Sunday Service 13 September 2026

Reading            St Matthew 18: 9-13, 18-26
 
Jesus said: “And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire.
 
“Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.  What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?  And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.
 
“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
 
Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 
 
Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’”
 
Sermon             Practising the seventy seven times table
 
Peter asks a question that recognises a challenge faced by each of us – the challenge to forgive those who make our lives harder through how they treat us.  At first glance, his is a question that appears to be set within the confines of church life:
 
Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?
 
Yet the Lord’s Prayer refers to those who sin against us.   In this sermon I will apply the challenge of forgiveness beyond the confines of church – to include anyone we consider has ‘sinned against us.’   And at no point will I claim that forgiveness is ‘easy’.   And I concede that I am but scratching the surface when it comes to what could be said.
 
Three points…
 
Firstly: We are invited to practise Forgiveness that stops counting…Matthew 18: 21-22:   Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”  Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times”. I suspect that most of us would regard Peter’s suggestion of forgiving seven times as generous to the point of extravagance.  When it comes to generosity, however, Jesus always goes further.   Eleven times further.   Not seven times, says Jesus, but…seventy-seven times.  Had Jesus accepted Peter’s suggestion most of us would have needed some form of note-taking or record.  The record of when and where we had forgiven…first time, second time, third time…up to seventh.  Keeping such a record would itself be a form of not forgetting.   (And, yes, all too often forgiving comes with not forgetting.)  Being willing to forgive as many times as Jesus instructs Peter amounts to not keeping such a record.  Forgetting, rather than constant remembering.   Stop counting.  
 
Losing count. Note that neither Peter or Jesus refer to there being instances where we are exempt from forgiving.   Peter asks about how often and maybe hopes that forgiveness might ‘run out’;  what isn’t on the table at all is the option of refusing to forgive in the first place. Accompanying the act of forgiving with a record-sheet risks reducing it to a transactional exercise.   And if we’re honest that is where all too often we get ‘stuck’ as and when we feel wronged by someone else.  We recall the extent of the hurt they cause us…the wrong they have done to us…a score of wrongs becomes a debt we feel they should repay.   In her hymn, Forgive our sins as we forgive, Rosamond Herklots puts it memorably and vividly as she refers to the unforgiving heart that broods on wrong and will not let old bitterness depart.   She goes on to offer the prayer, Lord, cleanse the depths within our souls and bid resentment cease.  Then, bound to all in bonds of love, our lives will spread your peace. (Rejoice and Sing: 84: 2, 4)   
 
Keeping a record.  Counting and scoring.  Activities for which a calculator could be offered as the symbol.  Peter learns that we need to put down the calculator.  Rather, as Fred Kaan puts it:  we are to practise [Christ’s] acceptance until we know by heart the table of forgiveness and laughter’s healing art.  (Rejoice and Sing 646: 3)   In place of a calculator with a limit of seven, Kaan encourages us to practise the 77 times table.  Practise a forgiveness that stops counting.
 
Secondly, we need to recognise that the absence of Forgiveness undermines our Christian witness (Matthew 18: 31) When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their Lord all that had taken place. Jesus follows his answer to Peter with a parable to illustrate the damaging impact of being unwilling to practise the 77 times table.   A slave falls on his knees and begs his master to give him time to settle his account.  His was a massive debt – ten thousand talents.  In his commentary on Matthew John Proctor observes that,  A talent represented about twenty or thirty years’ wages, the equivalent of a large mortgage.  So the…servant’s debt was astronomical.  No normal sum would be as large as this.  The debt is utterly unpayable and the situation has gone far beyond recovery.  (Matthew, John Proctor, BRF, 2001, page 156)
 
Amazingly, out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.  (Mt. 18: 27)   Yet, to his shame, this slave when encountering another who owed him money fails to embody the generosity of forgiveness that had been shown to him.  His debtor owed him a hundred denarii – the equivalent of a day’s wage – but he seizes his debtor by the throat and demands payment, throwing him into prison when he fails to pay.   Despite being forgiven himself he doesn’t practise his 70 times table and even fails to begin Peter’s count to seven.     I am struck by the impact of this ungracious behaviour on others who see it.  Fellow slaves see what happens and were greatly distressed.   In short, they could not ignore the massive contradiction between the gracious treatment he had received and the total absence of grace in how he treated someone else.
 
