Transcription
15 through 21. When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, what if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him? So they sent word to Joseph saying, your father left these instructions before he died. This is what you are to say to Joseph. I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they have committed in treating you so badly. Now please forgive the sins of the servants of God of your father. When the message came to him, Joseph wept. His brothers came and threw themselves down before him. We are your slaves, they said. But Joseph said to them, don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of your God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the savings of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children. And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.
And our new lesson from the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew chapter 18, verses 21 through 35. Hear God’s word this morning. Then 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? Jesus said to him, not seven times, but I tell you, 77 times. For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. And as he could not pay, his Lord ordered him to be sold together with his wife and children and all his possessions and the payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him saying, have patience with me and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the Lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that 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. Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me and I will pay you. But he refused. Then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and they went and reported to their Lord all that had taken place. Then his Lord summoned him and said to him, you wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave as I had mercy on you? And in anger, the Lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my Heavenly Father will also do everything one of you, for one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart. This is the word of the Lord.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, we thank you. We thank you for your grace, your love, and your compassion. For all the ways that we are able to live and be and to serve you. That we are able to do so because of you. We ask that your word would guide our hearts and our minds so that we would live out the gospel every day. So that we would be your servants in every possible way. Gracious God, hear our prayer. Amen.
Last week, we chatted a little bit about how the church is supposed to maintain communion and relationship. If one of us sins against another, we don’t jump to another county and start worshiping there. We go to one another and we heal what is broken. We follow a flowchart given to us by Jesus. But of course, this leaves us with a hanging question. What do we do? How often do we experience this grace and forgiveness? How many times do we do so before we wash our hands of someone? This might sound a little harsh in its basic principles, but this is what we do. We look at how often we have to forgive and then we say, you know what, I’ve forgiven you enough. And walk away. And the question is, how many times is enough? How many times must we forgive? How many times do we deal with this? And Peter thinks he’s got the right answer. And like I said to the kids, I love Peter because he is going to throw that comment out that’s going to spark the conversation. If Peter has a question, he is going to ask it. And so what does he do? He does that thing I used to do with school. And he goes up to Jesus and says, how much do I have to do, Jesus, to get that A? Oh, no. How many times do I have to forgive Andrew, James, and John? How many times do I have to forgive Mary Magdalene? How many times do I have to forgive your mother, Jesus? Because yes, she was one of the followers. How many times do I? And in some ways, it might feel like you’re sitting down and wondering how much work you have to do for Mr. Peter’s honors ninth grade history class to be able to get through. But it’s far much more complicated than just that, because there is no minimum, as Jesus says. At the root here is not patience, but it is grace. It is grace and how much we give of that grace. Should we forgive someone who insults us, hurts us on an almost daily basis? Yes, yes.
But part of that grace also involves us healing ourselves and forgiving them. Grace is a two way street healing the relationship both with those who have been hurt, but those who are hurting. It is a two way road. And here’s where Peter’s question really resonates from. The rabbis, the religious leaders of Jesus’ time had said, guess what? You only have to forgive your brother three times. Well, like I said, my brother would have hit that marker by about end of cereal bowl in the morning. Now, they took this from the idea in Amos that God forgives us only three times, only three transgressions, but not the fourth. And we cannot be more grace filled than God. But here’s the thing. That’s a misinterpretation of Amos. For as we see and as we know, God doesn’t just forgive three times. God forgives and God forgives and God forgives.
So here we have this former teaching, this older teaching. And yes, we could we could notice that this concept, this interpretation by the rabbis has more holes than Swiss cheese. Yes. But that’s where Peter’s question comes from. Because here’s Jesus talking about grace and forgiveness and restoring relationships. And Peter says, I was always taught that three was the number. How about I go more? I’ll go bigger. I will go the extra mile, Jesus. I’ll go all the way to seven. But then Jesus says, no, Peter, seventy seven or seven times seven. It’s a limitless amount, it’s a non tracking amount. And it goes back to an opposite moment. See, back in Genesis four, twenty four, a gentleman named Lamech states that if Cain is avenged seven fold, see that seven again, Peter’s seven truly Lamech. Seventy seven fold or seven times seven fold. So in Genesis, we have this discussion of revenge that involves these numbers. And now Jesus is saying, oh, no, you will not be avenged. You will be forgiving that much. Jesus takes the opposite approach to vengeance. He is undoing the vengeance. And then he tells us this great parable.
