There is a word that many of us learned as children. I’ve never actually looked up its definition, but the meaning became clear to me after the first few times I heard it. It’s a word that parents use quite often. The word is “umpteen.” As in, “I’ve told you umpteen times not to do that!” Or, “For the umpteenth time, will you take out the trash?”
“Umpteen” is truly a gospel word. [Rachel Reeder, Homily Services, Sept. 1987, p. 16] A word of grace. It conveyed to me in my childhood the love of a parent who did not bother to keep an EXACT count of my failings and inadequacies. “Umpteen” has a nice ring to a child’s ear, much nicer than, say, “7” or even “77.” It would have really unsettled me to hear my mother say, “I’ve told you 4 times to do that.” She’s counting? “Umpteen” times left a little room for grace to operate.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts,” says the Most High. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways….”
The Apostle Peter, you may recall, was a little slow to grasp this concept. He approached Jesus and asked, “When my brother or sister wrongs me, how often do I have to forgive them? Seven times would be about the max, wouldn’t it?” “No,” Jesus replied, “not even seventy times seven: I say umpteen times.”
Umpteen times. An unlimited number. Nothing that can be balanced on the harsh scale of equivalence. But a factor in the equation of extravagance which characterizes Divine mathematics.
“Forgive us our debts,” Jesus teaches us to pray, “as we forgive our debtors.”
Now, if we hear “debt” and flash on “Mastercard” we risk succumbing to the paradigm proffered by the cartoon character Cathy as she leaves her office late one night. “I worked late every night this week to get caught up from my one week vacation,” she says. “I’ll work the next six weekends to catch up on what I’m letting slide while I’m trying to get caught up. I’ll spend the next month trying to get caught up on what slid while I was catching up on what slid. One measly five-day fling has somehow compounded into an endless sea of obligation!” She concludes, “For some, life imitates art. For me, life imitates credit card debt.”
Jesus does not want our lives to imitate credit card debt. Jesus does not speak of debt to an institution, a bank, or a finance agency. The debt to which Jesus refers is not impersonal. It is the kind of debt that can only be incurred within a community/a family.
I compare it to the loan of $500 my parents made to me when I started college. First off, you must realize that my parents were in no way wealthy, and for the most part I financed my education through scholarships and jobs. But they loaned me $500. And I paid it back. And then borrowed it again. And then paid it back. Then my car broke down……but I paid them back. And so it went until the true location and absolute ownership of that floating $500 became very hazy.
Such loans, such debts, require the lender to have compassion for the debtor. Such loans, such debts, require the debtor to trust in the lender.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts,” says the Most High. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways….” says the Creator who sets up the universe as a great feast, and beckons “everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; you who have no money—no matter!—come anyway. Here you will buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
We cannot repay the debt we owe to God for creating the earth and the heavens, for giving us life. But as our debt is forgiven—written off—swept away—so we are instructed to forgive the puny debts owed to us. To forgive from the heart, as the Gospel so hauntingly words it.
Or, as Paul Simon has put it, “I have reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland.”
We all have reason to believe we all will be received not at Elvis Presley’s mansion in Memphis, but in that graced land of our imagining and longing.
The land opened up for us as we read in this morning’s Gospel of the calling of Levi, the tax collector. In first century Palestine, among the people of Israel, tax collectors are traitors. They are Jews who are collaborating with the Roman army of occupation, by gathering in the tax money for the Roman government. Tax collectors generally purchased a contract which obligated them to produce the required amount of revenue and which entitled them to keep anything they could amass in excess of that amount. Tax collectors were, thus, often wealthy and spectacularly unpopular. Beyond the extortion, tax collectors were in violation of the purity codes of Israel, due to their physical contact with Gentiles and Roman coins.
“As he was walking along, Jesus saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me”………………and as Jesus sat at dinner in Levi’s house, MANY tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples….and when the scribes of the Pharisees saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, “Why? Why is he doing this? Doesn’t he know what these people do to us every day? Doesn’t he get it?” Jesus responded, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, do. I haven’t come to call the righteous, who already now what to do, and how to get close to God. I’m here for the sinners.”
I have reason to believe we ALL will be received in Graceland. Unsettling and offensive as THAT may be. “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” says the Most High. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways….”
None of us can earn the love that proclaims, “Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
We cannot pay the price of admission into Graceland. Just as good parents love their babies, who perform absolutely no useful work and are often smelly, self-centered, and demanding creatures with drool on their faces, so The Holy One loves us. Love is a gift. Salvation is a gift. Life is a gift. Something totally unearned. Given by a gracious God for God knows what reason. There’s nothing you can do to earn it. There’s nothing YOU can do. There’s nothing you can DO.
Except to trust in God’s generosity. Except to trust that there is enough love and grace to go around, that we’re not talking a limited pool of resources here, that the good fortune of one does not diminish the fortune of another. Except to trust that The Almighty’s blessings will come in good time and in appropriate forms to each of us—even if we fail, goof off, or malinger.
An old friend from Louisville tells a story about old-fashioned Sunday school picnics. [These were not part of my religious tradition or cultural heritage, but the way she tells the story makes me feel like I was there]. Anyway, she says, they’d say at church: “We’ll all meet at Sycamore Lodge in Shelby Park at 4:30 on Saturday. You bring your supper and we'll furnish the lemonade and the iced tea.” But if you were like me, you’d be out on Saturday and come home at the last minute. When you got ready to pack your picnic, all you could find in the refrigerator was one dried-up piece of baloney and just enough mustard in the bottom of the jar so that you got it all over your knuckles trying to get to it. And just two slices of stale white bread to go with it. So you made your baloney sandwich and stuck it in a baggie and went to the picnic.
When it came time to eat, you sat at the end of a table and spread out your sandwich. But the folks who sat next to you had brought a feast. They were all good cooks and they had worked hard all day to get ready for the picnic. They had fried chicken and baked beans and potato salad and homemade rolls and sliced tomatoes and pickles and olives and celery. And two big homemade chocolate pies. That’s what they spread out there next to you while you sat with your baloney sandwich. But they said to you, “Why don’t we just put this all together.” “No, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t even think of it,” you murmured, embarrassed, with one eye on the fried chicken. “Oh, come on,” they’d insist, “there’s plenty of chicken and plenty of pie and plenty of everything. And we just love baloney sandwiches. Let’s just put it all together.” And so you did. And there you sat, eating like royalty when you’d come like a pauper. Graceland Again.
Only someone who receives the summons to discipleship while sitting at the tax booth, or a feast after contributing a stale baloney sandwich can understand the unpredictable wildness of God’s love for us. Only someone who has been given gifts all out of proportion to what is deserved can extend that kind of generosity to others.
As people of faith we are called to employ an alternative system of accounting. Not hunched over, tallying wrongs. Not keeping rigid count of the number of times forgiveness has been offered, so that we can stop when the limit has been reached.
Instead, we behold the exuberant landscape of earth and spirit, affixed in the dance of light and color in the stained glass that surrounds us: the stars in the swirling heavens at the dawn of creation, the doves soaring in a gently lightening sky, the springtime leaves falling as the leaves of healing before moving back to the cosmos. All of it given. Given to us all, given with pizzazz [in the words of Annie Dillard] given in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
We are forever indebted. And we know it. Some things there are which cannot be bought and sold. Some things there are that can never be quantified. Some things are simply given and can only be repaid by giving of ourselves, by giving back, by giving thanks with expansive hearts.
An outpouring of love and tenderness for creation and Creator is surely the coin of the heavenly realm in which we are bidden to live. Together. In a divine economy. Where the numerical system is never base 10 or base 12, but base umpteen.
