15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19A

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19A September 13, 2020 This week, a friend of mine asked a question. She said she had been thinking about forgiveness, especially in light of this week’s gospel reading, and she couldn’t help but wonder what to do with anger? Is it possible to forgive someone and still be angry? Or do you have to give up the one to do the other? And if we do have to give up anger to forgive, how on earth do we do that? Let’s look for a minute at the context for today’s gospel reading. Our reading for today is nestled within some other passages in Matthew that might inform how we read this difficult parable. This chapter of Matthew’s gospel starts with the disciples arguing about greatness. Jesus teaches them that greatness can be found only through humility, and then he warns them about causing “a little one” to sin. Next he tells them the parable of the shepherd who has 99 sheep and leaves them to go find the one lost sheep. Immediately following that, we have last week’s reading which is Jesus’s teaching about how to deal with conflict in the church, which is immediately followed by this week’s passage-where Peter asks Jesus how often he must forgive someone who offends him, Jesus answers with a ridiculously large number and then tells the parable for today. In this parable, a slave begs the king to forgive his very large debt, and when the king does forgive this debt, the slave leaves and goes and demands payment for a much smaller debt from a fellow slave. The debt-forgiven slave has the other slave thrown into prison, and the parable tells us that the other slaves are greatly distressed when they see this, so they go report it to the king. The king calls up the forgiven slave and says 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?” Jesus concludes the parable by saying, “And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’” Here are my takeaways from this parable. First, we cannot maintain both anger and forgiveness. They are mutually exclusive. At first, it looked like the king had forgiven the first slave, but then at the end of the parable, we see the king’s anger, which must have been so close under the surface, as he revokes his forgiveness and hands the slave over to be tortured until he can pay his full debt that the king had just forgiven. Second, this parable holds up an unflattering mirror before us in that it shows that we are much quicker to beg forgiveness for ourselves than to offer it to our fellows. And finally, the key to forgiveness in this parable, the antidote to our anger when we have been wronged, is named in one simple, and almost archaic word: mercy. One of my colleagues told me about a previous boss she had in the church who would not let her use the word mercy as a response when she would write the Prayers of the People; he would never let her use the response, “Lord, have mercy.” When she finally asked him why, he responded, “Because people don’t understand mercy.” And in some ways, it’s true. We don’t understand mercy. And isn’t that really the point of Jesus’s whole parable today? Mercy is such a foreign concept to us, especially these days. What does it even mean to act mercifully, to ask for mercy from one another? How can we live more mercifully 6 months into a global pandemic, when we are all tired and just want things to “go back to normal”? What would it look like to employ mercy in our common life, in our public life? How might we even begin to go about demanding it? I think the first step in this is that we as people of faith have to recognize the mercy that has already been shown to us by God. That is the first step in discharging our own anger about perceived wrongs or injustices that have been done to us. We must confess our own faults and failings and then wholeheartedly receive the assurance of God’s pardon, God’s forgiveness, God’s mercy. There is a quote from Bryan Stephenson’s book Just Mercy that we read a couple of years ago that speaks to this. Stephenson writes, “There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can't otherwise see; you hear things you can't otherwise hear.”i

Today, before we take communion, we are going to pray a litany of forgiveness, where we name our own brokenness, commending to God those ways that we have failed God and each other and also commending to God those who have hurt us. We will receive the assurance of God’s pardon, and then we will taste God’s mercy as we share communion, receiving the mercy of God that is incarnate and embodied in our Lord Jesus Christ into our very bodies, hearts, and souls. As we do this, Bernadette is going to play one of my favorite hymns “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy” and I’ll invite you to reflect on the ways you have tasted God’s mercy in your own life. The words for the hymn are set to a tune that rolls like the gentle waves of the ocean, and they are “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea; there’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty. There is welcome for the sinner, and more graces for the good; there is mercy with the Savior; there is healing in his blood. There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven; there is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgement given. There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed; there is joy for all the members in the sorrows of the Head. For the love of God is broader than the measure of the mind; and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind. If our love were but more faithful, we should take him at his word; and our life would be thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord.”ii This week, your invitation is to spend some time floating in the wide sea of God’s mercy for yourself and for those around you. Begin to look for ways that you might be called to act mercifully to others. Begin to think about what it would look like to employ mercy in our common life, in our public life, and how might we begin to go about demanding it? i. Stephenson. Bryan. Just Mercy. 2014. ii. Hymnal 1982. 469. Words: Frederick William Faber. Music: St. Helena, Calvin Hampton.