Robert Simon is dead. He was killed last Tuesday. His family knew him as Robbie. Maybe you know him better as “Mudman.”
And maybe you thought, as I did when I heard the news, that justice had been done. Because, you see, Mudman Simon killed Franklinville police officer Lee Gonzalez four and a half years ago, and had already been condemned to death by the courts. But this had been a brutal killing, a gruesome murder by a fellow inmate. Was this really justice?
And another big story in the news this week was President Clinton’s offer of clemency to 14 convicted terrorists. Almost everyone I heard talking about it (except the defense attorney) was outraged that these men had been freed. And yet such renowned and respected figures as Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter had urged the President to this action. Was this the right occasion for forgiveness?
One of the women in our Thursday morning Bible study commented on the fact that everyone she knew had reacted to the news of Mudman Simon’s killing more with cheers than tears, with a “Yes!” rather than a prayer for God’s mercy. Did that strike you, too? What were your feelings, when you heard?
I’ve been thinking about all of these things this week... The passage from Matthew that I just read wasn’t pulled out for the occasion, it’s the lectionary Gospel text for this week, so forgiveness was already on the agenda. And a number of questions surfaced:
Was this killing just? Was the original sentence just? And what parts do mercy and forgiveness play in this scenario? And what about those widespread feelings of - I don’t know if satisfaction is quite the right word, but there is a sense that these two events are in balance somehow, that this second murder evened the score for the original one.
And then there was the Old Testament passage we just read. [Ex 14:5-18] When the Israelites finally won their freedom from Pharaoh, after multiple plagues and the deaths of all the Egyptian first-borns, and were on their way to the Promised Land at last, what should happen? The king reneges on the deal. He sends his armies after the Israelites, with more slavery and oppression in mind, of course. And God sets it up so that the Egyptian armies see the Israelites escaping between the waters and think they have time to catch the fleeing tribes before they make it across. They descend into the passageway, and the seas rush back and kill them all. And in the next chapter the Israelites whoop and holler and sing aloud in celebration - and yet Pharaoh’s soldiers were only following orders. Was this just?
How are we as Christians to think, and to feel, about these issues?
We know God cares about justice. God IS justice: “For the word of the LORD is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice..." [Psalm 33:4-5]
God requires justice from his followers: “Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you... “ [Deut 16:20]
And God’s justice doesn’t mean only what is called “distributive justice,” that is, ensuring that everyone gets his or her fair share of the food or the land or the education or the other gifts he has given us. God also requires “retributive justice.” That kind of justice is about rewards and punishment. And Scripture is full of promises of God’s justice, from the giving of the law in Exodus all the way up to the promises of judgment in Revelation:
“YHWH [is] a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty..." [Ex 34:6-7] "YHWH is slow to anger but great in power, and ...will by no means clear the guilty..." [Nahum 1:3]
I haven’t even begin to quote all the passages that apply. The word “justice” appears 165 times, the word “judgment” 222 times, the word “just” 443 times (of course, sometimes the word “just” just means just - isn’t English fun?), and the word guilt appears 137 times, etc. etc. Plus or minus one or two, of course, depending on which translation you are using. It’s a major theme of Scripture. And yet with all of this evidence of how important justice is, Jesus tells Peter to forget all about that, and to forgive, instead.
“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 7 times?' Jesus said to him, 'Not 7 times, but, I tell you, 77 times.'" [Mat 18:21-22]
So what are we to make of it all?
We don’t have time to go into a comprehensive analysis of all the issues involving the justice system, but there are three primary principles in this passage that we can identify.
The first principle is that Jesus’ words do not apply to the governing authorities. They apply to interpersonal relationships within the community of his followers. Remember that Peter asked about what to do if one “member of the church” sins against another one (actually, the word Peter used was “brother,” but that’s what he meant). Jesus’ words do not reverse God’s interest in establishing a peaceful and orderly society. God has given ruling authorities - whether kings or elected officials - responsibilities that private citizens do not have. They administer justice on God’s behalf for the purpose of maintaining social order - which is a gift of God for all of his creation.
The second principle that we can draw from this passage is that forgiveness is only necessary when a real wrong has been done. The slave who begged forgiveness from his master had a real, major outstanding debt; the owner would have been completely within his rights to have the slave and his family sold to make restitution. Forgiveness doesn't mean pretending there is nothing wrong, that harm hasn’t been done. There’s nothing easy or casual about forgiveness, and Jesus doesn’t expect it to come naturally. He knew we’d have to work at it.
And the third one is, of course, that having been forgiven of his own, greater debt, the first slave no longer had the right to collect on the debt that was owed to him. What was once just had become unjust. It was no longer fair.
We human beings have an incredible desire for things to be fair, don’t we. It’s one of the first things children learn to say, right after “no!” and “mine!” We love it when the good guys win and the bad guys get their comeuppance. Miriam’s song in Exodus 15:1, after the drowning of Pharaoh’s army, is one that we still sing today, “I will sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously: the horse and rider thrown into the sea!” It satisfies a very deep need, one that God our creator himself gave to us, built in to us. It is not wicked or evil to be gratified when justice seems to have been done, as many of us feel was done in Mudman Simon’s case.
We also have a need to be safe. And some of the feelings we have about the release of the 14 terrorists has to do with fear, fear that they won’t abide by the terms of their parole, fear that other terrorists will be encouraged by the President’s pardon.
And I think we need to distinguish between those two needs, the need to be safe and the need to be fair. Because the need to be fair speaks to the past, while the need to be safe speaks to the future. Note that the man in Jesus’ parable did not lend his slave any more money. He simply did not require payment of the debt already incurred.
So we are, I think, permitted to take reasonable steps to insure that the individual in our lives who needs to be forgiven is protected from their own propensity to sin in that area. For instance, don’t lend your car to the guy who totaled it last time and don’t give your PIN number to a compulsive gambler. You don’t need to let the bully walk all over you, put out your best Scotch for the alcoholic, or tell your deepest secrets to the compulsive talker. What we may not do is withhold love from that person, decide they are bad or unworthy of our care and attention, or make them pay for what they have done.
Because if they need to pay, God will see to it. You can trust God to take care of settling all outstanding accounts. He keeps the books.
God’s promises to see that justice would be done were incredibly important to the faithful Israelites as they endured warfare and conquest and oppression and exile. It is often the only comfort the victim has, to know that justice will be done, that the somehow the cosmic order will be brought back into balance. So too can we be assured that if payment needs to be made, God will see to it - and he keeps better accounts than you and I ever could.
Right now, as far as you and I can see with our limited vision, the only way you can get even with anyone is by forgiving them completely - because the debt we owe to God, that has been paid on our behalf, is greater than any debt that is owed to us by the people around us. The only getting even we can do is in the opposite direction from what we usually think - it’s not about making someone else pay, but about sharing what we have been given.
The only debts we can forgive, though, are those that are owed to us. We cannot forgive on someone else’s behalf. And so while we might pray for Mudman Simon’s soul, we cannot forgive him - because the wrong he did was to God and to Officer Gonzalez’ family and to the Franklinville community.
So if you found some satisfaction in his death, forgive yourself. God loves justice even more than we do, and he has often in the past used one evil to destroy another evil. When God “Vengeance is mine; I will repay,” it was to reassure us that evil does not escape his attention. We can trust him.
