Pastor Mark Nieting
Matthew 7: 1-14
Part 9 in our series on the Sermon on the Mount
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Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus.
Ever heard of the Golden Rule? I’m sure you noticed that it was in today’s text as part of the Sermon on the Mount, but just in case you didn’t catch it, I’m going to give you three different versions and see if you can pick out the “real” Rule:
a) Let’s do it to them before they do it to us! (Sgt Esterhaus, Hill Street Blues)
b) Treat other people the same way they treat you. (A majority opinion)
c) Do to others what you would have them do to you. (Jesus, Sermon on Mt)
So….. which is it? Obviously the third one. As Jesus nears the end of this magnificent teaching he summarizes it with this absolute GEM. It’s like Jesus is saying to us, “Do you want to really get to the heart of what I’ve been teaching?? Then here it is, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” How sweet is that! Isn’t that how the entire world ought to work, everybody just loving on everybody else? That’s not, however, where He begins the section.
He begins by telling, literally by ORDERING us not to judge others…..unless we want to be judged by God, and who wants THAT to happen?
The world is full of people who love to judge other people, and I’m not talking about Judge Judy and Joe Brown. We ALL have a tendency to judge others. Walk through a mall and we’re literally going: hmm….don’t trust him! Looks kind of shady! She looks kinda questionable. Her mother let her out of the house looking like that?? My my what a fine looking young man…. Must be Lutheran!
What are we doing when we judge other people? We’re applying whatever standards exist within us to those around us. To my mother, the only kind of music worthy of existence under God’s blue sky is classical music. That’s HER standard and she made sure we kids knew how she felt when we listened to something else. Ford people think like that about Chevy people, and vice versa; Steelers fans can’t imagine how anyone can root for the Eagles, and Eagles fans…. are there any?
A lot of judgment is based, of course, on ignorance. It’s something that takes maturity, experience and wisdom to discover……sort of the way teenagers, when they finally mature, begin to see that their parents really DO know something.
Now before we all turn to the person next to us and tell them, “See…. Jesus doesn’t care about my grades or if I eat with my elbows on the table or what my curfew should be or whether I text while I am driving!!!” let’s be clear about what this means. Jesus is NOT talking about the decisions made by human judges or those who work in Kingdom of the Left Hand to enforce the laws of the land. If we run a stop sign and get a ticket, we get the judgment we deserve. In fact, we can go so far as to be able to remind others when they are breaking a Law, because a Law applies to everyone!
He’s not even saying we shouldn’t remind each other about the “stop signs” that are all around us in life, things that are summarized in the Ten Commandments. We parents HAVE a God-given responsibility to PARENT our children, and God will hold us responsible for the task. At the same time, we children have a God-given responsibility to be subject to our parents, in the same way we are subject to God!
What Jesus IS saying is this: “If you think you’re better than someone else or smarter than someone else or more righteous than someone else, you better think twice, because you’re not.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his great work “The Cost of Discipleship” says it this way: The source of the disciple’s life lies exclusively in his fellowship with Jesus Christ. He possesses his righteousness only within that association, never outside of it. (page 205).
Let’s put it another way: can one grain of salt decide it is “saltier” than the next grain in the shaker? Salt is salt! Do light bulbs run about saying to other light bulbs, “I’m a brighter than you are, you dim bulb?” No, they do not.
Jesus is applying Kingdom Principles to the People of His Kingdom, and the greatest Kingdom Principles are these 2: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and, Love your neighbor as yourself.
It all began with forgiveness….and as we’ve been seeing on Wednesday evenings throughout Lent, forgiveness is a messy business. It cost Jesus His life, Jesus who, while we were still sinners, died for us. Forgiveness is a dirty job, but it’s one we both receive, and are asked to give, on a daily basis.
Farther back in the Gospel of Matthew, Peter walks up to Jesus and says, “Lord, if another member of my church sins against me, how often should I forgive him? As many as seven times?” I can almost feel Peter puffing out his chest with his sense of self-righteousness. Jesus answers, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” (18:21-22). Forgiveness. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.
Jesus is calling us to roll up our sleeves and do some very demanding work. In our justice-oriented world, we expect that insults are going to be followed by apologies and crimes are going to be followed by punishments, but Jesus turns this system upside down by saying, “Just forgive!” Notice that Jesus doesn’t even expect the sinner to repent or make amends. Forgive them,” says Jesus — “Not seven times, but, seventy-seven times” (v. 22). Maybe 490 times. Maybe beyond calculation.
It’s a dirty job. That’s what Lent reminds us. Love isn’t easy…..that’s what makes it precious.
The parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18) reveals the reason we must offer forgiveness to one another. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven “may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves” (v. 23). So Jesus is saying that we can learn a little something about life in God’s kingdom by paying attention to a story about how this king deals with his debtors.
The king begins by summoning a man who owes him 10,000 talents, which is an insanely large sum of money. A talent is the largest monetary unit of the day, equal to the wages of a manual laborer for 15 years. 10,000 talents would be the wages of 10,000 manual laborers, over the course of 15 years. So this man is more than knee-deep in debt. He’s over his head, drowning in red ink. It makes the sub-prime mortgage crisis look like a problem with petty cash.
The king orders the slave to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, so that a payment can be made. With nothing left to lose, the slave falls on his knees before the king and says, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” Surprisingly, the king shows pity and releases the slave, forgiving him the entire debt (vv. 24-27).
That’s the kind of God we have, says Jesus — a king who has mercy on us, and who forgives us our debts. It’s a dirty job, but we’ve got a God who will do it!
Now that’s a pleasant parable, but we haven’t reached the end. That freshly forgiven slave races out of the palace and comes upon a second slave who owes him a hundred denarii — 100 coins, someone’s wages for a few weeks. It’s something, sure, but it’s positively microscopic compared to what the first slave owed the king. The first slave seizes the second slave by the throat and demands that he pay him what he owes. The second slave falls down and pleads with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you” (v. 29). Sound familiar?
No way, says the first slave. Not gonna happen. He throws the second slave in prison until the whole debt is paid.
The plot thickens. When his fellow slaves see what has happened, they go ballistic —and run to the king. The king summons the first slave and says, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. You think that was easy for me Why didn’t you show mercy to your fellow slave, as I did to you?” The slave is speechless.
Then, in his anger, the king hands him over to be tortured until he pays his entire debt.
Jesus concludes with the words, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (v. 35). There’s an unbreakable bond between the forgiveness of God and the forgiveness we are to offer one another, making it illogical and impossible for us to accept the mercy of the Lord and then refuse to extend mercy to others. Jesus summarizes this quite succinctly in his teaching of the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our sins, as we also have forgiven those who have sinned against us.” (Matthew 6:12).
Forgive us our sins: all of them, every single one: that’s what we ask of God.
As we have forgiven you : that’s what we offer our neighbors.
In the economy of the kingdom of heaven, you can’t have one without the other.
Our Lord is a merciful God who is willing to do the dirty work of blotting out our transgressions, washing us from our iniquity, and cleansing us from our sin (Psalm 51:1-2). God is telling us that once we have been transformed by his forgiveness into the kind of people who can do the hard work of forgiving others. God knows that his mercy can have a surprising and wonderful effect — it can create a community of merciful people.
Amen
