Rooted in Forgiveness | Romans 14:1-12, Matthew 18:21-35 | 9.13.26

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have a couple of readings today.

The first one is from the book of Romans.

And I'm going to go ahead and read that one to us.

This one is about Paul is writing to a group of people he hasn't met yet.

And most of the time Paul's writing a letter, he's writing to people he knows, but he's writing this one to people he hasn't met.

And he's trying to explain to them how to be gracious when they have disagreements.

And so we're going to keep that in mind as we read this first reading from chapter 14, verses 1 through 12.

Let's listen for God's word to us this morning.

Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarrelling over opinions.

Some believe in eating anything, while some only eat vegetables.

Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat, for God has welcomed them.

Who are you to pass judgment on slaves of another?

It is before their own Lord that they stand or fall, and they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike.

Let all be fully convinced in their own minds.

Those who observe the day observe it for the Lord.

And also those who eat eat for the Lord, since they give thanks to God.

While those who abstain abstain for the Lord and give thanks to God, for we do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.

So then whether we live or we die, we are the Lord's.

For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?

Why do you despise your brother or sister?

For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

For it is written, As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.

So then each one of us will be held accountable.

This is God's word for God's people.

Thanks be to God.

And it comes right after the reading we did at Family Camp last week, where Jesus was urging his followers to seek restoration to the community when others sin against them.

First you go to the person, then you bring some others with you, then you bring it to the church, that passage there.

And forgiveness is a tough topic to talk about, honestly, for a lot of reasons, one of which is that it has been twisted and misused in the past.

I want to say up front that forgiveness doesn't mean becoming a punching bag.

Forgiveness is not weakness.

In fact, in a lot of ways, it's about letting go to reclaim our own agency so that we can use that agency to love and build and lead.

Jesus' call to extend forgiveness has been used in circumstances where the power differential is actually different than the parable we're gonna read, where we'll read a parable.

But but that teaching on forgiveness has been used to tell people, especially women, to stay in abusive relationships.

It's been used to tell victims and survivors to forgive their abuser instead of actually confronting the abuse itself.

But I hope by the end of our time together this morning, where we're headed, you'll see that forgiveness isn't something we carry alone, and that it's not something that's weak.

It's something that gives us power.

And it's something that the whole community shares in.

And Jesus' own parable on forgiveness doesn't take accountability, doesn't let people off the hook.

If we read carefully, we'll see the ways that community and accountability are also part of the recipe.

But before we dig in, let's pray and ask God to bless our time.

Holy God, speak to us and build us up by your word, that we may live out your love and grace in our lives.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing to you, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

Our gospel reading is from Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

We'll read verses 21 through 35.

Let's listen together for God's word to us today.

Then Peter came and said to him, Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often should I forgive?

As many as seven times?

Jesus said to him, Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.

For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.

When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him.

And as he could not pay, the Lord ordered him to be sold together with his wife and children and all of his possessions, and payment to be made.

So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything.

And out of pity for him, the Lord of that slave released him and forgave his debt.

But that same slave he went out, and he came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denari.

And seizing him by the throat, he said, Pay what you owe.

Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you.

But he refused.

And then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt.

When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed.

So they went and reported to their Lord all that had taken place.

Then his Lord summoned him and said to him, You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave as I had mercy on you?

And in anger his Lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.

So my heavenly Father will do also to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.

This is God's word for God's people.

Thanks be to God.

Father Greg Boyle lives in LA, and he has a ministry to ex-gang members.

And they get out of prison, they denounce their gang affiliation, they can work at a place called Homeboy Industries, and he helps them to build their lives back, to build skills, and to build community.

One of the things he always says is that once we are touched by the tenderness of God, we become that tenderness to others.

Once we are touched by the tenderness of God, we become that tenderness in the world to ourselves, to others.

Once we experience God, we become God's hands and feet in the world, we might say.

Presbyterians name that truth this way.

We say, grace and gratitude.

When we experience God's grace, we cannot help but respond to that experience with gratitude by living out a gracious and spacious life in the world.

We believe this.

This is what we say.

But it is often hard for us to imagine what that would look like in our daily lives.

It can be hard for us given the state of things, the bills in the mailbox, the news on our phone, the distracting and detracting state of things as they are.

It can be hard for us to see or imagine what living out God's tenderness would even mean here in East Tennessee in 2026.

How do we grow in our tenderness in a world that can seem so chalked full of cruelty, poverty, and greed and anger?

I think part of it might have to do with patience.

When I read our text today for a word that rhymes with the Spirit of God as I've experienced it, that word that jumps out to me is patience.

