William H. Willimon - "Our Kind of Crowd" (September 15, 1996)
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- | In the aftermath of the first Rodney King verdict, | 0:19 |
in the riots which followed a truck driver | 0:25 | |
named Reginald Denny was dragged from his | 0:29 | |
truck and beaten severely by a raging mob. | 0:33 | |
It was payback time in L.A. | 0:39 | |
In the months that followed a painful recuperation | 0:44 | |
for Mr. Denny, he met with those who had beaten him. | 0:48 | |
He looked them in the eye. | 0:55 | |
He extended his hand to them and said, | 0:57 | |
"I forgive you." | 1:01 | |
An AP reported commenting on that scene said, | 1:05 | |
it is said that Mr. Denny is now suffering | 1:11 | |
from brain damage. | 1:15 | |
Today's gospel is from Matthew on forgiveness. | 1:19 | |
Peter said to him, Lord if another member | 1:29 | |
of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? | 1:34 | |
As many as seven times? | 1:39 | |
Jesus said to him, oh not seven times. | 1:42 | |
But I tell you 77 times. | 1:47 | |
For this reason the kingdom of heaven | 1:51 | |
may be compared to a king who wished to settle | 1:57 | |
accounts with his slaves. | 2:00 | |
When he began the reckoning, one who owed him | 2:02 | |
10,000 talents was brought to him. | 2:04 | |
And as he could not pay, his lord ordered him | 2:08 | |
to be sold together with his wife and children | 2:12 | |
and all his possessions and payment to be made. | 2:14 | |
So the slave fell on his knees before him | 2:18 | |
saying, have patience with me and I will pay you everything. | 2:21 | |
And out of pity for him, the lord forgave the debt. | 2:26 | |
But that same slave, as he went out, came upon | 2:33 | |
one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 denary | 2:37 | |
and seizing him by the throat he said, pay me what you owe. | 2:41 | |
Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him. | 2:46 | |
Have patience with me, I will pay you. | 2:50 | |
But he refused. | 2:54 | |
Then he went and threw him into prison | 2:56 | |
until he would pay the debt. | 2:58 | |
Now when his fellow slaves saw what had happened | 3:00 | |
they were greatly distressed and they reported | 3:03 | |
to their lord all that had taken place. | 3:06 | |
Then the lord summoned him and said to him, | 3:10 | |
you wicked slave. | 3:12 | |
I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. | 3:14 | |
Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave | 3:18 | |
as I had mercy on you? | 3:20 | |
And in anger, his lord handed him over to be tortured | 3:24 | |
until he would pay the entire debt. | 3:27 | |
So my heavenly father will also do to every | 3:30 | |
one of you if you do not forgive your brother or sister | 3:34 | |
from your heart. | 3:38 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 3:41 | |
Well there was a business man who wished to settle accounts, | 3:49 | |
wished to put things right, get everything back in order. | 3:54 | |
Balance the books. | 3:58 | |
And so he calls in his servants | 3:59 | |
and among them is this servant who owes him 10,000 talents. | 4:02 | |
Don't worry about looking it up in your commentary, | 4:11 | |
I will tell you. | 4:14 | |
10,000 talents is about 5 tons of pure silver. | 4:15 | |
We're talking big money. | 4:22 | |
Well, of course there is absolutely no way | 4:24 | |
to pay back such a ridiculous debt. | 4:28 | |
Makes you feel sorry for the little guy. | 4:32 | |
He falls down on his knees. | 4:34 | |
He pleads. | 4:36 | |
He snivels about. | 4:38 | |
Patience and mercy and forgiveness. | 4:40 | |
And the business man has pity. | 4:45 | |
He writes off the whole debt. | 4:50 | |
And you're thinking, yeah, this is just | 4:53 | |
the way they teach over at the school. | 4:56 | |
(laughing) | 4:58 | |
At any rate, | 5:00 | |
this now forgiven servant goes out. | 5:04 | |
On his way, after being forgive this ridiculous debt, | 5:07 | |
he meets a fellow servant who owes him | 5:10 | |
a few denary of trifling sum. | 5:13 | |
And he, remembering how he has just been | 5:16 | |
forgiven this huge sum, he forgives this | 5:21 | |
relatively small debt. | 5:27 | |
Sure, as a tooth fairy. | 5:31 | |
And O.J. is innocent. | 5:34 | |
Get real. | 5:36 | |
He takes his fellow servant by the throat. | 5:37 | |
He begins to pound on him. | 5:40 | |
He hires a lawyer. | 5:42 | |
He gets him thrown into jail. | 5:43 | |
And I remind you at the beginning of the story, | 5:48 | |
this was a guy on whose side you were. | 5:50 | |
Well, at any rate, word gets back to the boss | 5:55 | |
how his once hugely forgiven servant | 5:57 | |
