Lessons in leadership: Grace
Kingdomtide
Rev. Dr. David M. Oliver
First United Methodist Church
Massillon, Ohio
September 13, 2026
Text: Matthew 18:21-35
Opening Prayer: Almighty God, whose Word is authority and power and whose way is love, grant unto us clear minds, understanding hearts, and willing spirits so that we may wisely appropriate your Word of Truth. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
This morning is the fourth and final message in the series “Lessons in Leadership.” In the first week we discussed power. Power is the ability to act. As people of faith we use our power to act for the benefit of others just as Jesus did. God empowers us to act in a Christ-like manner through the Holy Spirit. In the second week we talked about acceptance of leadership and how Moses and Peter accepted the call of God. Whenever we accept God’s call, we do so by relying on the Holy Spirit to fulfill God’s call. God is the one who equips us to answer the call. It’s never a matter of reliance on our own understanding, experience, or energy. Last week, we looked at leadership and how to creatively deal with conflict. Whenever there is change, some degree of conflict is inevitable. It is important for us to learn to listen to one another and seek common ground so that we can move forward together based on the things that unite us rather than what divides us. The goal must always be to win an agreement rather than trying to win an argument.
If you wish to complete the sermon listening guide, please take it out of your bulletin at this time.
Today we look at grace. Grace is one of my favorite biblical words. Grace is defined as, “The unearned, unmerited love and favor of God toward humanity.”
In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word is (khen, pronounced hen), which means favor, grace, or finding kindness in the eyes of someone.
In the New Testament, the Greek word for grace is charis, meaning kindness, goodwill, or a gift that brings joy. In the Bible, grace is the freely given, unearned favor and love of God toward humanity.
Grace reflects the nature and character of God. When we say that God is a God of grace, we mean that God is kind, generous, patient, and full of mercy.
I remind you of what I have shared in the past:
Justice is getting what we deserve.
Mercy is not getting what we deserve.
Grace is getting what we don’t deserve.
Because of sin, every human being is in need of the mercy and grace of God evidenced by Jesus Christ becoming human so that we could be reconciled in our relationship with God.
This happened dramatically to me when I was a senior in high school. At age eighteen with all my foibles, insecurities, and attempts to appear otherwise, I felt empty and alone. My father had just moved to a new church. I was in my senior year and did not know anyone. I had broken my ankle in a motorcycle accident that previous summer. I was isolated, lonely, searching for friends, searching for some meaning in life that would give me a sense of grounding and purpose greater than my confused, mercurial, teenage self.
My father, who was a United Methodist pastor, suggested that I attend a Thursday night Catholic Charismatic prayer meeting that was popular with young people. Our church only had older people so I accepted his suggestion and started going. Very soon it became clear that they knew Jesus in a way that I did not.
Although I had attended church and Sunday School faithfully my whole life, these young people prayed like they were talking with Jesus as if he were sitting in the room with them. Of course, he was there in the power of the Holy Spirt, but I didn’t understand that at the time.
After a few months of spending time with them and exploring prayer and the Bible on my own, I came to a decision point. I felt compelled to respond to God’s mercy and grace in a way I had never done. However, I was not sure that the Lord would accept me. I was mixed up. I had approached the faith as if I had to perform to be loved. Since I was not performing very well, I couldn’t see how God could love me.
One Thursday night in late February 1972 I poured out my heart to God. I confessed my sin to God. I asked for forgiveness. I then asked Jesus to come into my heart. I didn’t really know what that meant but I said, “Lord, if you want to come into my heart and be my Savior and Lord, I pray that you would.”
Within moments of uttering that heart-felt prayer, I sensed the power and presence of God in a new way. For the first time in my life, after nearly two decades of church attendance, I powerfully experienced God’s love for me.
I felt God pouring his grace over my life. It was like love was being poured over me and around me. I sensed in my spirit that the Lord was opening my mind and heart in a new way. I felt something like liquid love being poured into me and cleansing me. In my mind’s eye I saw the top of my head open up and Jesus’ love being poured into my mind, then flowing down into my heart and the rest of my body. I also saw a black, tar-like substance, which was my sin, was being expelled out through my feet until I was washed, cleansed, and made whole, head to toe, inside and out. God looked beyond my faults and saw my need. That is why I belong to Jesus. Thanks be to God!
This was a divine moment, a transformational moment for me. I was changed by grace, the grace of the living God who loved me just as I was. Jesus Christ met me and accepted me as I was but he was not content to leave me where he found me…in my darkness and despair.
Shortly thereafter, I read a Scripture which captured the essence of this experience. Romans 5:8 declares, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us.”
This is the essence of grace, what we call the Good News. God offers the unconditional love of Christ to each of us. The question is, “Will you recognize your need for this love and receive Christ’s love into your life and allow him to free you, fill you, change you, and use you as he intends?”
Your experience of God and Jesus will be different than mine. That is to be expected. If God went to the trouble of creating each of us with unique fingerprints, iris prints, and DNA, God is certainly capable of reaching out to us in unique ways to invite us into a living, vital, transformative relationship based on grace. Amen?
