Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our Gospel lesson (Matthew 18: 21-35).

A young Nazi SS officer, dying in a Polish concentration camp hospital, asked a nurse to bring a Jew to him from the camp. He wanted to confess his horrible misdeeds and receive forgiveness. Then he thought he could die in peace. The Jew she brought was Simon Wiesenthal who survived the Holocaust and became well known for promoting knowledge about it. At the bedside of the soldier, he listened to the confession. The soldier told Wiesenthal of several atrocities, details of which I will spare you. The soldier confessed with great anguish on the last story: "Oh God… I shall never forget it – it haunts me. Please forgive me and let me die in peace." Wiesenthal later wrote, "I stood up and looked in his direction, at his folded hands. At last I made up my mind and without a word left the room." Later some rabbis confirmed his action when they wrote, "Whoever is merciful to the cruel will end up being indifferent to the innocent… Let the SS man die unforgiven. Let him go to hell." (source: Concordia Pulpit Resource,1999)

Other religions, like Judaism, may make mention of forgiveness. But for Christianity, the one true religion revealed by the Son of God Himself, forgiveness is the core. That is what is revealed to us in our text today. Christ teaches us here that we are completely unable to come to God because of our huge debt. The 10,000 talents in this parable in our text was, at that time, a way to say billions and billions of dollars, more than even the gross national product of the entire Judean region. This scoundrel, this wicked slave, fell to the ground, pleading for mercy and patience, which he received. But he didn't really realize how much he had been forgiven. He seems to be thinking that he still needs to pay his master back, that he could somehow earn his forgiveness. Instead of receiving the forgiveness given in mercy, as a free gift and responding to his fellow servant in like fashion, he himself is unforgiving. He responds to his fellow servant's debt by trying to cash in, by making the servant earn his forgiveness. He shows by his deeds that He did not understand or trust his master's forgiveness, and thus is condemned again.

Contrast Wiesenthal's story with that of Corrie Ten Boom, the author of The Hiding Place and other books. As many of you are probably aware from her books and movies, Corrie was a Christian woman in a family of Christians who sought to protect Jews in Holland during WWII. In 1944 they were discovered and she, her father and mother and sister were all sent to concentration camps in Germany. There her family all died, her sister with her. After the war Miss Ten Boom traveled throughout Europe and the world sharing the message of forgiveness in Christ Jesus. At a church service in Munich a former SS man at her concentration camp at Ravensbruck. When she saw him she had a flashback of all the cruel things he and other guards had done, especially to her sister. But here he was now, approaching her after church, bowing and saying "How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein. To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!"

His hand thrust out to shake hers. A moment of truth and faith and love had come. For a moment she kept her hand at her side. I'll use her words to describe her reaction. "Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent pryaer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.

"As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command the love itself." (from The Hiding Place, 1971, p. 238). Corrie forgave and made peace with this man who had done her and her sister such great harm.

In a few moments we will begin our communion liturgy, in which we all come together around Christ's body and blood. There is a small phrase in that liturgy, one you might be tempted to think of as some minor tradition, called the sharing of the peace. I will say "the peace of the Lord be with you" and you will respond "and also with you." Today we will practice what we normally do not, that is going around and greeting, shaking the hands of a few fellow members with the phrase "Peace be with you." In the early church this was a critical part of the communion service. Especially in smaller house churches every person would go around and greet every other person with a greeting of peace (Nagel, Lutheran Worship, p. 306-7). If the peace was blocked at some point, that is if there were two members not fully reconciled with each other, the service would stop and the minister would go to work reconciliation between those members at that point. Only after reconciliation had been achieved did the communion liturgy continue! Matthew 5: 23-24 "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift." One early church manual (the Didache) from around 100 A.D. said about the Lord's Supper "Let no one who has a quarrel with his companion join with you until they have been reconciled." "It is bad to scorn another human being.It is fearful to scorn the body and blood of Christ in a man" (Nagel, p. 306). The eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ is never just an individualized "me and Jesus" process. When you receive the sacrament, his body and blood is connecting you powerfully to Him and to every other body who receives Him with you at that time. So "Peace be with you." I hope I am not scaring too many of you away from the blessing of receiving Him and his forgiveness physically. If there is someone with whom you are not reconciled and you have not made a recent, sincere effort to be reconciled with them, then go, find them and come back again in two weeks for this special, particular forgiveness. If there is someone with whom you are not reconciled, but you have made an honest, recent effort for that reconciliation only to be rebuffed by them, then come. Receive His strength, the power to continue to hold out the hand Christ's forgiveness to them through you. "Peace be with you." Those of you who have been members of this congregation a long time know that this congregation has not always been at peace. Those of you who are newer in the past 2-3 years may not know that. I hope you have sensed only peacefulness. But just three years ago this congregation had, I'm told, numerous divisive issues. The tension was such the District President asked to send in a consulting group called Peacemakers. Before Peacemakers could finish the process, the previous pastor resigned. Several teachers took calls to other schools. At that time I was a simple seminarian, taking my classes in St. Louis, playing on the tennis team, wondering where God might be leading me and my family to for my vicarage, my "practice" year. We hoped it would be in Kansas. President Patten began asking me to consider Immanuel in Junction City. He did not sugarcoat the problems here. After hearing of all the division and tension here, my first response was "Thank you President Patten, but this sounds way more complicated than what I want to take on right out of seminary. Isn't there some other congregation in Kansas that is more at peace?" President Patten persisted. I asked if I could speak to Ted Kober, the leader of the Peacemakers group that came here and shared God's Word of Law and Gospel, warning and forgiveness. They had led numerous people through our Lord's Word about peace and reconciliation and Christian love and forgiveness, including Bible study on this specific Matthew 18 text. Ted and other Peacemakers told me stories of peace and reconciliation they had witnessed in their brief visits here, and of their hope that the Holy Spirit through God's Word was continuing to build upon that peace.

Now Immanuel has a new reputation, both in Junction City and among other pastors and congregations in Kansas. Now we have a reputation as a congregation of peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. One sister in Christ who has been a member here since the 1940's, said it wonderfully about a year ago "This is the most peaceful I've ever seen this congregation." If you have not yet been through a Peacemakers Bible Study, or if you think you could benefit from a refresher on peace and reconciliation, I invite you to begin with us in two weeks. I pray that none of us ever has to forgive someone for as much hurt as that prison guard brought upon Corrie Ten Boom. But I know that we, as Christians, are called by the Lord in this text to forgive those who have hurt us, even if they are terrorists who blow up buildings, or friends and family members who wrong us repeatedly. If you do not know if you have the strength to forgive, look not to yourself, but to your Lord and His Word. Search the Scriptures with your fellow forgiving Christians and receive the strength of his hand, pierced for you on the cross, held out to you after his resurrection. When the books of a certain Scottish doctor were examined after his death, it was found that a number of accounts were crossed through with a note: "Forgiven--too poor to pay." But the physician's wife later decided that these accounts must be paid in full and she proceeded to sue for money. When the case came to court the judge asked but one question. Is this your husband's handwriting? When she replied that it was he responded: "There is no court in the land that can obtain a debt once the word forgiven has been written." And that is the good news that the Gospel offers us this morning. God's attitude is not "I'll forgive but I won't forget," but rather, "Forgiven, Forgotten Forever." Across our debt has been written the words, "Forgiven--too poor to pay." Once our huge debt has been cancelled there is no one who can collect on it. God wipes it out of his mind. Let us in faith respond to his great gift of forgiveness. Let us forgive ourselves like that. Let us forgive others like that. Amen. (Modified from Sermon Illustrations, 1999)