Sermon for the 15th Sunday after Trinity.
Romans 14: 1 – 12
Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarrelling over disputable matters. 2 One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3 The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
5 One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind. 6 Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. 8 If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
10 You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written:
“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge God.’”
12 So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
Matthew 18: 21 – 35
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
“Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Good old Peter, always willing to speak up when others keep quiet. People like Peter get conversations started. His question may have more wisdom in it than some have assumed. Is he trying to put a numerical cap on forgiveness, or is he alluding to the biblical symbolism of the number ‘seven’ meaning completeness, as in the seven days of creation?
So either he is trying to set an arbitrary cap on forgiveness, and Jesus corrects him by saying, “seventy-seven times”, which also can sound like an arbitrary cap to the literal minded, or perhaps Peter is saying we should forgive completely, and Jesus is affirming this by saying seventy seven times – that is complete completeness.
We have grown very literal minded since the first century, to us a number can mean only one thing, the ancients were rather more creative in their thinking. Whatever the case, the message is we should forgive. The parable that Jesus tells in response to Peter’s question tells us that we should forgive others because God has forgiven us.
The story is of a servant who owes much to a King, an impossibly high amount, and is forgiven that debt, yet that same servant then refuses to forgive the little he is owed by a fellow servant. The King calls him in, “‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’”
That we should forgive as we have been forgiven is a central theme of Jesus’ teaching, remember we pray, ‘forgive us our sins, as we forgive others.’
What are we being asked to do when we are told in the bible that we must forgive?
To say that what was done was not wrong?
Well, clearly it was wrong, else there would be no need to forgive. So it can’t be that.
To say that what was done didn’t matter?
Well, clearly it does matter or there wouldn’t be an issue. So it can’t be that.
To say that what was done was excusable?
The wrong may have been motivated by carelessness, or error, or desperation, or weakness, or any number of mitigating circumstances we might have sympathy for, but it remains a wrong. The motive for a wrong doing may be understandable, but that does not make it excusable. So it can’t be that either. Neither can it be to say that it didn’t hurt, or have destructive consequences, or that the pain caused will pass.
When the bible asks us to forgive, we are being asked to forgive the inexcusable, to forgive that which hurt and caused destruction, to forgive that which is wrong and done on purpose, to forgive something that really matters.
Why would God ask us to do that?
If God is fool enough to forgive us, why should we be fool enough to forgive others?
Even if God has forgiven the inexcusable in us, even if He has forgiven the hurt and destruction we have caused, even if He has forgiven the wrong we have purposefully done, and has forgiven us the even wrongs that really matter, why should we then follow His way?
Perhaps the unforgiving servant had a point, perhaps the King was a chump?
Why should we let those who have wronged us off the hook?
A man one day was walking beside the river, he noticed a fisherman casting from the shallows, so he walked a little further from the water’s edge. The fisherman was not so careful, he thoughtlessly carried on casting and thus the hook caught into the passer-by’s flesh – right into his neck. It was exceedingly painful. The fisherman showed no regret. Incensed, the passer-by refused to let the fisherman off the hook, he let it stay there in his flesh. The fisherman just cut the line, threaded up another hook, and went back to fishing. After a while the passer-by had to walk on, yet still he tended his fury and left in place the hook that would slowly poison him, because to forgive would be to let him off the hook.
Listen to this from Desmond Tutu, “Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously and not minimizing it; drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens to poison our entire existence…Forgiving means abandoning your right to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin, but it is a loss that liberates the victim.” He said this in the context of the horrors committed in South Africa under Apartheid.
Forgiveness offers the hope of personal healing, and the potential for reconciliation.
Not to forgive offers nothing, other than the break down of relationships, and the engraining of self-destructive bitterness into the human soul.
If you think forgiveness is hard and painful, try not forgiving.
If you think forgiveness is foolish, look in the mirror and ask ‘who is the fool?’
God forgives us because it is His nature to do so. God is love. That’s what the bible says.
We are created in love. We are redeemed in love. We are sustained in love.
When we do not forgive as we have been forgiven we turn our backs on that love, and our world becomes a darker, colder place.
The danger is if we set limits on our forgiveness, if we say ‘how many times must I forgive’? Then we set limits on what we imagine God will forgive in us.
As we heard in Romans, “You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.”
By the measure we use to others, we measure out to ourselves. We end up not receiving God’s forgiveness because we judge Him by our poor standards.
As the old hymn says,
“…we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal God will not own.
For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.”
The love of God is broader than the measures of our mind, and of our constricted compassion, infinitely broader.
How do I know that?
Jesus descended from the infinite heights of heaven to the finite depths of this world, confining his heavenly glory within the constrained bonds of a human body, and lived as our brother so that we might see how much God loves us. He even went to the cross, and to the grave, so that we might see sufficient of the infinite love of God to know that we are forgiven and accepted.
The measure of God’s mercy is infinite because the measure is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.”
Forgiveness need not mean there is no justice. Forgiveness need not mean that evil is allowed to flourish. Forgiveness means there is the possibility of healing, or to use the biblical word – salvation.
God has forgiven the inexcusable in us. He bids us to go and sin no more, and to offer His freely offered forgivingness to others. To live according to the Spirit in love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, and when we fall short, to turn to Him once again, in the knowledge that His love and forgiveness is infinite.
