Been a while...

I've not updated this blog in quite a while. About to go on maternity leave from my work as a pastor, I will not be preparing or preaching sermons for a while. I thought maybe I could catch up in the mean time on my posts.

So, here is Pentecost + 17:

Matthew 18:21-35
21Then 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?” 22Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. 23“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”


I use a study bible that gives every section or passage a heading. At the beginning of the 18th chapter of Matthew, the heading is “True Greatness.” I can’t help but think back to where we begin this chapter: a conversation among the disciples of Jesus about who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I have to imagine that they were hoping for a cushy spot pretty close to the greatest when they arrived there, and they set the tone for the rest of this chapter in which we get a discussion of conflict resolution, the humility of being great, and the parable of the shepherd who wouldn’t let even one sheep out of a hundred get lost from the rest of the flock. It’s a nice outline:
a. Humility: We enter faith with humility, realizing that we need God in our lives and that with God’s help and guidance, things can be and are far greater than we could ever accomplish on our own.
b. Temptation to sin: Then we are continually faced with the temptation to separate ourselves from God because we might like trying things on our own for a while better than relying upon God.
c. Extravagant love from God: We are reminded that even when we turn away and our love fails, the love of God never lets us go completely but seeks us wherever we are.
d. Learning to live with each other in peace: Then we must learn to accept that God’s love for us is mirrored and God’s love for others, and we must learn to live peaceably with each other, offering mercy when mercy is due, and holding each other accountable for how we live out our lives of faith.
e. Forgiveness and more forgiveness: And when we make mistakes, we are shown that forgiveness is the only true reconciliation and reconnection with each other and with God.
f. … and then unforgiveness: Here at the end of the chapter, Jesus tells another parable without such a happy ending as the Lost Sheep just a few verses before.

Forgiveness is a big deal. We use that word to describe many different situations in life. Fashion gurus talk about fabric that is forgiving when describing clothing that hides the parts of our bodies we’d rather the rest of the world didn’t notice. Insurance companies offer accident forgiveness so that our rates aren’t jacked up so high for so long. Several years ago the talk about forgiving the debts of developing countries was all the rage among the Group of 8 and the citizens of those nations. And there is the most often intended meaning of the word: to let go of anger toward another person or group when he, she, or they has caused you some offense. Jesus wants us to consider God as our model for forgiveness—the one who forgives us when we don’t deserve it, who has shown us in Christ that forgiveness of even the most vile misdeed is possible, and who desperately hopes we’ll catch on one day and truly start living a life oriented toward forgiveness of one another’s wrong-doing rather than searching for the way to benefit most from one another’s mistakes.

Both parts of our passage today demonstrate God-sized forgiveness. First, Peter—the rock of the church—asks Jesus how many times he should forgive another member of the church, a brother or sister, when he/she sins against him. I would have expected more from Peter. He’s the first among his peers; he knows exactly who and what Jesus is and isn’t afraid to say it…yet. In fact, he, himself, is often the recipient of forgiveness when he acts impetuously or out of fear before thinking through the implications of his actions. He’s a guy who would rather ask for forgiveness than permission. Knowing what we know about him, we might think he would be the first to step forward into the bold and extravagant act of offering others forgiveness. Yet he almost seems stingy here, or maybe resentful. Isn’t just accepting an apology or telling someone there are no hard feelings between you enough? Do we really have to make a big deal out of this forgiveness thing?

Jesus uses some code language in his response. Not just 7 times, but 77 times should you forgive someone who does you wrong. 7 being the perfect number and mentioned elsewhere with this connotation, Jesus tells Peter than feigning forgiveness just won’t cut it. You have to really mean it; and to mean it you have to work at it; and to work at it you have to follow God’s perfect example of forgiveness in your own life. It’s the whole “Do unto others…” concept.

But 77 is an extravagant number. At this point, Jesus is piling on his point about the generous love of God—the love that reaches out to children and other members of society whom the rest tend to forget; the love that seeks out those who wander or run away from the fold; the love that tries everything possible to reconcile a broken relationship; love that we are not used to practicing or receiving when you get right down to it.