Forgiveness – or the lack of it – has a wider ‘audience’ than merely those causing hurt and those directly hurt.   Forgiveness – or the lack of – ripples out impacting others.  We need look no further, as Christians, to Jesus who, on the cross, said, Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing. (Luke 23: 34)   The One who taught us to pray, Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, practised what he preached.   Sadly, all too often, even though we have been forgiven on an astronomical scale, we do not always exercise that same grace and our Christian witness is impaired as a result.   Others, like the slaves in Jesus’ parable, are greatly distressed.
 
Rutger Bregman in is wonderful book, Humankind, shares what he describes as a parable of unknown origin: An old man says to his grandson:  ‘There’s a fight going on inside me.  It’s a terrible fight between two wolves.  One is evil – angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly.  The other is good – peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy.  These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’ After a moment the boy asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’ The old man smiles, ‘The one you feed.’
(Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2020;  page 10)
 
Jesus urges us to feed the inner wolf – the one that is peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy.  Doing so will make our Christian witness credible;  feeding the other wolf impairs our witness.
 
Thirdly, we concede that Forgiveness is beyond us … yet we should feed the right ‘wolf’.  The king in Jesus’ parable says to the unforgiving slave: Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you? And Jesus concludes by urging his hearers to forgive your brother or sister from your heart. (Mt. 18: 33, 35) Just as we have conceded that Peter’s suggestion of sevenfold forgiveness is more generous than many of us would contemplate so, too, we need to be honest enough to admit that the unforgiving slave in the parable is sometimes not dissimilar to how we feel about those who inflict hurts on us.  Practising Peter’s seven times table is tough … let alone the 77 times table!  It is not within our own power or capability to forgive yet refusing to do so can eat away at us.   Choosing the costly and difficult option of forgiving – even without any sign of remorse from the other – can free us from the prison of resentment.  And resentment is a toxic force which poisons and can destroy us.   By contrast, feeding the wolf of forgiveness, seeking God’s help to do so, heals the hurt.   Margaret Silf retells a true story by Yevgeny Yevtushenko: It was a bleak day in the bleak year of 1944 in Moscow.  Some 20,000 German prisoners-of-war were being marched across Red Square.  The mood was grim and angry.  Most people present had had a husband, a brother, a son, a father, a lover killed in the conflict.  The police were having trouble holding them back behind the cordons.  Some spectators were ready to tear the now-vanquished enemy limb from limb. The captured officers led the parade.  Heads still held high, in an attitude perceived by the crowd as arrogance, they were jeered and spat upon as they passed.  And then came the ordinary soldiers – a very different picture.  Men on crutches, barely able to hobble across the Square;  men wrapped in blood-soaked bandages;  men wracked by exhaustion, starvation, and abject humiliation. Silence fell over Red Square.  The people who had suffered so much at the hands of this enemy now looked into the eyes and faces of thousands of fellow human beings teetering on the very edge of desperation. And then one woman broke through the cordon.  In her hand she held a piece of black bread from her own kitchen, bread she could ill afford to give away.  Before anyone could stop her she thrust it into the hand of a German prisoner.  Others saw her gesture.  Others also had bread in their homes.  Others also recognised the human being behind the enemy uniform and broke through the cordons to give what bread they could.  Soon the scene of triumphalist scorn turned to one of human compassion.  A bleak moment in human history became a moment of transformation. (One Hundred More Wisdom Stories, Margaret Silf, Lion Books, 2013)
 
Forgiveness is anything but easy.  We can feel so justified in our wish for revenge.   In our Old Testament reading Joseph’s brothers had good cause to feel anxious as they approached him given their treacherous treatment of him.   Little wonder they ponder, What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong we did to him?  (Gen. 50: 21)   Joseph’s response spotlights where the ability to forgive is sourced – in the God of steadfast love and mercy:  Joseph knows his 77 times table!  Do not be afraid!  Am I in the place of God?  (Gen 50: 19)   What he goes on to say, to the brothers who had wanted him dead, shows that if we draw upon God’s steadfast love and mercy and are willing to practise forgiveness we are enabled to see good even through hurt:  Even though you intended to do harm to me, says Joseph, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.  (Gen. 50: 20)
 
Martin Luther King once said, We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.  (The one) who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.  (cited by John Pridmore in The Word is Very Near You, Canterbury Press, 2000, page 268) I am not pretending for one moment that it is ‘easy’ but rather than being consumed by resentment, bitterness and a desire for revenge, if we can feed the wolf of Christ-like forgiveness and, like Joseph, seek to discern where God’s purposes are to be served, we will be able to sing Herklot’s words: In blazing light your Cross reveals the truth we dimly knew: what trivial debts are owed to us, how great our debt to you! (Rejoice and Sing 84: 3)
 
Let us pray.
 
