Worship
Service for September 13, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: What does this worship service need?
P: Quiet where faith can grow, song that
blossoms hope, scripture that remembers love, honest words to untangle a small
length of knotty existence, and gifts offering service of the heart.
L: Who shall come to this worship service?
P: All who have prayer in the center of their
lives, all who are lonely for the touch of God, all who seek to find a place of
welcome, love, justice, and hope.
L: Come, people of God, to this service.
P: We come!
And may God meet us this day.
Opening Hymn – Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart #169 Brown Hymnal
Prayer of Confession
Holy God, there is no God like
You in heaven above or on earth beneath.
You keep Your covenant with Your people, but we continually go
astray. Forgive us for our insolence and
lack of faith. We have not listened for
Your word amid the clamor of words all around us. We are more pleased to repeat familiar tunes
than to listen for new melodies and strange harmonies. We try harder to defend what we think we know
than to reach for that which is beyond our grasp. Slow to trust, afraid of the unknown, we are
cautious to hear and do Your will. We
pray for ears to hear the cries of our neighbors and for hearts which resonate
with Your Spirit. Silence us and
instruct us until we learn afresh to sing the songs of faith, hope, and love. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God’s eyes and ears are constantly open to
our prayers and our cries. God leads us
out of the darkness of the past and into the bright promise of today. We are called to stand strong and confident
in God’s love.
P: We rejoice in God’s love which began
before creation and flows in and through us this day! Thanks be to God.
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Gracious and merciful God, You are the One who can take what was
intended for harm and transform it into an instrument of healing, hope, and new
life. Like Joseph and his brothers, we carry memories of wounds that have never
completely faded, words that cannot be taken back, and relationships burdened
by guilt, resentment, fear, and regret. Yet you meet us within these difficult
places, inviting us to believe that the past does not have to determine the
future and that, through your grace, reconciliation may still be possible.
Forgive us, O God, for the ways we keep careful accounts of the wrongs
committed against us while forgetting how generously we have been forgiven. We
confess that we sometimes cling to resentment because it feels safer than
vulnerability, and that we withhold mercy because we fear it will make us weak.
Teach us that forgiveness is not pretending that harm did not happen, excusing
injustice, or remaining silent in the face of abuse. Instead, help us
understand forgiveness as the courageous refusal to let bitterness have the
final word.
Give us the strength to forgive not merely seven times, but
seventy-seven times—not because wrongdoing is unimportant, but because your
mercy is greater than the power of sin to divide and destroy. Where
reconciliation is possible, lead us toward honest conversation, repentance,
accountability, and restored relationship. Where reconciliation is not safe or
cannot yet occur, grant us the grace to release our anger into your hands and
to walk forward in freedom.
We pray for those who have been deeply wounded by the actions of
others. Surround them with compassionate people, protect them from further
harm, and assure them that forgiveness does not require them to deny their pain
or abandon wise boundaries. Bring healing to wounded hearts, justice to those
who have been wronged, and transformation to those who have caused harm.
We pray for families divided by old grievances, churches strained by
disagreement, communities fractured by suspicion, and nations trapped in cycles
of violence and revenge. Raise up peacemakers who will speak truth with love,
pursue justice with mercy, and help enemies recognize one another’s humanity.
Loving
God, we also bring before you those who are sick, grieving, lonely, anxious, or
overwhelmed. We remember those carrying burdens known only to you. We
especially pray for…
Hold all these people within your compassionate care. Provide strength
for today, hope for tomorrow, and the assurance that they are never beyond the
reach of your love.
Free
us from keeping score, soften what has become hardened within us, and make us
people whose lives reflect the extravagant mercy we have received from you.
When human intentions bring harm, work patiently to bring forth good; and when
fear tells us that reconciliation is impossible, remind us that your grace is
still at work, creating possibilities we cannot yet see.
And
now, O Lord, in a moment of silence we offer up our most sincere prayers.
We
offer these prayers, both spoken and unspoken in the name of Jesus Christ, who
teaches us the way of mercy and calls us into the freedom of forgiveness,
praying together.…Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give
us this day our daily bread. Forgive us
our debts as we forgive our debtors. And
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and
the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn – All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name #43
Brown Hymnal
Scripture Reading(s):
Genesis
50:15-26
Matthew
18:21-35
Sermon
The
Freedom to Forgive
(based on Genesis 50:15–26 and Matthew 18:21–35)
I don’t know who ever came up with the
catch phrase, “Time heals all wounds.”
