Sermon: Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 18:21-35, Sept. 17, 2023 + Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Sermon: Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Matthew 18:21-35, Sept. 17, 2023 + Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

I think you might agree with me that forgiving other – also forgiving ourselves – is one of the hardest things we human beings do in the course of our lifetimes. Isn’t that true?

We all know from our own experiences that the phrase “forgive and forget” is virtually impossible for us. We also know that forgiveness is made more difficult when those who have wronged us refuse to acknowledge their wrong-doing. And we likewise know that the failure to forgive, when we hold grudges, can eat away at us like a cancer and may cause us far more suffering than it’s worth.

Difficulties with forgiveness, seeking reconciliation, and restoration are an enormous burden for us individually and communally as a whole society. Witness, for example, the ongoing ravages of racism emerging from chattel slavery that existed in this country and the conundrum about what we do now to make amends.

The challenge of forgiveness is the confounding human reality of sin that today’s gospel reading seeks to address. Peter thought he was being generous when he said, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?

But then Jesus ups the ante quite a bit with his response to Peter: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Or in some older translations, 70X7, that is, 490 times. This is not about keeping score, because if you’re counting off the number of times you’re trying to forgive, you’re not really forgiving – especially from your heart. You’re playing a numbers game. So, when Jesus instructs Peter and us to forgive 77 times, he’s really saying that we are to engage in processes of forgiveness without an end point. We are called to do it countlessly.

And then Jesus tells the story of the unforgiving servant. In the parable, one of the king’s underlings – a middle manager, really – had squandered the kingdom’s resources to the tune of ten thousand talents. The biblical Greek word that translates ten thousand talents is “myriad” – which means countless.

In short, the servant’s debt to the king was incalculable. And yet the king had pity for him. This is the same kind of gut-wrenching compassion that Jesus had for the crowds who were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. So, the King released him from punishment and freed him from the obligation to try to pay back the debt of his mismanagement. This was an act of extraordinary generosity and grace.

Then you know what happens next. Immediately the forgiven servant encountered one of his underlings who owed him a far smaller debt, but which he nonetheless could not pay. And the forgiven servant showed no mercy and threw his debtor into jail. This, of course enraged all the other servants who told the king who in his rage threw the forgiven servant into prison to be tortured, saying “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” 

Then we have this zinger of a concluding statement in Matthew: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive each other from your heart.”

Not only are we called upon to forgive each other, but to do so from your heart, which in the biblical Greek implies and involves: our soul, mind, intelligence, passions, desires, appetites, affections, will, character, and more. In short, to be commanded to forgive from the heart involves every fiber of our being in the deepest of places.

What we have in this story about the king and the wicked, unforgiving servant is an elaboration on that petition from the Lord’s Prayer which we pray every day: “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” And we learn from Matthew’s recollection of Jesus’ teaching that there’s literally hell to pay if we don’t forgive others as we have been forgiven – and to do this forgiving from our heart, from the deepest of places of who we are.

Well, where does that leave us? We’re essentially being called upon by Matthew’s Jesus to do the impossible, with the threat of divine judgment hanging over our heads. And that’s the whole tenor of the Jesus revealed by Matthew – an exacting teacher who makes extraordinary, impossible demands on his disciples. Remember from the Sermon on the Mount: if you even look with lust at someone, you commit adultery; and if you’re angry with someone, it amounts to murder. The demands of Jesus in Matthew are relentless and it’s absolutely impossible for us perfectly, completely, to keep these commandments. That’s the bad news.

But if we read just a little further in Matthew’s Gospel into chapter 19, we get some good news. In response to the story about the rich young man when Jesus taught that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to be included in God’s dominion, Jesus’ exasperated disciples asked: “Then who can be saved?” That’s when finally, Jesus makes the statement that is the heart of the whole gospel narrative up to this point as far as I’m concerned: “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” (cf. Matthew 19:23-26) That is to say, we cannot save ourselves. It is God who saves us. Christ does what we cannot do.

