Vicar Karla 9/13 Sermon

There’s a restaurant in St. Paul called the Groveland Tap which is

down the block from Pilgrim Lutheran, my longtime church home. Because

it’s right there, naturally it becomes where people go after meetings or after

Sunday evening worship. It’s a great restaurant with excellent food and an

extensive beer selection. My long time go to item on the menu was a burger

that used a cinnamon roll for the bun. Somehow the sweet of the cinnamon

roll met the savory of the burger in a way that worked, and it was so

delicious. So imagine my intense disappointment when I walked in one

evening after a church council meeting to take a cursory look at the menu,

even though I knew what I was going to order because I always got the

same thing, to see that the cinnamon roll burger was no longer on the

menu.

Distraught, I asked our server what happened and why it wasn’t on

the menu, and she said that they ended up needing to take it off the menu

because so few people ordered it. She completely agreed with me that it was

delicious and that once people ordered it they, like me, were hooked, but

since so few people were actually apt to order it in the first place, they just

couldn’t keep it on the menu. I vowed to never forgive them for this

travesty. Similarly, I’ve never forgiven Lush Cosmetics for discontinuing a

body lotion I loved that smelled like chocolate cherries and was one of the

few things able to keep my winter dry skin happy. I’ve also never forgiven

Pat’s Tap in Minneapolis for taking my favorite goat cheese fritters off their

menu.

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When it comes to forgiveness, these examples are very insignificant.

Me holding these grudges, at the end of the day, doesn’t matter just like

these “wrongs” happening in the first place are lower than low stakes in the

broad scheme of this world we share that is full of actual sins and mistakes

that come along with life altering consequences.

Like most of Jesus’ parables, there is meaning under the words that

Jesus is using to make his point today. Peter comes to Jesus asking how

many times he should forgive someone who wrongs him. He asks if it’s

seven times he should offer that forgiveness. It seems like Peter is looking

for what he thinks is an absurdly high number. Surely no one would be

interested or willing in offering forgiveness seven whole times! And Jesus

says, basically, that is nowhere near enough. Like so many parables that

Jesus uses to make his lessons more accessible, this one is about the

church, about a community of believers that is rapidly growing as Jesus

travels around sharing his message of love and grace. Because this

community is growing so rapidly and because it is attracting such a,

honestly rag tag group of people, some guidelines are clearly needed for

how to live in community together, how to live and work and travel with

people who very well may have caused past harm to others in the

community.

Everything Jesus offers is so countercultural, so wildly different from

the limitations of what the world offers. And extravagant forgiveness is one

of those things. Because we receive this grace and forgiveness, God calls us

to share it with others, with the church. The Lord’s Prayer, a pretty central

piece of our liturgy, says, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who

trespass against us.” So, what keeps us from offering forgiveness and mercy

to others when it has been given to us so abundantly? There have been

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more than a few times in my life where my prayer has been, “God, I need

you to do the heavy lifting in offering forgiveness because I am just not

there yet. So until I can get there, and I pray you help me to get there, I

need you to pick up my slack.”

One of the things I actually find most interesting in this morning’s

parable is that it is Peter who is asking this question about the limits, or

really the lack of limits, as we learn, to the ways God asks us to forgive.

Peter, who will deny knowing Jesus three times on the night that he is

betrayed and eventually put to death. Peter is the one asking about this

limit, when Peter is the one who is going to need limitless forgiveness from

Jesus. And Jesus gives it. On the night of that betrayal, before he is dragged

away by the Roman soldiers, Jesus looks Peter in the eyes, washes his dirty

and dusty feet, and preemptively forgives him for an incredibly deep

betrayal.

On one hand, the author of Matthew’s gospel portrays Peter as the

model of faithfulness. He is shown to be a leader among the 12, ready to

follow Christ and to do hard things, eager to ask questions to learn and to

grow, both for his own sake but also for his friends. We see him vow to

remain with Jesus and his friends no matter what, even if death is what will

come…. And it will, as we know. And even though Peter is portrayed to be

this model of discipleship in a lot of ways, he will still betray Jesus not once,

not twice, but three times for the sake of his own safety. As Peter asks this

question today, though, he is completely unaware of his forthcoming

failings and the three betrayals to soon come. To those of us who know

what will come in a few chapters, though, we can recognize the irony.

Forgiveness is easy for God, but very often it is anything but easy for us.

Today’s discourse is Jesus giving practical applications and advice for how

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to live in community. He is building this community of believers, and he

knows that it is critical that they all live together in ways that are so

completely countercultural to what he is seeing around him. After all, God

has sent Christ to Earth because there is so much anger, malice, score

settling, contempt, greed and on and on. So Jesus comes to bring

something different, something so much better. And forgiveness is so much

better and so different from what the rest of the world is doing that it’s a

pretty foreign concept to his disciples who have spent their lives engrossed

in the status quo.

I recently read a book by Pulitzer prize winning journalist, Kevin Sack

entitled Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and

Forgiveness in One Charleston church. I didn’t know anything about this

book, but when I was wandering through Birchbark Books in Minneapolis

with my mom this spring, I was struck by the title and picked it up on a

whim. And, it’s one of the most significant things I’ve read so far in 2026.

