Am I in the Place of God?

Sermon on Matthew 18:21–35

To begin, I want to take a moment to acknowledge two things.

The first is that the term “slave” appears often in Jesus’ parable

And because the term, “slave,” carries a lot of trauma and pain for a great many people,

I shall be using the term “servant” for the rest of the sermon.

The second thing to mention is that I —

like many people in the world —

Experience an anxiety disorder.

This is not some great secret;

Three years ago my sister helped me begin seeing a therapist

And I’ve been able to develop strategies that have

Helped me organize my thoughts and reclaim my self-worth.

But two years,

I was challenged with the first difficult confrontation in my work towards self-compassion:

I felt like I had failed my parents.

My parents supported me through my musical and theatre endeavors in high school,

Helped me pay for my preferred college,

Supported me as I studied piano at this college,

And let me live with them after college while I worked as a youth minister.

And while they had done so much to support me,

I felt like I hadn’t lived up to their hopes for me:

I hadn’t succeeded enough in life, done anything worthy of note, hadn’t gotten married

And didn’t always feel as happy as I thought I should.

So I did what most English majors would do:

I wrote a poem.

I cautiously shared it with them,

Expecting that my confession would only make them feel hurt and unappreciated

But after they read it,

All they had to offer me was love and compassion.

They promised that they loved me for who I am, not what I produced

Told me that I didn’t owe them anything

And they asked how they could better show love to me so I might believe them.

Though they might not of realized it,

They were forgiving me of the many impossible debts I thought I owed,

And once they did, it felt nothing short of liberating.

And this liberating feeling of forgiveness

Is what I believe Jesus hopes to show Peter

After the mouthpiece of the disciples hesitantly asks his Messiah

How many times he is supposed to forgive someone,

Hiding the true question behind his breath,

“How many times can I expect to be forgiven?”

Reading the fear in Peter’s voice,

Jesus takes the generous suggestion of seven forgivenesses,

And skyrockets it up to an unthinkable seventy-seven forgivenesses.

Then Jesus reinforces this promise

Of unquantifiable love

By telling of a servant who owes a king ten-thousand Talents.

Now, the numbers of this passage are essential,

For the world of Jesus, like our own, is driven by wealth.

One talent was worth roughly six thousand denarii

Which means that this servant owes his king

The debt of a whole country.

The servant knows that he will never be able to repay this debt;

And when he sees that his wife, children, and possessions

Will be sold along with him in consequence for his debt,

He falls upon the ground, begging for the king for an ounce of mercy

That will give him the time he needs to find some solution to pay everything.

But the King, observing that this servant

Believes that his debt is worth more than who he is,

Decides to forgive the servant of everything he owes —

No strings attached, no conditions, just limitless forgiveness.

Can you imagine what the servant must have felt like?

Would he even have been able to comprehend the king’s decision?

He owed an impossibly huge debt,

And yet was forgiven at no cost.

Liberated because the king, like God

Determines, now and always, that who we are is so much more important

Than what we owe

And so we are infinitely forgiven.

But then Jesus does that annoying thing

Where he keeps talking.

And our freshly forgiven protagonist

Goes out to find a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii

Which is significant, but so much smaller than his former debt —

It’s the difference between how difficult it is to count to seven

Versus how difficult it is to count to seventy-seven —

It’s laughable to think that our forgiven servant would care

About something so insignificant.

But he does care.

Because we humans are so often more concerned with what we are owed

Than extending forgiveness to the people in our lives who need it most.

And the forgiven servant becomes the unforgiving servant

When he responds to the exact same plea he gave to the king just a few minutes ago —

“Have patience with me, and I will pay you” —

With violent retribution.

He who should have recognized the importance of forgiveness

He who knows how liberating limitless forgiveness can be

Refuses to share it, because he cares more about what he believes he is owed

Than the essential worth of another human being.

And then we get the devastating consequence

Other servants witness the act of cruelty,

Report the unforgiving servant to the forgiving king

And the servant is punished for neglecting to share

The limitless forgiveness he was given.

The forgiven hero has become an unforgiving villain;

The message of God’s limitless forgiveness for us

Is also a message of how difficult

We humans find it to forgive one another’s debts.

Forgiveness carries the power to create the Reign of God on earth

When we choose to make forgiveness known

Through our actions and our words,

Or the power

To cause pain and suffering

When we withhold it.

And seeing those extreme stakes

Peter’s initial question makes all the more sense,

How can we practice limitless forgiveness

When people hurt us

Or the ones we love?

Fortunately, we have an example of the

Forgiveness that Jesus expects from us

In the character of Joseph.

Joseph’s brothers have abused him because he had his father’s favor

Threw him in a pit, sold him into slavery

And after Joseph rose to become the second-in-command of Egypt

He helped them survive a famine that plagued their homeland.

