Sermon for the Eighteenthh Sunday After Pentecost
FORGIVENESS IS A MIRACLE,
NO MATTER HOW YOU SLICE IT
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus
Christ! Amen. Today's sermon is based on the Gospel of the Day, from St.
Matthew 18, and also the Old Testament, from Genesis 50.
Dear Christian friends,
In these readings, the Old Testament and the Gospel of the Day
we have some frightful examples of how weak faith and unbelief deal with God's
forgiveness. I call these examples frightful because these two readings
strike so very close to home-close to me, and very likely, close also to
your. By now, you must have already learned from your own experiences that
forgiveness is not any easy thing. As today's Old Testament shows, it is not
always an easy thing to believe you truly have God's forgiveness of all your
sins. Then, as you can see from today's Gospel, forgiveness is not an
especially easy thing to extend toward your neighbor, either.
JOSEPH'S BROTHERS MUST BELIEVE JOSEPH'S WORDS, DESPITE HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT
THEMSELVES
In today's Old Testament, Jacob had just died. Remember that, many years
before Jacob's death, his ten elder sons did an evil thing to Joseph: They
sold Joseph into many years of slavery and imprisonment in Egypt. Amazingly,
Joseph did not hold this terrible sin against his brothers. Ass soon as he
had opportunity to be reconciled to his brother, Joseph freely forgave them
with no strings attached. Joseph did not begrudgingly forgive, either. He
did not say to his brothers, as we are tempted often to say to our neighbor,
"Fine, I forgive you. But don't expect me to have anything more to do with
you!" No, Joseph forgave his brothers fully and openhandedly. Where they
once hated him, he shed tears for them and opened his arms to them. Where
once they stripped him of everything he had and everything he was, Joseph
cared for his brothers, providing for every physical need all the days of
their lives. Joseph had even sent a message through them to his father
Jacob, speaking a promise that fully included Joseph's sinful brothers:
You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and
your children and your children's children, and your flocks, your herds, and
all that you have. There I will provide for you. you and your household
(Genesis 45:10-11).
Here in today's Old Testament, Father Jacob has died. Suddenly
Joseph's brothers begin to fear that his forgiveness had not genuine. His
brothers said to themselves, "It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us
back for all the evil that we did to him." The ongoing guilt of their sins
against Joseph was pressing so heavily upon them, even after they had been
forgiven. Their ongoing feelings of guilt caused Joseph's brothers to doubt
Joseph's word of forgiveness, even after these many years of enjoying Joseph's
forgiveness. Joseph had never been anything but merciful to them, but now in
their recurring guilt his brothers doubted his mercy.
Perhaps you are familiar with this sort of recurring guilt. Like Joseph's
brothers, you may have experienced once or twice the recurring guilt of past
sins. Your deep feelings of guilt have a very haunting quality about
them-they never really go away. The horrible memory of guilt can only be set
aside and forgotten for a while. I can stuff my own memories into some
closet in the back of my mind, but I always know where to find them again.
With the slightest memory of my past sins, those dormant feelings of guilt
all too quickly spring to life again. My stomach twists back into knots and
my breath draws quickly at the pain of realization. I fight the urge to look
over my shoulder to see if anyone has caught me in my thoughts, for I am
sure that I would rather die a thousand deaths than to have any of these
memories exposed to the light of day. Luther called the guilty conscience
"almost incurable wounds," and I have come to believe him. The fear that
Joseph's brothers felt about Joseph is not too far away from my own fear
concerning my God: "What if God holds a grudge against me, and pays me back
for all the wrongs I did to Him?"
God calls such fear weakness of faith. When your sins are forgiven you, they
are forgiven. When your sins are taken away from you, they are thrown "as
far as the east is from the west" (Psalm 103:12). Satan, your accuser, is
the only one who wants your sins to be known. He will throw your guilt back
upon your conscience in order to torture and confuse you. But Jesus Christ
your Lord died and rose again! God your heavenly Father knows nothing of
your sins any more because Christ your Lord has forgiven them. The sort of
suffering and fear that Joseph's brothers experienced in today's Old
Testament must be resisted. When you feel the recurring haunt of your past
guilt-when you think that God might change His mind about you, as Joseph's
brothers feared he might change his mind about them-you may say to your own
accusing conscience, "Go away! The things of which you accuse me have been
forgiven by my God!"
