Sunday, November 7: The Parables

Matthew 18:21–34

How many times do you want to be forgiven? Probably as many times as you mess up, and then once more just so you don’t have to worry about it.

It’s easy to empathize with the reasons that we fall short, because we know what we meant, we know it was a bad day, we know that we’ve been under a lot of stress lately. We probably deserve a little slack.

How many times do you want to extend forgiveness? Of course as many as it takes! For most things. As long as it’s not terribly inconvenient. As long as we don’t have to be too uncomfortable. And, honestly if we don’t punish them now, how will they ever learn?

The call to forgiveness is easy for us to nod along to in a church building on Sunday morning, but when life happens (as it always does) forgiveness is one of the most difficult things for us to do. It’s the willingness to voluntarily eat the the debt that is rightly owed, without the guarantee it will be the last time. It’s the recognition that an offense has truly occurred, and for some reason can go unpaid.

And while there’s a very important distinction between forgiveness and enabling bad behavior, a foundational element of the Christian life is that we are the forgiven ones, who can in turn forgive.

Jesus’ parable this week invites us to consider not only the great debt that was paid on our behalf, but the ways that we can forgive others as well.

See you Sunday!

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