“Lord, Widen Our Hearts” - Fr. Pete's Sermon for September 13th, 2026, the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 18:21-35

Every couple of months I get together for lunch with two clergy friends—Pastor JP from Joy of Christ Lutheran Church and Pastor Ron from Mililani Presbyterian. Usually we meet at Zippy's. We have wonderful conversations, solving all the problems of the church, the community, and sometimes even the world. But whenever the meal comes to an end, and the server lays the check on the table, we all look at each other.

"Whose turn is it?" "I think you got it last time. "Didn't Ron pay in July?" "Wait... JP bought lunch the time before that."

We sit there trying to reconstruct the financial history of our lunches over the last several months. Same thing happened recently with Fr. Greg Johnson, but he keeps clear notes as to which of us paid last!

Now, there's nothing wrong with how we do this. We're just trying to be fair. But it struck me that most of us spend a good part of our lives keeping score. We keep score over who called whom last, who apologized first, who remembered the birthday, who did more of the work, who always gets their way, who owes whom. It seems we're natural accountants of personal matters.

Well, Saint Peter was too. Last week, Jesus gave instructions on how to deal with someone who has hurt another brother or sister. Now, in today's Gospel, Peter asks Jesus what sounds like a generous question. "Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" In Peter's day, many rabbis taught that forgiving someone three times was enough. Peter doubles it—and adds one for good measure. Surely forgiving seven times ought to do it.

Peter wants a formula. He wants Jesus to hand him a holy calculator. "Just tell me the number, Lord, when I can finally say, 'I've done my Christian duty. I've forgiven enough times.'" But Jesus isn't interested in giving Peter a number. "Not seven times," he says, "but seventy-seven times."

Now, Jesus isn't asking us to keep a bigger accounting book. "Well, that's number seventy-six... only one more to go!" Seven in the Bible is the number of completeness or perfection. Jesus is saying, Peter, you've asked the wrong question. Stop counting. God’s kingdom doesn't run on calculators and spreadsheets. It runs on grace. So forgive infinitely.

Then Jesus tells a story. A servant owes his king an unimaginably large debt—so large that he could never repay it in a lifetime. He falls on his knees and begs for mercy. To everyone's astonishment, the king doesn't arrange a payment plan or reduce the amount owed. He simply forgives the entire debt. Wipes the slate clean. The servant walks away free.

Now, you would think that someone who had received such astonishing grace and forgiveness would become the most gracious and forgiving person in the kingdom. Instead, he immediately finds another servant who owes him a comparatively tiny amount, grabs him by the throat, and demands payment, now! When that man pleads for patience using almost exactly the same words the first servant had spoken to the king, there’s no mercy. No compassion. He has him thrown into prison.

It's a shocking story. And Jesus intends it to be. The point isn't that the second debt didn't matter. Forgiveness never pretends that nothing happened. It doesn't excuse evil or deny justice. Rather, forgiveness is choosing not to let the hurt be the end of the story. It’s refusing to allow bitterness to become the defining reality of our lives.

Some of us are old enough to remember one of the most unforgettable photographs of the Vietnam War. A little girl, her clothes burned away by napalm, is running down a road with an expression of unimaginable terror. The image became one of the defining pictures of that conflict. We talked about it in one of our Confirming Faith classes this summer.

The girl’s name was Kim Phúc. She survived, though it took years of painful surgeries to recover. Eventually she became an international ambassador for peace. In 1996 she spoke at a Veterans Day observance in Washington, D.C. During her remarks she said that if she could meet the man responsible for the bombing, she would tell him that they could not change history, but they could choose to do good in the present.

Sitting quietly in the audience was a former Army helicopter pilot named John Plummer. For years he had carried the burden of that photograph and the horrors of the war. After Kim finished speaking, he wrote a short note: "I am that man." He made his way through the crowd until he reached her, handing her the note. Overcome with emotion, he could barely get the words out. "I'm so sorry," he kept saying. "I'm so sorry."

Kim opened her arms. He fell into them sobbing. And she said simply, "I forgive you."

That didn't erase history. It didn't undo the suffering. But it did mean that grace proved stronger than bitterness. Many of us can vouch for the fact that forgiveness doesn't erase the past. But it does keep the past from imprisoning our hearts.

This morning we begin our stewardship season here at St. Timothy's with the theme, "Lord, Widen Our Hearts." Over the next several weeks we'll be reflecting on that theme, and we’ll hear from members of our ‘ohana about what that prayer, “Widen our hearts,” means to them.

But I hope you've noticed something this morning. I haven't been talking about money. Because stewardship doesn't begin with our wallets. It begins with our hearts.

A narrow heart keeps score. It remembers every slight, every offense, every unpaid debt. It asks, "What's the least I have to do?"
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But a widened heart has been so transformed by the extravagant grace of God that it begins to reflect that same grace toward others. It forgives generously. It welcomes generously. It serves generously. It gives generously. Not because it has to, but because it has discovered that God's love can never be earned, only received and shared.

So that's our prayer this season. Not just, "Lord, help us meet the budget." But, "Lord, widen our hearts." Now one of the reasons I love being your vicar is that the people of this church do have such wide hearts! But, I think all of us can ask God’s Spirit to make them even wider.

To widen our hearts to forgive. Widen our hearts to love. Widen our hearts to welcome. Widen our hearts to give.

And when God answers that prayer, I suspect we'll discover that generosity—in every part of our life—is no longer something we have to force. We won’t have to keep tabs on who paid what when.

No, when God answers our prayer, generosity simply becomes the natural overflow of hearts that have first been enlarged by the grace of Christ.

Thanks be to our generous, gracious God. Amen.