has not forgive his fellow servant. | 6:01 | |
The boss calls him in. | 6:05 | |
He says, in anger, you wicked slave. | 6:08 | |
Look at how much I forgave you. | 6:12 | |
Whatever happened to all that speech about | 6:15 | |
mercy and pity and patience? | 6:17 | |
So Jesus says, of course the business man | 6:21 | |
handed him over to his mafia enforcer | 6:23 | |
who broke his arms and both of his legs | 6:26 | |
and threw him in to jail. | 6:28 | |
Let the torture begin. | 6:32 | |
And Jesus says that somehow God | 6:38 | |
is mixed up in all of that. | 6:40 | |
Well I don't know about God, | 6:46 | |
but we certainly are. | 6:47 | |
Debts must be paid. | 6:51 | |
I'm sure you're just like me. | 6:55 | |
You don't wanna see anybody get away with anything. | 6:56 | |
Well now with whom do you identify in this story? | 7:01 | |
The little servant who at first needs so much forgiving, | 7:07 | |
but then just a short time later | 7:12 | |
shows so little forgiveness. | 7:14 | |
Or the king, the big business man | 7:18 | |
who in a great burst of generosity writes off | 7:21 | |
the whole debt, but when he sees what a little wretch | 7:24 | |
this one whom he has forgive really is down deep, | 7:28 | |
oh he ends the parable with a scene straight | 7:32 | |
out of Pulp Fiction. | 7:36 | |
Now you know of course that one of the reasons | 7:38 | |
Jesus tells these little stories is because | 7:41 | |
in a story we just quite naturally identify | 7:44 | |
with various characters in the story. | 7:47 | |
Jesus doesn't have to say, | 7:51 | |
well now I'm gonna tell a story about a man | 7:53 | |
with two sons and you find which one fits you. | 7:56 | |
No, just quite naturally we try to find | 7:58 | |
our place in the story. | 8:00 | |
My colleague, Dan Via, says that these parables | 8:04 | |
are like looking through, out a window | 8:08 | |
and they're like a window where we see better | 8:11 | |
the world or God. | 8:14 | |
But there are those occasions in parables | 8:17 | |
when you're looking through the window, Via says, | 8:22 | |
and you see your own reflection and suddenly | 8:25 | |
that window becomes a kind of mirror. | 8:28 | |
You see your face in it. | 8:32 | |
I think this parable is a kind of mirror. | 8:38 | |
It's a lot of us here. | 8:41 | |
Now some of you will be like the king in this story. | 8:43 | |
You will study hard and you will become powerful people, | 8:48 | |
to whom others will incur great debts. | 8:53 | |
Others of you, despite your best efforts, | 8:57 | |
will be relatively powerless. | 8:59 | |
And you will incur huge debts to others. | 9:03 | |
But the parable says that wherever you find yourself, | 9:10 | |
in a place high or a place low, | 9:13 | |
there are many debts. | 9:16 | |
And there's not much mercy. | 9:20 | |
You will note in the parable that whether we're | 9:25 | |
talking about the bosses that live out | 9:28 | |
on Country Club Drive or whether we're talking | 9:29 | |
about the servants that live down on seventh street, | 9:32 | |
high or low, there's really not much mercy. | 9:35 | |
There's no mercy up in the palace with the king | 9:40 | |
by the end of the parable, when he thinks better of it. | 9:43 | |
And there's no mercy down with the slaves. | 9:46 | |
Politicians of the right or the left today | 9:50 | |
seem eager to jump on the band of welfare reform. | 9:55 | |
And of course, you know why they're so eager for that. | 10:00 | |
They've read the public opinion polls. | 10:01 | |
They know what we want. | 10:04 | |
And they're going to give it to us. | 10:05 | |
We're going to have welfare reform. | 10:07 | |
Time for payback for all those welfare moms | 10:09 | |
for not realizing the American dream. | 10:13 | |
And I suppose you expect me, | 10:17 | |
remembering how many breaks I have received in my life, | 10:23 | |
realizing that though I was never the beneficiary | 10:27 | |
of an affirmative action program, | 10:30 | |
I did benefit from the old boy network. | 10:33 | |
Not to mention the time and the gifts | 10:38 | |
and the talents of scores of nameless coaches | 10:41 | |
and teachers and youth workers and others | 10:45 | |
who gave me break after break after break. | 10:48 | |
I suppose you won't need to remember that. | 10:51 | |
Well forget it. | 10:55 | |
This isn't the way the world works. | 10:56 | |
And this parable, I think, is about | 10:59 | |
the way the world works. | 11:02 | |
There are always people who criticize the bible. | 11:03 | |
They think it's idealistic, romantic, unrealistic. | 11:05 | |
Oh right, remind me, welfare does not cost me | 11:12 | |
