Union Church

September 14, 2008

Luke 17: 4. Matthew 18:21,22.

Many people today question the Bible’s truth.
They question its validity.

Perhaps it is a friend or an emerging teenager who questions the Bible.
“Did Jesus really say this? Did he really do that?
Could that story have really happened like that?”

And then follow up with: “Well, it just doesn’t make sense with today’s scientific knowledge.
It contradicts itself in so many places.
Why should I believe the Bible?
Why should I take the Bible seriously?”

These are all very important concerns.
They need to be taken seriously.

To address them, I would ask the question:
Which way are we going to read the Bible to understand what Jesus is saying?

Most people reject the Bible because they approach it as a fourth grader, as a fact fundamentalist.

Today’s original passage comes from Luke.
If we read this from the factual point of view only, we say:
“I only have to forgive you seven times a day. The eighth time I get to punch your lights out.”

How many of us have brooded in our minds about how many times we will put up with something and then self-righteously exact our revenge?

Sounds like elementary school doesn’t it.

Well, by the time Matthew writes to his community, the interpretation of limiting forgiveness and counting until we can take our revenge has become a real problem.
So Matthew has Peter ask
“How many times do I have to forgive? Seven times?"
Matthew’s Jesus says, “No, not just seven times but seventy-seven times.”

There are two primary ways of reading the Bible.
We can read it for factual information or we can read it for metaphorical meaning.

The culture wars in the United States are battling precisely on these two approaches.

Let me be clear.
The Bible was not written 2,000 years ago to be a scientific textbook in the 21st century.
When we speak about the mystery that is God, when we express the experience of Divine Intuition, Divine Presence, Divine Inspiration we can only use the language of metaphor.

And so we say, “The experience is like this... The experience is parallel to that... The experience elicits a feeling like this...”

What we see going on between our two short gospel readings is the factual reading of Jesus’ teaching instead of a metaphorical understanding. People have already counted to 7 and are now negatively reacting to those who pester them.
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you seven times...”

So Matthew seeks to correct this counting by having the question posed to Jesus with the answer already given of 7.
Jesus responds with a multiplication of 77.

The real key to this passage is the metaphorical number 7.
7 is a holy number.
7 is the number 3 which represents heaven and the addition of number 4 which represents earth.
So 7 equals heaven and earth.
Not surprising, there are 7 Biblical days of creation.
7 is the number of days of the week.
The basic number of our organized life together is 7.
So 7 is a holy number.

How many times do you forgive a person who hassles you 7 times in a day and asks forgiveness 7 times?
You do the holy thing - You forgive.

So Matthew, wanting to stress the metaphoric meaning of the teaching adds the multiplier effect - 77 times.
This means as many times at it takes to remain holy.

The bottom line is that forgiveness is a holy act and a holy requirement and therefore requires a holy number of times.
In other words, as many times as it takes.

Counting is not the point.
Forgiving is.

And by the way, quess how many letters are in the word “forgive.”
7.

Metaphor is the way to read the Bible.