Forgiveness, One More Time
Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church
A warm welcome to each worshiper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.
As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.
943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkway.org
Order of Worship
May 12, 2024
Seventh Sunday in Easter
10:00 a.m.
*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.
Prelude
Greeting and Announcements
Mission Statement: We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.
Call to Worship:
Sing to God a new song,
for God has done marvelous things!
Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth,
for God is still doing marvelous things!
Break into joyful song!
Sing praises with lyre and melody
and trumpets!
Let the seas roar and the floods clap their hands!
For God is coming to judge the world
with righteousness.
God is coming to judge the world with equity.
Sing to God a new song!
*Hymn Blessed Assurance #369
Prayer of Confession:
Jesus, friend and brother,
you taught us to abide in your generous love,
for it completes our lives and gives us joy;
you ask us to love others as you have loved us,
for it brings your creation to fruition.
We sometimes struggle
to love the people in our lives
as you have loved us.
Forgive us, we pray,
and teach us your love again. Amen.
Assurance:
Long ago Jesus said to his disciples,
“I have called you friends, because I have made
known to you everything that I have heard from [God].
You did not choose me, but I chose you!”
Jesus speaks these words to us today.
Jesus forgives us and chooses us to be his friends,
sharing his great work of love. Hallelujah!
Scripture Reading Matthew 18: 21-35
Forgiveness
21 Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven[a] times.
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him, 25 and, as he could not pay, the lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Sermon Forgiveness, One More Time
Friends, this morning’s sermon is the second toe I’m dipping into Stump the Preacher 2024, sermons requested by y’all and then preached by me. This is another of the many topics that were brought to me last year, that I saved for this year. The person who suggested this one asked this question: what do we do about forgiveness when the person who hurt us is not at all remorseful?
Deep sigh. It’s one of the hardest questions I’ve ever had to face in my faith journey, and I’ve faced it many, many times. Seventy seven times. Or maybe seventy times seven times. Who knows, I lost count.
I’ve preached to y’all about forgiveness at least twice before, but this is a topic we keep coming back to, and for good reason. Forgiveness is the backbone of our faith. Without forgiveness, everything else we try to do in the name of following Jesus falls apart.
Love is the hands and feet of our faith. It’s the action. It’s the mercy and justice work. Hope is the vocal chords of our faith, making whatever we say to one another a message of Good News, a message that echoes Jeremian 29: 11–”For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans to prosper and not harm you, to give you a future with hope.” Discipline is the muscles of our faith that we strengthen through our spiritual practices. But none of those things can hold up our faith, even if we have all of them, if we lack the ability to forgive. Without the hard spiritual work of forgiveness, love is hollow, hope is ungrounded positivity, and discipline lacks its outcome.
Jesus taught us that forgiveness sets us free from debt and payback. It opens us up to the love that Paul taught us about in 1 Corinthians 13–the famous “love is patient, love is kind” passage. Love keeps no record of wrongs. That’s only possible through forgiveness. Forgiveness tosses the ledger out the window.
Jesus’ friends and neighbors lived in a world where there was totally a ledger, and people lived in fear of it. It was a society deeply lacking in mercy and justice. Peter, approaching Jesus in this passage in hopes of getting a gold star and a pat on the head, tries to prove he lives way above his community that literally chains one another in debt. Peter thinks that forgiving someone just once should be more than enough–and after all, it’s way more than most of his neighbors are willing to do for one another. So surely forgiving seven times wins Peter the gold in the Forgiveness Olympics, right?
Wrong.
Because forgiveness isn’t about how good you are for letting others off the hook. Forgiveness is for everyone, including you.
Jesus knows exactly what kind of hypothetical will get Peter’s attention: a debtor’s prison. In Jesus’ day, if your neighbor owed you money, even a very small amount, you could imprison their whole family, and even threaten to sell them into slavery, until your debt was paid back.
Holy guacamole.
Can you imagine your whole family going to jail because you asked your friend if she could spot you 5 bucks, and you didn’t have it on you to pay her back? What would you learn, in a world like that, about helping one another, and being willing to receive help? In a world like that, every person is out watching their own back, untrusting of even those closest to them.
Jesus tells Peter a made up story about a man who learned the hard way that we can’t survive in a world like that. He says there’s a man in the bottom 98% of Israel’s wage earners who owed the Jeff Bezos of his day a bazillion dollars–money that, to be clear, the Jeff Bezos of First Century Palestine doesn’t need, and likely doesn’t even really notice is missing without looking it up in his ledger. Because this Average Joe doesn’t have a bazillion dollars on him, Jeff Bezos goes after everything near him–all his possessions, his house, his wife, and his children. Everything and everyone is property that can be exchanged for money to go to this guy’s Cayman Islands bank account. But the poor guy pleads with Jeff to see him and his family as human beings who don’t deserve to be harmed. It’s incredible what happens here, because the poor guy is asking the rich guy here to change his whole world view on the spot, just for him. And Jesus tells us that the odds of that may be long, but that’s not an impossible scenario, because Jeff Bezos has a change of heart and decides to just erase the poor guy’s name from his ledger. No time in debtor’s prison, his family is free and safe, and he doesn’t lose anything. He’s free.
