September 13, 2026 – The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Cal Calhoun
In the Name of God, who forgives and implores us to do the same: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
There’s a prayer we say each week. And it comes with good pedigree. It is the prayer that Jesus gave the disciples when they asked him how to pray. As a result, we call it the Lord’s Prayer. So it only makes sense that as we gather each week, to worship God, the God made known to us in Jesus Christ, that we would do what Jesus said to do to remember him, that is communion. And that we would pray the prayer Jesus gave his followers to pray.
We have this Book of Common Prayer. It contains the services we use in this branch of the church of Jesus Christ. After the Table of Contents, the Introductions, and information about the Church calendar, the first main section is the Daily Office. The Daily Office imagines a life of prayer several times a day, built on the monastic tradition of prayer several times a day. The Daily Office has four main prayers: Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayers, Evening Prayer, and Compline, or bedtime prayers. Each of those four services include the Lord’s Prayer. Which is to say, If you were praying the Daily Office, you would say the Lord’s Prayer four times a day, not just once a week. So the Book of Common Prayer imagines this Lord’s Prayer as being pretty central to the practice of the Christian faith.
Let’s take a quick look. [8:15 The Lord’s Prayer is a few pages ahead of where we are on page 336.] [10:30 Look at page 15 in your bulletin.]
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
This last section I’ll leave off, that part is a doxology added later, it’s not original to Jesus. In this prayer, we are asking God to do every one of these things, except one. We are asking God to make God’s will happen. We ask for God to provide our daily bread, our food. We ask God to forgive our sins (to use the contemporary wording). We ask that God save us from temptation and deliver us from evil. There is just one thing, in this prayer, that we are to do, for which we are praying for God’s help, “as we forgive those who sin against us.”
That seems to be the message in the gospel. Peter, who knows Jesus pretty well, asks how many times he has to forgive Hubert, who is driving him bat – crazy because he keeps asking Peter what to do with the 7 baskets of crumbs gathered from the Feeding of the 4000. Peter, knowing how Jesus is, goes way over the top and says seven times? Can I wack Hubert in the head if he asks me an eighth time? Jesus responds, no, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. An absurd number. I’m no Greek scholar, but some translations claim Jesus says seventy times seven, which is an even more absurd 490 times. In either case, Peter walks away knowing he is never going to get permission to wack Hubert in the head.
Something else we do each Sunday, or nearly so, is confess our sins and ask for forgiveness. Interestingly, if you were praying the Daily Office, you would be confessing your sins three times a day! Noonday Prayers doesn’t include a confession. The others? Yep, confessing those sins.
So, the message is our need for forgiveness might only be exceeded by our need to forgive. Our need for forgiveness might only be exceeded by our need to forgive.
I don’t want to make forgiveness seem like a an easy, slam dunk, just do it, kind of thing. Most of us have some major things we have to forgive, and for which we need to be forgiven. Sometimes the one we need to forgive or ask forgiveness has died, and we can’t really get closure. Sometimes that one has been abusive, and there doesn’t ever need to be a relationship with that one, but to not forgive may mean you hang on to hurt and trauma and anger that you really need to let go of. In that case, forgiveness is for you, it gives you the opportunity to get your life back. Forgiveness is not forgive and forget.
I remember a conversation that I overheard in seminary. And you may have heard this before. Two people, both of whom way smarter than me, were having a conversation about whether hell exists. The first said, well I sure hope that hell exists, because when I sit at that great banquet table, I don’t want to look next to me and see Hitler sitting there. (I thought to myself in that moment, “yeah, me neither.”) And then the other said, “yeah, but what would that say about the ability of God to redeem anyone or anything?” (and I thought to myself in that moment, if I had to choose sitting next to Hitler or not, meaning choosing whether God could forgive anything, I’d have to choose sitting next to Hitler.)
Now, I’m not saying Hitler is sitting at the banquet table in heaven. I have no idea who is there and who is not. And I can only hope that I might have a seat someday. But this I know and believe with all that I have: God can save whoever God wants to save, whenever God wants to save them. And that also means that God can forgive whatever God wants to forgive.
And that is the trap for us. If God is going to forgive us, everything, then we have to, at least, attempt to forgive everything. And in the end, that forgiveness is more for us than the one who has wronged us.
So there seems to have been a challenge laid down to include a line of a Dolly Parton song in the sermon. I hearby declare today is the end of this challenge! I googled Dolly Parton songs with forgive or forgiveness. They weren’t any I had ever heard, which had the advantage of you not knowing how badly I butchered the song. One with some promise Is How Can I Help You Forgive Me. That didn’t feel like it was exactly what I was looking for. There’s also I’m Fresh Out of Forgiveness for You, which is exactly the opposite of what I am trying to say. So it’s not Dolly Parton, but it is about forgiveness:
I’ve been tryin’ to get down
To the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak,
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about
Forgiveness, forgiveness
Even if, even if
You don’t love me anymore. – Don Henley, J. D. Souther, Mike Campbell.
Amen.
Year A – The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 13, 2026 – The Rev. Cal Calhoun
