

And when somebody hurts you anyway—and somebody will—

forgive again.

Not because it didn't hurt.

Because it did.

Seventy-seven times?

Seventy times seven?

At some point the number doesn't matter anymore.

Close the ledger.

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