“Only what we ought to have done.”

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22, Year C (October 2, 2022).

View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Proper 22C (Track 2)

Preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Jordan, New York

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[Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.”]

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea”, and it would obey you.

“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”” (Luke 17:1-10 (verses 1-4 added))

Edited Transcript

May only truth to be spoken here and only truth be heard: in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I invite you to be seated.

Ah. So this, this is like a super easy Gospel to hear and talk about–really easy.

It's important with with a Gospel like this to look at the context that this small piece of scripture lives inside of. Because it's a hard piece of scripture, if you try to take it out of its context and just try to understand, why is Jesus being so mean to the disciples? And why is he talking as though the disciples own slaves?

So I wanted to take a step back and think about the past few weeks, and what the readings have been, because that's the context leading up to what's happening today. I think it's really important to know, why does this passage start out with the disciples saying, "increase our faith?" There's a context for that request.

And, you know, it's important to because this week, I think, whether it's something going on in my own life where you feel a need, or whether you're looking at what what happened in Florida and Puerto Rico and Cuba and the destruction... You can read a passage like this, where Jesus says, If you had faith, you could change x or y or z. If you don't have the context, then we might read this passage as Jesus kind of telling us: You don't have enough faith. And that's why all this bad stuff is happening to you or to the world.

But that's not what Jesus is talking about. So I want to back up. Why did the disciples say, increase our faith?

We've been going through about six weeks and every week, we've had a different parable from Jesus. And each of those parables has basically been about forgiveness. Jesus has been teaching the disciples about forgiveness. He tells them the story of the one lost sheep. And how this not-so-smart shepherd leaves the ninety-nine sheep to go after the one wandering sheep, because that's how valuable that sheep is. He talks about the woman who loses one coin and spends all day scouring her house for the one lost coin. And then he tells the parable of the prodigal son, who asked for his father's inheritance and squandered it, and came home just hoping to get a job. But the father not only wasn't mad, but welcomed him with open arms and threw a party. And he tells the story of the unjust steward, you remember that one? This confusing story about a steward who gets in trouble, and starts using his master's money to build relationships, and forgive debts.

So Jesus is telling story after story about what it looks like when we forgive. Even the story from last Sunday, the rich man and Lazarus. It's kind of a story about what happens when... there was never a chance for forgiveness. Did you notice that in that story: even after death, there's a chasm between the rich man and Lazarus, there's an unbreachable space between them. The relationship is broken. So all of these parables are little ways of teaching about the space that can open up between us in our relationships: between one another, or between God and us.

The only way to bridge that gap is the father with open arms. Or the shepherd who runs out after the lost one. The bridge is forgiveness. It's the person willing to say: I'm reaching out across to remake this connection that's been broken between us.

And in these parables, Jesus is teaching us and teaching the disciples. Why do we do that? Why do we reach out across the gap to remake the connection? Because that's who God is. God in Christ is reaching out across the gap that we thought we couldn't bridge to remake that connection. And because we're made in God's image, we are also made for making the connection and for forgiving.

Jesus has been telling the disciples about forgiveness. And after he tells them these five parables about forgiveness, he says to them, if you cause someone to stumble... it's better for you if a millstone were thrown about your neck and you were cast into the sea. And they're all like, Oh, boy. And I think he's talking about... he's saying, God is about forgiveness, it is in the nature of God to forgive. And therefore, as hard as it is, it's in your nature to do it. And if you don't forgive, you might cause someone to stumble. And the disciples don't want to hear about that. Neither do I. Forgiveness is hard, if you haven't noticed.

And then one of the disciple says, Well, okay, I mean, I get that we should forgive people. But what if someone sins against me more than once? And Jesus says, if someone sins against you seven times a day, and comes back to you seven times a day, you have to forgive them seven times. And what is the response of the disciples? "Lord, increase our faith!"

It's a hard teaching: that you are made for forgiveness, that we are made for forgiveness. Think about where you've been hurt. It's not easy to forgive. I imagine that each of us has known what it's like to have that chasm that opens up because of the pain that might feel unforgivable. And yet, Jesus is saying, not just once, but seven times a day.

