The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost - Matthew 18:21-35 - The Rev. Colette Hammesfahr

 

September 13, 2026 - Matthew 18:21-35

John Lewis was a civil rights leader who later served for more than thirty years as a congressman from Georgia. But before he became a congressman, he was an activist who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. He participated in the Freedom Rides and helped organize the March on Washington. He was beaten while leading marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

There’s a story about his life that is not very well-known. It happened in 1961, when Lewis was just 21 years old. Lewis entered the whites-only waiting room of a bus station in Rock Hill, SC. A group of white men attacked him. One of those men was Elwin Wilson. Wilson was known for his support of segregation. Wilson was arrested for the attack and later admitted to his involvement with the Ku Klux Klan. Even though Wilson and the other men who beat him were in custody, Lewis chose not to press charges. He shows Wilson grace and mercy.

After the attack, after Lewis chose not to press charges, Wilson began to change. For years, he carried remorse over what he had done. Forty-eight years later, in 2009, he set up a meeting with Lewis, who by then was a congressman from GA, and he traveled to Washington, DC. When he met with Lewis, Wilson told him he was sorry. Lewis immediately forgave him. The two men embraced.

Wilson said that the day they met in Washington was a different day from when they first had “met” in 1961. It was a different day. It was a different week, a different month, a different year. A different life. He said, “It was wrong for people to be like I was. But I am not that man anymore.”[1]

Over the past few weeks, Matthew’s Gospel and Paul’s letter to the Romans, have given us what we could say is a sermon series on love, reconciliation, and forgiveness. We’ve looked at what genuine love looks like and how that love is reflected in carrying the cross. We’ve looked at what love requires when somebody hurts us – or when we are the ones who have hurt somebody else.

And today Peter asks Jesus what seems like a pretty reasonable question about forgiveness: How many times do I have to do this? Seven times? And Jesus tells him not seven times, but seventy-seven times. And then Jesus tells him a parable.

A man owes his lord a very large sum of money. Much more than he could ever repay. Because he cannot pay the debt, the lord orders the man, along with his wife and children, and all their possessions, to be sold. The man falls on his knees in front of the lord and begs, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” The lord has pity on him. He doesn’t give him more time or allow him to work out a payment plan. He forgives the entire debt. The lord shows the man grace and mercy.

Then this same man, who has just been forgiven of his debt and has walked away owing nothing, finds someone who owes him a much smaller amount of money. The same scene happens again, except the man who was once on his knees begging is now standing over someone who has fallen to his knees, begging. The man begs for patience. He promises he will pay what he owes. But this time, there is no grace. There is no mercy. The man who had just been forgiven, given grace and mercy refuses to forgive. He has the other man thrown into prison until the debt is paid. He has received an extraordinary amount of grace. But somehow, that grace has not changed him.

Why is this servant still the same man? He has experienced something that should have changed him. An impossible debt has disappeared. His family has been spared. His future has been given back to him. And yet, he walks away unchanged.

What does it actually mean to be changed by grace?

In Rome, Paul is dealing with Christians who disagree about things they truly believe matter. Some eat anything; others don’t. Some observe particular days; others don’t. Paul doesn’t spend a lot of time deciding who is right. Instead, he asks what their belonging to Christ should do to the way they see and treat one another. He says, “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.”

Paul is saying that when we receive grace and mercy, we are meant to be transformed. Our lives are not simply our own. We belong to Christ. And because we belong to Christ, things begin to change. We don’t have to make everyone answer to us. Paul says, “Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another?” Everyone belongs to God.

Paul also says that we don’t have to prove our faithfulness by being right about everything. He knows the people he’s writing to have strong convictions. Paul doesn’t tell them not to have convictions. He tells them to hold those convictions “in honor of the Lord.” Instead of worrying if the other person is doing it correctly, the focus should be, “Am I living faithfully before God?” Grace changes how we see the person standing in front of us.

Yet, the forgiven servant walks away unchanged. It wasn’t simply that the man refused to forgive. It’s that he experienced an incredible amount of grace, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference in the way he lives. He has been given his life back, but he goes right back to living the same way he did before.

If we really believe that we belong to God, then over time, that should change us. It should change the way we see ourselves. It should change the way we see other people. It should change what we hold onto and what we’re willing to let go. It should change how quickly we judge, how much we keep score, and how badly we need to be right. It doesn’t mean everything suddenly becomes acceptable or that nothing matters anymore. It means our faith becomes about more than getting things right. It becomes about who we are becoming.

When we were younger, we may have thought about faithfulness in ways that were easier to measure. Did I go to church? Did I say my prayers? Did I follow the rules? Did I do what I was supposed to do? And those things do matter. But as we grow in our faith, the questions should begin to change. Am I more patient than I used to be? Am I more generous? Am I slower to judge? Can I admit when I’m wrong? Can I listen to someone I disagree with without immediately trying to change their mind? Can I offer someone else the same grace that I am so grateful to receive for myself? In other words, is following Jesus actually changing me?

The servant in Jesus’ story was forgiven, but he never learned to live like someone who had been forgiven. His debt was gone. His family was safe. His future had been given back to him. But somehow, he was still living out of the same fear, the same need to protect himself, the same need to keep score.

Last week, I spoke about theologian Henri Nouwen. Henri spent much of his life writing about what happens when we begin to understand ourselves first and foremost as people who are loved by God. When we know ourselves as God’s beloved, we don’t have to spend our lives proving our worth. We don’t have to constantly defend ourselves. We don’t have to win every argument or measure ourselves against somebody else. We become free. Free to be generous because we know how much we have been given. Free to show mercy because we know how much mercy we need. Free to let go because our lives are held by God. And none of this happens overnight.

That’s why Elwin Wilson’s story is so important. He looked back over the forty-eight years between that bus station in South Carolina and that office in Washington and said, “I am not that man anymore.” He received grace and mercy and he became a changed man.

Most of us probably don’t have a moment in our past anything like his. But every one of us ought to be able to look back somewhere in our lives and say: I’m not that person anymore. There are things we once thought mattered that don’t matter nearly as much anymore. There are things we used to hold onto that we have learned to let go of. There are people we once would have judged but we now try to understand. There are wounds that once defined us that no longer have the same power over us.  There are ways we once thought about God, about other people, and about ourselves that grace and mercy have changed. And hopefully, ten years from now, we’ll be able to look back at who we are today and say it again. I’m not that person anymore.

 Because, little by little, the grace of God is changing us. That’s what faithfulness looks like -- becoming people who live like grace is true. Amen.

 

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[1] Andrew Dys, “Rock Hill Man Apologizes on TV for 1961 Attack on Congressman,” The Herald, February 4, 2009, updated September 16, 2020, Herald Online.