Unceasing Forgiveness

15th Sunday after Pentecost

Today's Readings: Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Siblings in Christ, we have been given an immeasurable gift. We profess and trust in Christ, God incarnate, who lived, died, and rose again for the salvation of the world. We can never fully grasp the magnitude of what our God has done. The love and grace God extends to us is unconditional and impossible to calculate. But oh do we try. For centuries the Church has tried to set boundaries on the boundless. Our human minds are constantly working to make sense of things, even intangible things like love, faith, grace, and salvation. We want so badly to be able to fit our lives into a neat and tidy little box to be tied up nice and pretty with a bow.. we desire this so much so that we extend this need to God. Yet God constantly blows the top off of our boxes, refusing to let us pin down the Spirit, and challenging us to expand our horizons.

In our gospel reading this morning we hear Peter ask Jesus how many times we should forgive. He needs to be able to measure out his forgiveness and wonders if once a day might be acceptable – I think we can all understand how it certainly could seem reasonable to him. Yet Jesus of course says no – not seven times, but seventy-seven. And before Peter can even groan and ask why, Jesus shares a parable, an example. Why should we forgive seventy-seven times? Because that is the forgiveness God offers to us.

I can also just hear in my head Peter’s resistance, “77 times?! How will I ever keep track!?” To which Jesus might have responded, “Ah yes, that is precisely the point.” For centuries there has been a strand of the Church pumping out this vision of God as a Lord who sits above us on a throne tallying up our sins, quantifying our debt and making sure we pay it off before we enter heaven’s gate. Yet if this were true we would all go before the throne with insurmountable debt, like the slave in Jesus’ parable; we would have debt so large selling ourselves and our families into slavery would still take generations to repay! Yet like the king in the parable, God forgives; God erases our debt completely - which perhaps God never wasted time calculating in the first place because God too would just lose track.

It breaks my heart that the Church all too often, like the forgiven slave in the parable, accepts God’s unfathomable forgiveness just to turn around and enslave others in debt and sin. This is not what Christ asks of us. We begin worship so often with Confession and Forgiveness, because we know we are sinners. We come before our Lord God, confess our sin, and receive forgiveness – just like the slave in the parable. The challenge lies in what we do with that forgiveness. We can use it as a power play – ‘I am forgiven and YOU are not,’ OR we can be transformed; having learned from GOD’S example, we can turn around and do the same. Seven times? No, 77.. as a matter of fact, don’t keep track.

“Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God (Rom. 14:10).” Judgment quite simply is not OUR job, not our burden to bear. So if we are free from being judge and jury we need not sit around twiddling our thumbs wondering what to do instead! God HAS given us task and purpose – love and serve your neighbor. We love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). We forgive because God first forgives us. We enter into the pain and suffering of our neighbor, of our world, because God entered into that despair first. Lord if I am not judge and jury, what then shall I do with my life? God always answers, “Pick up your cross and follow me (Matthew 16:24).”

Through the cross, we have been given an immeasurable gift. We can never fully grasp the magnitude of what our God has done. The love and grace God extends to us is unconditional and impossible to calculate. May we stop putting our time and effort into trying to put God neatly into a box and start putting our time and effort into exploring who God truly is and what it means to follow Christ down the path to Calvary. May we stop putting our time and effort in tearing one another down and start putting our time and effort in building one another up in love – the same love that God first extends to us.

Child of God, YOU are

forgiven,

redeemed,

transformed.

Go,

love and serve God -

which looks a whole lot like loving and serving your neighbor.

Amen.