24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.
~Romans 14:10
 
Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
~Matthew 18:21-22
 
The church in ancient Rome finds itself amid cultural, economic, emotional, and religious revolution. Everything is changing. People are being accused and attacked. They are frightened and defensive. The future is uncertain. There is chaos without and within, and this underground movement in first century Rome committed to the Way of liberation Jesus imagined finds itself gathered with little in common. Jews and Gentiles together, they can’t even agree on what is right to eat or what day is right for worship. One’s act of honor is another’s offense.
 
How do you forgive when you can’t even agree that an offense has occurred? And yet, Paul has come to understand that the practice of forgiveness is a taproot reaching to the deep reservoir of our common baptism—unyielding rootedness that holds the community in place as a storm of uncertainty rages around it. It announces a different way, a better reality, in other words.
 
That’s what Jesus is indicating to Peter. There is no limit to forgiveness inside the Kindom of God as if it is a limited commodity. God is mercy, an antidote to a world governed by debt keeping, retaliation, and strife. Those who choose this way choose a hell of its own making. Ah, but the alternative…
 
Enter into worship. 
 
 
Readings: Exodus 14:19-31 † Psalm 114 † Romans 14:1-12 † Matthew 18:21-35
 
About the Art: Swanson, John August. Moses, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56554 [retrieved September 11, 2023]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.

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