Embodied Unity
FROM THE RECTOR
I preached this sermon on Tuesday at Central United Methodist Church as a part of the Soup and Sermons series we are sharing with Central, First Christian Church, and Trinity UMC. I hope you will join us at St. Paul’s at noon this coming Tuesday for the next service in the series, when Ryan Pfeiffer from First Christian will be our preacher.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
Embodied Unity
TUESDAY IN THE THIRD WEEK IN LENT
Matthew 18:21-35
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Evan Garner, and I am one of the clergy at St. Paul’s across the street, and I am so thankful to be here. I am grateful for the opportunity to stand in this pulpit and speak to a congregation made up of folks from Central, Trinity, First Christian, and St. Paul’s as well as, I’m sure, people from other churches and from no church at all. I am glad that we can be here together today. And I am particularly thankful for the opportunity to be a part of a ministry that is being shared by these churches.
This preaching series didn’t happen in isolation. It is not an accident or a coincidence that we are here today. This is the fruit of the dream that collaboration among our congregations is not only possible but also life-giving. And I perceive that it has been a while since this particular sort of collaboration has been possible. For many years, our separate communities of faith have done good and faithful work, but we have pursued that work separately. Jennie, Chase, and Virginia, the clergy team at Central, have offered a different vision for what it means to be the church in Fayetteville—one of partnership and collaboration.
It is not an accident that we are here. This Soup and Sermons series did not spring up spontaneously because none of us had enough work to do. It came about because this is a moment when being the Body of Christ in this community requires deeper connections, stronger partnerships, and more meaningful exchanges between our congregations. That’s because this is a moment when political divisions, economic disparities, and even sectarian bloodshed are threatening to rip God’s people apart, and we cannot respond to those forces, which seek to divide us, if we cannot find ways to stand together, to work together, and to pray together. Without partnerships like this one, none of us can be faithful to our identity as followers of Jesus. And, for the chance to be the church that God is calling us to be, I am profoundly thankful.
This preaching series did not spring up in isolation, and neither did the parable that Jesus tells us today. Parables are rarely, if ever, spoken out of context. They always have a reference point—a teaching, a message, an insight that the one who uses the parable seeks to express. The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant is no exception, which is probably good news because the parable itself is pretty hard to swallow.
A king, whom Jesus, by the end of the parable, seems to compare with God, initially orders that a man and his family be sold into slavery in order to pay his debt. But, after hearing the servant’s pleas for mercy, the king relents and spares him, forgiving everything that is owed. Yet, after learning that this same servant refused to forgive the relatively insignificant debt of another servant, the king changed his mind yet again and had him thrown into prison to be tortured until even the last penny was paid. “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you,” Jesus said, “if you do not forgive your sibling from your heart.”
That doesn’t sound like Jesus—at least not the one I want to hear from. So what’s the context for this haunting parable about forgiveness? What is this supposed to teach us about God? Well, to get there, we have to work our way backward through several layers in Matthew 18 and try to figure out what Jesus was trying to get across to his disciples in order to learn how this parable helped him do that.
We can start with Peter’s question: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” The Bible doesn’t usually convey the tone with which the text was originally spoken, and I honestly can’t tell whether Peter was asking this question because he wasn’t sure or because he wanted to show off. Seven is an interesting number—a number that represents completeness or perfection. There are several examples in scripture of forgiveness being expressed in a seven-fold pattern, like the instructions given to the Levitical priests for worship on the Day of Atonement.[1] But other rabbinical sources available in Jesus’ day suggested that three times would be a gracious plenty. Maybe Peter was asking Jesus, “Do I really need to forgive someone all the way? Or perhaps he was trying to impress his teacher by promoting an even greater commitment to forgiveness than other rabbis would teach.
Either way, Jesus’ response shatters Peter’s expectations, and ours, too: “Not seven times but seventy-seven times.” Some translations even render that as “seventy times seven.” In other words, Jesus says to Peter, “You think you understand what it means to forgive. But, for those who want to follow me, even the furthest limits of forgiveness that they can imagine must be broken.”
As you might expect, Peter’s question wasn’t uttered in isolation either. Regardless of his motivation, Peter seems to want to make real and tangible something that Jesus had said earlier in Matthew 18. “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone,” Jesus taught them. If they won’t listen to you, take one or two others with you. If that still doesn’t work, share the matter with the entire church. And, if they still won’t listen to the whole church, let that person be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
It helps to remember that Jesus was shockingly generous and welcoming to Gentiles and tax collectors, but I don’t think that’s the point. And I don’t think it’s an accident that Jesus (or Matthew) uses the anachronistic word “church” to describe the community of faith he has in mind. He’s speaking to us about what it means to be the church—the “called out” ones, who are Jesus’ very hands and feet on the earth to this day.
It’s not good enough for those who claim to belong to Jesus to take a passive approach to forgiveness. We can’t wait for those who have wounded us to come to their senses and repent and return to the community of faith on their own. Jesus says that the responsibility for reconciliation rests on us. It is we who have been hurt by others who must seek them out in an attempt to restore the unity that we are called by Christ to embody. And, when it is impossible for us to do that on our own, either because we cannot be effective by ourselves or because, in some situations, it is physically dangerous for us to confront the person who has hurt us, we are told to bring one or two others along with us.
And, if that doesn’t work, it becomes the responsibility of the whole church to pursue healing and restoration—because the church cannot be the church unless it takes the matter of radical forgiveness radically seriously. Only as a last resort—only after someone refuses to accept the invitation to forgiveness offered by the whole community—must the community then be reconstituted without that member as a part of the body because nothing—absolutely nothing—within the Body of Christ can stand in the way of forgiveness.
This isn’t just something we are called to do. As Christians, it is who we are. Jesus taught his disciples that they must be about the work of pursuing forgiveness without limit because they have the power to show the world what it means to be at unity with God. And, as his followers, we can only show the world what it means to be one with God by embodying that same unity here on the earth. “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven,” Jesus said, because how we live with one another in this life absolutely has a direct correlation with how we live with each other and God in the next life.
Finally, we have dug deep enough into Matthew 18 to see why this strange and challenging parable is important for us to hear. Jesus is trying to teach us why forgiveness matters. And it matters because it matters to God. “What do you think?” Jesus asked near the beginning of this chapter. “If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountain and go in search of the one that went astray?” If that is how our God pursues us whenever we are lost, how can we say that we belong to his flock if we are not equally committed to seeking those who have gone astray? And, if we are not willing to go and search for those who have wandered off, how can we ever know what it means to be the one who is pursued by the Good Shepherd?
Every time we hesitate when given the opportunity to forgive, we undermine our own ability to know the forgiveness that God has given us. Every time we choose the safety and security of being right rather than seeking reconciliation with those who have wronged us, we cut ourselves off from the Body of Christ. The incomprehensible limitlessness of God’s grace can only make sense to a community that is defined by radical forgiveness. And, when that radical forgiveness defines who we are, we are more likely to find ourselves standing together, praying together, and working together, for that is how we become the Body of Christ together.
[1] This is from Leviticus 16:14, 19. See also Genesis 4:15, 24; Leviticus 18:28; and Proverbs 24:16.