Joseph's brothers were required to set their guilty feelings aside, and they
were required to trust themselves exclusively to Joseph's words of
forgiveness and acceptance. You likewise are required to do the same. What
truly matters now is not the guilt of your past. What truly matters is the
Word of Promise that has been spoken to you: All your sins are forgiven in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
THE WICKED SERVANT MUST CHANGE HIS FEELINGS TOWARD HIS NEIGHBOR BECAUSE OF
THE WORDS
HIS KING SPOKE TO HIM.
If Joseph's brothers must believe Joseph's words, despite how
they feel about themselves, the wicked servant in today's Gospel must do the
opposite. That is to say, this wicked servant must change how he feels
concerning his neighbor, and he must do so base on the words his king spoke
to him.
This king had given his servant a great gift-an unimaginably
enormous gift. He owed the king 10,000 talents, an amount he could have
never paid with a lifetime of labor. Amazingly, the king forgave him. But
then what happened?
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." So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him,
"Have patience with me, and I will pay you." He refused and went and put him
in prison until he should pay the debt.
This Gospel puts you into a tough position, doesn't it? You can
tell, just by hearing the story, that this wicked servant is rightly
condemned. But part of you doesn't want to see him punished too harshly for
not forgiving his neighbor such a small debt as a hundred denarii. Neither
you nor I want to see this wicked servant punished to harshly because we
share his guilt.
The difficulty lies in our weakness or our unwillingness to forgive in the
same manner as we have been forgiven. You and I both know very well what it
is like to have received great forgiveness from God, but then not to want to
pass that same forgiveness on to others. Anger runs deep. Wounds slowly
heal. Memories of other peoples' sins against you can sear your conscience
as deeply as the memory of your own sins. Just as it is easy to doubt God's
forgiveness for yourself, so also it is all to easy to withhold forgiveness
from others. But today's Gospel speaks clearly, and it will not let us go:
"How will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven
times?" Jesus [says to you],"I do not say to you seven times, but seventy
times seven" (Matthew 18:21-22).
And again Jesus says here,
In anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all
his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do
not forgive your brother from your heart.
So the undeniable facts are these: God has declared His forgiveness and
mercy to you for the sake of Christ. Doubt in this forgiving mercy of God
you will destroy you. Hence today's Old Testament. So, too, unwillingness to
extend forgiving mercy toward your neighbor will likewise destroy you. Thus
today's Gospel of our Lord.
These are tough readings, dear saints, but they are NOT
merciless readings. Rather, these readings are full of the Father's mercy.
These readings are full of the strength of forgiveness that comes to you
solely by the miracle-producing power of Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit.
Though the weak flesh will doubt God's forgiveness, God your heavenly still
forgives you nevertheless! Your God will never tire of announcing His
forgiveness to you, won for you by your Lord Christ. And although the weak
flesh will likewise hesitate to forgive others, God still extends to you the
power of His own forgiveness, enabling you to will and to do those things
which are good and pleasing in His sight.
Both today's Old Testament and Gospel meet together in the Fifth
Petition of the Lord's Prayer. That is where we pray, "Forgive us our
trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Stated in light of
today's Gospel, you could pray this portion of the Lord's Prayer by saying,
"Forgive us our debts [as great as they are], as we also have forgiven our
debtors [since they owe us so little compared to the debt you have forgiven
us]" (Matthew 6:12).
Confidence in your own forgiveness before God comes solely by the power of
the Holy Spirit. He comforts your wounded conscience and your bruised
memories and He does so by His powerful Word. To add comfort and confidence
upon comfort and confidence, God graciously allows you yet another way of
knowing that all your sins are completely forgiven. God does this for you by
the way you learn freely and completely to forgive others. Stated another
way, your forgiveness toward others comes only by the miracle of God. When
you find yourself able to forgive, give thanks and praise to God!
"If you forgive, you have the comfort and assurance that you are forgiven in
heaven. Not on account of your own forgiving, for God does it altogether
freely, out of pure grace, because He has promised it, as the Gospel
teaches" (Large Catechism, 5th Petition).
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