Rachel will not be acting out this parable with the kids in Sunday School and weirdly, when Rebecca and I talked, we could think of no choral pieces that bring this parable to life either. And thank God, because it’s horrible.

If any of you are still laboring under the mistaken notion that the God of the Hebrew Bible is a god of vengeance and the God of the New Testament is a god of grace, I would encourage you to go back and re-read Jesus’ last line about God torturing you forever if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

I mean, that is messed up on multiple levels and I use that word mess intentionally. This is very messy. There is a remarkable lack of consistency in the scriptures before us today. And yet I think that lack of consistency says more about us and our own ambivalence when it comes to matters of justice and mercy than it does about the true character of God.

We pick up today right where we left off last Sunday. Jesus has just told his disciples that if a person sins against them they are to go to that person and do everything in their power to work things out. And Peter basically says, ok Jesus, but what if we work it out and they do it again:

“(H)ow often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” (And) Jesus says to Peter, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”

Now when you and I hear that, we probably think, “Jesus Christ, have some boundaries.” Well he didn’t, and we’ll get to that. But that’s not what Peter would have heard.

Peter would have heard an echo of Genesis chapter 4, wherein Cain kills his brother Able and God condemns him to wander the earth as a fugitive. In that story, Cain cries out in his vulnerability and says, “anyone who meets me will kill me.”  So God puts a mark of protection on Cain to let people know that if they harm him, God will enact a sevenfold vengeance.

So, let’s pause here a moment and observe. We have the first crime and its consequence. And we have a God already clouded in contradiction, a God who is both showing mercy and yet threatening vengeance if anyone messes with the mercy God has shown. If you hurt Cain, says God, I’ll hurt you seven times worse.

Well Cain does alright for himself. He settles east of Eden in the land of Nod. He marries and even has a family. But years later his great, great grandson Lamech kills a young man for merely wounding him and says, “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech shall be avenged seventy-seven fold.”

Notice how the mere threat of vengeance on God’s part has escalated into a justification for outright and unrestrained retribution on the part of God’s children; a violent tendency God finally brings back under control by later commanding 3 separate times that His people take no more than what is due. None of this seventy-seven fold stuff. Let the punishment fit the crime.  You may take an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth, but no more (see Exodus 21:24-25, Leviticus 24:19-20, Deuteronomy 19:21).

So when Jesus says, forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven times, he is reversing the way of Lamech.

And when he says elsewhere in the gospel, forget about an eye for an eye, I tell you to love your enemies, bless those who persecute you, and turn the other cheek, he’s talking about a complete reversal of how things have been done: talking about a whole new creation, a whole new world, what it would take to build a wholly new kind of kingdom (Matthew 5:38-39).

So far so good. We like that sort of talk around here. But then Jesus tells a parable that feels like it could have been written by Lamech.  I mean it starts off well, but before long things devolve into unrestrained vengeance as quickly as they did in Genesis.

And then, to make matters infinitely worse, Jesus concludes by saying: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Is Jesus telling us to forgive… or else… forgive or God won’t forgive you?

There’s a conundrum here, a contradiction between what Jesus is saying we should do and what God - who, last I checked, we are supposed to emulate - seems to be doing. There is a tension here between our desire for justice and our need for mercy… a tension we find throughout scripture because it is a tension that exists within all of us. And it’s a tension this parable teases out, not to give us any easy answers but to help us come face to face with how complicated this is because of how complicated we are.

And speaking of complications, the first thing I want you to notice is that Jesus says, “The kingdom of God may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.”

“Compared.” That’s new.

Usually Jesus says the kingdom of heaven “is like,” right? The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. But what Jesus is doing here is more complicated than a simile.

He’s letting us know, right off the bat that the kingdom of heaven is not like the kingdom in this parable - which is good news! - but it can still be compared to it. The king and his servants are not an analogue for God and us, but we can still compare what happens between God and us with what happens between this King and his slaves.

So let’s recall what happens: a king has a slave who mismanages so much money that he can never in a million years pay it back. In response, the King orders that the slave, his family, and all of his possessions be sold.  They are not going to fetch anywhere near what is owed to the king, but at least the slave will be punished for what he’s done. And, to be fair, you should know that most kings would have simply had him executed.

But the slave begs for mercy and, lo and behold, the king not only grants it, he completely forgives the debt and lets the guy go free. Which, to be clear, is absurdly generous. And then what does our anti-hero do? The ungrateful slave goes out and nearly strangles another fellow to death who owes him such a relatively small amount that realistically it could have been paid back if he’d just given the guy a little time.