I’ve always equated this passage with the idea of “forgive and forget.” I think this is an attractive idea for us when we are on the receiving end of forgiveness, but isn’t it so much harder to accomplish when we are the ones who have to forgive? That is the whole point of the parable he tells next. You have this guy, a slave to a king who probably owns quite a bit of wealth and property. Surely from time to time he had the opportunity to help his servants when they were in financial need. It was beneficial for him to do so because it kept them in his debt and gave them cause not to think of trying to become free of him. After all, were they to try and leave him, their debts would likely make it impossible for them to survive on their own. But for the king to forgive a debt in this kind of circumstance was unusual. The debt the king decided to forgive was enormous. A talent was worth more than 15 years’ wages of a laborer. That was some debt—probably accrued over a long period of time and hardly repay-able by a slave who earned little to nothing. When the king offers forgiveness for the debt, the slave can hardly believe it. Where did this kind of generosity come from? He did not deserve it, yet there it was for him to enjoy.

Isn’t it strange that he, then, chooses not to offer one of his debtors the same kind of generosity and relief? His debtor, his fellow slave, one who was in the same boat he had been in even offered the same plea he had offered the king: “Have patience with me, and I will repay you.” Yet he offers nothing to his debtor. And he didn’t get away with it, either. When the king got wind of it, he had the slave tortured until he would be able to repay his debt—a debt he would likely never be able to pay in full.

What does this say about models for forgiveness? If we liken God to the king, then we see at once an extravagant forgiving nature who, when we ask, is willing to do even the most ridiculous things for us. But we also see a God who will not accept our lack of that kind of love and grace toward each other. While I think the torture is best understood in the context of the hyperbole of the whole story, the fact that the king was so angered by his slave’s disregard of a fellow human being teaches us something about forgiveness: it’s not about us. It is about the relationship—between God and us, and among us.

We were made to need each other’s companionship through life. We were not made to be isolationists, yet we continue to grow farther and farther apart when we forget that forgiveness only truly works when it is both received and given. It feels good, doesn’t it, when you receive forgiveness? What does it feel like when you give it to someone else?

Receiving forgiveness is not our ultimate reward. When we are converted to the love of Christ, we recognize that God forgives the sin in which we live and move, and the relief we feel in those moments is real and strong. But it is not ultimate. The reward of forgiveness comes from offering it to someone else, even when they do not deserve it. It is the feeling that you are truly making a connection or reconnection with another human being, that your life is actually intertwined with the life of another, that you have something meaningful and powerful to give to someone else.

If we’re going to talk about who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, I think we’d better be careful of nominating ourselves to the position. We don’t deserve that title any more than anyone else does, but we can help each other move toward the kingdom of heaven by forgiving debts, letting an “I’m sorry” really mean something, and forgetting the past in favor of moving forward to a reconciled future. To hold on to resentment and anger only makes it harder for us in the long run. Jesus knew this was true and urged us not to live in that kind of state. The reward for forgiving your neighbor’s debts to you is getting to live a life free of greed or malice.

So who is the greatest? Ultimately it is the one who realizes that forgiveness, for it to be truly effective and transformative in this life, must be passed on to another.

What would you do? If your bank or credit card company decided to forgive your mortgage or consumer debt, would you still make your friend pay the 50 bucks he owes you from a few years ago when he doesn’t really have the money to pay? If someone close to you forgives you for breaking her heart, would you forgive a sister for breaking yours?

I challenge us today to think of forgiveness as complete only when we have both received it and offered it. I ask you to think about the times in your life when you have been forgiven, be thankful for those times, and let them be inspiration to you to find the dark places and broken relationships in your life that need your kind and generous offer of forgiveness. After all, being the body of Christ is about being whole, healing brokenness, and making sure no one is left to live alone in a life of sin without the understanding that there is another way.

Forgive and really forget, my friends. It is the way of Christ. It is the life we have been created to live. It is what will finally bring us into wholeness in the body of Christ.

Amen.