Welcome to Resurrection Parish, and thank you for joining us for the second week in our message series, “Cornerstones.” For the next several weeks we are going to be looking at some of the foundations of our Faith, and how we live them here in our parish.
Last week, we talked about the importance of Love. The mission of the Church, and our parish, is to love God, love others and make disciples. Love precedes and comes before growth and success. If an organization is successful and making an impact, it is because people have loved it to that point.
Today we are going to look at another important foundation of our Faith by looking at the parable from the Gospel of St. Matthew which we just heard. St. Matthew writes: “Then Peter approaching asked him, ‘Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?’” (Matthew 18:21).
Peter thinks he is being very generous here because rabbis taught forgiveness should be extended three times. After that, you had no obligation to forgive another. But Jesus says it isn’t generous enough. “Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.’” (Matthew 18:22).
Now Jesus doesn’t mean on the 491st time you don’t forgive. Rather he means there is no limit to the number of times you forgive. Forgiveness is to be a habit with no limits.
Then Jesus tells a story, which was his very favorite way to teach. The story of a master who decided to settle the debts of his servants. In those times, there was no payment schedule and there was no such thing as bankruptcy. If you owed money and your debtor wanted the money back, they could simply demand it and you had to pay it or go to jail.
“When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt” (Matthew 18:24-25). So the very first debt is from a servant who owes the king a ridiculously huge amount. This would be like saying you or I owed billions of dollars.
“At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me and I will pay you back in full’” (Matthew 18:26).
“I’ll pay you back in full.” As ridiculous and absurd a promise as the amount itself. Jesus continues, “Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan” (Matthew 18:27).
So out of pure mercy, the master forgave the debt. That’s what forgiveness is. It is simply canceling the debt. The Master didn’t say to pay it off the best he could. Instead out of grace and at a personal loss he cancelled the debt. Through no merit of his own and for no other reason than the Master’s kindness and mercy the servant is freed from his enormous debt.
If the story ended here it would be a happy one; but Jesus’ stories often have surprising twists and turns; and this one is no exception; “When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe’” (Matthew 18:28).
So this servant finds himself in a similar situation as his master, but much different in degree. He finds a fellow servant who owes him money – and demands payment: the scene plays out as before. “Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back’” (Matthew 18:29).
The fellow servant says exactly what the guy said to his master. Except this promise of repayment was a reasonable one: he owed roughly three months wages of the average working man. But he refused. Instead, he had his fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt.
The hypocrisy is arresting. Generosity is paid forward with cruelty. There may not be anything as infuriating as seeing someone who has been treated with mercy and grace refusing to extend it to others.
The parable continues, “Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’” (Matthew 18:31-33).
It’s not a question of his forgetting the grace and mercy he himself received, it’s a question of his failing to incorporate these blessings into his heart. We can actually receive grace and blessings and it makes absolutely no difference. Just like people who receive communion every Sunday and they’re the same miserable people after Mass as they were before Mass.
Now in a parable, someone is usually God and someone is usually us: Jesus wants us to see in ourselves one of the characters, and it isn’t always the hero. In fact, it often isn’t. Often he creates a character who does something absurd or makes a decision we can’t understand to highlight our own absurdity. At the end Jesus makes it clear who is who. He says, “So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart” (Matthew 18:35).
Until we forgive from our heart, we’re subjecting ourselves to a form of torture, a kind of prison of our own making.
Along with teaching us about forgiveness, Jesus teaches us something about who we are, about our spiritual reality that life tends to obscure, a truth about ourselves that we don’t see easily. I am that servant who owed a huge debt I could not repay. You are the servant who owed a huge debt you could not pay. That is your reality. That is my reality before God. We owed God a debt we could not pay. We owe God the whole of our lives and all of our devotion because he created us and has given us everything else besides.
We have fallen short of that devotion creating that debt and God in his mercy and grace has cancelled it. He paid the debt by sending his Son who died on the cross. That’s Grace.
We all need grace. Grace is a gift. You can’t buy it, you can’t earn it, you can’t pay it back. You can only pay it forward. And the Church was established to be the primary place where that happens.
Christians should be the most accepting people because we should remember that God accepted us when we were unacceptable. If Churches aren’t careful, we can become self-righteous. And they become self-righteous in all kinds of ways: left and right; conservative and liberal. But we cannot forget that every single one of us is in need of grace. The moment we forget that as a parish, the moment that leaves our culture, we have lost our purpose.
This is an imperfect church for imperfect people. If you’re a perfect person, you’re in the wrong parish. You need to go to…another parish. People who know they need God’s grace,
extend grace to others.
Our job as a church is to make the message of grace evident. That of course begins with our teaching and preaching. But it doesn’t stop here in the pulpit, it must be extended to every single person who walks thru those front doors regardless of ethnicity, political persuasion, sexual orientation, personal history, past mistakes, hair color.
We’ve got to take that message of grace and apply it, increasingly, to the whole of our lives, and all our relationships and associations. Treating others as God has treated us. The Church is most appealing when grace is most apparent. The church is most effective when the message of grace is most evident.