Of course the fellow slave falls down on his feet and begs for mercy in much the same way as the first slave did, but the first slave shows him none.  He has him thrown in prison, which he technically has the right to do. Such a response was perfectly legal. Strictly speaking, the ungrateful slave is not being unfair. But after all that mercy we’ve just witnessed, it doesn’t feel right, does it? No.

In fact, his actions upset his fellow slaves so much, they report back to the king who summons him back in.

“You wicked slave!” he says. “I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” And then he has him handed over to be tortured until his family can pay back the infinite sum, which they can never do, leaving the first slave to suffer forever in a hell of his own making.  Uggh!

Speaking for myself here, I admit that when then his fellow slaves ratted the first slave out to the king some part of me was relieved. They wanted justice and they got justice. The first slave was a horrible person. There is no way he deserved to be forgiven a second time. But notice that in their quest for justice they end up with a terrifying king and a hellish ending full of eternal torment and unending vengeance.

This is not, according to Jesus, what the kingdom of heaven is like, thank God. This is what the kingdom of heaven may be compared to, and I don’t want to go to that place or live under that king… but I can also see how easy it is to get there.

Jesus is asking us to compare two completely different ways of being. Do we want to live in a world of unlimited vengeance or a world of unlimited mercy? Do we want to live in a world where ultimately all is forgiven or a world where ultimately everyone gets what they deserve?

Do we want to follow in the way of Lamech or the way of Jesus?

The answer may seem obvious at first, but I think the internal conflict we feel when we contemplate the tension between justice and mercy is real and justified. We absolutely want forgiveness for ourselves. We don’t always want forgiveness for others. We absolutely want justice when we have been wronged. But we want mercy when we have done wrong.

In the parable no one does anything wrong in their pursuit of justice, but in the end nothing feels right.

In the kingdom of heaven, we all do wrong and God forgives us all anyway, which also… doesn’t …feel… right.

I don’t think the slaves were wrong to call out the first slave for his lack of mercy, but where do we draw the line?

If the lines between good people and evil people were perfectly clear that would help…but they rarely are. Which brings us to our Exodus reading. You may have noticed that the reading is rendered in black and red and some of you may know that when the Hebrew Bible was finally assembled during the second temple period - (we’re taking around 450 BCE) - the priests in charge gathered stories from both the north and the south of Israel and wove them all together into one cohesive narrative.1

Here, in one their most formative stories - Israel’s escape from slavery in Egypt - we have two very different accounts. So different that if you look carefully you’ll see that the parting of the red sea is unique to the red story. You’ll also notice that the red account portrays a militaristic God who delights in drowning Pharoah and his army and that Moses and the people respond with similar delight when they break out in song following the destruction of their enemy.

In the black account, on the other hand, we have a God who stands between the Israelites and the on-coming army as a non-violent cloudy pillar of fire. This God holds the Egyptians at bay while the Israelites run, clogs up the wheels of the chariots, and sends Pharoah’s army into a panic so they cannot attack. When the fog clears there are plenty of Egyptians who lie dead on the sea shore, but exactly how they died is less clear and the Israelites respond with a somber faith in the God who has rescued them. This God’s desire to save the Israelites is not synonymous with a desire to punish the Egyptians.

Two very different stories.

Now, to be clear, Egypt is the oppressor in this story. The children of Israel have been enslaved, exploited, and abused for generations, their babies tossed in the Nile to drown. The Pharoah had multiple chances to let God’s people go and stubbornly refused.  It is very easy to paint the Egyptians as the bad guys who finally got what they deserved and understand why the Israelites would dance on their graves.

But anyone who has been around awhile knows it’s never that simple. The Egyptians who died on the banks of the red sea were not purely evil. They were soldiers doing what soldiers do. They were real people with families who would mourn them. Some of them had just lost their first born children to the final plague through no fault of their own. And that recognition, that tension is not lost but carefully preserved in our scriptures by allowing these two accounts to lie side by side.

We see this tension reflected in the rabbinical commentaries and traditions that grew up around this story as well. In the Talmud the angels are about to break into song when they see the Egyptians thrown into the sea and God silences them, saying, “How dare you sing for joy when my creatures are dying?”

During the Passover, when Jews remember this story, a few drops of wine are always poured out at the Seder as a reminder that the cup of deliverance cannot be fully savored until all our delivered. If all means all, then all must also include one’s enemies.

