February 23, 2025
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Luke 6:27-38; Genesis 45:3-11, 15
A New Accounting Method
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
How did you learn to do basic arithmetic? The methodology has changed over time. Current students learn what’s been dubbed “new math.” They’re taught a different way of adding together a column of numbers than the way people of my generation did. This can be a problem for parents when their children need help with their math homework. The way the parent sets out to solve the equation doesn’t make any sense to their child. “That’s not how Mrs. Brown taught me, Dad.”
New math versus old math. The answer to both is the same, but how you get there is different.
But in our reading today from Luke, Jesus shares what can only be called a new accounting method. And this new methodology isn’t a new way to reach the same solution. It leads to radically different end results.
Our lives together are filled with various debits and credits. We all commit offenses and infractions. These items fill the debits column on our accounting sheet. This debits sheet will have various categories. There’ll be a section detailing our personal debits, the ways we have offended others, cheated them, been cruel and uncaring, etc. This category will have subheadings for each person we’re indebted to. It begins with God and then is followed by every person we’re indebted to.
Then there’ll be another section which categorizes the people who owe us. It contains a list of every person who has ever slighted or shown cruelty to us. It begins with our bossy siblings and schoolyard bullies and continues all the way to the person who cut us off in traffic yesterday.
Both lists are extensively long, the one for the people we owe and the people who owe us.
Besides infractions of behavior, these debit lists also include lending lists. Who has borrowed from me? How much did I lend them and have they paid me back?
Those things are debits, and they need to be resolved. Accounting yearns for equalization, zeroing out. Someone needs to pay up, to make up for the debt. Someone needs to credit these accounts in arrears. There are various ways this crediting can take place. Material and monetary debits are the easiest. They’re paid back, dollar for dollar, coat for coat, cup of sugar for cup of sugar.
But for behavioral infractions, here is where it gets interesting. One possibility is very basic: eye for eye, tooth for tooth. No less and no more than what was taken. Other areas aren’t so clear cut, but something needs to happen to make the situation whole for the person who was slighted. Maybe it’s payback; maybe it’s punishment. Maybe it’s an apology. Maybe it’s a lifetime of hatred and resentment.
These are heavy duty accounting ledgers. They carry with them tremendous debt burdens.
But in his sermon, Jesus completely scraps our traditional accounting methods and presents a radically different methodology for dealing with debts.
“If anyone strikes you on one cheek,” he says, “offer the other also.” No eye for eye here. Quite the opposite!
“Lend and expect nothing in return.” That doesn’t sound fiscally strong!
“Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” But what about my righteous anger, Jesus? Can’t I at least enjoy that?
Jesus does also address credit. He presents three hypothetical situations and plays “Where’s the Credit?”
- If you love only those who love you, he asks, how does that CREDIT you? Don’t even sinners love those who love them?
- And if you only do good to those who do good to you, how does that CREDIT you? Even sinners do the same.
- And if you only lend to those people from whom you hope to receive something in return, how does that CREDIT you? Even sinners lend to receive in return.
No, in Jesus’ accounting method, other things measure as credit. These are the assets in his ledger:
- Kindness. Jesus reminds us the Most High is kind to the likes of us, even though we are ungrateful and wicked.
- Mercy. Jesus calls us to be merciful, just as our heavenly Father is merciful.
- Forgiveness. Not judgment, not condemnation, not retribution, but forgiveness. In another passage Jesus calls us to forgive others not just once, not just three times, but seventy times seven. How’s that for accounting!
In our worldly way of accounting, these things don’t add up. But in Jesus’ new accounting, kindness, mercy and forgiveness reap a bountiful harvest. Blessings, he says, abound in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.
Jesus urges us to respond with mercy and forgiveness.
The story is told of a mother who pled for her son before the emperor Napoleon.* She asked him to pardon her son. Napoleon noted that her son had committed a certain offense not just once, but twice. Justice demanded he pay with his life.
“But your majesty,” she responded, “I’m not asking for justice. I’m pleading for mercy.”
Napoleon said to her, “But your son does not deserve mercy.”
“Your excellency,” she explained, “it would not be mercy if he deserved it, and mercy is all I ask for.”
“Well, then,” Napoleon said, “I will have mercy.” And he spared the woman’s son.
Jesus reminds us of the ledger columns where our debts to God and our neighbors are noted. Can we repay them? When it comes to our own sins, we plead before God for mercy. We plead for mercy, not because we deserve it, but precisely because we do NOT deserve it, and we CANNOT restore wholeness.
We plead for mercy, we ask God to forgive us our debts.
Christian author Ron Lee Davis tells the story of a Catholic priest in the Philippines.** He was very much loved and revered by the people of his parish. But he carried with him a deep regret for a sinful act he committed while he attended seminary. Although he had often confessed this sin, still he found no sense of consolation or forgiveness.
Now in his parish there was a certain woman who possessed a deep faith. She intensely loved God and moreover, she claimed to have visions where she conversed with Christ face to face.
She was very sincere about her experience, but her priest was skeptical. He wanted to test her experience. And so he said to her, “Daughter, the next time you speak with Jesus, ask him about the terrible sin I committed.” The woman agreed to her priest’s request.
A few days passed and the priest again met with the women. “Tell me,” he asked, “Did Jesus visit you in your dreams?”
“Yes, Father, he did,” she replied.
“And did you ask him what sin I committed in seminary?"
The woman meekly responded, “Yes, Father, I asked him the question you instructed me to ask.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“Father,” she said, “these were his exact words. He said, ‘I don't remember.’”
In the book of Jeremiah, the Lord says, “For I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sins no more.”
This is the accounting of heaven, my friends. What has been forgiven through our Lord Jesus Christ is gone completely. This is the measure of mercy found in his cross. His forgiveness restores our broken relationship with God and makes us whole. Only forgiveness can achieve this tremendous act of healing.
Our story this morning from Genesis shows the power of forgiveness on the human level. If anyone deserved to get payback, it was Joseph on his brothers! They beat him up and sold him into slavery. He lived the majority of his life separated from family and country. But when he could have smitten his brothers, he embraced and welcomed them. He gave them a good land, the choicest land, for their families and herds.
He understood that God had taken a horrible, evil act and worked something good in spite of it. Through his brothers’ hateful actions, God brought about blessing. In a period of extreme drought, ample grain had been gathered to mitigate mass starvation in the region.
And it was only forgiveness that could restore the very most precious commodity to Joseph: his family. If ever there is a story of good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, it’s this story about Joseph and his brothers.
Jesus calls us to cast aside our worldly accounting method and join him in his. And as we do so, the good measure of heaven’s grace will abound, on earth, as it is in heaven.
* Luis Palau, Experiencing God's Forgiveness, Multnomah Press, 1984.
** Ron Lee Davis, A Forgiving God in an Unforgiving World, Harvest House Publishers, 1984