We live in a world that is allergic to patience.

Everything is now, everything feels urgent.

Technological dangers grow at their own direction, outside of any human input almost at this point.

And we wonder how do we put the brakes on this freight train of hubris and productivity?

The begging slaves' plea is have patience with me.

And I wonder if we have the patience to allow others to grow, or if we will barrel over them, extracting what we feel we're owed and cut and run, all the while forgetting and dishonoring the immeasurable grace and patience and forgiveness we have already received.

The parable Jesus tells here in Matthew 18 is a tough one to read as a modern person.

There are many layers of difficulty for us.

For one, there's a king, so that's weird.

We don't really have kings anymore, or at least we're not supposed to.

So it's weird that there's a king and then there are slaves, which makes us rightly uncomfortable.

And there's perhaps a distance between us and the world that would have been so familiar to Jesus' disciples, uh, worlds of despots and people enslaved by their debts.

We don't know anyone like that.

But is it really all that far off?

Our modern economies are still fueled and churned by the debts that we owe.

Our car notes, our insurance, our mortgages, our student loans.

What if someone were to come along and demand of you every penny you owed them?

There may be a few of you in here who that would be fine.

Uh you could do that, but but for so many people in this room and in our country, how would we pay all that we owe?

And yet, what if when they came you said, have patience with me?

And then instead of delivering a payment plan, what if they said, fine, just don't pay me.

It's yours.

They forgave you the debt.

How would you respond?

I, I won't give you the specifics of my mortgage, but I would dance.

I would throw a party.

We would have a big party at my house if that happened.

And what what could we do with that kind of freedom?

Would you rest?

Would you make art?

Would you dance?

Would you travel to see friends and relatives you hadn't been able to see?

Or would you go find that guy you bought a tank of gas for last week and demand the 40 bucks back?

Sure.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Right?

At the church I served in Anderson, South Carolina, um, they had completed a capital campaign like right when I got there.

Like I got there and they were wrapping it up.

So I say that to say I had nothing to do with this.

Uh but they had wrapped up this capital campaign, and part of that campaign meant they had committed to spending a large chunk of it, over 10% of what was raised on local mission and service efforts.

They wanted to put that money back into their community.

And so uh one of the things they wanted to do uh was figure out how they could make their lives, the lives of their neighbors better, uh, even though they needed to do these major repairs on their building.

And so what they did was uh we we partnered with an organization called Undue Medical Debt.

And what this nonprofit organization does is it uh utilizes the funds that are donated to them to negotiate with hospitals and debt collectors to buy up medical debt at pennies on the dollar.

Uh, and then instead of tracking down individuals to pay them back, they forgive it.

Individuals and families get letters in the mail that say, hello, you owed this much money to these folks because of unpaid medical costs.

And we wanted to inform you that you no longer owe any of that money to anybody.

And because the founders of this organization uh they had been in the debt collection business first, so they had been on the inside, they knew how it worked.

And so then they began to get very skilled at buying up medical debt, and then they started a nonprofit where they could put that skill to good use.

And they used their craftiness and their creativity and their wit to create a debt-forgiving machine, which I think is pretty cool.

And with a gift of$40,000 back in 2022, uh, our church gave them uh$40,000 undue medical debt was able to forgive$5.2 million of medical debt in the state of South Carolina.

And at the time, that was all the medical debt in the state that they could get access to, in the whole state.

Uh over 1,200 families received notice that their debts had been paid.

1,200 families.

One letter, no more debt.

And what I want to say to you is that's not just good news for them.

Right?

That's good news for all of us.

And I mean that literally.

Do you imagine that your neighborhood is safer and more connected and a better place to live if the people in your community aren't anxious that they're being shaken down because of debts they received when they were sick?

That's the kind of neighborhood I want to live in.

I don't want to live around people who are stressed at every moment that they're not gonna be able to pay their bills.

What a gift.

You see, a world where debts get forgiven instead of collected is a world that looks a little more like the kingdom of God.

Forgiveness isn't just personal, it is interpersonal.

It's it's the the person I've wronged forgiving me, and it's between me and them, and it also affects everyone around us.

It affects my family, it affects how I sleep at night, it affects where I spend my money.

It's structural as well.

It's about whether the whole system is going to keep demanding an eye for an eye, or whether somewhere, someone will break the cycle.

You see, this parable Jesus teaches, it uses this economic metaphor for forgiveness.

It's a teaching on forgiveness.

And it is a metaphor.

It is about more than just the forgiving of financial debt, but it's not about less than that.

It's also about that.

