[Sermon] Doing the Unimaginable

David Horton, Minister of Music & Worship

September 13, 2026 + Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

https://youtu.be/oxUlMuomR7s

When Peter asks Jesus for a reasonable limit on forgiveness, Jesus answers with a story that obliterates the whole idea of a limit. In this sermon, David Horton walks through the parable of the unforgiving servant: a king who cancels an impossible debt, and a forgiven man who can't bring himself to do the same for someone who owes him far less. It's a story less about villainy than about fear: when we've felt powerless, we reach for a ledger because it feels like control. David traces how that instinct calcifies into resentment, and how refusing to forgive doesn't punish anyone but ourselves. Drawing on Psalm 103 and a hymn pairing with Hamilton's "It's Quiet Uptown," he makes the case that real forgiveness is rare enough to be called unimaginable, and asks what it would take to open our hands.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Grace and peace to you from the God who opens our clenched hands and calls us into the freedom of forgiveness. And we say, Amen. 

Well church, it’s September. Time to slide back into these pews—or nod at the brave souls who endured them all summer—half-expecting the turn of the calendar to somehow make us saintly and serene. But the leaves change, and we don't. We show up right on cue: intensely, stubbornly, relentlessly human.

And this is why I need to hear these stories again and again—not once, but for the hundredth time. Is any of this new? No. Do we have halos? Not even close. We are human. Glorious, yes, but profoundly fragile. And God help us, we betray, we deceive, and we break each other’s hearts—until it feels like that’s just what we’re built to do.

Can I get an amen? 

You see that reality written all over the trail Jesus lays out in Matthew’s Gospel—walking miles ahead while the rest of us are just trying not to sweat through our clothes.

By the way, if you haven't figured it out by now: I am not a hot-weather person.

Can I get an amen? 

But all summer long, Jesus has handed us this wildly unpredictable landscape of grace. Throwing seeds on dry rocks. Feeding thousands with room-temperature fish—because nothing says divine favor like mystery seafood in July. Watching Peter try to walk on water, lose his mind, and get hauled out like a soggy golden retriever.

Turns out, that was just the warm-up act.

Before the summer's over, Jesus lets a Canaanite woman win a pretty substantial theological argument. He promotes Peter to keeper of the Kingdom keys—only to look him dead in the eye a chapter later and call him Satan. Talk about employee evaluation day. And to top it all off, he leaves us with an agonizingly awkward protocol for handling conflict without setting the church on fire.

And just when you think we might get a pass on all that hard work, Peter steps forward to speak for all of us. Having somehow survived the briars and the boundary lines, he shows up with a clipboard and an Excel spreadsheet, looking for a clear, legally binding limit on human patience:

He asks, “Lord, how many times do I have to forgive my brother or sister when they sin against me? Up to seven times?

Oh, Peter—you always have to give the guy credit. He really thinks he nailed it, here. I mean, seven is a holy number—the ultimate symbol of perfection. And who can blame him for wanting a cap on it? We all want a clean quota—that magic line in the sand where our obligation to extend grace expires, and our right to be completely, biblically furious becomes legally permissible.

But of course, Jesus completely blows up Peter’s neat little spreadsheet by responding with, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

In other words: Stop counting. 

Because in Kingdom language, mercy is not a currency to be rationed; it is the very atmosphere we must breathe if we want to survive.

And to show us just how ridiculous our little scorecards really are, Jesus tells a story that takes human accounting and cranks it up to absolute madness.

Picture the king settling accounts. An official is dragged forward owing ten thousand talents. To get the joke, you have to know ancient math: one talent was twenty years of hard labor. Ten thousand talents was the yearly tax revenue of the Persian Empire. This wasn't a missed credit card payment—this was a personal balance sheet that rivaled the national debt.

And in sheer, sweating panic, the man falls on his knees pleading, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you back everything."

Now, this is total delusion. He couldn't cover the interest in ten lifetimes. Yet moved by pure compassion, the king erases the entire debt. Wipes the ledger clean. Gone.

Then comes the tragedy of it all.

That official walks out the door and bumps into a servant who owes him three months’ wages. A real debt, but a completely manageable one. Instead of passing on that wild mercy he just received, he grabs the man by the throat and demands, “Pay me what you owe.”

The servant drops to his knees with the exact same plea: "Have patience with me, and I will pay you back."

Same words. Same posture. But the forgiven man refuses to pass on the air he was just given to breathe and instead, throws this man in prison.

Now, it’s easy to look at this dude and see a monster. But his reaction is actually deeply, tragically human. Think about what just happened to him: he stood on the edge of a cliff, completely helpless and exposed. He was terrified. And when we feel completely powerless, our first instinct is almost always self-defense.

The minute he walked out into the street, he looked for something solid to grab onto. That radical grace felt too big, too unpredictable, too vulnerable—so he ran straight back to what felt safe: a ledger, a contract, a debt he could enforce. He didn't grab that man out of pure malice; he did it out of fear. He wanted leverage.

That is the tragedy of human accounting: when we are drowning, we beg for mercy. But the moment we feel threatened, we demand strict accounting for everyone else.

