05/17/2026 - Matthew 18:21-35, Seventh Sunday of Easter
Whenever I recite the Lord’s Prayer or the Our Father, the part that seems to always trip me up is the forgiveness part. Because if I’ve never been to a church before, I’m not quite sure what they’re going to say when we reach that line.
Most churches I’ve been a part of have recited it the way we do here - “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
But one church I worked in always said, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us.”
And the church I attended in college recited, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
And while that last one may seem narrow compared to the other interpretations, the parable Jesus tells about forgiveness and the kingdom of God is about just that - forgiving people of their debts.
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Scripture: Matthew 18:21-35
Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Should I forgive as many as seven times?”
Jesus said, “Not just seven times, but rather as many as seventy-seven times. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle accounts, they brought to him a servant who owed him ten thousand bags of gold. Because the servant didn’t have enough to pay it back, the master ordered that he should be sold, along with his wife and children and everything he had, and that the proceeds should be used as payment. But the servant fell down, kneeled before him, and said, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ The master had compassion on that servant, released him, and forgave the loan.
“When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him one hundred coins. He grabbed him around the throat and said, ‘Pay me back what you owe me.’
“Then his fellow servant fell down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he threw him into prison until he paid back his debt.
“When his fellow servants saw what happened, they were deeply offended. They came and told their master all that happened. His master called the first servant and said, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you appealed to me. Shouldn’t you also have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ His master was furious and handed him over to the guard responsible for punishing prisoners, until he had paid the whole debt.
“My heavenly Father will also do the same to you if you don’t forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
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This parable is one of the most straightforward ones in Scripture.
And that’s most likely because unlike other parables taught to large crowds, this one is kept in Jesus’s inner circle, among his closest disciples. And it’s brought about by a question from Peter, a question of how often we should forgive those who sin against us. Except it’s really not everyone he’s asking about - the word that gets translated here as “brother or sister” is actually more accurately translated as “fellow disciple.” He’s asking about how often the disciples should forgive each other when they sin against each other.
Given what we know about Peter, he probably thinks that his suggestion of seven times is generous. But Jesus goes even beyond that, giving a quippy answer that’s essentially him saying, “There is no limit.”
Because God is a God of grace, with more than enough to go around for everyone.
And we know this, we know that we should forgive others. We’ve been taught from a young age that it’s the right thing to do. This parable is often cited as Jesus telling us we have to forgive others when they wrong us, because otherwise then God won’t forgive us.
And here I have to acknowledge that this is one of the passages that has been misused by people in power who have done wrong to convince the people they’ve hurt to forgive them without any accountability or change in their behavior.
That isn’t what Jesus means here, it would go against all of his other preaching where he advocates for the care and protection of vulnerable people. And part of how we’ve gotten here is assumptions we make or are taught to make when approaching this parable.
When I was taught this parable in Sunday school, I was taught that God is the king in the story and we are the servant who received forgiveness but didn’t pass it on, and therefore now God is mad at us and throwing us into prison. The assumption here is that God has already forgiven us for so much more sin than any one person can sin against us, so we have no reason to not forgive someone else. And that’s the easiest, traditional roles that we cast ourselves in with the easiest, traditional message of the parable. The “plain reading” of the parable, if you will.
But if we keep casting ourself in the same role, we’re going to keep getting the same result, over and over again.
So, let’s switch the players around a bit.
Because what if we’re the servant that the other servant demanded repayment from, having been forgiven themselves? What if we are the ones who have heard that someone we know has been forgiven for millions of dollars in debt? Debt that they incurred through taking millions of dollars from the king, the government, funneling that money into the pockets of their family and friends without accountability. Money that could’ve gone to helping feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and heal the sick. But instead, it ended up in the hands of somebody who never intended to pay it back.
A debt tinged with violence, greed, sorrow, and pain inflicted on countless others over years, if not decades. But now all of that greed and selfishness is forgiven.
We know that we owe that person a few thousand dollars. It’s not an insignificant sum, to be sure, but way, way less than the debts they have just been forgiven for. And maybe we didn’t accrue it maliciously. Maybe it accrued through our ignorance, little missteps that added up over time.
We’ve been working day and night to try and come up with the money to pay them back, but even though it’s a much smaller sum, there’s no way we’ll be able to do it. But now maybe the person doesn’t need the money back. Maybe their experience of forgiveness will also extend to us.
But even though this person has been forgiven, even though they seem to be getting away with all of the awful things they have done scot free, they don’t extend the same forgiveness and grace to us.
Instead we end up in prison for the same crimes they committed and were forgiven for.
