For those keeping score, this story takes place in 1999 when Foy Davis was married and the rector of a small Episcopal church in San Antonio.

********

 

On Monday afternoon Foy stopped by the church. Monday was his day off, but sometimes he came in anyway. He nodded at Judy who was on the phone. She smiled and raised her chin in a greeting without stopping her conversation. He went down the hall to his office and found his battered copy of the Common Lectionary.

Let’s see. Proper 19, year A.

He flipped through the pages until he found the right Sunday. He scanned through the available texts. The Old Testament text was from Exodus chapter 14. He skimmed it quickly, reading parts of it aloud.

“The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud…Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The LORD drove the sea back…At the morning watch the LORD in the pillar of fire…”

Foy made a rumbling noise at the back of his throat.

Okay Paul, what have you got for me. Romans.

“Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions…Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables…Those who eat must not despise those who…”

Foy made the rumbling noise again. He reached over to a corner of his desk and picked up a Nerf football. He used two hands moving opposite directions to flip the ball into a spiral. He quickly caught it and did this a few times. Then he turned back to the book and skimmed further through the Romans passage.

“Who are you to pass judgment…we do not live to ourselves…for it is written, every knee shall bow…”

He let his head fall back until his hair touched his collar. His mouth popped open, and he rolled his head around a little, trying to make his neck click. He shot the Nerf football like a basketball toward his trash can. It hit the side of the can and bounced crazily around the floor. Foy groaned, long and slow and deep, letting his voice rumble slowly. He put his chin in his hand and let his gaze drift over to a stack of papers on his desk that had been growing for several months. He was avoiding the stack because he knew that if he started digging into it, going back in time with the layers like an archaeologist, he would find something he should have done and did not.

He took a deep breath and looked at the gospel text.

“Matthew, give me something good this week. You’re my only hope. Help me Matthew-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope. And I do not want to fight with the text this week. I need something smooth. Something I can see."

“Chapter 18…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 seven times? Jesus said to him, Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven.”

Hmm. Maybe. Yeah.

He read further.

Oh yeah, that parable about that one guy whose debt was forgiven but he didn’t forgive that other guy. Yeah, I can work with that.

Foy’s eyes dropped quickly to the end of the parable.

“And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

“Oh shit.”

Foy sighed. It had been so much easier when he was a Baptist, preaching revivals right out of seminary. Preaching whatever text he wanted.

“Well, Matthew it is. Okay Matthew, Sensei, I will let you thoroughly kick my ass all week…”

He put his hands in a mock Kung Fu position and made a silly, high-pitched martial arts whine, like something in a Bruce Lee movie.

“Hoo waaaaah”

He spoke in a deep voice, like a badly translated Kung Fu movie. “But in the end I shall master you and you shall deliver to me everything that you know.”

There was a tiny tap at the door and Judy said, “Foy, are you talking with someone in there?”

“Just having a little chat with Matt. C’mon in.”

Judy peered around the corner of the door. Her eyes traveled across the room. The Nerf ball was at her feet. There was an Etch a Sketch on the corner of his desk. On the floor by the bookshelves was a Hungry Hungry Hippos game. It looked like someone had been playing with it.

"Who's Matt?"

Foy held up the Bible.

“You know, Matthew, Mark, Luke…Olivia, Newt, and John.”

“Oh,” she said, as if she understood, but she left just enough lilt in the “oh” to express her concern.

“Jenny wants you to call her.”

She backed out of the room.

Foy smiled. Judy had been the secretary at the church since the Han Dynasty. She didn’t approve of the toys and some other things which he had to admit were a little odd.

That’s as far as I need to be on a Monday. Matthew it is.

He got up and turned off the light. He looked back at the Lectionary book on his desk. He held up the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

“And I forgive you, Matthew, for putting such a terrible ending on that passage. What WERE you thinking?”

He laughed.

“Another week of the Bible messing with my mind.”

********

 

In the early part of the week, Foy kept picturing Jesus standing with Peter. He ran the scene a number of ways in his mind.

“So how many times are we supposed to forgive? I mean, you have to admit there must be an ending point. So, I don’t know, some people say like four times maybe? Seems like you want a little more than that. Maybe seven times?”

“No no. Putting a number on it is not…that’s not the way of…okay, you want a number? All right. How about seventy times seven. There you go, there’s a number for you.”

“What? That’s like…” Peter’s lips moved and he touched the fingertips of his left hand with his right index finger, one after the other. “That’s like…way… a lot. Hundreds. Like more than 400.”

