Pentecost 16A
September 13, 2026
Matt. 18:21-35; Psalm 103:1-13
INTRODUCTION
In last week’s readings, we dealt with how to hold one another accountable in a faithful community, dealing with the inevitable situation in which one person wrongs another. Today’s Gospel reading is right on the tails of that conversation. Peter, wondering just how far to push this, asks, “Ok, but how many times do we have to do this? How many times should we forgive? As many as seven?” And Jesus will open up the depth of God’s forgiveness, with his famous formula: “not seven, but seventy-seven times.” In other words: don’t ever stop.
This depth of forgiveness is nothing new to people of faith. Our first reading shows this. Today we’ll hear the stunning conclusion of the Joseph saga. You know this story – Joseph’s brothers, the sons of Jacob, are jealous of him and his technicolored coat, and they sell him off into slavery and pretend he is dead. He has a rough go of it in Egypt, but eventually ends up as Pharaoh’s second-in-command, having used his gift of dream interpretation to save Egypt and surrounding areas from a seven-year famine. Now his brothers have come crawling to him for help, not knowing it is Joseph – until he reveals himself. Assuming there is no way Joseph will ever forgive them (and really, would you?), they try one more time to fool him, but Joseph won’t have it. Instead, he forgives them, telling them that what they intended for evil, God used for good.
We have all been in a situation of either needing to ask or offer forgiveness. Neither position is an easy one. As you listen today, think about your own experiences with forgiveness, and consider what light today’s lessons might shed on the situation. Let’s listen.
[READ]
“If my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”
Dear Peter, always so eager to please. The more I preach, the more affection I grow for this impulsive and flawed disciple, and the more of myself I see in him. I imagine what must be going on in Peter’s life that he thought to ask this question. Has he just had a fight with his spouse, because she has done that thing again that he just can’t stand and for goodness’ sake why won’t she stop it already?? Have and the Sons of Thunder gotten under his skin, with their ridiculous antics? Has he already started to wonder if maybe Judas Iscariot has some different priorities than the rest of them, and when Peter brought it up to him, Judas said something pretty hurtful and Peter is licking his wounds about it? Who has sinned against Peter, that made him want to ask this question?
Whatever it is, I really believe that Peter asks this question of Jesus in good faith. Maybe he would prefer not to have to forgive someone who has wronged him at all, so the fact that he is even willing is remarkable. How many of us hold grudges that we struggle to let go? I can think of a few folks who have hurt me, folks who I thought I had forgiven until suddenly I start griping about them all over again and I think, “Hm, maybe I haven’t really let that go like I thought I had.” And I see Peter looking at the situation and thinking, “You know, I’ll betcha Jesus is going to say I should not only forgive, but do it more than once. That seems like a Jesus-y thing to say. I know: I will overshoot. I’ll ask if maybe… seven times is enough – because seven is a whole lot, the number of completion even. Oh yes, seven, this will impress Jesus, and show him that I’m really starting to get what he’s been trying to teach us.”
Well, once again, Jesus has something more to teach Peter, and us. “Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.” (Ah, I feel crushed on Peter’s behalf!) What Jesus is really saying here, of course, is, “It’s never enough times. There is not a point at which forgiving is done. So just keep doing it.”
Then to hit home the point, Jesus tells this parable, one which should leave us feeling outraged! A man is forgiven an exorbitant amount – it might as well be a gazillion dollars, for there is no way that the 1st century equivalent of a middle class guy with a family to support is going to ever be able to pay it back. It’s millions of dollars! He and his family are about to be sent to jail, but the man begs for mercy, promising to pay it back. He will not; it is impossible. And in a moment of sheer grace, the king decides to cancel the debt, and sends him on his way.
Oh, how I wish the parable ended here! Wouldn’t that be a nice analogy for how gracious God is with us? A perfect illustration of how Jesus died for all our sins, and so our debt of sin is completely erased, and we can live in spiritual freedom for the rest of our days?
