Pentecost 16a

Intro: Sunflower Story

Matthew 18:21–35 “Then Peter approached him and asked, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times?”

First thing to take noice of here is the 7. Seven is a number of completion in Israelite and Jewish thinking. So to ask if I should forgive seven times is to ask should I offer a regular and complete forgiveness.

“I tell you, not as many as seven,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven.

70x7 or 490 times. I don’t think we are meant to keep a folder of how often our loved ones need our forgiveness. You are at 478 you better clean it up! its taking the exaggeration of seven and really hitting it home. Seventy times seven.

Now Jesus is tapping into something famliar for the people (Tell story of vengeance for Cains death times 7, and the sinful escalation of Lemech to 70 times.)

Jesus is the foil, as much as Lemech is sin Jesus is Righteousness, forgivness in stead of vengeance.

“For this reason, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle accounts, one who owed ten thousand talents was brought before him.

A talent is 75lbs, 10,000 talents tells us some things. This king is infinitely wealthy, to have that money on the first place, and he is infinity generous to have allowed a man to get so far into debt.

Where can we imagine an infinitely wealthy and generous king…God of course.

Since he did not have the money to pay it back, his master commanded that he, his wife, his children, and everything he had be sold to pay the debt.

The entirety of the mans possessions and life will be sold and will not remotly cover the debt, Like our sin before God.

So we have our infinatly wealthy and generous kind, owed such an infinate debt by a man that that man will be forever in prison. You serve an infinitely resourced God and ow such a debt for sin that you would be eternally in the prison of Hell if there is no intervention.

“At this, the servant fell facedown before him and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you everything.’ Then the master of that servant had compassion, released him, and forgave him the loan.

The prayer the plea…(compare to the Kyrie)

THe infinite mercy of God (make the distinction between justice, mercy and grace).

“That servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him, started choking him, and said, ‘Pay what you owe!’

Now as Lutherans we believe that our salvation comes by our faith, and faith alone accesses Gods saving grace. This was a response to the Roman Catholic view of Salvation coming by the synthesis of faith and work. Roman Catholic apologists have sometime criticized our tribe for believing that works play no part and we can run around like heathens.

What Lutheran and protestant view usually is, that we are saved by faith alone, it accesses God’s grace, and that grace transforms us into people of works. What we see in the parable is a man who is not transformed. This does not mean a failure of work, but the absence of the transforming faith.

“At this, his fellow servant fell down and began begging him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he wasn’t willing. Instead, he went and threw him into prison until he could pay what was owed. When the other servants saw what had taken place, they were deeply distressed and went and reported to their master everything that had happened. Then, after he had summoned him, his master said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’

Forgive us as we forgive from the Lord’s prayer, talk about we are asking God be with us in our forgiveness and to give us the power to do what he does infinatly well.

If we are not granted God’s saving faith and Grace we will not show the transformation that shows our salvation is true. It asks real questions about the presence of saving faith.

We will show wickedness that leads to reprobation.

And because he was angry, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed. So also my heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart.””

Jesus is giving us warning about participating in what Grace is doing in our lives. TO allowing saving faith to do its saving work.

Applications

St. Paul reminds us that Love keeps no record of wrongs. We have been granted infinite mercy and we must turn and show it to others. Now if you are in a abusive relationship or the sin of another keeps you in constant turmoil, I am not telling you to keep allowing that. You should follow the instinct to get out of those reltaionships or at least redraw boundaries to keep the hurt from breaking through into your life repeatedly. What the gospel is asking is to allow the debt of those hurts to go. This is a process. It may have to be done in the context of Christian Spiritual formation, or community.

Reflect regularly on the infinite generosity of God, and your infinite debt. This is why our prayer of confession is worded the way it is. This is why Psalm 51 says what is says, David understands the stakes. We need to understand the stakes. It will lead to transform us into more generous and forgiving people as we reflect what has been done to us.

As the Gospel reconciles our relationship to God, reconcile relationships with eachother. I know some of you have been seriously hurt, and I already encouraged boundaries from getting hurt to the point of abuse and turmoil. But if you have not yet shared that you forgive the debt, that you are not looking for a pound of flesh its time. You may have to go first. But we pray every week forgive us as we forgive. We must be practicle in showing what God has practically given us.

Conclusion

The gospel is the cure to generational vengance. If some one harms lemech he would come back to harm them not 7 times but 70, and I imagine that would mean that persons honor demanding they do the same and so the spiral begins. But Jesus comes and offers us an exagerated forgeness that breaks the cycle. The need for vengeance does not disappear he absorbs our vengeance owed to God by suffering though innocent. We are saved from the justice of God by receive the mercy of God because of the Grace of God.

“Behold the man up on the cross, my sin up on his shoulder, ashamed I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there, until it was accomplished, his dying breath has given me life, I know that it is finished.”