“How about seventy times seven? Like that? There’s a number for you, Peter.”

“What? That’s, that’s, that’s….that’s a lot of them. A lot of times. Let’s see, seven times…49, uh…”

“It’s 490 times,” said Matthew, stepping forward. “Four. Hundred. Ninety. Times. You know what that would be like? Guy punches you in the nose one morning. You say, ‘Ouch, dammit that hurt.’ He says, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ You say, ‘S’okay, I forgive you.’ The next day he does the same thing. ‘Bam, ouch, sorry, I forgive you.’ Next day, ‘Bam, ouch, sorry, it’s okay.’

“It’s like 18 months - every day. Guy hits you the first time in early summer. Every day for a year until it’s summer again, and then on into late fall. Getting hit every day. What’s that going to do for anyone?”

***

On Wednesday Foy looked up a couple of articles on the Internet. One was about a black woman who had thrown her body over a KKK marcher to protect him from an angry mob. The other was about a boy who was kidnapped and shot in the eye. He barely survived. As an adult he became a minister, and he found out the man who shot him was in a local prison. He started visiting the man. They eventually became friends, and he visited him in prison until the man died. Then he did the funeral.

He carried these things around inside of him, letting them percolate.

And then it was Thursday. Foy had arranged that on Thursdays he was not to be disturbed apart from emergencies. He came in with a cup of coffee and a doughnut for Judy, as had become their Thursday tradition. He got his messages and said, “I’m off to see if I can find a sermon.”

There was a desk in Foy’s office, but he had pushed it against the wall because he didn’t like sitting behind it. The desk became a kind of credenza. There was a plant in the open space where a chair would go. Books and other things were piled messily upon the desk. In the center of the room was a round table with a few chairs around it. Foy cleared everything off the table. He got a coffee mug filled with pencils and highlighters and sat it in the center of the table. He grabbed 4 or 5 sheets of thick, 11x17 inch paper and put them on the table as well. Then he stood in front of his bookshelves. The books were arranged by basic subject. General scriptures and hermeneutics, Old Testament, New Testament, Church History, Ethics and Theology, Pastoral Care, Liturgical & Worship Resources, Contemplative Spirituality, World religions, and then a large collection of dictionaries, Bibles, lexicons, and other language and subject helps.

Let’s see…Bruner. He pulled the second volume of a 2-volume commentary on Matthew from the shelves. Gundry, yes. Barclay of course. Um…He ran his hands down the spines of books. Turning to his collection of parable resources, he took Bernard Brandon Scott, Capon, Jeremias, and an old book by George Buttrick that he loved. He grabbed his Greek New Testament and a parsing guide, because his vocabulary had gone all to hell over the years.

Foy stacked these books on the table and returned to the shelves. He spoke to himself out loud.

“The problem with this passage is we don’t know what forgiveness even means. We don’t even know what it means in English. That’s going to be key. What is Matthew saying that Jesus said we should do?”

He had to move a fossil, a GI Joe, and a Rosie the Riveter action figure to get to his big Greek lexicon, the Arndt and Gingrich. He pulled it and laid it on the table with the other books.

Oh, what’s that word?

Foy opened his Greek New Testament to Matthew 18:21.

Then came the Peter…no coming. Then coming, Peter said to him, Lord…Posakis? What’s Posakis?

He checked his parsing guide.

Only occurs 3 times in the New Testament. No wonder. Posakis - How many times.

Then coming, Peter said to him, Lord, how many times harmartesei…uh, hamar…what’s that word - oh yeah, sin. How many times sin unto me…into me… AGAINST me the brother of me and apheso. There you are - apheso, aphiemi, forgive.

Foy leaned over and grabbed the first volume of Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. He had saved money for a year to buy the whole set by mail order, and he was proud of them. Ten volumes in their classic blue covers. Foy flipped to the article on aphiemi and began reading.

“To send off, richly attested in Greek from an early period…”

Whatever, just what does it mean?

“To hurl…” Hurl! He chuckled.

“To release, to let go, to let it be.”

Foy leaned back in his chair. So the idea behind Matthew’s word is letting go. That’s got promise. I can work with that.

He flipped a few pages over in Kittel. How are other people using aphiemi in the New Testament?

