September 13, 2026
We come to church looking for something.
What is your “something?”
Why did you go through all the trouble of getting up on your day off,
getting dressed,
hopping in the car,
and showing up here today?
Some of us come looking for assurance.
Some come looking for connection.
Some come looking for answers,
or knowledge,
or simply a little peace.
But I wonder if, underneath all those things,
we are looking for something else.
Forgiveness.
If there is one thing we should learn every time we come to church,
it is forgiveness.
God’s forgiveness—
that teaches us how to forgive.
God’s forgiveness—
that shows us the greatness of God’s love.
God’s forgiveness—
that gives us hope that yesterday does not have to determine tomorrow.
We come here to learn about God’s forgiveness
so that we can go back out into the world
and live as disciples of Jesus.
And before we even pretend to understand the greatness of God’s love—
before we open our big mouths and start telling everybody else about it—
we first have to wrestle with God about forgiveness.
Because forgiveness is hard.
And God has an amazing way of teaching us that.
Over,
and over,
and over again.
Which is why I love Peter’s question in today’s Gospel.
“Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?
As many as seven times?”
I love Peter.
Because Peter lives in all of us.
Peter, who wants to be righteous.
Peter, who is eager to be a good follower of Jesus.
Peter, who wants to get this discipleship thing right.
And Peter, who apparently would really like Jesus to give him an exact number.
Seven?
Is seven good?
Because if it is seven,
I can keep track!
One…
two…
three…
[LITTLE PAUSE]
And after seven—
we’re done!
That’s Peter.
The same Peter who is willing to be sent out to do the Lord’s work.
The same Peter who declares his loyalty to Jesus.
And the same Peter who, when things get difficult,
pulls out a sword and cuts off somebody’s ear.
That Peter.
Peter lives in all of us.
And Jesus tells him:
Not seven times,
but seventy-seven times.
Jesus is not giving Peter a bigger number to keep track of.
He is telling Peter:
Stop counting.
Forgiveness is not a scorecard.
We are not supposed to keep track of how many times we have forgiven somebody,
waiting eagerly for number seventy-eight
so we can finally let them have it.
Jesus is calling us to become generous with forgiveness.
We are called to be—
if you’ll forgive the play on words—
forth-giving.
Giving it forward.
Because otherwise,
we become like the servant in today’s parable—
someone who has received extraordinary mercy
but cannot extend mercy to somebody else.
And I have learned something about that over the years.
One of the hardest people for me to forgive
is myself.
I can get stuck in my own sins.
I can replay them.
I can dwell on them.
I can think about what I should have said,
what I should have done,
what I should have known better.
And strangely enough,
sometimes dwelling on my sin is easier than accepting forgiveness.
Because accepting forgiveness means
I have to get up.
I have to change.
I have to try again.
It is sometimes easier to ignore what I have done,
or punish myself endlessly for what I have done,
than to trust that God has actually forgiven me
and is telling me,
“Now get up. Let’s keep going.”
And I have noticed something else.
The less forgiving I become toward myself,
the more judgmental I tend to become toward other people.
Funny how that works.
When I find myself unable to forgive someone,
sometimes that tells me as much about what is happening inside me
as it does about what that person has done.
It becomes an invitation:
Andrew,
you need to trust God a little more.
You need to remember the mercy you yourself have received.
And ministry has taught me this over and over again.
In fact,
you have taught me about forgiveness.
Think about this.
You and I gathering here this morning
is itself a testimony to the power of forgiveness.
Eighty years ago,
people from the country where I was born
and people from the country where most of you were born
were enemies.
Our nations were killing one another.
There was Pearl Harbor.
There was Hiroshima.
There was Nagasaki.
There was tremendous suffering,
grief,
anger,
fear,
and hatred.
And yet—
here I am.
A Japanese man,
standing in an American pulpit,
praying with you,
loving you,
being loved by you,
and in a few minutes,
breaking bread with you.
Think about that.
Something happened.
History was not erased.
The suffering was not declared unimportant.
Nobody had to pretend that terrible things had not happened.
But the past was not allowed to have the final word.
Relationships were rebuilt.
Enemies became allies.
Strangers became friends.
And somehow,
eventually,
you and I ended up here.
Together.
This week also marked twenty-five years since September 11, 2001.
Twenty-five years.
Many of us can still remember exactly where we were.
We remember the images.
We remember the fear.
We remember the anger.
We remember the grief.
And twenty-five years later,
I wonder:
What has changed?
And perhaps an even harder question:
What still needs to change?
Forgiveness does not mean pretending evil never happened.
Forgiveness does not mean abandoning justice.
Forgiveness does not mean returning ourselves to dangerous situations.
And forgiveness certainly does not mean forgetting.
Joseph did not forget what his brothers had done to him.
They sold him into slavery.
They betrayed him.
They changed the course of his life.
And yet Joseph could eventually say:
“You intended to do harm to me;
but God intended it for good.”
Notice—
Joseph does not call the evil good.
He calls it evil.
But he refuses to let the evil have the final word.
That, I think, is where forgiveness begins.
Forgiveness says:
What you did matters.
The wound is real.
The past cannot be changed.
But by the grace of God, the past will not own the future.
Maybe that is why Jesus tells Peter:
Stop counting.
Because God stopped keeping score a long time ago.
“The Lord is full of compassion and mercy,
slow to anger and of great kindness.”
“As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our sins from us.”
We do not forgive because the other person deserves it.
We do not forgive because what happened was acceptable.
We forgive because we have been forgiven.
And every time we come here,
every time we confess our sins,
every time we hear the words of absolution,
every time we come to this table with empty hands,
God teaches us again:
You are forgiven.
Now—
go learn how to forgive.
Not seven times.
Not seventy-seven times.
Stop counting.
And let the mercy you have received
become the mercy you give away.
Amen.