Now, what we run into with this parable is the money involved, right? Last time I checked, Ulster Savings doesn’t take talents at the window. So we have to translate a little bit into what and how much a talent is. And guess what? It gets even more complicated because there are talents of gold because a talent is a weight. And there are talents of silver, so we’ll keep it easy, easy. We’re talking biblical money figures and it gets a little weird and say it’s a talent of silver. So one talent of silver in your hand. So like a pound of silver and it’s roughly valued at. And this is when I wrote the sermon. And of course, markets fluctuate. So give me a little grace there. Twenty seven thousand per talent. So one talent equals twenty seven thousand dollars. So multiply. I know I’ve got you doing math in worship and I’m sorry. Multiply all of that by the sheer debt of this gentleman. And you have a slave owing his master two hundred and seventy million dollars. Don’t ask the question of how a slave incurs that amount of debt. It’s a parable. Let the parable be the parable.
So you have the one slave who owes this exorbitant amount of money that I’m sure all of us would like to be repaid, right? And he falls down onto his knees and begs the master to forgive his debt. And the master does. But then what does he do as he’s leaving? He sees his own debtor. His own debtor who owes him a hundred denarii. Now, one denarii was one day’s wage. You work all day, you get one denarii or one denarius. So a hundred denarii was a hundred day’s wages. So we’ll take and say it’s a hundred and fifty dollars for one day’s work. We’ll call that good. And we’ll figure out that he owes roughly fifteen thousand dollars. Two hundred and seventy million and fifteen thousand. In other words, this gentleman who’s trying to collect the debt that he owes the king somehow for even though it’s been forgiven. He needs eighteen thousand debtors owing a similar amount to be able to pay off that debt. Is he going to be able to collect it? Does he have eighteen thousand debtors out there? The reality here is you have one man who has this massive level of debt and he is forgiven that. And in the same moment as he’s leaving this moment of forgiveness, what happens? His very small debt that he is owed, this almost insignificant by comparison debt, he throws the man into jail. He throws him into jail to be tortured. There’s no comparison of these two. The king is so grace filled, so wondrous and lavishing in his wonder of grace. And this one slave is trying to bleed a stone. It’s so sad, but it’s not about dollars and cents in reality. And as Jesus explains it to us, God, of course, is the king. God is the one who is owed that exorbitant amount, the amount of our sins, the amount of our transgressions. And guess what? God has forgiven us. God has given us grace upon grace upon grace upon grace. That 270 million, every one of us probably is incurred in terms of owing God and God’s grace. And you know what? God doesn’t keep a tally. There is no tally for all of us. There is simply only one thing, a five letter word of grace. But it is an amazing thing because it is something that we are called to respond to. And see, this is where things go off the rails for this slave, because after he has been forgiven, he does not forgive. And so when we are forgiven, are we called to be like this slave or are we called to be like God and forgive? Are we called to move forward and love one another and give grace upon grace upon grace in a continuous manner? Yes. Yes, we are. We are called to have grace overflowing from us.
Now, we are not God. But we can try and be like God. Too often, stories like the one I’m about to share happen. And it is our job as God’s people to move against the flow of this story. So my great uncle passed away when I was going through my final days of seminary. He died tragically during a massive hundred year storm, washed away in a stream. He either had a heart attack and collapsed and that caused it or he had got swept up in his waders and that caused it. At his funeral, the minister, the priest asked if anybody would like to share a story. And at his funeral, my great aunt stands up and says, I got a story to tell. And she brings up this 60 plus year old grudge, this terrible moment where her brother, if you have a sibling, don’t laugh. Her brother yelled at her once, 60 years ago. And at his funeral, she held on to this grudge for so long, she aired it at the funeral. And that is so often what we do. We hold on to things, we hold on to a lack of grace. But grace is too life-giving for us to do that.
I can imagine how great that moment would have been if Aunt Barb had stood up and said, years ago, my brother hurt me. But then we had this great moment where I sat down with him and I talked to him and I told him I forgave him for yelling at me. And we hugged. And it was this wonderful moment where my brother and I were healed together. The choice is clear for us. Will we experience grace and the healing and the love that it brings or will we hold on to a lack of grace, a lack of compassion, a lack of forgiveness and let it eat away at our hearts for years upon years? Brothers and sisters, Christ calls us to live grace. He calls us to be givers of grace. And so, my brothers and sisters, let us experience and give the grace that God has given us. Amen.
And now, children of God, let us respond to him.