***

After lunch Foy got a pen and several nice pencils and started writing on the 11x17 sheets of paper. He wrote down the moves of the text and made bullet points of ideas and thoughts. He got his copy of “Draw Squad” by Mark Kistler and spent 15 minutes drawing buildings and coke cans and corked bottles floating in water. Shading was what he loved. Cross-hatch shading, shading with the side of the pencil, smudging the graphite with his finger.

He moved back and forth between drawing and writing, becoming fully engrossed in the text. At 3 pm he left the church to make a couple of visits, one to an elderly man in the hospital. Then he had a cup of coffee with a guy who had visited the church. Over coffee it was revealed that he was worried that Foy’s church didn’t believe the Bible enough. He felt the church should believe the Bible a little more before he could become a part of the community.

***

Friday was Judy’s day off, and there was no one at the church but Foy. He walked down a darkened hall toward the sanctuary. No other kind of alone feels like being alone at church. Dark, empty churches scared Foy as a boy, and he still had a bit of that mysterious feeling in him when he was alone at church. Foy parted the emptiness with his body like a ship breaking ice. He moved through the foyer and into the sanctuary. He had his notebook computer, his sermon notes, and a Nerf football. He moved behind the pulpit, opening his computer and laying it in the center of the pulpit. He spread his notes out around it. Then he bent over, holding the football in his hands like he was behind the center on a line of scrimmage. He made a “hup” sound and dropped back behind the communion table like a quarterback moving into the pocket. He bounced on his toes a couple of times and fired a pass at the clock on the back wall above the center aisle. The Nerf football flew in a tight spiral and hit the wall a few feet to the right of the clock. Foy liked to throw things. Anything, really. Rocks, balls, frisbees, knives. He was quite adept with the Nerf football and was proud of that. He often looked for an excuse to play catch with children in the church.

“Oh yeah, Brett Favre.”

He ran down the aisle and picked up the football.

He turned quickly around and lofted a pass high into the air. His hands dropped to his sides and he stared at the ball in flight, amazed and charmed by its sudden presence in the sanctuary. The ball arched gracefull toward the rafters, reached it’s pinnacle, and dropped behind the pulpit area into the place where the choir sat. There was a muffled series of bumps as it bounced around the chair legs for a couple of moments. And then all was still and silent again.

Foy put his hands in his pockets and slowly walked down the aisle toward the front. The pews seemed filled with the souls of the departed saints from St. Alban’s past, and the aisle was much like the one he had walked down as a boy in the Baptist church, when he gave his heart to Jesus. He knew no other world but this world. Knew it and hated it and feared it and loved it.

Foy moved behind the pulpit and looked at his notes. He typed a few things into the computer, then moved from behind the pulpit and paced the stage like a stand-up comedian.

“The thing about forgiveness is, we don’t know what the hell it means. We never define it. People are always saying, “Forgive me,” or “I forgive you,” but we don’t define it. That’s a problem. And it’s one of two problems facing us in today’s text.”

Foy stopped walking and looked at the clock on the wall. He stood still, thinking.

“That’s a problem. That is a problem. That is the problem.”

He moved back behind the pulpit and spent a few minutes typing on his computer. Then he looked up and spoke to the empty sanctuary.

“The other problem is, no sane person would ever forgive someone 490 times. And that’s what 70 times 7 would be. That would be like someone doing something awful to you, say punching you in the nose, and then asking for forgiveness. And of course you would forgive him, for we are commanded by Christ to do so. Then that person punches you in the nose every day from now until…”

Foy checked his calendar and did some math. An astonished and pleased look came on his face.

Oh, that is so cool.

“Every day from now until the year 2000. And you would have to forgive him every single time.”

Foy left the pulpit again. He went to the choir area and retrieved his football. He flipped it, spiraling, into the air as he walked back to the pulpit. He turned quickly and threw the ball out into the pews. It hit the top of one pew, bounced sideways, hit another pew, then dropped to the floor.

“No one would do that. Not you and not me. No human can forgive someone 490 times. And you know what? I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant. I think he was trying to make a point for Peter and the others. There is something wrong when you think of forgiveness that way, when you think of forgiveness as something hard you have to do, and you only want to forgive for as long as you have to. What you’re really wanting to know is how many times before you can deck the guy who has been punching you.”

Foy stopped.

Ooh. Yes.

He ran to the pulpit and began typing furiously on the keyboard.

********

 

The alarm went off at 4:30 am on Sunday morning. Foy was already awake, laying on his back staring up into the darkness and listening to the gentle sound of the ceiling fan. He flopped his right arm onto the nightstand and fumbled around for the clock. He turned it off and sat on the side of the bed. A feeling of sorrow and dread came over him. It was a heavy feeling. He tilted his head back and relaxed his jaw so that his mouth popped open. He exhaled slowly, blowing air from his lungs with an audible sound.

