Matthew 18:21-35
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” Amen
This is a day of new beginnings for you and for me. I am grateful to stand before you and pray for your consideration in calling me to be your Pastor. My last name, M I C H A U D, has several pronunciations. My father and mother taught me the French pronunciation of “Me Show” The D is silent. In Maine, where I taught for twenty years, my name is most often pronounced “ME SHOE.” My name also is pronounced with the D, “MICH ODD” and sometimes an R appears, as in “MICH ARD.” I respond to each of these and accept the local dialect as part of living with an odd name. However, I prefer “MICH O.” Could we give it a try?
If you have read my brief biography, you know something about me. I grew up in Portsmouth, NH, and was baptized in Portsmouth’s North Church as a Congregationalist. By the time I was confirmed as a member of North Church, it had affiliated with the United Church of Christ. I have been UCC all my life and served as an English Teacher for 33 years. When I began to consider retirement from teaching in 2009, while I was a Deacon at North Church, I decided to seek Ordination as a UCC pastor/teacher. I had planned to attend Andover Newton, however, they closed in January 2014. I ended up seeking my Master of Divinity at Iliff School of Theology in Denver while visiting my son, Jordan, who still lives in Denver.
I met my wife, Sarah Scherer, at Iliff School of Theology and we married in October of 2014. We graduated together in 2016 with our MDivs and I completed my Ordination in the Rocky Mountain Conference in 2018. Sarah and I have one common vision, to serve God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Sarah’s church is nature and she is licensed as a Spiritual Director, Yoga teacher, and Life Coach. Our match includes my gregariousness and her introversion. Yet she is a singer and songwriter and plays guitar and violin. As a singer, she has a dynamic voice. I fell in love with her when she sang one of her songs for me in her kitchen. Perhaps she will share her love and voice with you sometime.
I came to First Congregational of Millbury to meet with the Search Committee in August. I forwarded my Profile because I have chosen to serve churches that have affirmed the status of “Open and Affirming.” As a congregation, you voted to assert this designation. You won that battle, and I am grateful. Love wins.
I left that meeting hopeful and pleased with those I met. My keen takeaway was that you truly, deeply, care for this church. You have invested in ample assistance for people with disabilities. The church is one of the cleanest I have seen. All the public spaces seemed well-lighted and exceptionally well-maintained. Such care is a visible act of love and respect for all, and I came to love those I met and look forward to serving all whom I have the privilege to meet. We have emerged from the long trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic and collectively we can aspire to new growth and community connections.
Today’s passage from Matthew represents a consistent theme in the teachings of Jesus. The parable regarding the servant and debt reflects on our relationship to our ever-speaking God. Are we listening?
“Seventy times seven” is a lot of forgiveness. Once is tough enough. Twice, can seem almost unreasonable. Remember the adage: “Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, shame on me.” “Seventy times seven?” Yet that is what Jesus stated to Peter. Keep on forgiving, he counseled, even when forgiveness seems foolish. Forgiveness is more of a gift we give ourselves than a favor we offer to others.
Jesus went on to speak the parable of a servant who owed the king a bundle. “Ten thousand talents.” This would have been an impossible sum. Jesus uses hyperbole. Perhaps, this sum is so much that Jesus is joking. Peter would have seen this as an impossible sum that a servant could never accrue. The servant’s plea for mercy touched a tender chord in the king, and the servant was forgiven. His account was marked “paid in full.”
As Jesus taught us to pray, “forgive us our debts” or sins or trespasses, the core of loving ourselves and our neighbors comes down to forgiveness.
Then comes the BUT. The servant soon met a man who owed him a mere handful of denarii- a small sum that amounted to several days’ wages. The debtor pleaded for mercy but received a sentence to the debtor’s prison.
The king, upon hearing of the first servant’s refusal to forgive, rescinded his former offer, and the servant wound up on the locked side of a prison cell “until he would pay his entire debt.” His refusal to forgive was his undoing. So it goes. Prison would have been akin to the outer darkness, leaving the servant and his family and friends gnashing their teeth.
Current medical research indicates that persons who are unforgiving are more susceptible to a variety of illnesses than their more tolerant counterparts. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that type A personalities (long thought to be particularly prone to cardiovascular illness) are no more likely than anyone else to suffer heart attack or stroke. The culprit, researchers say now, is anger. Type A persons are in danger only if they carry around unresolved hostility. It is anger, not activity, that places a person at risk.
Forgive seventy times seven? Jesus knew it was for our own good. People who refuse to forgive rarely do damage to the other person but seriously jeopardize their own well- being. Forgiveness involves releasing persons from the consequences they deserve because of their behavior. The behavior remains recalled, but the offender is released from its effects as far as the forgiver is concerned. Forgiveness means the original wound’s power to hold us trapped is broken. I recall a story of a prisoner of war who asked another, “Have you forgiven your captors yet?” “I will never do that,” the second one answered. “Then they still have you in prison, don’t they?”
There is, of course, a keenly spiritual dimension to forgiveness. It is an awareness of God’s love for all. Our forgiveness is linked to God’s forgiveness. God’s abundant love, through the life and death of his Beloved child, offers each of us a path of coming closer to the divine by learning to forgive and in doing so, frees us to live in the Peace of Christ.