Earlier in Matthew's gospel, once at 16, 19, and then just earlier in chapter 18, Jesus tells his disciples that whatever they bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

And whatever they loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

We talked a little bit about that last week at camp.

Binding and loosing.

And that is to say that the grace and forgiveness that the disciples of Christ live out in this world is real and effectual at the level of God's reign in the world.

And it's this sort of teaching that Jesus follows with this parable of the unforgiving slave.

Forgiveness for Jesus' followers is so important because through it and by it, real freedom, real liberation from deaths and punishments and servitude and war happen on earth as it is in heaven.

Church, if we have truly encountered the love of God in our lives, if we have tasted grace of some kind, we can't help but want to live it out, to pour it out for others as well.

But we don't always do this well.

We hurt one another, we hurt ourselves, and we continue to live in a world whose economic engine is debt and pain and war.

And so we must work together in community with accountability to mercy the world back together, to forgive it back together, to love it back together.

This is what Jesus was doing.

God came to the world in Christ to love it and to wholeness.

We carry a lot though, don't we?

Can we take a deep breath in and let it out?

I want you to think about some of the things you brought in here with you this morning.

We carry lots of kinds of debt.

We carry the conversation we had that didn't go well last night.

We carry the car note and the mortgage and the school loans.

We carry the debts we're owed, the hurts that we've received in the past, the people who have hurt us, who have done us wrong, that we haven't let go of, and the wounds that we have that still ache when we press on them.

And we carry the weight of our of our own hearts that have been hardened in certain ways, and the moments where we've chosen to grip our hurt instead of open our hands.

The moments when we've chosen to demand more from others instead of offering them the grace that got us to where we are.

And we carry all of that in a world that has no patience for carrying anything slowly, and that needs it on my desk by five.

The world wants the debt paid now.

It wants the apology now, it wants the healing now, and the world hands you a bill and says, pay what you owe.

But friends, that is not the only story on offer.

That is not the only way to view reality.

There is another king in another kingdom who looks at 10,000 talents, a debt that no one could ever pay in ten lifetimes, by the way.

And instead of collecting, forgives.

Instead of extracting, releases.

This is grace.

And once we have tasted that kind of grace, once we have felt the weight lifted, the account closed, the chains loosened, we cannot go back to living as though that never happened.

We can't go back to living the way the world has called us to live.

We can't go back to trying to demand from others what we received for free.

We have to become the tenderness of the world.

So hear this as an invitation, not a burden.

I hope that we and that I will grow in living tenderly.

I hope that we will grow in patient, uh, will grow in our patience in a world that is not very patient.

That we can live graciously even here and now, even though the bills are still in the mailbox and the news is still on our phones, and the whole exhausting machinery of the world that runs on debt and extraction and an eye for an eye.

I don't want to pretend that that's not true, but I don't have to live that way.

I don't have to live that way because I have the Spirit of God.

And I trust the truth that God has claimed me in Christ and freed me to live in this way.

So that we can leave and be patient with people around us who are still becoming who God has made them to be.

Our parents, our partners, our neighbors, the stranger who cuts you off in traffic.

If it was me, I'm sorry.

Have patience with me.

Have patience with me, the slave begged.

Have patience with each other, we might say back, because patience is a fruit of grace.

Be gracious with the debts others owe you.

Not because the debts don't matter, not because the hurt wasn't real, not because it wasn't painful when you gave it away, but because grace received and grace withheld cannot live in the same heart for a long time.

Something in us atrophies under the weight of unforgiveness.

And something in us gets free when we finally let go.

It's slow work, it is not efficient, it will not trend online, you will not be able to capture it in a TikTok.

But it is the Lord's work.

Bound in heaven and loosed here on earth, in Knoxville and in this room, and in you and in me, every time we can take that deep breath, and instead of responding in the way that we think is gonna get us what's ours faster, if we respond with the grace that we have seen in God, that we have seen in the life and teachings of Christ, may we be tender, because we have been touched by tenderness.

And one quick aside, too.

And that doesn't mean non-accountability, right?

There's that really ugly part of the parable right at the end, right?

Where the where the guy, where the community sees what has happened.

The community goes, We saw your debts get forgiven, and then you're acting like this.

And there's accountability there, right?

For the ways that we continue to hurt others, but that doesn't take the forgiveness away.

The forgiveness is first.

That's why we say grace first, and then gratitude.

You've received the grace, and now we will be accountable.

That's what Paul wrote in Romans.

So we grow in tenderness, not just because it's good for us, but because it's good for the world.

And let it be so not only in our hearts, but here on earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.