Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We are astoundingly capable of being self-centered. We can put ourselves—our desires, our wants, our will—above everything and everyone. We can make ourselves the center of the universe and measure everything by what it means for us. And I think that is at the heart of this parable.

We hear today’s Gospel as a lesson about forgiveness: we must forgive if we are to be forgiven. And certainly that is its message. But Jesus also shows us what can keep that lesson from ever reaching the heart. He shows us someone who receives an extraordinary gift and goes on living as though nothing has changed.

Look at the servant. When his master settles accounts, the debt is immense, and the servant cannot repay it. So he begs for patience. He promises to pay back what he owes. He is trying desperately to find a way out.

And the master shows him mercy. Mercy the servant has not earned. Mercy greater than he even asks for. The servant asks for time to repay the debt. The master forgives it entirely.

We can imagine how grateful the servant must feel. The debt that threatened his whole life is gone. He is free. And then he goes about his day. He encounters someone who owes him a much smaller debt, and suddenly mercy has no place in his life. He wants repayment. He demands what he is owed. The mercy he received has changed his circumstances. It has not changed his heart.

And that is the problem. It is not simply that he has failed to learn his lesson. He has never really opened himself to the lesson. He has made himself the center of everything. He got what he wanted from the master, and now he intends to get what he wants from everyone else.

He never stops to reflect on what has happened to him. He never asks how receiving such mercy should change the way he lives, or how he might offer someone else the freedom he has just received. He thinks only of himself and his own needs. And that blinds him to the depth of the gift he has been given.

That is how we so often live, whether we want to admit it or not. We receive truth from God. We receive forgiveness and mercy. We receive grace to help us become better. But we can receive all these things without truly opening our hearts to them. We welcome them insofar as they give us what we want, and then we move on. The lessons never sink into the heart.

So, in the next situation, the next encounter, we make the same calculation all over again: What is best for me? What do I want out of this? We fail to recognize God as our teacher, the one revealing a better, more perfect way to live. We are so concerned with what we want from him that we never stop to consider what he wants to change in us.

The gifts God gives us—his grace, his forgiveness, the blessings of our lives—are meant to do more than improve our circumstances. They are meant to transform us. They are meant to make us more like God himself, so that the mercy and love we receive from him can reach others through us. The gifts are not meant to end with us.

But for that to happen, we have to stop making ourselves the center of everything. We have to look up to God and receive what he is teaching us. And we have to look toward our neighbor: someone who also needs God’s love, who also needs his grace and forgiveness, who needs the very gifts we have received.

We have to allow God’s grace to remake us in his image, to make us people who care for one another and carry his message of salvation into the world.

So spend time in prayer. True prayer: not just mindlessly asking God for whatever you happen to want, but entering into that heart-to-heart encounter with your Creator. Allow him to shape you. Allow him to show you your place in this world and the good he is calling you to do.

Let him open your heart to the needs around you. To the person who needs forgiveness. To the person who needs comfort. To the person who needs to experience God’s grace and love. And allow him to move you to respond.

That is the purpose of everything we do here. It is why we gather on Sundays to worship our God and celebrate the Eucharist. It is why we baptize and confirm, why we marry, why we have our ministries and our Bible studies. In all of this, God is at work to transform us.

What we receive here is meant to change how we live when we leave here: how we forgive, how we care for one another, how we respond when someone needs us.

So set aside, for a moment, your own will and your own desires. Allow God to take the center. Allow him to open and expand your heart until you begin to recognize the needs of the people around you—and become willing to answer them. Prioritize God. Prioritize the faith. Get involved. Let the love you have received become the love you offer.