Which may be why a rabbinic reading of this story still circulates that claims Pharoah not only survived the red sea, but fled and went on to become the King of Ninevah. You may remember that the king in that story is so quick to repent when the prophet Jonah shows up that Jonah is annoyed at being sent all that way for nothing.

Friends, the story of Jonah is read every year on the Jewish high holy day of Yom Kippur, the day of repentance and atonement. If the story is true, then Pharoah - evil Pharoah! - is a paradigm of repentance for his former enemies and one of the foremost recipients of God’s amazing grace.2

As I said at the outset, this is messy because we are messy. Our scriptures and the God we see in them says as much about our own ambivalence as it does about God.

Jesus knows that a God willing to forgive men like Pharoah is not a fair God.

Jesus knows that a God who would punish us for not forgiving men like Pharoah is not fair either.

It doesn’t make sense. Which makes me think that perhaps fair has nothing to do with any of this at all. Maybe this isn’t an equation we can ever work out or a tension we will ever resolve, but one we need to live with as best we can.

Justice and mercy are strange bedfellows. They don’t lie comfortably side by side anymore than these verses in Exodus or Jesus’ words about forgiveness and the parable do. They don’t lie comfortably in us either.

But you know what does make sense? The idea that we get what we give. If you want to live in a world where you are forgiven, you have to live in a world where you are willing to forgive. If you want to live in a world of peace, you need to make peace with your enemies in this world.

This isn’t a threat. It’s simply a reality. It’s not a quid pro quo, but more of an observation of the way things work. We make the world we want to live in one decision at a time. We get the God we want for others. We have the power to choose between the way of Jesus or the way of Lamech.

I don’t think Jesus is telling us this because God is going to punish us if we make the wrong choice. I think he’s telling us this so we can see exactly what God is trying to save us from and it’s not God, but the myriad ways we punish each other.

Twenty-five years ago, when our country was attacked on September 11, 2977 people were killed.  In response we chose the way of Lamech. We killed over 900,000 people in the wars on terror that followed and it is estimated that those wars led indirectly to the deaths of 4.5 million more.

Three years ago, when Israel was attacked on October 7, 1200 people were murdered.  They chose the way of Lamech and as a result 74,500 Palestinians have died, with more being added to their number every day.

Justice has been meted out, 77 fold, but has justice been served? Is the world better now? Is anyone safer? Or are we stuck in hells of our own making? I think the term “forever war” is our answer and I don’t want to live in that kingdom anymore than you do.

The hard truth is that are are innocents and horrible perpetrators, unforgivable wrongs and demonstrations of amazing grace on all sides, and we live somewhere in the messy middle. Perhaps Jesus is trying to make a way for us between justice and mercy like Moses did between the waters of the red sea.

Maybe, as one anonymous Jewish commentator wrote: “The two (sides) of the sea represent the two sides of the story. And we must pass through the middle, preserving and valuing life, yet not drowning in war and hate. The middle path between justice and mercy is a difficult one to tread and at any moment we can be washed away.”3

At any moment, and this is me now, we can cross the line between hating the harm, the sin, the evil that has been done and becoming harmful, sinful, and evil in our quest to eradicate it.

It would be so much easier if there were simply good people in need of mercy and bad people who deserve justice, but it’s not easy at all.

Which is why I chose these words by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as our meditation for today.

He said: ”The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.”

The tension between justice and mercy is real. How we respond is realer still. Our call is to hold the line, my friends. Hold the line right here in our own hearts with humility and hope for all. Amen.

Footnotes: 1 The classic Documentary Hypothesis posits 5 strains: The J (Jahwist / Yahwist): from the southern kingdom of Judah who used the divine name Yahweh. E (Elohist): from the northern kingdom of Israel who used the term Elohim for God. D (Deuteronomist): The writer or school behind most of Deuteronomy. P (Priestly): Priestly writers and editors who wrote legal and ritual texts like Leviticus. And R (Redactor): the ultimate editor or group of editors who wove these distinct traditions and documents into the single continuous text we have today.

2  I learned all this here: From the Jewish Chronicle. https://www.thejc.com/judaism/why-did-we-sing-when-the-egyptians-drowned-t1anz5d2     anonymous reporter

3 Also from the Jewish Chronicle. https://www.thejc.com/judaism/why-did-we-sing-when-the-egyptians-drowned-t1anz5d2     anonymous reporter