Homily for Trinity 22

[Texts: Micah 6:6-8 / Phil. 1:3-11 / Matt 18:21-35]

Lucy is our beagle. Cute and sassy! She likes all sorts of games. She fetches, she plays tug of war, she protects her family from “the evil thing” that lives in the hall closet – also known as the vacuum cleaner – and she loves for visitors to come to the house so she can give them reminders of their baptism with her tongue. Yuck. But the one thing Lucy just can’t seem to get the hang of is going for a walk. Lucy doesn’t go for walks. Put her on the leash and instead of walking with you, she thinks in a variant of the old tug of war game. She pulls this way and then without warning will take off that way. And she’ll circle – no doubt trying to trip you up. In short, she seems to resist with might and main wherever it is that you want to lead her.

“He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”

Walking humbly is what Lucy doesn’t do. In her pride she thinks that she knows best and off she goes until she is hauled back in line by the leash. You and I are rather like Lucy, aren’t we?

Walk humbly with God, with that leash on? Not us! And so we take off this way and that, and God patiently yanks on our chain to get our attention and get us walking the way He would have us walk again. Not the way we think is best, but the way He knows is best, the way He leads us. Yes, even when we fear the way He’s leading, and we pull one of Lucy’s “I’m not going there and you can make me” with our legs braced against the direction He’s leading. But He gives a tug and off we go that way anyway.

When we will ever learn the joys of submitting to Him and letting Him take us for a walk? Of letting us lead us through this world to Himself in heaven? Of not questioning His ways, but giving ourselves over to them?

Peter was pulling a Lucy in today’s Gospel. He was willing to go for a walk with Jesus down the forgiveness path – but only so far. He figured after seven times, he’d plant his feet firmly and say: far enough down that path, thank you very much.

But Jesus doesn’t agree to do things our way; instead, He invites us to do things His way, to walk humbly with our God. And that means to walk all the way down the forgiveness path. Past mile marker seven or seventy-seven or four hundred ninety. To risk going down the forgiveness the path as far as He went Himself.

For surely He’s the one who is the King in today’s Gospel reading – He usually is. He’s the one who wipes out the debt of his servant – a phenomenally huge debt – a debt of proportions big enough to even catch the attention of a Bill Gates. And when the man has nothing to pay with and is facing certain slavery for himself and bringing sorrow and grief on all his loved ones, and all he can do is say: “Have patience with me and I will pay all!” Mysteriously the heart of the King is moved.

Patience? He gets something better than patience. He gets mercy, pity, forgiveness, the total wiping out of his debt. One moment he and his family faced poverty, shame, and slavery. The next moment he was a free man – all thanks to the mercy of the King. The King who assumed the debt to wipe it out. Who endured the loss rather than make the servant pay. We call that the cross. For there our King took to His own account all our debt and so wiped it out indeed. As St. Paul put it: “He cancelled the record of debt that stood us against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Between us and what we owe there now stands a payment so huge that it cannot be exhausted.

And our Lord wants us to live in that and celebrate it and rejoice in it and pass it on!

Oh, but look what happens! Instead of living in the forgiveness of the King, following Him all the way to the point where we too are forgiving those who sin against, blessing those who curse us, and doing good to those who spitefully use us – thus becoming like our Father in heaven – we pull a Lucy. Don’t want to go that way. Don’t want to walk down that path all that way. It scares us. We’re staying put.

Jesus won’t let us though. He gives a very solemn warning. When the fellow in the story won’t pass on the forgiveness that he has so freely received, when the pity and mercy of the King will not be allowed to govern his treatment of those who sin against him, a terrifying thing happens. It all works backwards. He ends up losing what the King had freely given. “So my heavenly Father will do to everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

It’s a relatively simple either /or. Either we pass on to others the joyful forgiveness that we have received so undeservedly from the hand of God, and pass it on as freely and lavishly as He dishes it out to us, or we insist that he deal with us by “playing fair.” If we give others only what is there due, we can count on our God to do the same for us. Which will it be?

In today’s Epistle St. Paul prays for the Philippians that they be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. How better may that fruit be shown in us than in our humble submission to the walk of forgiveness that God wants to lead us on?

Today we approach again the Holy Table and receive from it the very body and blood that once on Calvary’s cross blotted out all the record of our debt. We receive it as the pledge and guarantee of our forgiveness. Let us also receive it as the strength and power of God Himself entering into us so that we can share the mind of Christ, who humbly walked the way of forgiveness to its joyful end. Will folks take advantage of us? Certainly! Who cares?! Our God has shown us that this is the path of life. And He gives us the will and the strength to walk it.

So don’t be like my stubborn beagle, people loved by God. “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” Now, are you ready to go for that walk? Amen.