Being set free from such an enormous burden should trigger a grand reverse of the cycle–instead of hunting down his debtors, this man should burn his ledger and set everyone else free, too. He should do his part in making his neighborhood safer for everyone. He should make his world a place where it’s ok to need help. But instead of leaning into his relief, he learns nothing from this interaction with Jeff Bezos and shakes down another Average Joe who owes him a dollar. When the other dude says “oh man, I forgot my wallet!” our dude throws the other guy right in debtor’s prison. The other working guys around him are horrified that he would betray them like that, so they hand him right back to Jeff Bezos, who throws him in that debtor’s prison he wanted so desperately to stay out of.
When we can’t forgive one another, we’re all left with nothing. When we hold grudges against one another, when we hold debts and mistakes and past hurts against one another and we can’t let go, we create a whole system where everyone lives in fear and distrust and no one has enough space to live a good, productive, loving life.
The reverse of that is a world with grace. Grace is an undeserved gift. None of us can make up our harm to one another on our own. And this is where my friend’s question comes back into the conversation: it’s hard enough to let go of the record of wrongs when we’re dealing with someone who knows they were in the wrong, is sorry, and wants to make amends. But what about the person who will never admit they hurt you, never apologize, and never acknowledge that their actions had consequences?
In this world, that person may never understand how they hurt you, but the harm they put out into the world will absolutely come back to them. Some folks in other faith traditions might call that “karma,” and that’s fine that they do. I look at it as reaping what you sow. Hurt people hurt people. When you put harm out into your world, the people around you bristle, and pass it on. And on and on and on. It’s like a credit card with a huge balance and you just keep paying interest on it month after month.
But when we forgive, we offer everyone around us a chance to live differently. It’s not just about you and the person who hurt you. Remove them from the equation for a second. If you extend grace through your heart, spirit, and the actions that come from that wellspring, the people closest to you will feel that first. Your partner. Your best friends. Your siblings. Your kids. And they’ll get to pass on that grace instead of the hurt. You’ll help the people closest to you see that you have grace for them when they come up short, when they make a bad move, when they hurt your feelings, or when they mess up and they need you to help them fix it. And that sets them free to teach others that it’s ok to not be perfect, because we’re just humans. I’ve faced some incredible heartbreak in my life, and I can’t even fully process all of it, so I know that there’s nothing another human can do to take that away from me. The same, I’m afraid to say, is also true for all of you. I can’t undo what others have done to you.
But a little grace from me, from you, from everyone, helps us survive a bad day, and little by little, God erases the ledger, and heals us.
Amen.
*Hymn Be Still, My Soul #534
Offering
Offertory
*Doxology #94
*Prayer of dedication
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer
God of life and love, we give you thanks for this new day. We’re grateful, O God, for all the ways your presence is made known to us – in great and small ways – whereby we are reminded of your steadfast love for us and for all people. On this day of celebrating your love, we give you thanks for those who have given us life. We praise you, O God, for your gift of motherly love, both gentle and fierce, both strong and humble, both kind and true. For mothers who have joined you in heaven and whom we miss dearly this day, we give you thanks. For mothers who work day and night to raise and care for their children, we give you thanks. We also remember those mothers who labor at this task alone. May we, your church, remember to uphold all families through our life together. For mothers who have lost a child to death and must carry on, we ask for your mercy. May we all sustain these mothers in their time of need and answer your call to reach out to them in compassion and love. For women who are new mothers and those who are expecting children but are not quite mothers yet, we praise you, O God, for the joy and anticipation of new life. Grant that we never forget our duty to uphold these growing families – that in our shared life together, we all may hear the call to be your disciples in this world. For all of the women who longed for – but never had – children of their own, we give you thanks. These women have been living examples of your love and grace as they have answered the call to nurture and care for others. We also pray, O God, for the mothers who have failed to live up to the call of motherhood. We believe you are a God of healing, and we remember that we all stand in the need of your grace. Where we cannot forgive, Lord, give us strength. We stand in solidarity this day, O God, with mothers around the world who have watched their children die of hunger, every mother who has been victim of abuse, every woman who stands against a world that massacres her children in the name of war and dares to rename them “collateral damage.” We lift to you the spirits of all mothers around the world – even those mothers we will never know personally. We praise your name and lift all mothers, those we have mentioned and those left unmentioned, as we join together in the prayer you taught all of your children in all times and in all places to pray. Let us join in praying the Lord’s Prayer.
Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.
*Hymn How Great Thou Art #77
Benediction
Postlude
Staff
Natalie Bowerman Pastor
Betsy Lehmann Music Director
Joe White Custodian
Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant
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