First Reading: Genesis 50:15-21
15When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” 16So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this command before he died: 17‘Say to Joseph, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.”’ And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 18His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” 19But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? 20As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. 21So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.
Psalm 103:1-12
1Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. 2Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. 3He forgives all your sins and heals all your infirmities; 4He redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and lovingkindness; 5He satisfies you with good things, and your youth is renewed like an eagle’s. 6The Lord executes righteousness and judgment for all who are oppressed. 7He made his ways known to Moses and his works to the children of Israel. 8The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness. 9He will not always accuse us, nor will he keep his anger forever. 10He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our wickedness. 11For as the heavens are high above the earth, so is his mercy great upon those who fear him. 12As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.
Second Reading: Romans 14:1-12
1As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. 4Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8For 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. 9For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. 10Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11for it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” 12So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.
Gospel: Matthew 18:21-35
21Peter came up and said to {Jesus}, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times. 23Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. 28But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 31When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. 32Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Forgiven but Unforgiving
Today’s reading from St. Matthew’s gospel is one that should be very familiar to everyone. In this passage, St. Peter asks Jesus a question, and Jesus responds with a comparison. Peter is asking about forgiveness and the way the story is presented it seems that Peter wants a limit to be set on how many times he must forgive a brother. As usual Jesus turns the expectation on its head and tells Peter in essence, there is no limit to forgiveness. For the average Christian, this is where we begin to run into trouble. Unlimited forgiveness is something we expect from God, but when it comes to us extending that same unlimited mercy, we begin to have reservations.
All of us want to be forgiven every time we ask. This expectation is true when we confess our sins and when we ask for forgiveness from our neighbor. But when it comes to us forgiving our neighbor, we’re too often more like Peter, we want a limit. We want boundaries, we want to know the exceptions. This of course comes from our desire to cling to grudges, to get revenge, and to generally hold something over someone who has wronged us. But Jesus will have none of that, we are commanded to forgive as generously as our heavenly Father forgives us. Jesus made this very clear on more than one occasion.
This is why we need to hear our readings for this morning within the framework of two additional statements Jesus made. The first statement is one we quote each week, and it comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, it’s one we recite anytime we say the Lord’s Prayer: “forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins of others” (Matthew 6:12). We pray this prayer weekly, (hopefully more often than that) but the majority of us want to rationalize this passage in a variety of ways. The second statement Jesus made comes right after the “Lord’s Prayer.”
It’s a passage less familiar to us and one we generally want to ignore: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matthew 6:14-15). This is a statement Jesus will restate at the end of our gospel reading, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (vs. 35). It’s also important to note that Jesus followed this declaration about forgiveness up in the very next chapter with a statement on judgement.
Starting in chapter 7 verse 1, Jesus continued, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (vss. 1-5). Again, I believe we must consider our gospel lesson for today within the framework of all these verses. This brings us back to Peter and his question.
As with so many of the stories of Jesus, the parable of the debtors arose out of a question posed to Him. In our gospel lesson for this morning, Peter asks Jesus, “Master, if my brother sins against me, how many times should I forgive him? Seven times? Even as he asks that question, I couldn’t help but think about kids and how they will sometimes confess something they did wrong, expecting to get praise for being honest.
In the same sense, Simon Peter, by asking this question, isn’t expecting rebuke but praise. According to Jewish law, Peter had the right to think that he had done something above and beyond. Rabbinical law read: “If a man transgresses one time, forgive him. If a man transgresses two times, forgive him. If a man transgresses three times, forgive him. If a man transgresses four times, do not forgive him.” What Peter has done is to take this law of limited forgiveness, multiply it by two, add one, and then sit back and consider himself a righteous Jew. You can imagine his surprise when Jesus tells him, not seven times but you must forgive seventy times seven. Then Jesus proceeded to tell a story.