God of steadfast love and mercy, 
you call us to practise our 70 times table of forgiveness.
When we are tempted to return hurt for hurt 
grant us the strength to forgive 
as in Christ we have been forgiven.  Amen! 
 
Hymn       Help Us Accept Each Other
Fred Kaan (1929-2009) © 1975 Stainer & Bell Ltd  CCLI Licence No. # A-734713 Sung by the Kirk Virtual Choir, St Andrew’s Kirk, Chennai
 

Help us accept each other 
as Christ accepted us; 
teach us as sister, brother, 
each person to embrace. 
Be present, Lord, among us 
and bring us to believe:
we are ourselves accepted 
and meant to love and live.
 
2 Teach us, O Lord, your lessons, 
as in our daily life 
we struggle to be human 
and search for hope and faith. 
Teach us to care for people, 
for all – not just for some, 
to love them as we find them 
or as they may become.
 
3 Let your acceptance change us
so that we may be moved
in living situations
to do the truth in love;
to practise your acceptance
until we know by heart
the table of forgiveness
and laughter’s healing art.
 
4 Lord, for today’s encounters 
with all who are in need, 
who hunger for acceptance, 
for righteousness and bread, 
we need new eyes for seeing, 
new hands for holding on: 
renew us with your Spirit; 
Lord, free us, make us one!

Prayers of Intercession 
 
God of Joseph, source of steadfast love and mercy, 
we pray for all who, like Peter, have cause to ask,
‘How often should I forgive?’
 
We pray for all for whom retaliation and revenge feel justified: 
the victims of the injustice of power…
those who live in war-torn territories…
the displaced and the desperate…
those abused and wrongly-treated by forces set against them.
 
Silence
 
God of Joseph:  may your steadfast love and mercy inspire us.
 
We pray for the Church:  
that we may more truly practise what we preach
For all who have been hurt by the words and actions
of those claiming to be followers of Jesus…
For all who are wracked by the guilt of regret…
those haunted by memories of hurt they have caused others…
and those who are unable to believe and trust that they are forgiven.
 
Silence
 
God of Joseph:  may your steadfast love and mercy inspire us.
 
We pray for any known to us who struggle with their 70 times table:
those who can pray the Lord’s Prayer yet find it hard to pray the words, 
‘Forgive those who sin against us’ 
when particular people and particular hurts 
continue to hold them captive…
for those whose health is impaired by bitterness and resentment…
those whose relationships continue to affected by past hurts…
 
Silence
 
God of Joseph:  may your steadfast love and mercy inspire us.
 
Enable us, God of Joseph, to offer the bread of kindness, 
even to those we see as our enemies 
and make us willing to see your goodness 
even in the most challenging of circumstances.
We offer these prayers in the name of the One 
through whom we know your loving acceptance of us, 
Christ Jesus.  Amen.
 
Offering
 
We offer all that we have and all that we are 
with the prayer and pledge that your name be glorified 
and your steadfast love and mercy are known and shared.  Amen.
 
Hymn       Morning glory, starlit sky
William Hubert Vanstone (1923-1999) © Mrs I Shore CCLI Licence No. # A-734713 Sung by the Harvard University Choir.
 

Morning glory, starlit sky,
soaring music, scholars’ truth,
flight of swallows, autumn leaves,
memory’s treasure, grace of youth:
open are the gifts of God,
gifts of love to mind and sense; 
hidden is love’s agony,
love’s endeavour, love’s expense.
 
2 Love that gives, gives evermore,
gives with zeal, with eager hands;
spares not, keeps not, all outpours,
ventures all, its all expends.
Drained is love in making full,
bound in setting others free,
poor in making many rich,
weak in giving power to be.

3 Therefore He who shows us
God helpless hangs upon the tree,
and the nails and crown of thorns
tell of what God’s love must be.
Here is God: no monarch He,
throned in easy state to reign; here is God,
whose arms of love, aching, spent, the world sustain.
 
Benediction     
 
The Lord is merciful and gracious, 
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always accuse, 
nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins 
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as the heavens are high above the earth, 
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.  
 
Go, as forgiven people, and practise forgiveness and
may the blessing of 
God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 
rest upon you now and always! Amen.