Year A
Matthew 18:21-35
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
God’s Mercy Is Healing
Our world is in need of healing. Just open up a newspaper or open the news on your computer or phone and read all about it. The world is indeed need of healing and reconciliation and so, too, are we as individuals. In my mid-thirties, after attending a cursillo weekend, where I began to realize God’s love and forgiveness in my life, I wanted to grow closer to the Lord in my prayer life and in my study, and it was during this time that the Lord showed me the anger and hurt from past life experiences that needed healing for me to be well. So I began to study the healing ministry of Jesus through the Order of St. Luke and through study, meditation and confession, I forgive myself and those who hurt me, and I was given a way to continue to be able to find that healing to this day.
Forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts that the Church provides a human life. The past cannot be changed. We hurt and get hurt and when we are wronged, we are going to have to come to terms with it. We will either be bitter, angry, and damaged by the moment, which is the cause of many health issues, or we will discover the divine resource that enables us to authentically and genuinely forgive ourselves and those who hurt us. In each of the lessons today we see this ethic of forgiveness and mercy that God can lead us to, to find new life. God’s mercy can lead us to live mercifully toward one another which can help us find healing. And we might ask ourselves, what does it mean to live mercifully toward one another? Because, most of the time, we, human beings provide each other with excellent examples of what not to do.
Today in our readings we have some negative examples but also some positive examples as well. In the reading from Genesis, we read of Joseph’s encounter with his brothers who had years before thought of murdering him but instead sold him into slavery. Far from being enslaved, Joseph was now the pharaoh’s right-hand man. When his brothers beg him for mercy after Jacob, their father’s death, Joseph doesn’t seek revenge he weeps and offers them forgiveness. In this encounter, Joseph offers us a model for justice, a way to live mercifully toward one another and we see God’s way of mercy of loving neighbor. God brings healing to this family by engaging with what Joseph’s brothers did so that ultimately it has a redemptive rather than a destructive result.
Today’s gospel parable of the forgiving king and the unforgiving servant, personalizes our need for forgiveness, the challenge we face to forgive others and as in the OT reading, we see the way God leads us in the way of mercy and forgiveness. The text begins with Peter’s famous question about forgiveness and Jesus’ equally famous response. Peter feels that there should be a limit to forgiveness. The wisdom of that day said that forgiveness was a three-time matter. If someone did you a misdeed, it was your obligation before God to forgive him or her. If they repeated their wrongdoing, you should forgive them again, said the rabbis. After all, it was the God-like thing to do. Even a third time was encouraged, because it increased your public esteem and your religious long-suffering character. But there had to be a limit on mercy, for justice required its day. Therefore three times forgiving was the general rule for the truly devout. Peter must have felt pretty good about his answer of seven times.
But Jesus simply says no. Forgiveness is unlimited for those who love God and the parable explains why this is the case. The servant or slave owes the lord the equivalent of almost two years of tax revenue. The servant is forgiven. Then the servant makes the massive mistake of not treating another as he has been treated. He showed no inclination toward mercy, even after receiving and benefiting from another’s gift of mercy. We would assume this man would feel relief, joy and gratitude toward the king who forgave his debt.
We are shocked that this man failed to “pay it forward,” because we know that this is the moral expectation of the story. How does he fail to make the connection, which is obvious to us and would have been to the original audience of Jesus’ parable? The failure of the ungrateful servant is in his inability to place himself in another person’s shoes…as we like to say. To act mercifully toward his fellow servant, the ungrateful servant must be able to see himself as both the debtor and the debt-holder, the sinner and the one forgiven. He is not capable, or not willing, to see through the eyes of the other or see the sin in himself. This in my opinion is the moral deficit of our humanity.
Paul today echoes this deficit in the Epistle when he argues that it is easy to be judgmental when we are convinced that we and the way we do things is right and others and the way they are doing things are wrong. Of course, there are things that are clearly wrong. But by trying to hold on to our ways, we limit the power of transformation that the gospel is constantly calling us to. Paul, who is writing to an emerging Christian community in Rome with very different traditions and worldviews, in the midst of strong differences of opinion, does not take sides but insists that they should embrace all people as equals in Christ. His concern is to prevent the sides from becoming so polarized that they no longer respect each other or seek to understand the other’s opinion.
Paul argues that they can still have their convictions but the only way they can be both humble and fully convinced and walk in the way of God, is by extending mercy toward others who disagree. Showing compassion for the other is the true measure of those who know God’s mercy, and this is when healing can happen. For, as Paul reminds us “We do not live to ourselves…we live, to the Lord.” The focus of those who love God is not judgment, for that is God’s realm, but rather pursuing “what makes for peace and for mutual up-building.” Our texts today give us a merciful ethic for life.
But the world does not seem to be constructed in ways that reward a merciful ethic. We must choose whether we will live mercifully toward one another or toward our individual interest. Forgiveness is a choice. It is mercy offered to find healing. It is a way of life and the goal for those who seek to live in a way that is faithful to Jesus’ life and teaching. For, once we appreciate how much God has forgiven us, we should be ready and willing to forgive seventy-seven times. God’s mercy for us can lead us to live mercifully toward one another which can help us find healing. This is the only way we and our world will begin to look more and more healed like the kingdom God intended it to be.