There was a certain king who called in his servants to settle their accounts. He found one who owed him 10,000 talents and, because he couldn’t pay, orders him thrown into jail and his wife and children sold into slavery. In an amazing turn of events, in response to the man’s pleas, he forgives him the entire debt. You’ve heard the debt comparisons before, the man’s debt was literally unpayable. We must consider how this man should have responded. The debt would have condemned him to life in prison; his wife and children sold into slavery. The servant’s response should have been elation. But as Jesus continues, we find the mercy extended wasn’t shared.
In response, the forgiven servant goes to a fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii, a miniscule sum by comparison, and demands payment. The second servant pleads for extra time, but the forgiven servant refused to hear the pleas of the second servant and had him thrown into jail. The story gets back to the king who was understandably enraged. He calls in the forgiven servant and said that because of his unforgiving spirit, his original debt was reinstated and he was now to be thrown into jail.
The message here to Peter, and those listening, is you can be forgiven; forgiven even for the sins so enormous that they can never be repaid, but forgiveness comes at a price. We are forgiven as we forgive others. Remember Jesus’ words at the end of the prayer Jesus taught the disciples, “if you do not forgive the sins of your brother, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you”, and “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” These are hard words to hear, and even harder words to live by, but Jesus is clear, we must forgive as generously as we are forgiven. As I mentioned before we are more like Peter than we want to admit.
In this conversation, Jesus is telling Peter, yes, you can be forgiven, forgiven countless times, but you’re asking the wrong question. Peter begins this conversation by asking, Master, how many times must I forgive? Jesus responds, Peter, how many times have you been forgiven? Jesus is asking Peter, and us, if I can forgive unlimited sin, if I can forgive a debt that you are incapable of repaying, why can you forgive the small debts of others? St. Paul addressed this in his letter to the Ephesians, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you (4:32).
It’s a story I’ve told before but it’s one that bears retelling. A Parochial School teacher asked the her class a question, “who knocked down the wall of Jericho?” No one answered, so she called on Billy. “Billy, who knocked down the wall of Jericho?” “Why are you asking me? I didn’t do it and I don’t know who did; and besides, if I did know I don’t rat on people,” was his reply. The teacher, angered by Billy’s curt answer, takes Billy to the superintendent who was drinking coffee in the lounge. “Mr. Archer, Billy refuses to tell me who broke down the wall of Jericho. I demand that he be disciplined.”
To this demand the superintendent replied, “Calm down, Jenny. If something on the church grounds has been broken, it’s a matter for the Trustees to investigate. I think they’re meeting this morning in the Luther Room. Take the matter to them and they will take care of it.” Off to the Trustees meeting went the teacher with Billy in tow. After hearing her complaint, the head of Trustees tried to soothe the by-now fuming teacher. “Jenny, its okay. I’m sure the thing was about ready to fall apart anyway. Besides, there’s plenty of funding available in our endowment account to replace the darn thing.”
It’s obvious from the story, that everyone, even the teacher has missed the point of the original question, but the response from the superintendent and the trustees, even though they weren’t aware of the point, was that there is forgiveness even if we knock down the wall of Jericho. The second thing Jesus wants His followers to understand is that forgiveness also comes to us with an obligation.
The King was owed 10,000 talents, a sum that would take thousands of years to repay. The point Jesus is making is that there was no way the debt could be settled. Jesus was driving home the point that “God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (vs. 8). I hope you recognize those words from Psalm 103!
Let me ask you this, have you ever thought that Jesus didn’t have to end the parable of the prodigal son the way that he did? It’s a familiar parable.
We know that as the prodigal comes home, the elder son is jealous and sulks. But what if, instead of going to the prodigal first, the Father had gone to the elder son first. What if he had said something to him like this: “Look, your brother has come back and frankly I don’t know what to make of it. He looks like death warmed over and maybe there’s a chance that he has finally comes to his senses. So, with your approval, I am going to take him back as a hired servant and give him a chance to prove himself. I tell you what, we’ll not make a big deal out of this. We’ll play this low key and see just how much he has matured. As far as anybody else is concerned, he’s just another servant. But I think that you’ll agree that this is the least that we can do for him. Keep an eye on him.”
