17th Sunday Pentecost
Proper 19
Matthew 18:21- 35
"Changed People??"
21* ¶ Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?"
22 Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.
23* "Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.
24* When he began the reckoning, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents;
25* and as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.
26* So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ’Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’
27* And out of pity for him the lord of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.
28* But that same servant, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat he said, ’Pay what you owe.’
29 So his fellow servant fell down and besought him, ’Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’
30 He refused and went and put him in prison till he should pay the debt.
31* When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place.
32* Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ’You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me;
33 and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’
34* And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt.
35* 35* So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."RSV
I would like to begin by telling you about a certain household and let us pretend to be able to hear and understand the thoughts of two of the people in that household.
In this household is a mother, a wife, who has her father-in-law living with her.
From the moment this man cam to live with them, the atmosphere, the tension, the uneasiness in that house became more apparent. The wife thought to herself, "I have enough to do, I can’t take care of this man, too. Besides, he doesn’t like me. He has always felt I stole his son from him. And now that his wife has died, he feels even more alone and blames me. Why do I have to have him in my house, anyway.
As you can see, the situation was not good. She felt it was all his fault, because he will ill tempered and he even had the gout with his foot wrapped resting it on the open oven door of the kitchen stove. He would complain about what his daughter-in-law did and how she fixed the food, until she would get so angry she just couldn’t stand it.
He thought, "I am so lonely. And her, she did it. She took my son. and now that the little lady is gone, oh, I miss her, I have no one to talk with, no one to understand me like she did. I know she is not like my dear wife, Mary, no one could be like her, but I wish she would try."
As you can see, beside the outward actions which were not good, there was a lot of thoughts under the surface which did not come out or were shared with anyone. The wife was full of resentment of having to put up with the man, and he is so lonely, so unhappy with no one to talk with or share his feelings.
The wife was a Christian woman; yet she was high-spirited and would lose her temper and explode. She would explode at him, he would yell back. Then, there would be those long frosty days to follow, when neither one would talk, or even look at the other. Then a mild thaw would come, but yet another explosion and the same pattern would be repeated again and again.
Finally, the woman could not take it any longer. She went to her pastor. She felt guilty about her feelings, she felt ashamed she felt hurt, she felt unforgiving. She felt plan lousy. She told her pastor the whole story, "I just can’t control myself. What can I do??"she asked . The pastor asked, "What does he like to eat the most?" The woman answered with a surprised look on her face,"Fudge." "Next time you and he are about to get into another shouting match, stop and make him some fudge," said the pastor.
The woman left the pastor’s office thinking that the pastor didn’t know what he was talking about, or he was too young to know how to minister and perhaps the congregation should begin looking for a pastor who knew how to handle problems.
Everything went fine for the next couple of day. But one day, the woman was busy fixing supper in the kitchen. It had been a busy day, and she was running behind. The demands on her time were many that day, and besides, gramps was more demanding that day than ever. He was following her around the house like a shadow. Now he was sitting in the kitchen with the oven door opened and his foot resting on the door. She had to continually walk around him. As she was carrying some hot water from the stove to the counter she tripped and spilled some hot water on his leg. And there it came!! As she stood there, she felt her body turning red, all the way up to her ears. She was just about to explode all over him when she remembered the advice of the preacher. She let him yell and carry on about the water. But she said a little prayer within herself turned away and went to the cupboard and began to make him some fudge.
Some hours later, after supper which she was doing the dishes, he was back again in the same spot with his foot resting on the oven door. She opened the pan of fudge she had hidden, cut him a piece, put it on a plate and set it before him. He was dozing a little in the chair, but when he opened his eyes, he saw the fudge, stared at it and couldn’t believe his eyes. Finally, as a tear fell on the plate, he took his foot down from the door, turned to her and said, "Let’s talk, and let’s make up. Let me tell you why I am so grumpy. I am so awful lonely." The woman came over to him, embraced him in her arms and said, "Yes, I want to talk with you, too. I know it isn’t your fault that you have to live here, I do resent it, though. "
And you can finish that conversation.
When forgiveness is present, lives change. Forgiveness was present through that action of preparing the fudge. Forgiveness changes people. In the gospel lesson this morning, Jesus makes just that point, in his answer to Peter’s question and in the parable which follows, Jesus speaks about forgiveness as a way of changing lives.
Let us begin by looking at that statement of Peter’s. Notice in your insert what he says. "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" To get the full impact of this statement, you need to understand the Hebrew mind. When they speak in exaggeration they are trying to make a point. Peter asked how many times he should forgive and he gave an exaggerated number 7. The rabbi’s had said 3 times was enough to forgive. So, Peter thought he was going way beyond the law and the Rabbi’s by saying 7. He was trying to make a point with Jesus which said he was willing to go beyond what everyone thought was normal in his willingness to forgive someone a wrong.
But Jesus takes it one more giant step and says no, not 7 times, but 70 times 7. Which means, Jesus was making a point by saying one cannot count or keep track of how many times one forgives. Jesus is saying that forgiveness does not stop with numbers, but it is a way of life, it is mixed up with love, mercy and recollection. Forgiveness happens to change people, to bring them into a relationship with another.
