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Karen Hollis | August 30, 2026 14th Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 18:21-35 Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?” “No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven! “Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt. “But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.
“But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. “His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full. “When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.
“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”
I like this translation of the text, because we’re not talking in Talents or Denari, units of money from the first century, we’re talking in units of money we can understand . . . even if a servant owing the king millions of dollars makes absolutely no sense. This huge amount of money is actually a signal to us that this story lives in the world of fairy tales or parables . . . it takes place in a common setting of the day, but it is a strange world that invites us to break free from the way we usually see things and look at the world differently.
Let us pray . . . May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
When we ask the question, how then shall we live, Jesus responds right away with today’s answer: practice forgiveness. We’re diving right into this year’s theme, right into the deep end. There are so many layers to forgiveness, there is so much complexity.
In my own life, there are things and people I have managed to forgive, including myself, and other things that still linger with me. I have sat with some and worked on repair and there are others with whom I will never have those conversations. And still others where we have come together with good intentions and the space between us remains a bit muddled. It’s tough. Being human is tough, and considering forgiveness is such a tender space, because it means some harm has taken place.
Let’s continue on this exploration by remembering what forgiveness is not. Theologian Debie Thomas observes that forgiveness is not about denying that harm has occurred, it’s not a shortcut, it’s not synonymous with healing and reconciliation, and forgiveness is not quick and easy.1
When I think about forgiveness, I remember the maple tree I pass on my morning walk with Joy (border collie). Even on the windy days of spring and summer, the deep green leaves hold on tight, vibrating in the wind. We humans also keep a grip on things until the time is right . . . sometimes our entire live. Forgiveness won’t happen fully until the time is right for us. It just won’t.
Perhaps it happens in layers, perhaps it happens over decades, or all of a sudden. Perhaps it comes after hours and years of therapy, or when something seemingly unrelated clicks into place. When we forgive, what does it feel like? Like a release, like lightening the load, like freedom? Does it get easier the more we do it? (sigh) I don’t know. Jesus seems to think it’s important to practice. Forgive 7 times, then 7 more, forgive 77 times, and then 70 times 7, depending on how you translate the Greek. In the Bible, numbers are often symbolic . . . some say 7 means perfection.
Haha. No pressure. Maybe he wants us to continue practicing until forgiveness is second nature. Why? Why is it so important?
I think about the man in the parable who’s debt was forgiven. One might think that after experiencing this kind of unbinding from debt that he would pay it forward for the collective liberation of his community. But while he was forgiven the debt, the fact that he turns around and demands a debt repaid to him suggests he is still holding onto something. As the story continues, the consequences that land on him are extreme.
For his lack of mercy, the king “sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.” In the world of the parable, the fairy tale, how can he possibly repay millions of dollars, especially when he’s locked up? He is stuck in his circumstances without mercy, without grace, without possibilities.
And then stunningly, Jesus says: “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.” (deep breath) This is not the God I know . . . this is not the action of love. So, what’s going on here? Why did the author write it this way? What if the author was trying to describe the human experience in the way they understood it? What if the author uses this image of imprisonment to describe the experience of holding onto something we cannot let go. We all know what it feels like to be stuck in our thoughts, stuck in our feelings, without options that we like, maybe the situation has seen justice, maybe it hasn’t, but overall, our human experience of holding onto this stuff is just awful.
“In her popular memoir, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes that withholding forgiveness is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.” As many people teach these days, forgiveness, it seems, is about freedom . . . our own freedom.
After describing mistreatment as a chain that binds us, theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber expands on this idea of what holding on to stuff does to us: “Maybe retaliation or holding onto anger about the harm done to me doesn’t actually combat evil. Maybe it feeds it. Because in the end, if we’re not careful, we can actually absorb the worst of our enemy, and at some level, start to become them. So what if forgiveness, rather than being a pansy way to say, ‘It’s okay,’ is actually a way of wielding bolt-cutters, and snapping the chains that link us? What if it’s saying, ‘What you did was so not okay, I refuse to be connected to it anymore.’? Forgiveness is about being a freedom fighter. And free people are dangerous people. Free people are not chained to resentments . . . Free people aren’t controlled by the past …. Free people laugh more than others. Free people see beauty where others do not.”
What if underneath it all, Jesus is trying to tell us that when we hold on tight we fortify ourselves against grace. And it feels awful. The God I know is present for the moment where we are ready to release. Like the maple tree on my walk, when the season changes, when the time is right, the leaves turn from green to deep orange and they simply let go . . . making space for new shoots to grow in the spring. We open and release what we have locked away. Forgiveness doesn’t mean what happened is ok, it’s not the same as healing, not the same as reconciliation . . . forgiveness means in a sense, I choose me.
Because God is with us, we know that whatever we experienced is not the end of the story. In partnership with us, God takes the worst of our experiences and works with them in the spaciousness of Holy Saturday, where new life takes shape. It is toward this abundance that Jesus invites us to practice forgiveness . . . practice like we would anything else – practice yoga or the clarinet – we could think of it as a muscle that is weak at first, but as you give it attention, it gets stronger and finds its own kind of expression, its own way of doing things. Jesus invites us to practice so that we might live in the fullness of God’s promise.
1 Debie Thomas, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2748-unpacking-forgiveness Sept 12, 2026