more than just a few dollars every year in taxes. | 11:15 | |
But the bank doesn't show mercy to me | 11:20 | |
for all I own on my mortgage. | 11:21 | |
Why should I show mercy to that woman | 11:25 | |
living in a trailer trying to make ends meet | 11:28 | |
with her two kids? | 11:31 | |
See, there are parables which show us | 11:34 | |
something about God. | 11:37 | |
But there are also parables which show us | 11:40 | |
something about me. | 11:42 | |
There's a great deal of indebtedness. | 11:47 | |
Up here, down there. | 11:50 | |
And there's not much mercy. | 11:55 | |
Early in my academic career I was the victim | 12:01 | |
of a bad book review. | 12:04 | |
A professor at another institution | 12:08 | |
slashed this book, which I had written, | 12:12 | |
and he had many negative things to say about it. | 12:15 | |
And the book review was not only critical, | 12:19 | |
but it was unfair and mean | 12:23 | |
and low and. | 12:28 | |
Last summer I heard that this professor | 12:32 | |
had been removed from his position. | 12:34 | |
Due to a sexual indiscretion with a student. | 12:38 | |
And my heart just went out to him. | 12:45 | |
(laughing) | 12:48 | |
Yeah. | 12:52 | |
After the bombing in Oklahoma City, | 12:56 | |
Billy Graham stood up in a memorial service | 12:59 | |
after the bombing and Billy Graham greeting people there | 13:01 | |
and he said, we are here at Oklahoma City | 13:04 | |
to let the healing begin. | 13:08 | |
We are here to stand beside you, to let you know | 13:10 | |
that a nation stands beside you. | 13:13 | |
We are here to forgive whoever did this. | 13:16 | |
And I thought, well Dr. Graham, I don't think | 13:26 | |
Janet Reno has been speaking about mercy. | 13:28 | |
Maybe that's why you're here. | 13:33 | |
I don't know that we're here for that. | 13:34 | |
That is not the way the world works, high or low. | 13:38 | |
Columnist Hal Croither recently told | 13:43 | |
of a couple of his friends who had been | 13:46 | |
to a marriage counselor and there in the counseling session | 13:48 | |
he said these are basically two, fairly quiet, | 13:51 | |
reserved people, but they got in the context | 13:54 | |
of that counseling session. | 13:57 | |
And then they just said all sorts of things | 13:58 | |
to one another. | 14:01 | |
And he said now their marriage is a total shambles | 14:03 | |
because they have no way to forgive each other | 14:08 | |
for all that stuff they said in the counseling session. | 14:10 | |
And maybe that's why there's so little truth | 14:15 | |
in most of our human relationships. | 14:17 | |
You better be careful what you say | 14:23 | |
even to your very best friend | 14:25 | |
because if you say the wrong thing | 14:28 | |
and if what you say the truth hurts too deeply, | 14:30 | |
you're gonna pay and pay. | 14:34 | |
Because where forgiveness is in short supply, | 14:40 | |
and isn't it always, everywhere, | 14:45 | |
we tiptoe about in our relationships. | 14:49 | |
So fearful are we that we might transgress, | 14:54 | |
we might incur a debt, and then it will be time | 14:57 | |
for the torture. | 15:03 | |
There's a new hit movie out. | 15:07 | |
It's called First Wives, in which three ex-wives | 15:09 | |
devise some devilish schemes to torture | 15:15 | |
their ex-husbands who have so tortured them in court. | 15:20 | |
And I predict the movie will be a big success. | 15:26 | |
Oh, that's right, you were just thrilled | 15:31 | |
to see O.J. walk. | 15:34 | |
Oh yeah, I'm sure you were just deeply grieved | 15:37 | |
to watch the Brothers Menendez finally go to jail | 15:41 | |
for dusting mom and dad with a shot gun and then reloading. | 15:44 | |
Well I wasn't. | 15:51 | |
Because after all, you've got to uphold morality | 15:54 | |
and dues have got to be paid. | 15:57 | |
Morals must be upheld and I've got my standards. | 15:59 | |
And Jesus says it's all over. | 16:04 | |
It's high, it's low. | 16:06 | |
It's in the palace up with the king. | 16:09 | |
And down in the ghetto with the servants. | 16:11 | |
Debts are being collected. | 16:15 | |
The Palestinian bomber is just simply repaying | 16:17 | |
the Israeli soldier. | 16:21 | |
The IRA booby trapper is only reciprocating | 16:25 | |
the protestant extremist. | 16:29 | |
And the guy who held up the convenient store | 16:31 | |
in Durham last night is only compensating | 16:34 | |
his abusing father for 20 years of debts with interest. | 16:38 | |
All over the world debts are being collected. | 16:44 | |
See, at first in the story you thought | 16:48 | |
you had met a really nice king, a merciful king. | 16:51 | |
A forgiving king. | 16:56 | |
