Sermon for Contemporary Worship (First Lent)

Not preached due to weather (Was to be preached at St. John's on Feb 22, 2015)
Scripture text: Matthew 18:15-35

We enter into the season of Lent with an extended passage from the Gospel of Matthew on the value of reconciliation. That this is the theme of these texts is not always obvious to us at first, especially given that we begin this extended discourse with a Scripture passage that is often used by the Church as a mechanism for discipline and addressing misbehavior.

Jesus outlines a four stage process for dealing with a transgressor in the church. First, address the transgression with the one who committed it privately. Secondly, do so with appropriate witnesses. Third, do so before the whole community. Fourth, if none of these work, treat this one as a “Gentile and a tax collector.”

If we’ve reached step four, it’s easy to see this as failure. We have not fixed the problem. We have not reconciled this sinner, and now the only option is removal from the community. Banishment, exile, rejection. But that’s not actually what’s supposed to happen at this stage. To fully understand what Jesus is asking here, you have to step outside its boundaries somewhat and remember first off who it is that is reporting this teaching to us: Matthew. And what was he before he became a disciple and an evangelist? Oh, yeah, a tax collector. So he presumably has first hand knowledge of how Jesus treats tax collectors. And how does Jesus treat people like him? “Follow me.”

Reconciliation is the goal. If the first three steps fail, you start over at the beginning. You go back to the basics. What does it mean to be a disciple. What does it mean to be a Christian. All that. It’s less rejection than it is retooling. It’s starting over and trying again to bring this transgressor into the community.

Peter’s question and the parable that follows are logical progressions of this chain of through. Peter seems to understand what Jesus is saying here. To reconcile requires forgiveness, but how often? He offers up the comparatively generous number of “seven times,” thinking that’s surely hyperbole enough (The Jewish Talmud of his day suggests only 3 times by comparison.) Jesus goes even further with by saying “seventy-seven” times. Occasionally we’ll hear this translated “seventy times seven.” But the point Jesus is making is not the exact number, but the pure extravagance of forgiveness that is required for reconciliation.

And the parable drives home this point, leaving no doubt as to Jesus’ intention. Ten thousand talents is an outrageous sum, an amount no person could ever repay. (If you want to talk math, at the usual daily wage of ancient Israel, that sum would take 200,000 years to repay.) And yet, the king does the unthinkable; he shows mercy and forgives the debt. The servant however sadly refuses the same mercy over his colleague who owes a paltry (in comparison) 100 denari, for which he is then held to account for his cruelty.

Reconciliation requires extravagance. Time and again, Jesus teaches us this lesson. We hear it in other parables as well, perhaps most famously in the Prodigal Son. The younger son has done the unthinkable, demanded his inheritance while his father is still alive (essentially telling dad to “drop dead”) and then squandered it. When he returns in remorse, the father likewise does the unthinkable and forgives him. An interesting side bit of trivia. Some scholars have argued that this famous parable should be called the Prodigal Father, since the word “prodigal” (a word not common in modern English) means “extravagant.” Reconciliation requires extravagance.

Forgive, forgive, forgive. Reconcile, work it out. Try again and again. Never stop. Never give up. Never allow a lost one to remain lost. Treat the lost as Jesus treated Matthew and Zacchaeus and the woman of Syro-phoenicia and the Roman centurion and countless other “Gentiles and tax collectors.” Follow and forgive.

This is Jesus’ lesson to us in these stories. But it isn’t just a demand he makes of us. He is the merciful king in the parable. He himself goes out of his way to forgive extravagantly. He is the embodiment of the Biblical concept of hesed, a Hebrew word we often translate as “mercy” or “loving-kindness.” More than one Biblical scholar finds these translations inadequate, because the word really means something to the effect of “expecting nothing from someone and yet receiving from them everything.” We should expect nothing of God, sinners as we are, and yet he grants us everything.

Jesus is at the center of that. How far will God go to forgive us? How far will God go to be with us? How far will God go to reconcile with his people? How extravagant will he be? You have only to look to the cross to see the answer. That’s God’s extravagant reconciliation. He wants us so badly, he’ll die for us. He, like so many in these parables, does the unthinkable. God dies for his people. God dies for us.

Unthinkable extravagance. That is God’s way. Whatever it takes to bring us together. He and us. We and him. “No greater love,” Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospels, “has anyone than to lay down his life for his friends.” That’s what God does for us. He gives everything to be reconciled to us. This generosity, this mercy, this hesed is unthinkable, and yet it is true. God is the prodigal father, God is the merciful king, God is the unthinkably extravagant reconciler, and we are those who benefit from his grace. Amen.