Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

 © 2020, Dr. Tamilio

Today’s readings from Romans and Matthew speak of judgment and mercy.  There are many ways to think about these concepts.  Let’s take judgment, for example.  When we think of that word, we may think of a defendant in court, standing in judgment before the judge.  We may also think of a contest (like American Idol) in which contestants are judged — or the Olympic Games, when judges give points to competitors such as figure skaters or gymnasts.  You may also think of God as the judge of the universe: how all of us will be judged on judgment day.  You may also think of yourself: how you judge yourself all the time.  This one is particularly interesting, because we judge ourselves quite a bit.  In the book and CD set Graceful Passages, Lew Epstein has a piece entitled, “Letting Yourself Be Loved.”  In it, he writes,

It’s not easy, letting yourself be loved —

‘Cause we’ve learned to judge ourselves —

we’re always judging ourselves.[1]

I’ve shared this with you before.  One of my professors from seminary (Rev. Richard Sparrow) used to say, “If you treated others the way you treat yourself, you’d be in jail.”  It’s funny, because it’s true.  Most of us treat ourselves terribly — worse than we’d treat anyone else.  (Sociopaths are excluded from this example.)  In his song “Open Arms,” Christian singer-songwriter Michael W. Smith declares,

Never judging, always loving

Needs to be what we become

Smitty (as his friends call him) continues:

Tell me where’s the love

That knows no boundaries

Tell me where’s the love — yeah, yeah

Open arms, we need to be open arms

Judgment abounds, even in places where it shouldn’t — such as the church — but it does.  Another contemporary Christian group, Casting Crowns, captures this in their song “If We Are the Body.”  They paint a picture of a stranger entering a sanctuary as worship begins.

A traveler is far away from home

He sheds his coat and quietly sinks into the back row

The weight of their judgmental glances

Tells him that his chances are better out on the road

That last line is painful: his chances are better off on the road.

The very nature of sin means that we are all guilty and, therefore, there are many things for which we can be judged: the bad we do, the good we leave undone, our thoughts, words, and deeds.  The list is endless.  If we are going to make it through this, and find that we aren’t better off on the road, then we are wise to heed today’s Gospel lesson.

Jesus often used parables in his teachings.  They are an effective and illustrative way to drive a point home.  Here we have the story of a king who decided to settle accounts with his slaves.  A man who owed ten thousand talents was brought to him.  According to one source, a talent was equal to about twenty years of a laborer’s wage.  So, to put it in modern terms, let’s say a laborer makes $25,000 a year.  One talent would be worth $500,000.  Therefore, ten thousand talents would equal five billion dollars!  Imagine a laborer trying to repay half a million dollars.  Now, make that five billion.  Impossible!  He appeals to the mercy of the king, who pardons the slave.

The heart of the parable is when the same slave is freed and comes across a fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii.  Today, a denarius would be worth $3.62.  One hundred of them would be worth $362.  The second slave pleads with the first one, but he (the first one) does not show him the mercy he was shown by the king.  Instead, the first slave throws the second one into debtors’ prison.

Not there is an obvious difference here.  Someone who shows mercy to someone who owes five billion dollars is far more compassionate than someone who pardons a $362 debt.  The connection here, though, is that our debt to one another (as one slave to another) is more like a $362 liability, whereas what we owe God for everything God has done for us — such as giving us life and offering us new life through Christ — is a five billion dollar debt.  It is an insurmountable debt, one that we can never repay.

Jesus paid that debt for us.  By shouldering the sins of the world and carrying them all the way to the cross, our debt to God has been stamped paid in full.  The cross is the ultimate act of mercy.  And yet most of us live as if the crucifixion never happened.  We know it did.  It is an historic event — the central event of the New Testament and our faith.  However, if you look at the way most Christians act, you’d think it was all just a story.

We long for mercy.  We thirst for it.  We beat ourselves up with the guilt we carry around with us.  Our nightmares are haunted with the bad we have done and the good we have left undone.  Like the Ancient Mariner in the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we walk around with an albatross around our necks — a sign of our sin.  What’s worse is that others make us feel this way, just as we thrust guilt upon them.  We say forgive and forget, but we never forget — and we do not let those who have wronged us forget either.

Jesus meets us in these moments.  He offers us a cup of cold water, just as he tells the disciples to do when he sends them out to minister in Matthew 10.  He tells us that his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.  He tells us that in his Father’s house there are many mansions.  He tells us that God, who provides for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, will surely provide so much more for us.  He tells us to take up our mat and walk.  He tells us that our sins are forgiven.  He tells us that he loves us with a love like none other, that we are the sheep of his pasture, that we will be with him in paradise.

This is the mercy we all long for.  The key is for us to embody that mercy — here, now.  We are to show that mercy to one another.  The slave who received mercy from the king didn’t take it to heart, because he didn’t show it to someone who was just like himself.  Do we?  We, who have received mercy from our king (the King of kings) do we show it to other people?

Two weeks ago I quoted the philosopher/theologian Schleiermacher.  Last week it was Hegel.  This week it is Alexander Pope.  Pope said, as if in a spirit of prayer, “Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.”  Pope got it backwards.  He’s already been shown mercy.  Now he needs to show it.  And so do we.  Amen.

[1] Graceful Passages: A Companion for Compassionate Transitions (Novato: Wisdom of the World, 2000), 20.