You thought this parable was going to be | 16:58 | |
a kind of William Bennet book of virtues lesson | 17:00 | |
on how we all ought to go out | 17:02 | |
and be nice to one another. | 17:04 | |
But no, no. | 17:06 | |
By the end of the story once this king | 17:07 | |
has time to think these things over, | 17:09 | |
his anger burns hot and he is busy extricating | 17:11 | |
the finger nails of this unmerciful servant. | 17:14 | |
And then we realize, you know, | 17:18 | |
there's no mercy anywhere. | 17:19 | |
High, low, then, now, there, here. | 17:21 | |
This is us. | 17:27 | |
Paul is right. | 17:32 | |
All have sinned and fall short | 17:34 | |
of the glory of God. | 17:41 | |
We all want vengeance. | 17:44 | |
Even though the bible says vengeance belongs | 17:48 | |
only to God, we want a piece of it for ourselves. | 17:51 | |
Leaving a demonstration on campus a few years ago, | 17:57 | |
a demonstration against the death penalty | 18:00 | |
in North Carolina. | 18:03 | |
Having made our statement against state imposed vengeance. | 18:06 | |
Having made a public statement against | 18:12 | |
the retribution of the electric chair, | 18:15 | |
somebody walking back to the parting lot | 18:19 | |
in the darkness was telling about a quote | 18:22 | |
that she had read in the newspaper just the day before. | 18:24 | |
Quoting one of our prominent politicians | 18:27 | |
in support of the death penalty. | 18:29 | |
And somebody in the crowd, I don't know who it was, | 18:32 | |
said, "I'd love to see Jessie Helms fry in hell." | 18:35 | |
Oh, that's right, we're not against the chair. | 18:43 | |
We just wanna be sure that we get to select | 18:45 | |
who gets to sit in it. | 18:47 | |
(laughing) | 18:50 | |
We have met the enemy. | 18:52 | |
We've met the unforgiving king, the unmerciful servant | 18:54 | |
and they're us. | 18:58 | |
This is a parable about us. | 19:01 | |
About the cycle of retribution and vengeance | 19:04 | |
and violence that has us caught | 19:08 | |
and what is to be done with us unmerciful as we are. | 19:10 | |
What is to be done when all have sinned and fall short? | 19:16 | |
I remind you of the one who told this story. | 19:25 | |
The one who, after we had whipped him | 19:31 | |
and beat him and nailed him to the wood, | 19:35 | |
looked down and said, father forgive. | 19:39 | |
They don't know what they're doing. | 19:48 | |
Our unmercifulness makes his mercy | 19:52 | |
shine all the brighter. | 19:59 | |
My father in law was attempting to comfort | 20:05 | |
a grieving family whose son had just been killed | 20:08 | |
while he was committed a robbery. | 20:13 | |
The family was in grief because their son had died. | 20:17 | |
They were in grief of the way he died. | 20:20 | |
They were in grief of what they knew | 20:23 | |
the community was saying about them. | 20:25 | |
And the Reverend Parker said, "I want you just | 20:27 | |
"remember one thing. | 20:29 | |
"That when your son I judged, neither I | 20:32 | |
"nor anybody else in this town will be doing the judging. | 20:37 | |
"The judge will be Christ. | 20:42 | |
"The one who embodied mercy." | 20:45 | |
He was the one that commanded us in the lead | 20:53 | |
into this story to forgive. | 20:58 | |
To forgive not just seven times, but 77 times. | 21:01 | |
He makes the number really nice and high, you see. | 21:05 | |
And I want to know who here this morning | 21:13 | |
has obeyed him. | 21:16 | |
I have not. | 21:20 | |
All have sinned and fallen short | 21:23 | |
of the glory of God. | 21:26 | |
And yet his glory is that at the last count | 21:27 | |
he has forgiven 70 times seven billion times seven. | 21:33 | |
I heard a man who had been on the outs with the church | 21:45 | |
since he was a college student. | 21:49 | |
And later in life his family plead with him | 21:52 | |
to go back and give church one more try. | 21:56 | |
Well by this time he had been around the block | 21:57 | |
a couple of times, got to know himself a little better, | 21:59 | |
got to know the world, the way it works. | 22:01 | |
Well he wonders into this Episcopal church | 22:04 | |
in the middle of the service. | 22:06 | |
The congregation's all down on their knees | 22:08 | |
praying the prayer of confession. | 22:11 | |
He hears them say, "We have done those things | 22:13 | |
"which we ought not to have done. | 22:18 | |
"And we have left undone those things | 22:21 | |
"which we ought to have done and there is no | 22:23 | |
"health in us." | 22:28 | |
And he smiles. | 22:33 | |
And he says to himself, | 22:36 | |
"Good, sounds like my kind of crowd." | 22:37 |
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