13th Sunday after Pentecost - Year A (Matt. 18, 21-35)

In any context, Matt. 18:21-35 is a “hard saying”.  In the context of the 10^th anniversary of “9/11” it becomes even a bigger challenge for the preacher.  Although the text seems specific to disputes between church members, to allow that to limit the impact of this teaching of would be, I think, to miss the point.  We are all debtors.  We all stand in need of forgiveness.  While most of us have never committed acts of evil and violence as great as those perpetrated on “9/11” we are part of political and economic systems that take the lives of many more innocent people than we generally want to know about.  When such deaths happen to us it is terrorism, when it happens far away, it is collateral damage.  I certainly do not mean to suggest that our role in these systems is comparable to that of those who hijacked those planes ten years ago.  But to suggest that any of us have blood free hands is also untrue.  We like to speak of people like the 9/11 attackers as inhuman, not like us.  The important truth of our Christian faith is, however, that they are just as human as we are.  That acknowledgement is the beginning of forgiveness and also the beginning of our transformation by grace into heralds of a new creation and a redeemed humanity.