But human nature is not so clean-cut as that. For the man leaves that place, and immediately finds someone who owes him money, a much more reasonable amount, like a few thousand dollars. He violently asks the debtor to pay, and when he can’t, when the debtor begs in the same way the servant has just done before the king, he has the man thrown in prison.
By now, the reader should be utterly aghast. How ungrateful this man is! How absurd to have received a life-changing forgiveness of debt, to have mercy shown to him that he did nothing to deserve, and then to turn around and be utterly unmerciful to his neighbor!
To me, this moment, when we all feel aghast at the absurdity of the man’s behavior, is the moment of truth. For this may be just a story, but we live this reality every day – and we are, I hate to say, often not the good guy in this story. We are the ones who have been forgiven massive debt – our sins wiped clean each day – and yet still go about our lives often oblivious, ungrateful, unmerciful, and demanding of others to pay us what they owe. We are the ones who struggle to forgive.
Now, that’s not true all the time. I know sometimes we humans are able to forgive, even incredible wrongs, and we are grateful, and we do recognize the gifts we have been given, even gifts we do not deserve. But there is also a reason that, when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus included this phrase: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Lutherans usually use the word trespasses or sins instead of debts, but same idea: we pray that God would help us to forgive others, just as we have been forgiven.
Or what if it means, “Forgive me in the same fashion, by the same measure, that I forgive others.” Oof, how would that go for us? It reminds me of a convicting reframing I heard posed about this text. When Peter asks, “How often should I forgive?” Jesus answers, “Well, it depends. How often do you want God to forgive you?”
The next part of the parable is the part I wish wasn’t there. The king finds out about the ungrateful, unmerciful servant, and is rightfully outraged. “Seriously, man?” he says. “I forgave you all that debt, and you turn around and you can’t even do a fraction of the same? I was merciful to you, and you couldn’t show any mercy at all to someone else?” I don’t like it because it sounds like God’s grace is conditional, and forgiveness has strings attached. “I will only forgive you if…” I don’t like it because the punishment is so very severe – not only is the servant jailed, but now also tortured until he can repay, which of course will be never. That is… tough to swallow. It makes me worry: is that truly how God deals with us?
I don’t like it, but it is important that this part is in there, too. Because not forgiving, not having mercy, not treating your neighbor with compassion is a sort of torture. As author Anne Lamott quips, “Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.” The unmerciful servant is tortured by “the jailors” – and that is how all those resentments and grudges that we hold onto can feel, right? We are held captive by them, and cannot free ourselves. We cannot shake them. And as long as we cannot shake them, we also cannot be free.
I think this parable is intentionally extreme to show us just how seriously Jesus takes this teaching. The extreme nature of it is meant to shock us, to shock us into recognizing the transformation that is so needed in our own hearts. It urges us to look deep within in order to see what jails us, what tortures us by its relentless presence, by the real estate it is taking up in there.
Forgiving once is hard. Forgiving seven times, to Peter’s credit, is harder. But forgiving seventy-seven times is sometimes what is necessary, in order to continually wipe clean the junk that would try to keep us from living fully into the life that God wants for us – a life in which we are not held back by fear, resentment, anger, and grudges, and so we are able instead to extend love, mercy, and compassion to our neighbor in need.
Jesus does this for us. He wiped the slate clean in our baptism. He wipes it clean every time we come to him, ready to repent. He wipes it clean each time we come to this table and hear those words, “Given for you.” He does not want us to suffer – that is why he shows us a different path. And when we fall off that path, he guides us back, showing us again that even though we are sometimes unmerciful and ungrateful, God is, as the Psalmist says, “full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”
Let us pray… Merciful God, we struggle to forgive, to let go of fear and grudges. Help us to forgive others as you have forgiven us, to trust in your love and compassion, and to live into the freedom you have won for us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy spirit. Amen.
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