He shuffled into the bathroom and got in the shower. He moved through the motions of bathing with robotic precision. His face was completely slack and showed no emotion. He shaved, dressed, and stooped to tie the laces on his shoes. The last pull on the laces always marked a strange transition.

It’s time to be thinking right. It’s time to get where you need to be.

Foy stood in the door of the bathroom, a dark figure against the light behind him. Light spilled onto the lower half of the bed. His eyes followed a series of lumps that resembled a small mountain range, leading up out of the light, bending and turning to end in a mass of hair pressed into a pillow. He watched Jenny in silence. She breathed in silently but exhaled with a heaving force, each breath like a deep sigh. She was huddled in a fetal position with her back toward the center of the bed. Foy felt a momentary flash of emotion because she looked so child-like. But then her posture made him think that she was trying to get as far away from him as possible, even in her sleep. He quickly left the bedroom. Those thoughts weren’t getting him where he needed to be.

The house was dark and quiet. He felt his way through the living room furniture and into the kitchen. He opened the door to the refrigerator, and the light made him squint. He scanned the contents, subconsciously hoping for some unexpected treat to be there. Then he realized that he wasn’t hungry, and he didn’t even know why he had opened the refrigerator in the first place. He closed the door, picked up his briefcase, and left the house. Summer was passing and the air was surprisingly cool for San Antonio. Orion was up in the early morning, along with all the winter constellations. He stared at them and felt himself relax. The stars were his silent, watching friends. Never changing. Neither his birth nor his death, not his life, his sorrow, or his joy would move them. This was religion in its oldest and purest form. No rules. Just this reality: you are very small and insignificant. He nodded briefly at the stars, finding a strange pleasure in their total disregard of his life. This primitive act of worship helped him. It got him a little closer to where he needed to be.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said out loud.

As he pulled his car onto the street, he turned on the radio. One of the stations had an early morning infomercial on. They were selling some herbal pills that were supposed to help your joints. He listened but didn’t pay much attention. He just liked the voices in the background. He drove through the dark streets until he turned into the parking lot of the church. He shut off the engine, and the voices from the radio died along with the the motor. The sound of his car door closing was so harsh in the quiet cool of early morning that he winced. His shoes crunched through loose bits of gravel and asphalt as he walked toward the church. When he stepped onto the sidewalk the sound of his footsteps grew softer. He fumbled briefly with his keys and put one into the lock of an old wooden door that opened directly into the back of the sanctuary. It was not a door that many people used, but the church was so old that ministers coming and going a few times a week had worn the door over many years. The wood and the hinges and the stone frame had been anchored together for so long that they seemed fused into one substance. The door was heavy. He pushed it inward, and the smell of an old church building hit him. A slightly musty smell mixed with wood and stone and aging fabric and a thousand other things. Foy paused and drew the smell into his nose deliberately. He liked the smell, and it got him another step closer to where he needed to be. For a moment he felt like a shaman priest of old, standing in the darkness amidst the pleasing odor of ancient things. The tiny glow from the Christ candle was the only visible light. It throbbed gently casting a faint pattern on the back wall. Foy turned on a light that shone down from the rafters onto the pulpit area. He never turned on all the lights in the sanctuary at once. The very idea of a sudden burst of light in this place was horrifying to him. Even this small amount of light was bad. The magic was broken.

“Get busy, hired man,” the lights seemed to say. “You have work to do, and you are nowhere near the place you need to be.”

Foy made a rumbling sound in his throat as a general expression of displeasure.

He walked down the center aisle toward the back of the church, looking right and left between the pews. He put a few hymnals and Books of Common Prayer back into their holders and picked up a few sheets of discarded paper. He checked the bathrooms in the foyer to make sure they were clean. Then he headed through the hall back to his office. He made some final changes to the order of worship and printed it. He stood by the printer looking at the first copy of the order of worship while the rest of the pages shot out with a rhythmic noise. He folded each one in half on a large work table near Judy’s desk. He folded paper with the casual ease of a task worked deep into muscle memory over many years. When the entire stack was folded, he bounced it on the table a few times to bring the sheets in line, then laid them flat on the table. He pressed the heels of his hands down on the folded side, forcing a perfect crease into the entire stack. Then he got his sermon notes from his office and headed back to the sanctuary. He put the orders of worship on a table in the foyer.

