August 2, 2026
But God…
Matthew 18:21-35
Rev. Shannon Jordan
Forgiveness is a tricky sermon topic.
It is up there with Love as a key tenant of Christianity. We love because God first loved us. We also are able to forgive because God first forgave us.
It is such a key piece of Christianity, but it is so “common” that it is easy to take for granted. We ask for forgiveness each week in our prayer of confession and when we say the Lord’s Prayer—forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. It is so easy to see how others need to stop doing those things, but easy to skim over our own complicity.
In our daily lives we may say a quick “sorry” when we bump into a stranger. We may drop the ball on something important and give a heartfelt apology to a friend or family member or co-worker—sometimes they move on, sometimes they stay angry. We may make such a huge error that we cause devastating consequences and our apology, while sincere, seems like so little. We also find ourselves as the victim of wrong doing and the recipient of an apology and being asked for forgiveness.
Forgiveness speaks to all of us.
Our passage is set after several sections on sin and forgiveness and they seem to bounce back and forth between God forgiving and God not forgiving. I think to really understand the twist in this parable, we need to hear it in context.
Jesus starts by teaching about temptations to sin—and that if your hand or foot causes us to stumble, to cut it off, it is better to be maimed than to sin and be thrown into eternal fire.
OK, don’t sin—or you will be thrown into eternal fire. Got it.
But then Jesus teaches about the lost sheep. If a shepherd has 100 sheep and one wanders away, the shepherd will leave the 99 to find the one.
So, OK, not cast away for wandering—forgiveness and celebration, check.
Then Jesus continues with how people in a church should respond to sin against them. Give them three tries to be repentant and if they aren’t, then let them be to you like a Gentile or a tax collector.
This is where it gets a tad tricky. At face value, Jewish people were not really to associate with Gentiles or tax collectors. In a Jewish world, they were outside of God’s community. In a Jewish world, this would be excommunication. Some churches and denominations use this passage to excommunicate people if they “keep sinning.” Is that what Jesus is saying?
In our passage this morning Peter seems to understand that the extremes that Jesus is using to teach a lesson about forgiveness. He and the other disciples KNOW how Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors—he treated them well. He was in relationship with them. He interacted with the outcasts. He didn’t treat them like the status quo.
Hear our parable with a twist this morning:
21 Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him, 25 and, as he could not pay, the lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, 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 slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
This is the word of the Lord, thanks be to God.
How do we get from lavish forgiveness to torture in so few verses?
Peter, in this discussion or debate, offers what he sees as a lavish mercy…forgiving seven times. Jesus makes it even more lavish, and says seventy times that. Jesus really wants to make the point of how important it is to forgive others.
The last several weeks we have talked in depth about talents. Sums of money—because money gives us a concrete understanding of the cost of a situation. In this parable, the king has a servant or a slave that owes what in modern language would be a bazillion dollars. A nonsensical number. Even a king could never owe that much, but here we have a servant or a slave asking for forgiveness and mercy, to pay it back over time in the future, and the king feels compassion for the slave and not only forgives the entire debt, but frees the slave and in essence his wife and children. This is such a big deal, and such an extravagant gesture, that I honestly can’t even come up with a comparable forgiveness in our era. In that culture, in that amount of money, there is really no comparison. Commentators liken it to a cartoonish amount of money or debt.
The parable then has the twist that we are learning to expect. The freed slave ran into another slave as he left, one who owed him a small amount of money. This other slave says the exact same words “have patience with me, I will pay you everything,” and the first slave refused and had him thrown into prison. We don’t know why he didn’t treat him the way he had been treated. We don’t know if he thought he had scammed the king. Maybe he was so self-centered that he missed the gift. We don’t know if he was living in such a terrifying scarcity mentality that he was simply unable to receive immense grace and then in turn share that grace with others.
His fellow slaves could though. When they saw this happen, they told the king, who then said “I gave you mercy, why didn’t you show your fellow slave the same mercy?”
Then the chapter ends with these two verses: 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’
And herein ends the teaching of this portion of Matthew. Yikes.
This is uncomfortable stuff—yet, we also pray every week, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. It is messy. It is not as clear as we would like it to be, but I do think we say it so often that we miss the power of it.
What are we supposed to do with this? We need to pay attention to forgiveness, especially forgiving others.
Our world is all about paying our own way. It is all about negotiating and fairness (at least when it comes to how we are treated in relationship to others). People don’t deserve forgiveness.
God’s economy is that we have already been given more than we can every repay. More than a bazillion dollars worth of blessings.