So now, after their father has died,

Joseph’s brothers are convinced

That the debt they owe to Joseph is so impossibly high that they could never repay it,

And that he will take his revenge.

But when confronted with his brothers’ desperation

Joseph asks the incredible question

“Am I in the place of God?”

On one hand,

Jesus’ parable of the Unforgiving servant shows us

That the answer to this question is “No!” —

For we are all dependent upon the life-giving, liberating forgiveness of God.

But on the other hand,

Jesus’ parable shows us

That whenever we have the opportunity to forgive debts

We are in the place of God —

For we can make forgiveness a reality

By liberating people from what makes them feel unworthy

By taking care of their needs.

And so Joseph realizes

That his brother’s need for forgiveness, security, support, and affirmation

Puts him in the place of God

Gives him the responsibility not only to forgive them,

But to make that forgiveness known and real to them.

So he forgives them not only with words

But with tears, an embrace

And a promise to take care of all of their needs

So that they may believe in the forgiveness he offers

And remember that they are all beloved children of God —

Recipients of limitless forgiveness.

That is the forgiveness that Jesus calls us to practice

The forgiveness of impossible debts

In words and in actions

That liberates people from their fears of unworthiness

To know that they are loved by the God of limitless forgiveness.

For Jesus shows us that we are here to make God’s forgiveness felt —

To forgive the debts of others

So that they know that God has forgiven them.

For it is God’s work that frees us,

But it is our hands, our bodies, our words, and our actions

That make forgiveness a reality in this world.

And what a task we have set before us,

For this world is a world of debts

That tells us that we are what we owe.

That tells us that we do not

Live for the Lord,

But that we live to pay the bills

To acquire wealth

To gain power

And that love and acceptance cannot be ours

Unless we can afford them.

And people —

And the very world itself —

Are crying out in pain

Because of the debts

We are expected to carry and repay.

People who bear the burdens of centuries of oppression

Are crying out for justice and reform

People across the country who have been exploited by our economic system

Are crying out for relief

People are being forced out of living spaces

Because we cannot imagine how to reconfigure our systems

Of debt and payment.

This week, we have watched the earth,

God’s beautiful creation,

Catch fire and pay for humanity’s neglect

To take care of our natural resources

To reduce carbon emissions

And many people have been uprooted from their homes,

Forced to find shelter elsewhere

And now cry out for aid

As homes and lands have been lost.

How can we expect people suffering from so much debt

To believe they are loved by the God of limitless forgiveness,

And how can we expect them to be ready to forgive?

People of Grace,

We must realize that we are in the place of God

Possessing the power

To make forgiveness a reality

And reshape the way the world works.

We are like Peter, doubtful that our world could function

On Jesus’ promise of limitless forgiveness

But called nonetheless

To practice a forgiveness that shows all of God’s people

That they are forgiven

By forgiving their debts

By taking care of their needs.

It’s an impossible task, is it not?

Jesus’ parables have a way of asking the near-impossible of us,

They give us amazing, life-changing news

Before asking us to be love of Jesus Christ to one another.

So when confronting the matter of forgiveness

Let us begin by remembering that we are loved

By a God whose love is so limitless

That all of our debts, sins, or offenses

Have been forgiven before we even ask

Because God became human

In the form of Jesus Christ

To live among us

Teach us

Die for us

And rise for us.

And then, fueled by Christ’s love and sacrifice

Let us take the gift of forgiveness,

And consider where we can offer it to others

By relieving the burden of debts and needs

From an overburdened world.

Let us consider how we as individuals and as a church

Can be Christ for our community,

Can use our resources and platforms

To begin forgiving the debts we see in the world.

For there are no shortage of debts in the world

I certainly have a few that are on my mind right now.

Student and housing debt has been an incredibly difficult burden

For a number of my peers,

And especially people of color.

And the wildfires this week remind me

How much we need to help one another survive

And how much we need to change the way that we treat our planet.

But I would like to hear from you, Grace.

I am willing to guess that there are debts that you have witnessed in the world

That you believe could be forgiven, fulfilled, or resolved

And I would like to invite you to make those known.

I have created a Google survey

That I will post on the Facebook post for this video,

The Youtube description,

Or in the Zoom chat,

And it just asks you to anonymously suggest

A debt that the Grace community could work together to fulfill.

Valaire Kaur, a person of the Sikh faith

Who leads the Revolutionary Love project

Claims that “forgiveness is freedom from hate.”

And perhaps more than any debt right now, hate holds back

The knowledge that we are loved by God.

So people of Grace, let us remember that we live because of God

And we live for God

And because we are limitlessly forgiven by God

We are in the place of God

Called to practice limitless forgiveness

So let us get to God’s work with our hands

Freeing people from debts and freeing people (and ourselves) from hate

Because Jesus Christ has freed us with forgiveness.

Amen.