These small tasks had driven away most of his emotions. It felt good to feel nothing. Now he could turn his full attention to the sermon, which was the only thing he felt he could control on a Sunday morning. He went up the steps to the platform and stood in the pulpit. He looked out into the pews, but it was too dark. The lights in the sanctuary had a dimmer switch. Foy raised the lights just enough so he could see the pews. But the room was still dim enough to feel soft. Everything needed to be soft in the beginning. That helped him get where he needed to be.

Standing behind the pulpit, he breathed deeply and began his sermon.

“Today’s text is a wonderful story from the gospels. If you’ve been in church for many years, you’ll recognize it of course. And like all the gospel stories, it brings out the humanity of the disciples with a wonderful and simple clarity. For they struggled with the same things we struggle with. In this case they were wondering how many times we should forgive people who constantly hurt us. And that is a very real question, especially for those of us who have been hurt and wounded and find ourselves both desiring love and friendship, but also afraid of the inevitable pain that comes with it.”

Foy stopped speaking and looked out at the pews, thinking intently. He bent his head and wrote on his sermon notes. He pulled a clean sheet of paper from a stack he kept behind the pulpit and wrote more things there. He spoke and wrote and walked back and forth, mumbling to himself and occasionally speaking aloud to an imaginary congregation. He worked his way through the entire sermon. Pausing and writing and changing and memorizing. Eventually the light of dawn shone through the windows, revealing dust in the air and details of the room. The clock on the back wall was now visible. It was 7:55.

Foy had been completely lost in his sermon preparation. Lost in the talking and thinking and performing of it. The peace of that absolute focus had gotten him almost to the place where he needed to be. Sorrow was gone; so was fear. What could be done was done. What could not be done was left undone. There was a certain peace that came with accepting this.

He strode purposefully back to his office and made changes to his sermon notes on the computer, printed a fresh copy, and put it between the pages of his Bible, marking the location of the text.

“It is finished,” he said with an audible sigh of relief. A smile crept onto his face. He was just about where he needed to be.

Foy sat in his office, waiting for the arrival of the early comers. He took deep breaths and enjoyed the silence. The clock on his desk ticked away. Outside he could hear cars driving by as the world came alive. His breathing grew soft and regular. He lost all feeling in his hands and body as he floated in a prayer-like state. He closed one eye and held his thumb in front of his face until it blocked his view of the clock. He opened that eye and shut the other one, watching his thumb jump to the left. The clock said 8:30. He did this a number of times, watching his thumb jump back and forth. Suddenly he stood up and ran to the sanctuary. He walked among the pews until he found his Nerf football laying on the floor where it had landed on Friday. He threw it through the open door at the back.

“Yes, Johnny Unitas. Johnny U.”

Foy ran up the center aisle and into the foyer. He scooped up the ball and tucked it under his arm. He dodged back and forth as he ran down the hall and burst through the door to the office area. He feinted hard to the left and then ran by Judy’s desk, swiveling his hips away as if it were trying to tackle him. He slowed down and trotted into his office. He stood there, breathing hard and smiling. He dropped the football to the floor and sat back down. The words of the text came to him and he spoke them aloud.

“How many times shall you forgive your brother? Not seven times, I say, but seventy times seven.”

He spoke the text again, but this time the words were different, and he did not know where they came from.

“How many times can you bind the strong man and plunder his house? Seven times? No, but I say to you, seventy times seven and every Sunday morning until the end of the ages.”

Foy heard the main door to the church open. There were faint voices and rustling people noises.

It’s probably the Camerons.

He listened and caught the sound of the Cameron children fighting over something. Foy grabbed a handful of hard candy from a box near his desk and stuffed it into his pocket. He walked out of the office area and around a corner. As he turned, a smile appeared on his face. He held out his arms and Hannah Cameron came running to him. She wrapped her arms around his knees and looked up. Foy pulled a piece of candy from his pocket and gave it to her. Steven was older and more subdued, but he wanted the candy too. He gave Foy a hug and was rewarded with a piece.

Doris Cameron saw him and said, “Good morning.”

Foy watched her face intently. Her good morning seemed a little forced to him. He knew It was hard to get children dressed and off to church, especially for a single mom.

Foy put his arms around her arms and gave her a respectful, sideways hug.

“I am SO glad to see you this morning,” he said.

And as far as he could tell, he really was.

rlp