And yet, we live lives that are often shaped by the world’s economy. A world that says we all get what we deserve, we earn what we have. A world that says if someone doesn’t have something, then they deserve to not have it. A world that teaches a scarcity mentality and that if we don’t take care of ourselves that no one else will—ignoring the fact that if we can take care of ourselves that we can only do THAT by the grace of God.
I spent time this week reading Miroslav Volf’s book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. This book is a wonderful deep dive on generosity, gratitude, grace, and how forgiveness is tied to all of that.
It isn’t about just deciding to forgive someone who has deeply hurt us. I know I can’t just decide to forgive someone like a magic wand has been waved over the situation, making it all better.
After reading this book, I was made much more aware of my need for gratitude, recognition of God’s abundance, my own shortcomings, my need for forgiveness, and my deep, deep, need to forgive others. If I can’t at least try to take in the fullness of all that God has given me, I too can behave like this servant. Over time these practices of remembering what God has done can heal the unforgiveness I feel towards others.
It is so important for us to remember that forgiveness rests in God.
Ephesians 2 states:
“You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived… But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.”
But God.
We can receive forgiveness from God and others because God has shown us glimpses of the amazing love God has for us. Calvin insists that reconciliation with God begins not with our goodness, but with God’s gracious initiative.
Love overcomes unforgiveness.
If we never truly believe we have been forgiven…
We will always live with scarcity.
We’ll ration mercy.
We’ll keep score.
We’ll protect ourselves.
Forgiving others will be impossible. In April I used two of the most powerful examples of forgiveness in the last few decades in my sermon. I lifted up the lavish forgiveness of the Amish after the tragic school shooting. I also reminded us of the forgiveness extended after the shooting at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church shooting—really unimaginable forgiveness.
The reality is that most of us won’t need to forgive at that level.
The reality is that unless we are intentional about forgiveness on the small things, it is hard to forgive with the big ones. Some of us ARE working daily to forgive someone. Some of you may be struggling with a big forgiveness, either needed to be given or received. That may be worth a one on one conversation with one of the pastors, a spiritual director, or a therapist. But what about day to day life?
I wondered about how to make this real to all of us who are wondering how to be intentional about this in our daily lives.
Why don’t we start with Pet Peeves.
Pet Peeves, while often inconsequential, can be catastrophic in a relationship. They can be seeds for resentment and anger, bitterness and hurt.
I did a quick search on pet peeves and found a great list of them…I wonder how many of these sound familiar in your households. According to Women’s Day, some of the most common are: chewing loudly/noises while eating, interrupting during a conversation, texting during a meal or conversation, taking phone calls in public, each of you can probably list 5 more.[1]
While none of these are terrible, and if they are all done by strangers and not the people with whom you come into regular contact, or you don’t live with, usually no harm no foul.
That said, usually the people we live with find our pet peeves, and that gives us the opportunity to practice forgiveness!
These blisters of irritation absolutely can fester and cause major problems in a relationship or marriage over time. They can cause a blister of resentment much like a small place of irritation on a shoe can cause a big problem if unaddressed.
If we practice holding grudges on the small things, we WILL find more small things AND forgiving bigger things will be even harder. We get really good at what we practice.
The reality is the human condition means we will all fail to meet the expectations of others. We hurt others—even those we love deeply. We make mistakes. And people can love us AND still hurt us. People can act in ways that can be anywhere from annoying to devastating to us. We need to practice forgiveness because if we don’t, I believe that we will suffer the natural consequences and end up being tortured with hate and bitterness as well as long term or even permanent breaks in relationships with people we love.
Looking at the whole of scripture, God does take forgiveness seriously so the idea that unforgiveness is the only unforgiveable sin is kind of ridiculous. The ability to forgive is a gift of God. We can’t do it on our own power. But God, who is rich in mercy, forgives.
Our ability to forgive very much rests on our recognition that we are forgiven. Like I started. We love because God first loved us. And we forgive because God first forgave us. We all fail daily to meet even the most basic teaching of Christ, to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Not most of our heart. Not some of our attention. All of it. If we’re honest, none of us can say we’ve done that perfectly. And that’s precisely why every one of us stands in need of grace. We don’t begin the Christian life by proving ourselves worthy. We begin by receiving mercy.
Every Sunday we pray, Forgive us our debts…
And every Sunday God answers, “My mercy is new this morning.”
We pass the peace and then we leave here.
We get in traffic. We go to work.
We live with spouses and children and neighbors and coworkers who will inevitably let us down. And we will let them down.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The question is not whether there will be opportunities to forgive.
There will be.
The question is whether we will meet those moments with a score card of wrongs against us or a score card of our blessings. A score card of how we have been forgiven. What we practice sticks.
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
Amen.
[1] https://www.womansday.com/life/a40057707/pet-peeves-list/