And then he tells this weird little story about, well, if you had a slave, you know, you wouldn't celebrate that they spent the day working, and tell them to put their feet up and relax. You'd say, "that's what you should have done." Now, this is a strange little way to tell this. But I think what Jesus is saying is, forgiveness is just the beginning. It's the starting point. It's the basic move of following Jesus. It's the basic move. It's where we begin. And so in this strange way–and Jesus will often tell us stories and talk to us in ways that surprise us—he's saying, forgiving once, or seven times a day even, you don't get a party for doing that. It's only what we ought to have done.

Again, it's a hard teaching. But we follow a Savior who is mercy and forgiveness. And we were made in that image.

Now, I went on a whole retreat, I once did a whole day, a whole horrible day of retreat on forgiveness. I'm joking. I mean, it was actually a wonderful retreat. But the whole day, I was just boiling in my resentment. Because it turned out when I had to spend a whole day talking about forgiveness, then I spent the whole day thinking about who it was that I needed to forgive.

And it was a hard day. But I want to bring to you a couple of things that I learned from that retreat because as hard as this teaching about forgiveness is we also can remember that Jesus is the one who says, Come you who are weary and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. My yoke is easy. If the yoke is that your basic job is forgiveness, that my basic job is forgiveness—and it's easy? Then we need to understand what forgiveness isn't. Because misunderstanding forgiveness is one of the things that can sometimes block us from forgiving.

So in this retreat, I learned two things that forgiveness isn't. One is forgiveness isn't denial. Forgiveness doesn't mean pretending that the sin didn't happen. It doesn't mean pretending that it was no big deal. It doesn't mean pretending that I'm not angry or sad or in pain, because of the sin against me. And that's really important because I think sometimes we would like to just put like a nice little wallpaper cover over the sin and be like "it's fine." Or "that never happened." But we know how, how a wound can fester when it's just kind of thinly papered over, but not really treated. True forgiveness means acknowledging the wound and the pain of what was there.

The other thing that forgiveness is not: forgiveness is not a lack of accountability. So forgiveness doesn't mean saying, "It's okay. I don't mind." Forgiveness and mercy can actually create space for accountability and for healing. Sometimes I think when we resist the opportunity to offer forgiveness, it's because we think that person or that structure will not be held accountable. But Jesus never says anything about people not experiencing consequences. So if there's a place in your heart where you know, forgiveness is needed? That doesn't mean that you're going to stay in a relationship with someone who abused you, for instance, and that's an important thing to understand. So forgiveness isn't denial. And it's not a lack of accountability, forgiveness doesn't mean that we can't still make choices about what's best for us best for our family, or best for our community.

What forgiveness is, is letting go. It's letting go of the need for what happened to change, for the past to change. It's letting go of the resentment, the desire to change the person or the situation. Forgiveness, all through the Gospels, is again about that movement of opening up our hands. It's about becoming free. And allowing the person that we forgive or the situation that we forgive, to also be free to be in relationship with God.

Now again, the move of forgiveness is something we follow. Because it's who God is for us. It's what God calls us to be as those who are made in the image of God, and followers of Christ.

Whether or not it's helpful to know that forgiveness isn't denial, and isn't lack of accountability—what I want you to remember is that forgiveness is first of all an act of God. So going back to the disciples saying, "Increase our faith." In this passage, I think they are modeling for us. When forgiveness feels hard, the disciples are modeling for us that what we need to do is ask God, to show us how to do that forgiveness. Ask God to lead us through the process of forgiveness. Ask God to be the forgiveness to be the bridge across the gap that we don't find in our own human power in our own human hearts, or in our own human minds, that we don't find the capability within us to do it. Those times where it's hard to live up to God's image. That's when we need to lean on God. When we need to ask God to take the lead in the process of forgiveness.

And I'll share one other thing I learned at this retreat. It's a little technique for letting God take the lead. When I first heard it, it didn't sound like it would work. But I tried it, and it did. So I'm going to share it with you. The retreat leader said, if there's somebody that you need to forgive, and you can't, or you don't know how, here's what you do. Whenever you think of it... now say the person I need to forgive is Joe. It's not Joe, I don't actually know any Joe's who you know, I need to forgive. Every time you think every time you get a chance, just say to God, Joe, Joe. That's it.

Just give God that person as often as you think of it. And if you're the kind of person who has a pattern of praying once a day at a certain time, just just make sure at some point in that time, you say to God, Joe. That's it. You're not telling God what to do. You're not asking God to do X, Y or Z. You're just handing that situation to God. With that one little word, that one name. And over time things will change.

We're made in the image of God and we're made to lean on God. So I invite you to try that. Amen.