The question is whether you have been paying attention to the myriad ways God has reached out to you over the years. Are you aware that you are loved and valued by God just as you are? Are you aware that what you have experienced of God thus far is but a prelude and an invitation to go further, deeper, and higher in relationship with your Creator?
What I am talking about is at the heart of what we call the journey of faith. It is a spiritual journey with Christ in which grace is the hallmark and centerpiece.
As leaders in God’s Church you and I are invited to pass on to others the grace that we have received. We are to share this gift of God and tell others what difference the Lord has made in the ways we live, love, lead, and learn.
Today’s Scripture reading is a story of grace. Without grace, reconciliation is impossible. Through grace, Jesus tells us we keep the door open to reconciliation always. Over and over. We don’t write people off as irredeemable. We don’t throw people out because they keep making the same mistakes. We expect people to grow, but we don’t give up on them when they don’t grow as fast as, or in the ways, we expect.
In the story we read, Peter comes to Jesus to show that he has been paying attention. He wants another gold star like the one he got when he confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, Son of the Living God. If anything, Peter might even have expected Jesus to tell him that he had gone a bit too far, had been too extravagant with forgiveness. Standard rabbinic teaching was that one ought to forgive four times in following the law of mercy. Four times is pretty lenient, most would think.
After hearing Jesus talk about reconciliation and bringing people back into right relationship, Peter asked Jesus, “How often should I forgive? As many as seven times” (Matthew 18:21-22)? Jesus responds to Peter’s question in an unexpected way. Jesus says, “Not seven times but seventy-seven times (or other translations say seventy times seven times).
Jesus was not suggesting that we do math when it comes to showing forgiveness. He was saying, “Quit counting, just forgive.” He was suggesting that our forgiveness be infused with grace. He was saying in essence, “Give to others the immeasurable gift of unconditional love that you yourselves have received from God. Don’t be stingy with God’s grace unless you want God to be stingy toward you.
Jesus goes on to illustrate his point with an incredible story. “There was a slave who owed his master ten thousand talents.” This was an astronomical sum. One biblical talent was worth about 15 to 20 years of a common laborer’s wages, or roughly $600,000 to $1.4 million US dollars in modern value. Ten thousand talents translates to between 6-14 billion dollars. In terms of days of labor it translates into this slave owing two hundred thousand years of salary to his master. This is more than some nation’s gross domestic product. How in the world did a slave run up such a debt!? This is a sum no one could pay off.
Nevertheless, the slave begs for mercy saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” How might that happen? That is asking for far more than a whole lot of patience on the part of the debt holder—200,000 years’ worth of patience.
Instead of patience, the master has pity on his slave. This word pity here is also translated as compassion, a word often used about Jesus. He had compassion. His heart went out. He had, in other words, empathy. He felt the other’s pain and desperation. The master knew there was no way his servant could repay such a debt. And rather than holding him accountable for such an outrageous, unimaginable debt, the master generously forgave him. He wiped the debt away, as if it had never happened, had never been accrued.
Then, the plot thickens. This man, who had just been forgiven an outlandish debt, grabs a fellow worker who owed him a hundred denarii. Now, a hundred denarii is not an insubstantial sum. Since a denarius was one day’s wage at that time, then this was one hundred days of hard labor. That’s significant, until you laid it alongside ten thousand talents. Then, it is microscopic, insignificant, nothing in comparison.
You would think that the servant who had moments before been forgiven a debt that would bankrupt nations would be generous, in turn, to the person who owed him such a small sum. After all, in financial terms, he is now up ten thousand talents. Of course, he should forgive the smaller debt. But he didn’t. He prosecuted this person to the fullest extent of the law.
Here’s the thing about this story, and remember, it is a story: Jesus is making a point, not reporting the news. The man who prosecuted the debtor was within the law. It was his right to do what he did. Some might argue that he should have done exactly what he did. After all, how can folks learn that borrowing has consequences? To forgive a debt is to unfairly benefit an individual and ultimately destroy the economic system. Some might wonder, “Is this parable a commentary on capitalism?” No, not really. But it does speak against the idea that commerce comes before humanity, or that systems matter more than people.
Now let’s remember how the story ends. What is the moral that Jesus leaves with his hearers? Jesus is reminding us that each of us has been forgiven an insurmountable debt. You and I can choose to pass on to others what we have received from God, which is immeasurable grace and mercy. As a poor substitute, we can choose justice as our standard when dealing with others.
Let us remember, however, that if we choose justice, we are inviting God to treat us with justice. Jesus said in Luke 6:37-38, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Someone created an acronym for grace meaning each letter of the word grace stands for something. They said GRACE stands for God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. God’s riches, which we desperately need and do not deserve, have been given to us in the life, teaching, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Our response to this gift of grace, this unmerited, unearned love and favor, is to live our lives in thanksgiving, generosity, and humility, seeking to pass on what we have received from the Lord. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift of grace and may you and I embody this same grace daily.
Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, we praise you for your gift of grace. May we be leaders of grace, a church of grace, husbands, wives, parents, aunts and uncles of grace. We need your grace every day, O God. Help us to be messengers of grace, communicating love, mercy, forgiveness, and joy with whomever we meet and interact this week. Amen!
Comments