That’s the gospel punch line. Where does all of this leave us in our impossible situation in relation to the command to forgive and to forgive and to forgive? Again, yes, it leaves us with the painful reality of the impossibility of our situation as mortals. But it also leaves us in the arms of a lavishly merciful and loving God in Christ for whom all things are possible.

It leaves us with the king who in response to myriads, countless, transgressions, nonetheless has pity on us, gut-wrenching, heart felt compassion. If we cannot forgive from the heart, from the deepest of places of the divine heart, God in Christ can and does forgive us.

Which is the whole point of where the gospel story in Matthew (and, for that matter, the other Gospels) is headed – to Jerusalem where on the cross Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)

Thus, we’re back in a state of grace. But we’re still called to seek to forgive others, as difficult as it may continue to be for us. Maybe the command to forgive 77 times, that is, endlessly, is graciously given to us precisely because of the impossibility of our situation in seeking to forgive others and ourselves. Maybe we need countless chances to begin to approximate the radical extent of God’s forgiving love toward us that comes from the very heart of God. We love because God first loved us (cf. 1 John 4:19). The corollary is this: we forgive, because God has first forgiven us.

Thus, we are not left to our individual selves to continue to undertake the exceedingly hard work of forgiveness. We are not adrift on our own. We have Christ’s presence here in our place of weekly Sunday assembly. Christ is here in word and sacrament in fulfillment of what he promised at the very end of Matthew’s Gospel: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20b)

Every time we come here it’s like going to the gym or going back to school as disciples of Christ for the weekly refresher course on how to seek to forgive others and ourselves. Christ, our coach, Christ, our teacher, is here to show us the way.

Here in this place, for example, we heard again the story of Joseph and his brothers whom he forgave even after the horrible things they did to him. And Joseph was able to forgive them because of God’s greater plan. As we heard in today’s first reading in Genesis as Joseph reassured his brothers: “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as God is doing today.” (Genesis 50:19-20). Thus, we learn from the story of Joseph of old how to forgive in the power of God’s mercy.

And we learn humility from the apostle Paul, a humility which serves the work of forgiveness. Here’s the wisdom from Paul from today’s second reading in Romans: “Who are you to pass judgment on… another?... For we do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s…. Why [then] do you pass judgment on your sibling? Or you, why do you despise your sibling? For we all stand before the judgment seat of God.” (Romans 14:4, 7-8, 10)

In short, humility serves the work of forgiving. Hearing again and again these bible stories and seeing the examples of the saints, we are helped in the forgiving work entrusted to us, and required of us.

Our Sunday worship, then, becomes dress rehearsal for the forgiving and reconciling work we are called upon to do in the wider world, in our own communal contexts.

When we receive absolution here, we are emboldened to leave here to seek to forgive others. When we share the peace with one another, we are trained and formed to be able to share that peace of Christ with others beyond this place. When we come to this table, we receive the nourishment of Christ’s very self to become more lovingly and mercifully Christ-like in all of our interactions out there in the community.

So, we have our marching orders – to forgive as we have been forgiven. You know the ones you are called upon to forgive. If you think for a moment, you can name their names. It may be someone in your family, among neighbors, co-workers, or other members of the church. It could well be yourself whom you need to forgive. It may be a concern of our whole society – involving the sins of racism, sexism, homophobia, and more.

I encourage you to reach out to the people in your mind and heart, and reach out to yourself, and address our whole society, when you leave this place to seek to do what God in Christ commands – to forgive from your heart, from the deepest places.

But be assured that you’re not alone in this hard work – you leave this place with the presence of Christ within you, and among us, the very one who has gut-wrenching compassion for you and the whole human race, who on the cross carried the weight of our transgressions and yet forgave us.

From the heart of God in Christ we have what we need to seek to forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive – from the heart. Thanks be to God. Amen.