Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. I want to talk about the sword of Damocles today. You've probably heard of this thing. It's a a cautionary tale that dates all the way back to fourth century Greek culture on the island of Sicily in the kingdom of Syracuse. I mean, typically we think of that as being Roman or Italian territory, but back then there were Greek outposts there. And there's this king, and his name is Dionysus, and he did some pretty questionable things to become king. And then he's got a guy who works in his court who really digs how comfortable it must be in order to be king, and that guy's name is Damocles. And then this whole thing unfolds that will create a really interesting metaphor that we're going to talk about today. But as much as I would love to give you the long, elaborate, ham-fisted details, I think it'd be way more fun to just play for you the best explanation of the sort of Damocles anecdote that I've ever heard anybody tell. And it's from legendary Los Angeles Dodgers baseball broadcaster Vin Scully. And a few years ago, during a baseball game, in the second inning of a game against the San Diego Padres, Vin Scully just goes off on this story about how the pitcher for the Dodgers, a guy named Chad Billingsley, is feeling a lot of pressure. Like there's not a lot of forgiveness, there's not a lot of leash here right now for him to make mistakes. And well, I'm just going to let him tell you the rest of the story. You can hear how it plays out. Top of the second inning, two outs, runners on first and second, 0-0 ball game. Chad Billingsley of the Dodgers pitching, Vin Scully on the call. Give it a listen.
SPEAKER_00We often talked about Chad Billingsley saying that he pitches with the sword of Damocles over his head. That's an old Greek legend. The ruler was Dionysius, and he had a guy in the courtier in the court who would always talk about how great the ruler had it. And so finally the ruler said, Okay, I'll tell you how great the rules are. The pitch is highballed too, and he had a big dinner for Damocles. And there at the head of the table was the chair and the beautiful table setup. And Damocles sat down, and directly above his head was a huge sword, and it was tied by one horse hair. And Damocles got the idea. This will be the seventh pitch to Eric's stomach. Ted ready checked right in the deal. And then it's the ponderation on the scoreboard, leading three to nothing.
SPEAKER_01And boom goes the dynamite, like one second after the guy gets done talking about how unforgiving this pitcher's situation he gives up a monster home run. And we're not going to talk about baseball the whole time, but I do want to talk more about that sword of Damocles idea. And it seems like there are three levels of application there that I've heard historically. The obvious one is just heavy as the head who wears the crown. It's hard to lead, people get after you, whatever. The second one is the version that was popularized by the Roman orator Cicero a few hundred years after the fact. This is what carried it forward into Western history, and his interpretation was that this guy achieved power corruptly, and therefore anyone who's willing to do the ugly things that are needed to achieve power means that they won't then be able to go on to rule justly, because all of the decisions they made to get into power are going to be nipping at their heels forever. And if they ever let off the gas, then people are going to overtake them and they're going to have to pay for what they did. But the third level of application for this sort of Damocles illustration, and the one that I want to focus on, is just the idea of anything that hangs over your head, most notably, obviously, guilt. Stuff from the past that nips at your heels, stuff that feels unresolved or ugly, the broken things, the worst days, the disappointing photos of wearing something or doing something that seemed really, really cool in that moment in history, but the photo lingers all the way into this moment in history. So ranging all the way from cataclysmic bad stuff that nips at your heels to silly little stuff that nips at your heels. That's the expression of the sort of Damocles that I want to talk about today. So we looked at this first passage in Matthew 9 for a whole week, and I was figuring we'd probably move on from that, but you know how I get. And I sit around and I think about it for a few days. I'm like, no, there's more here. So we're back to the Matthew 9 thing. And this is the account, as you know, of the paralyzed guy who gets dropped in front of Jesus. Jesus is teaching in that packed house. It's filled with people who like him, people who don't, people who aren't sure yet. And Jesus sizes up this guy's situation and seeing a crippled guy lowered through the roof in front of him, Jesus' first priority in making his life better isn't to heal the guy's legs. I mean, elephant in the room kind of thing. Everybody is thinking about the legs, but instead, Jesus' first priority is to tell the guy to take heart, and then he declares, your sins are forgiven. I could just give you the actual version here, Matthew 9, 2. So men brought to him a paralytic lying on a mat, and when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven. So as we talked about last week, we don't really get a good sense of what was going through this guy's head, but maybe he