This whole idea of gracious forgiveness, forgiving without any reward is difficult for us. You and I want revenge. We cannot forgive. We cannot live by a lifestyle of forgiveness. We want to get back at the one who hurts us.
Many of us are like the tots in the following:
"Two small-frys have an older brother who is a bully, and he’s always beating them up. One day they are coming home from Sunday School, and the lesson has been on when Peter comes to Christ and asks how often one should forgive his brother when he has sinned against him. And we know Jesus replies not seven time, but seventy times seven.
The two children as they walk along are puzzling over how they can apply that story to their big brother. One says,"We’ll keep a book and we’ll write down in it every time we forgive him," "Yeah," says the smaller child. "And when its 490 times he’d better watch out!!"
Many of us are like those two small frys when we are hurt by another. We want revenge, not forgiveness. But Jesus drives the point home even clearer by telling the parable of the unmerciful servant.
Follow along in the insert: "Jesus says, "a king wants to settle his accounts with those who owed him money. It was like a banker calling in his loans today. The first guy comes and the king looks in his book and sees the guy owes him 10,000 talens or about 10 million dollars in our day. No one knows how he built up such a large debt. The kings wasn’t keeping track too well, because there was no way in his life time could this debt ever be repaid. It was an impossible debt to repay, no matter how the servant tried. So, the servant falls on his knees at the feet of the king and say, "Give me time and I will repay." Give me time, he knows deep in his heart he cannot ever repay, but he asks for time. The king by now understands the enormity of the debt, knows the man cannot ever repay what he owes, so he forgives him the whole debt. He goes beyond what the man asks for, time and forgives the entire 10 million dollars, a lifetime of debt.
With this part of the parable, Jesus is saying this is the way it is in our relationship with God. We are so indebted to Him with our sins, that we cannot ever repay. There is no way in our lifetime we can work off our debt of sin. But we are like that servant, we ask God for time, for time, because we foolishly think we can appease God, we can work off our debt, we can be in control, so we ask for time. But God is wiser, He knows our helpless situation. He knows we cannot repay our debt of sinfulness, so He forgives our debt by having Jesus pay the price of our sins on the cross of Calvary. Jesus pays our debt for our sinful lives, our lifelong debt of sinfulness, on the cross. He pays so we don’t need to.
"Realize and rejoice"-Richard Hoefler--"The tragedy of our rebellion is that we can break the relationship between ourselves and God, but we cannot rebuild it.
If a bridge of reconciliation is to be built between us and God, it must begin on God’s side. Calvary is that point in history where God builds his bridge. He places a cross in the gulf of separation between himself and us. On that cross bridge He places the innocent body of his son, crucified!! "
Jesus’ body is like that of the solider in the following: "During the First World War an officer in the Corps of Engineers went out to repair a broken communications line. When he arrived at the spot of the severed wire, he climbed a tree to splice the dangling lines. Suddenly a bomb exploded beneath him, riddling his body with shrapnel. He knew that he did not have strength enough to repair the line, so with a last desperate effort he reached out and grabbed one end of the line and with the other hand caught hold of the remaining line. His body became a human conductor and the current flowed. On Calvary, with his hands stretched forth on the cross, our Lord held the hand of God and with the other hand he reached out and grabbed hold of us. The gulf was bridged, the barrier was eliminated, and Christ became the divine-human conductor. The powerful current of God’s grace flowed!!"
Jesus continues the parable by saying: Now that same servant meets some one on his way home to tell his wife the great news and remembers this guy that he owes him a day wage. He doesn’t talk mildly to this guy, he grabs him by the throat, tells him to fork over the 50 dollars or he’ll go to jail. The guy cannot pay, so he lands in jail.
The people who saw this confrontation go to the king because by this time everyone knows what the king did for the servant and they cannot understand why he couldn’t forgive such a minor debt. The king listens to the people, calls the servant back, even before he gets to arrive home, and reads him the riot act. He reminds him what was done for him, that a debt worth 2 generations of work was forgiven, but he couldn’t forgive a debt that could be worked off in a day. The furious king throws the man into jail until he could pay his debt.
The exaggerated point Jesus is making in this part of the parable is this: If God can forgive our lifetime of sins and wrongs, then we can forgive one who sins against us. But many times we take God’s forgiveness for granted, so then we cannot forgive our neighbor. Or another way of looking at it, we are arrogant enough to believe that what God does for us doesn’t matter, because if only given enough time we can prove ourselves to God, so we arrogantly live life judging others by our standards.
Jesus wants us to live a life of hospitality, a life of forgiveness, a life of kindness to others.
The following poem sums up Jesus’ point:
Let me shed a little light
On someone’s path I pray
I’d like to bring them
Happiness today.
It may be just a phone call,
A bright smile or a kindness
Or a long neglected letter,
To show you really care.
I hope I can bring happiness
In what I say or do.
Make life a little nicer,
For someone else - Don’t You???
AMEN
Written by Pastor Tim Zingale September 9, 2002
