"500 Candles" by Tom French via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Come Sunday: This often

Poem by Kyle Matthew Oliver for prayr.cc (CC BY 2.0)
Cover photo: “500 Candles” by Tom French via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

"500 Candles" by Tom French via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

A poem in response to the gospel reading from Matthew 18 for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (aka Proper 19A):

77 times.
70 x 7 times.
hebdomēkontakis is many
but well short of
all-in-all.

“Lord, how often should I forgive?”

I don’t buy “countless” here,
or modern mathematical cleverness.
70^7 misses the point.
Scripture says the chieftains of Israel
enlisted half a million.
(It’s in Numbers.)

Even Matthew’s Jesus
can conjure up infinity
if need be.
Inability to turn a phrase
was never part of
our Lord’s truly-human.

Big-but-not-hugeness,
not sand on the seashore.
Concrete and hard as hell.
Theoretically possible even to finish.
500 miles
to fall down at your door.

He didn’t mean
the expectation is finite,
though.
He just knew
we are
and need
to start.

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