How is that fair?
But then one day we see the same person who threw us in prison get thrown into the cell next to us. We overhear the guards whispering, saying that the person’s pardon was revoked because the government had heard how he was treating others convicted of the same crimes he was. So now they’re in the cell next to us, serving the same sentence we are, for the same crimes.
The schandenfreude would have to be strong. Maybe it would feel like some wrong had been righted, now that they’ve been thrown in prison too. Really, they never should’ve been forgiven in the first place. The things that they did were too far beyond what anyone could forgive them for. And since there’s no way for them to pay back the money, there’s no way for them to get out of prison now. They’ll have to stay there for the rest of their life until they make things right, which we know is impossible with how much they’ve done.
Because nobody with that much blood on their hands could ever pay enough for the pain and sorrow they’ve caused.
That feels like justice, right?
Except for one thing.
Jesus doesn’t mention in the parable that the servant with the lesser debt was released when the servant with the greater debt was thrown into prison.
Neither of them are able to work their way out, able to do enough to pay back the debts they’ve that they incurred, the harm that they’ve done.
So both of them end up right next to each other in identical cells, with the same bars blocking our way to freedom.
Because even though the person in the cell next to us has more debt, has done so much more harm than we could ever do -
We’re still trapped in the same prison with them.
And the only way we’re going to get out is if we all get out together.
Because we can have every single reason in the world not to forgive someone, to not show someone grace.
But God is a God of grace, and that grace is bigger than every single reason we could ever find.
And I do not say that lightly.
In this country we are awash in pain and grief and deep, deep moral wounds that seem like they will never heal. These wounds are festering, bubbling up into heartache and bitterness and unease.
More than that, they’re growing into canyons so deep and so wide we don’t think we will ever be able to trust people again. How can we, when we trusted them to do what’s best for us, for our loved ones, for our community and country - and they just took out more debt?
We want someone to pay. We want somewhere to channel our anger, our grief, our sorrow and rage. We want the quick payment to a debt that has been building for generations.
A debt that has been paid on again and again and yet still seems to keep growing when we look away for even a moment. But it’s a lot easier to take on debt than it is to pay it off. And the bill’s been put off one too many times, and now it’s come due.
And the truth is, we’ve contributed to it too. Our debts are part of this crushing pile, no matter how big or how small, how intended or unintended our contributions were.And we are all being crushed underneath it, whether we’re aware of it or not.
The only way to get out from underneath this crushing weight is if we start building scaffolds of forgiveness and grace to lift it off of everyone’s shoulders.
That does not mean we don’t hold people accountable.
That does not mean we allow ourselves and others to continue to be in positions where they are taking on debt, where they are continuing to cause harm and pain to others.
That does not mean we don’t step in when we see harm being done, and that does not mean we don’t do everything in our power to make sure people are pulled out of harm’s way and protected from further injury.
But it does mean that we cannot close off our hearts to the possibility of forgiveness, even if it seems like an impossible ask right now.
Valarie Kaur, a Sikh writer and peace advocate put it this way during her talk “We Will Be Brave With Our Love:”
“We will stand tall and say: You cannot make us hate you. You do not have that power. We will choose to see your humanity, even when you deny ours. We will block your actions with one hand - and extend the other hand with the vision that you might one day take it, or your children will take it.”
Because God is a God of grace, for everyone. Not just a few people who we think have earned it.
Jesus ends his parable warning the disciples that God will do the same thing as the king to them if they do not forgive their siblings from their hearts. Their siblings being the others who also consider themselves followers of Jesus.
Even if today we narrow the scope to other people who consider themselves followers and disciples of Jesus, we still have a lot of people we’re being called to forgive or will be called to forgive that if we’re being honest, we’d rather not. And that’s because right now, there is still active harm being done by people who for now, do not intend to stop. There are still debts being piled up, the final account has not been tallied. It’s almost impossible to forgive when we’re still actively being crushed.
But one day, somebody will include you in their tally of the debt they owe.
They’ll come to you, telling you that there is no way they can repay the debt they owe you, the harm that they’ve done to you.
And they’ll ask for forgiveness.
And God calls us to give it to them.
Because God is a God of grace for everyone.
And we are called to share that grace, even when we think that somebody doesn’t deserve it, so that the heaviness of the debt becomes lighter on all of our shoulders as some of it is erased.
And when forgive someone, we may just find that the prison bars that’re swinging open aren’t the ones that’re keeping the people we’re forgiving imprisoned.
They were the ones keeping us in prison.
Because God is a God of grace for everyone, including us. And grace is what sets us free.