The Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost I Think It’s About Forgiveness Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen. Today’s Gospel is Jesus’ Parable of the Forgiven Servant Who Refused to Forgive. Here is the punchline of the parable, and it packs quite a punch: “So also shall My heavenly Father do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” Dear Christian friends: Today’s Gospel teaches us that there are two parts to the forgiveness that Christ our Lord has earned for us, which flowed out from His crucified body and has now flooded the entire world: 1. The first part of forgiveness is that we receive from God, on account of His Christ, full pardon and peace. This is not a partial forgiveness or a temporary forgiveness. Jesus has given to you and to me COMPLETE forgiveness of the enormous debt of sin that we once owed Him. 2. The second part of forgiveness is that we each must then turn and forgive our neighbor the relatively small debt of sin that he has incurred against us. Your neighbor’s sin against you might feel large, especially in view of your injuries. Jesus wants you to believe that your neighbor’s debt is comparatively small, and certainly no reason to choke him. In order to impress upon us the dire necessity of forgiving our neighbor from the heart, Jesus gives us the crass and extreme example of a servant who refuses to forgive. Everyone can see that the man is wrong to seize his brother and choke him on account of what was owed. Jesus clearly wants us likewise to turn away and repent of our similar refusals forgive. Hence the solemn warning of the Lord, “So also My heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” There are many ways in which a Christian might fall into temptation and sin every day. Some things simply must not happen. We must not fail to forgive. Forgiveness is the greatest and most necessary act of the Christian faith. • You should think of forgiveness as the highest act of love that you can show your neighbor. As Jesus says in another place, “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). Your neighbor wants to be forgiven as much as you want to be. Your neighbor needs to be forgiven as much as you need to be. • Above that, forgiveness is also a high act of love and worship toward God. There is no higher act of worship than faith. Forgiveness is a simple and pure confession of faith. When you forgive your neighbor, you do more than speak confidence in your God’s careful ability to avenge the wrongs done to you (Romans 12:19). When you forgive, you also speak the confidence that your own sins likewise have been fully and completely forgiven—as they have. That is why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” (Matthew 6:12, Luke 11:4). The good name of God is kept holy among us when we forgive because forgiveness is the work of the Holy Spirit and the natural consequence of God’s powerful Word, which is at work in you who believe (1 Thessalonians 2:13). Forgiveness is the simple, greatest act of the Christian faith. Forgiveness is also an easy thing for Christians NOT to do. Like me, I am sure you have plenty of good reasons not to forgive: • Some Christians cannot yet forgive because the injury done to them is simply too great and their wounds too debilitating. A piano cannot be played with smashed fingers. A footrace cannot be run on shattered knees. In the same way, it might be possible that the sin committed against you by your neighbor is so deep and so devastating that you have no arm (as it were) to reach out toward him; no feet to carry you toward reconciliation and peace. To use the terms of today’s Gospel, it is difficult to “forgive your brother from your heart” when your brother has scorched and smashed your heart and ground the leftovers to dust. What should you do in the event of such terrible injuries? You should seek the face of the Lord, who “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). If you need somehow to find power and strength to forgive, then go to the One who is your power and your forgiveness and even your life. Listen again and again, as often as you are able, to Jesus’ forgiveness of you own sins. Why? Because Jesus teaches us to believe in today’s Gospel that, when He forgives of our debt of sin, He also makes it possible for us to forgive the debts of others. Easy to forgive? NO. Possible to forgive? Only by the miracle and power of Jesus’ Word of forgiveness, which is now yours in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, dear injured and wounded Christian, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him” (Psalm 37:7) “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31). “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things—including the power to forgive your neighbor from your heart—all these things will be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). The God of peace will equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in you that which is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen” (Hebrews 13:20-21). • Devastating injury is only the first reason—really, the minor reason—why you might consider it best not to “forgive your brother neighbor from the heart.” Maybe you do not lack the ability to forgive. Maybe you lack the desire. The issue is not with your injury, but with your pride and with your personal sense of justice, which has been violated. Stated another way, when you harbor anger and refuse to “forgive your brother from your heart,” you are left with no choice but to think of yourself more highly than you ought (Romans 12:3). Beware: your pride and your personal sense of justice are the stuff of idolatry. God is patient with you, but Jesus shows in today’s Gospel that even divine patience comes to an end. When you refuse “to forgive your brother from your heart,” you are NOT subjecting your brother to the justice and judgment of God. Rather, when you refuse to “forgive your brother from your heart,” you are subjecting your brother to the justice and judgment of YOU. But you and I are both much smaller gods than we might naturally think. Today’s Gospel lays bare this major reason why it is easy not to forgive: forgiveness requires us to abandon idolatry and idolatry has wrapped its coils around every chromosome in our human bodies. For the love of God and for the sake of your neighbor, knock yourself off your throne before your God comes and does it for you (Luke 1:52). If the butter is too hard, take it out of the refrigerator and set it someplace warm. If your heart is too hard, do the same thing: set your heart upon the warm forgiveness of God’s Word and promise. Dial yourself backward through today’s Gospel until you arrive at that place where you kneel next to this indebted servant, and listen again while the king mercifully releases you and forgives you your debt. Then change the name of this parable as it gets lived out in your everyday life. As the parable in today’s Gospel lives itself out in your life, do NOT allow it to be called any longer “The Parable of the Forgiven Servant Who Refused to Forgive.” Every morning and every evening, re-write this parable so that your daily life may be called “The Parable of the Forgiven Servant Who Gladly Forgives Because So Much Has Already Been Forgiven.” So much has already been forgiven, and so much shall continue to be forgiven by your crucified and risen Lord. The forgiveness of your sins began from the moment you first heard the divine Word spoken and poured over you. The forgiveness of your sins shall continue to the day of your earthly death, at which point you will need forgiveness no longer. You heard it at the beginning of the service; in a moment you will hear it again in the Holy Communion; hear it again from today’s Gospel: “Out of pity for him, the Master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.” Thus it is, and ever shall be for you.
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