was like, Oh, that's great, I'm super happy I'm forgiven, but I was more hoping for my legs back, you know, mobility and all of that stuff, job opportunities. Or maybe the guy really actually felt the impact of what Jesus was saying in a way that we don't. And I know when I first encountered this story, I don't know, I was a kid on the flannelgrams or whatever, I was expecting something way awesomer than a gesture I could get from literally anybody. Anyone can walk up to me and be like, oh, you're forgiven. I mean, it's just words, right? I wanted the magic. But if you really think about it, the amount of relief that that guy felt is probably about proportionate to how much he'd got wrong and how much he felt that sword of Damocles once again hanging over his head. So then you get to the very next verse and you realize that apparently the guy must have felt the relief quite a bit because the professional forgiveness gatekeepers are there in the room, the teachers of the law who know everything about everything and everything about exactly how much guilt points this thing gets you or that thing gets you, and they start griping immediately about how what Jesus just did isn't the proper forgiveness protocol, and they don't even entertain the idea that this guy might have just had the sword of Damocles removed from above him and that this huge burden might have been lifted off of him. They're not concerned about the guy at all. They immediately want to start bickering about political and social and philosophical things, and so they reject the idea that this dude just got forgiven so hard that they actually use the word blasphemy, which basically means you think somebody should be dragged out somewhere and hit with rocks until they're dead for doing it. Uh 9-3. At this point, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, This fellow is blaspheming. Jesus is like, oh, okie dokie, is that how we're going to do it? All right, well, which one is harder? To say your sins are forgiven or to tell this guy to get up and take his mat and go home, but so that you would know that I, the Son of Man, have the authority to forgive sins. Hey, kiddo, take up your mat and go home. And the guy gets up and he does exactly that, and it's obviously incredible. And it illustrates the point that these people want to nitpick about the authority to forgive. And Jesus says, No, I completely, absolutely have the authority to forgive. And then by proxy and through the rest of the New Testament, we figure out that he also has the authority to give away the authority to forgive, so that anybody who's a kingdom citizen can imitate him in giving away this life-giving thing. Funny thing, I've actually been in a situation like this once. I experienced a very meaningful private occurrence at a church where I was processing guilt and forgiveness, and that was the whole point of the exercise. And then some people found out about it and they were not joyful for what had happened to me spiritually in that moment. But others, members of that particular church, were mad that I came away feeling forgiven by God and they wanted to publicly complain that the proper protocol had not been followed. And it was gross, and it makes me really empathetic to this paralyzed guy who just encountered this liberating, healing balm of forgiveness from the one entity in all of existence who can actually give it. And then, like one sentence later, the religious professionals who are very sure of their structure and their understanding of how proper forgiveness works, they're trying to pull it back. Now, hold on. Don't get all excited about this forgiveness thing, sir. This is not necessarily a done deal. And so, what I want to explore tomorrow more in depth than we were able to last week is why? Why would you want to slow roll somebody else getting forgiveness, getting this liberation? What on earth could possibly be going on in the heads of these people? How would it benefit them to keep the sword of Damocles hanging over this guy's head instead of leaning into this beautiful moment of wow, wouldn't it feel great for me to have all the things that nip at my heels and all the crap from my past resolved and absolved and forgiveness to be poured out on me? I would really love the way that would feel too. No, instead, their attitude is that's not a thing, and it can't happen that way. And we're getting ready to fight and argue and even do something that once again is effectively calling for the death of the person who offered this forgiveness. So tomorrow I want to talk about that thought process and theorize a little bit about why they did it. And then after that, I want to take an angle on the text that is a little bit unusual for us. We don't always go this direction, but I want to just think a bit more about this concept of forgiveness versus the concept of willful gracelessness, of withholding forgiveness for the benefit of self, the benefit of a tribe, and just think about how this whole thing plays out with Jesus and the Bible and why the forgiveness deal really is the awesome part of the story, not the healing of the guy's legs. So we'll pick it up considering why these people wanted the sword of Damocles to linger longer for this man and why they were so mad at Jesus in the next episode, which happens right away. I'm Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. See you in a second.