Can I get an amen?

Holding onto someone's debt gives us a counterfeit sense of power. It makes us feel in control of a story that broke our hearts. So we nurse our grievances like treasures. We strap on resentment like armor, convinced that as long as we stay angry, no one can ever strike that same spot twice.

But here is the horrifying truth Jesus lays bare: when we demand strict accounting, when we refuse to pass on the mercy we rely on, we destroy ourselves. We rack up a debt of bitterness and systemic cruelty so large that no human life can ever repay it. 

Refusing to forgive doesn't punish the debtor—it locks us inside the vault with the debt, poisoning our relationships, our churches, and our own souls until we consume one another.

And God help me if I don’t believe that to be true. 

This is precisely why repentance isn't just a religious requirement—it’s a rescue mission. It’s why we desperately need to turn toward God’s radical model of love and forgiveness.

If we rely on human nature, we will endlessly measure, retaliate, and bankrupt each other. We need a divine pattern that breaks the chain of cause and effect.

And this parable from Jesus is just one of a thousand places where Scripture shows us a different way. Let’s take Psalm 103, where the psalmist offers a cosmic vision of this divine alternative, they write, 'Our God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love... As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our transgressions from us.

East and west never meet. That’s the point.

God does not operate on a ledger. Divine mercy is God looking at the heavy armor of shame and resentment you carry and saying: 'This is destroying you. Drop it. Live.'

I know how hard that voice is to hear when you're standing in the ruins of your own life. I know because I still find myself reaching for that heavy armor every single day.

A few of you know that in 2019, a divorce shattered my world. That brutal descent from 'I do' to 'I don't' left me standing in the ashes, wondering if God had completely left the room. The betrayal didn't just break my heart—it altered how I breathe. It stole my future, dismantled my faith, and left me furious at God and terrified of my own life.

So hear me when I say this: I am not giving you a neat religious lesson from a safe distance. I know as well as anyone in these pews that when an injury cuts to the marrow, forgiving doesn't just feel hard—it feels like a complete lie. It feels like an impossible, unpayable debt you're being asked to absorb while you're still bleeding.

And don't let me stand up here and fool you—forgiveness is not a box I checked off years ago. It is a daily discipline. Some mornings, I still have to wake up and choose to set down that ledger all over again, because the temptation to pick up that old anger and strap the armor back on is waiting for me right at the edge of my bed.

And I know I’m not the only one in this room who knows what that feels like.

When betrayal comes from someone who was supposed to protect you—when they brush off deep, cutting harm like it’s no big deal—your heart shuts down. That cold disgust you feel isn't a sin; it’s a self-preservation wall built to guard what’s left of you. You refuse to accept a fake, polite peace that starves your soul while you pretend everything is fine. Your chest grows tight, and your only prayer is simple: God, just get me out of this.

So, hear this clear word today: God does not ask you to carry what was never yours to bear. You are allowed to build a boundary of iron and truth. You do not have to force reconciliation with people who poison your peace. 

But hear this too—the hardest, most urgent truth I have to preach to my own heart today: refusing to forgive will never lead us into the kingdom of God.

While a boundary protects your holy space, staying locked in the house of resentment keeps us stranded outside the full life God offers. It keeps us bound to the very wreckage we hate. 

A boundary is meant to guard what is sacred, not to become a permanent prison where we nurse our wounds. God gives us that boundary so we can stop carrying their choices, unclench our fists, and step out into fresh air.

In the original Greek of the New Testament, the word we translate as forgiveness—aphiēmi (ah-FEE-ay-mee)—isn't an abstract sentiment. It’s an active verb. At its core, it is a physical release: to untie, to let slip through your fingers, to completely drop your grip.

To forgive is the quiet, radical decision to open a clenched fist.

We keep our hands balled up because we think a fist protects us, unaware that a closed hand is a prison of our own making. A closed fist cannot reach out in love, it cannot hold another human hand, and it can never open to receive the continuous, life-giving grace that God streams into our lives.

In just a moment, we are going to sing Isaac Watts’ hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” but together with “It’s Quiet Uptown” from Hamilton the Musical.

In "It’s Quiet Uptown", as Alexander and Eliza Hamilton walk through the shattering grief of losing their son, the song utters a line that catches in the throat: “There is a grace too powerful to name... They are trying to do the unimaginable.”

Real forgiveness is often just that: doing the unimaginable. It is turning away from our natural human urge to judge, punish, and hold onto anger, and choosing instead to step into God's radical, life-saving mercy.

When we survey the cross, we don’t see a scorekeeper; we see a Love that refuses to keep a ledger. We behold a grace so radical, so boundless, that it saves us from our own destructive nature and demands our soul, our life, our all. 

That is grace too powerful to name.

As we open our voices, open your hands. Let this music be your doorway.

Leave the heavy burdens at this table. Lay down the unpaid debts, the lingering grudges, and the bitter resentments that are destroying you. You were never built to carry this weight.

Hear the voice of grace calling your name today: Drop it. Live. Step boldly into the light of the One who has loved you, freed you, and held you from the very beginning.

That is the good news, church. 

And for that, we can say: Amen.