Living Forgiven

Romans 14:1-12, Matthew 18:21-35

How many of you have been forgiven? Show of hands…

That should be everybody’s hand – at the very least, if you’ve been to an Episcopal church before. Every time we confess our sins together, we are reminded of how God’s mercy and forgiveness are given to us – each of us, all of us, all our sins.

Many of us have also experienced forgiveness from another person, for small everyday hurts or major sins.

So – remembering what it’s like to be forgiven, how do you live with that forgiveness? What have you done with that relief or freedom or humility that washed over you when an apology was accepted, or a hurt released?

Have you made rules for yourself, or found rules to follow, so that you’ll never hurt someone like that again?

Do you find yourself living large, overflowing with generosity, in gratitude?

Do you suddenly find it easy to let go of old hurts yourself, and forgive others?

Or did the release of a guilt you’d been carrying suddenly remind you of the guilt that others owed you?

Maybe you’ve responded in several of those ways. We respond to forgiveness in all kinds of ways, and Paul and Jesus are both teaching about that today.

Jesus tells a story of a forgiven debtor whose sudden relief takes a selfish turn: freed from the absolutely unpayable debt he owed, he’s ready to get his life back on track by collecting what’s been owed to him. It doesn’t go very well for him, to say the least.

Jesus tells that story to remind Peter (and not so incidentally, us) that God’s nature and God’s judgement are infinitely more generous than our human nature, even at our very best. And it is dangerous for our souls and our everyday lives to put fairness ahead of generosity in the ways we live with one another. Doing that interferes with our own ability to receive forgiveness.

Forgiveness has to work without limits – even the generous limit Peter tries to set.
(Some of you must be wondering or worrying, so take note: Jesus isn’t telling Peter we have to set ourselves up to be hurt again and again, just let go of the hurts of the past, as many times as it takes to be truly free.)

Jesus reminds us that if we pass judgement on one another, as we do if we hold on to a hurt or insist on the payment of guilt, it means we’re forgetting who we belong to, and especially, forgetting who the other person belongs to: not to me as an antagonist or debtor, but to God, as a child of God. And they, too, are learning how to receive and respond to God’s forgiveness. They may just do it differently than I do.

In Paul’s communities, there seem to have been common disagreements about how we live forgiven; how we live in response to God’s mercy.
Having been brought into the risen life of Christ, adopted and loved and forgiven by the one Lord, some would say, there’s no way it’s okay to eat meat from the temples of the Roman gods, those dangerous idols. And if most of the meat in your city comes from those idols’ temples; if that pagan meat probably isn’t kosher, if – these days – you can’t tell if it comes from a farm that violates God’s standards for love of creation, or it comes laden with the baggage of unhealthy fast food and the soul-crushing consumerist culture – well, then, we should be eating only vegetables, in thanksgiving for God’s mercy toward us. Right?

Others say we should actually be eating it all – meat, vegetables, everything – in thanksgiving for that mercy. We should be celebrating our freedom from following all those idols of false religion and secular culture, showing far and wide our knowledge that it can’t hurt us because we are already redeemed through Christ, not through what we ourselves can do. Right?

Both could be pretty persuasive arguments – maybe one more than another, depending on how much you personally like a juicy steak. But if you’re convinced of one of them – if your response to God’s forgiveness is to avoid anything, anything at all, that could accidentally drag you away from your thanksgiving to God – having your friends keep arguing that being too straight-laced is a lack of gratitude toward God gets old pretty quickly.  And when they keep inviting you to meat-eating parties, full of everything that distracts you from God, and complaining if you stay away… you’re not going to be friends for long.

And vice versa. Vegetarians who insist you’re going to hell for eating meat are just as likely to break up relationships.

“So just cut it out, all of you!” says Paul.

“Those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. … Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another.”

Sometimes, Paul is so very Episcopalian. Live and let live, he seems to say – or better, live and let God. That’s familiar and welcome to the ears of those of us who love the diversity and tolerance of our particular way of common prayer.

But Paul himself isn’t interested in tolerance. What he wants is unity. Do not separate yourselves by passing judgement, he says, and I don’t mean just ignore each other’s quirks – support them! – because GOD has welcomed every one of these with whom you disagree. And our life together must reflect the unity of God.

I know that you know some people who don’t practice their faith the way you do. You know some people who don’t take church – or prayer, or the Bible – seriously enough, who feel free to take God’s forgiveness as a given, whether they worship or behave or not.

And you know some people who take church – the Bible, their prayers, whatever – far too seriously, people who can (and do!) tell you how not following the rules will take you straight to hell; people who know that being welcomed by God demands responsibility in response.

Do you tolerate those folks, or do you embrace them?  Do you work to build them up, to support them in their own response to God’s mercy, however different from yours, because without them, we will not be complete; without them, God’s mercy will not be fully known, to us, and to the world around us?

We all live forgiven, and we all respond to that forgiveness differently. The only thing we can’t do is limit it. We can’t limit forgiveness to seven times, limit it to the way that works for me, limit it by simply tolerating one another. The only thing we can do, forgiven as we are, is to build one another up, without tiring, without ceasing, without doubt, so that we are stronger, healthier, holier together in Christ.

How many of you, was it, who have been forgiven?

Keep those hands up, if you rejoice in Jesus’ call to live that forgiveness without limits. Keep those hands up, if you rejoice in Paul’s reminder to live that forgiveness for the sake of others. Those hands say that your life, and mine, are a testimony of unity and Christ, and of thanks to God, now and ever. Alleluia.

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