The book follows the more than 200 year history of Emanuel African

Methodist Episcopal Church- known for many of those two centuries- as

Mother Emanuel. It is the oldest AME church in the south. In 1817, the

church broke away from white methodist churches, it survived the Civil

War and Reconstruction, and eventually became a major staging site during

the civil rights movement.

This church is also the place where on June 17th, 2015, white

supremecist, Dylan Roof, entered Mother Emanuel after being welcomed to

a bible study, and shot and murdered 9 Black worshippers. Pastor and

elected state senator Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza Sanders,

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Daniel

Simmons, Susan Jackson, Ethel Lance, and Myra Thompson.

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One of the most profound parts of the legacy of this horrific massacre

came from a spiritual standpoint. On the night after the shooting, Chris and

Camryn Singleton, the now motherless teenage children of forty- five year

old Sharonda Coleman- Singleton, attended a vigil in her memory at the

local high school where she worked for many years. On their way out of the

vigil, a British television reporter pushed a microphone in their faces and

asked what they were feeling. Chris said, “We already forgave him for what

he’s done.” More than a decade later, he can’t explain how those words

came out of his mouth. Several years later he remarked, “I wish I had a

feeling that I was compelled to do it, but I didn’t. It just came out, which is

unreal. The reason I know it was God was because if it was fake there is no

way I would still feel this way years later.”

Two days later, the Charleston police prepared for potential civil

unrest as Roof made his first appearance at a state court bond hearing on

murder counts for each of the nine victims. The families of the victims were

invited to attend, they had not seen the Chris Singleton interview, they

hadn’t consulted with one another, but one by one, they stood up and told

Dylan Roof that they forgave him. Author Kevin Sack writes in his book,

“many could not find anything to absolve in Roof’s hellish act, or any

conceivable godly purpose in the taking of nine innocent believers. But it

was nonetheless a breathtaking exercise of grace, a reflection of a

Christianity so seemingly pure that few had ever witnessed it, much less

experienced it. Many hearts softened, not just in Charleston but across the

world, and anyone inclined to fan the embers of retribution found them

quickly snuffed, even as outrage smoldered.”

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Then President Barack Obama gave the eulogy at the Rev. Pinckney’s

service and reflected on grace. Christian tradition, he explained, asserts

that grace is not earned but is rather “the free and benevolent favor of God

as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.

Through the tragedy at Emanuel, God has visited that grace upon the

nation. He said, “For He has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He

has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. We

may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and

short sightedness and fear of each other- but we got it all the same.”

A couple of years ago, I was at an annual conference with the

Association of Christian Fundraising. At that year’s conference, Chris

Singleton, the child of one of the victims who proclaimed his forgiveness at

that vigil, was one of the keynote speakers. And the attention of every single

person in the room hung on to every single word that came out of his

mouth as he talked about grace, and God’s forgiveness. It was powerful and

it was beautiful. There are several parts of this that are profound. The first

is that he was talking to a room of largely ELCA Lutherans. Dylan Roof was

an ELCA Lutheran, and not a check the box Lutheran either. He was active

in his youth group, went through confirmation. Chris could have looked out

at that room of us with contempt, but he only shared grace.

After he finished speaking, there was a long line of people waiting to

buy his book and to have him sign it. Because the Lutheran world is so

miniscule, one of my friends is friends with Dylan Roof’s youth pastor, and

she has walked around with guilt since 2015 wondering how she missed the

signs, how she finds herself to be at fault in some capacity for his heinous

actions. As he was in line to buy the book and have it sighed, at the last

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minute, instead of making the inscription in the book out to himself, he

asked Chris to dedicate it to her, explaining exactly who she was. Again,

Chris could have responded with contempt, but he only shared grace in the

message he wrote to her, absolving her of any deeply held guilt.

This level of grace and forgiveness may feel only aspirational to us,

just like the forgiveness Jesus offers Peter feels so unfathomable. And

maybe it’s ok that it feels so outlandish to us. But that doesn’t let us off the

hook from asking God to help us understand it, to help us to wrap our

minds around it, so that we can embody that forgiveness and grace we

receive from God to in turn share it with others.

Pastor Meta Herrick Carlson writes on repentance:

“It is a dangerous luxury to give up on one another, to announce some

things beyond forgiveness- not just personally and today, but for everyone

and always.It is a dangerous luxury to declare zero tolerance because it will

be broken. It always gets broken, and then what? Intolerance has a pass.

The world does not need more grace restricted, more exasperated sighs,

more backs turned against one another, more detailed accounts of their

wrongs. It needs you and the soft courage that looks others in the face long

enough to wonder if trust can be made and it’s safe to try again differently.”

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Let us pray,’

God of grace, examine our hearts and show us the times and places where

we need to share your grace. When our hearts are closed off, open them and

help us to want to forgive. Pick up our slack to forgive others when we feel

incapable of it, and help us to get to that place of forgiveness. Because we

have been forgiven, extravagantly forgiven. Through your Son, who you

sent to Earth to show us how to love and how to forgive, help us to forgive

as we are forgiven. And when we’re just not quite there yet, help us to want

to get there. Amen.