If that had been the way Jesus chose to end the parable, would the elder brother have been as offended as he was in Jesus true ending? I doubt it. He probably would have reacted completely differently. From a purely humanistic perspective, it would have been a logical way of handling things. And this is the point I’m making. God’s unlimited forgiveness isn’t always logical. It doesn’t make sense from a sinful human point of view. Unlimited mercy comes with a price. As inheritors of God’s kingdom, we are expected to extend forgiveness as generously as God does. But this isn’t always the case with us, is it?
The truth is, all too often the times we think that we’ve forgiven someone hasn’t been real forgiveness at all. It may have been a condescending toleration, or a quick dismissal, or a cheap kind of pity. True forgiveness isn’t as easy as we’d like to think. This is why Jesus concluded our reading with the words “forgive from the heart.” Forgiveness from the heart means a complete wiping out of the debt. No caveats, no provisos, no stipulations, a clean slate. King David explains it best in Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Our extending forgiveness to others is perhaps one of the tests of our spiritual maturity.
In the story of the prodigal son, the younger son is welcomed back not as a servant but as an equal. The elder son isn’t given any special treatment at all. The father’s reaction cut him deeply. Too often we put conditions on forgiveness. Things such as, “I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget.” “Don’t tell me that my need for forgiveness is the same as his, because I know there’s a difference.” “Let the record show that I am the forgiver and he is the forgiven. I have the moral high ground. I will forgive him as long as he understands that he is not really restored to a full relationship with me.”
When the king forgives his servant the unpayable debt, Jesus is saying that the servant is restored to full relationship. No strings attached. Why would the servant return, if there were no world worth returning to? God shows us unlimited grace, but He wants us to understand that there is a cost: in receiving forgiveness we are expected to forgive others just as generously. The final point of this parable is found in the actions of the one forgiven. He goes out to a colleague and demands immediate repayment of a paltry amount of money. Having been forgiven, he refuses to forgive. Unforgiveness brings a penalty.
The King finds out about what has happened and he again summons the servant before him. We must be careful about how we handle this whole subject of forgiveness, because one day our life is going to be exposed. St. Paul in our epistle reading gets right to the point, “we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written, “As I live says the Lord, every knee will bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So then each of us will give an account of himself to God” (Romans 14:10-11). We must all give an account of any unforgiven sin. And before you begin to rationalize your actions, remember Jesus’ words, if you do not forgive the sins of your brother, neither will my heavenly Father forgive you.”.
Jesus went to the cross to pay the price we could never pay, to forgive the debt that we cannot. In Jesus’ story today He tells Simon Peter, be generous with forgiveness, as generous as I am with you. I tell you don’t forgive 7 times, forgive 70 x 7. Please don’t get hung up in the numbers, Jesus was deliberately exaggerating to illustrate a point, we need to be as generous with giving forgiveness as we are at receiving it. Once we understand the depth of our own sin, then we will forever be motivated to forgiveness.
In Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables, Jean Valjean served a 19-year sentence for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s family. Finally, he’s set free. A Bishop is the only one who will befriend the embittered man. Valjean rewards him by stealing some of his silver. He’s caught red-handed by the police. The Bishop is called to the police station to prefer charges. Instead of doing that, he brings Valjean his silver candlestick holders in an effort to fool the police into thinking that Valjean had not stolen. Valjean is forever changed.
Valjean extends grace to an orphan child and raises her as his own. He forgives the police man who wanted to put him back in jail. Finally, he dies, holding in his hand the two candlesticks that the bishop gave him. What is it that so completely changed this embittered man? He learned to extend mercy, because mercy had been extended to him. Every time we enter this sanctuary, we have 3 ever-present reminders of the forgiveness that has been extended to us; the cross, the font, and the altar. With these reminders always before us, in the name of the One who has forgiven you a debt which you cannot possibly repay, forgive others.
Amen