But honestly, there are some wounds that simply do not disappear just
because time has passed. Most of us have
lived long enough to know that time, by itself, doesn’t heal much of
anything. Time can cover a wound. Time can teach us how to walk around it. Time can place enough years between us and
the moment of pain that we no longer think about it every hour of every
day. But then a familiar voice, an old
photograph, a family gathering, or a sentence spoken in just the wrong tone can
bring it all back, and suddenly we realize that what we thought was gone has
simply been waiting beneath the surface to wound us again. That is where our story from Genesis begins.
To recap the story; Joseph’s brothers had
not merely hurt his feelings. They had
hated him, wanted to kill him, but instead threw him into a pit, sold him into
slavery, and then gone home and allowed their father to believe that his
beloved son had been killed by a wild animal.
Joseph went to Egypt where he endured slavery, false accusations, and
imprisonment before an extraordinary turn of events brought him into Pharaoh’s
service and placed him in a position of great authority. Years later, during a famine, the brothers
who had sold him came to Egypt looking for food, never imagining that the
powerful official standing before them was Joseph. Eventually Joseph revealed himself, the
family was reunited, and their father Jacob came to live in Egypt. For a while, it may have seemed that the
family had finally found peace. But when
Jacob died, all the old fear came rushing back.
The brothers said to one another, ‘What if
Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the
wrong that we did to him?’ Their
question tells us something important: they had been living beside Joseph,
receiving his generosity, and benefiting from his protection, but they still
did not trust his forgiveness. They
apparently believed that Joseph had only been waiting for their father to die,
because Jacob’s presence was the one thing holding Joseph’s anger in
check. And now that Jacob was gone, they
imagined that the day of judgment had arrived.
They sent Joseph a message claiming that their father had left
instructions for Joseph to forgive them, and then they fell before him and offered
to become his slaves. I doubt Jacob
actually said those words. I think the
brothers invented the message out of fear.
We can’t know for sure. But what
we do know is that guilt had made them unable to believe that grace could
really be grace.
But Joseph wept when they spoke to
him. There’s a special kind of sorrow in
loving people who remain convinced that love must contain a hidden
punishment. He remembered the pit. He remembered the chains. He remembered the years that had been stolen
from him. Forgiveness did not erase his
memory; but it changed what he chose to do with that memory.
Joseph answered, ‘Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God?’ That may be the heart of this whole passage. Joseph understood that forgiveness begins when
we stop trying to occupy a place that does not belong to us. He refused to make himself the final judge of
his brothers’ lives. He refused to let
their worst act become the only truth about them, and he refused to build his
own future around the punishment they deserved.
Joseph had the power to crush them, but he recognized that having the
power to retaliate did not give him the right to become God.
Sometimes forgiveness begins with a humble
confession: I cannot change what happened, I cannot make another person feel
the pain I felt and call that healing, and I cannot carry the responsibility of
being judge, jury, and executioner without allowing bitterness to take
possession of my soul.
However, Joseph did not pretend that evil
was good. He said plainly to them, ‘Even
though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to
preserve a numerous people.’ I think we
have to hear those words very carefully, because they have sometimes been used
carelessly. Joseph did not say that his
brothers’ cruelty was secretly good, and he did not say that God needed them to
abuse him in order to accomplish God’s purpose.
He named their intention honestly: ‘You intended to do harm to me.’ Forgiveness does not require us to rename
betrayal as misunderstanding, abuse as love, or injustice as part of some
divine plan. Evil remains evil. The good news is not that God causes every
wound; the good news is that human cruelty does not have the last word. God can take a life that others tried to
diminish and open a future they could not foresee. God can bring nourishment out of famine,
community out of isolation, and life out of places that once seemed ruled by
death.
There is an important difference between
saying, ‘God did this to me for a reason,’ and saying, ‘What happened to me
will not prevent God from creating something good through this situation.’ The first statement can make God sound like
the author of cruelty. The second is a
declaration of faith and freedom. Joseph
did not excuse his brothers, but he refused to let their sin determine the
ending of his story. What they had meant
for harm would not be given control over his heart, his relationships, or the
future of his family. In that sense,
forgiveness was not a favor Joseph bestowed upon those who had done him harm,
but instead was the way he stepped out of the prison of the past and didn’t
allow it to control his future.
Most of us will never face a story as
dramatic as Joseph’s, although there are some who have, but we know what it is
to replay an injury in our minds. We
remember the family member who spoke words that can never be taken back, the
friend who disappeared when we needed them, the colleague who took credit for
our work, the church conflict in which people who spoke often about grace
treated one another without much grace at all.
In those moments, resentment can feel like a form of protection. We keep the offense polished and ready
because we do not want to be fooled again.
We tell the story repeatedly, perhaps only to ourselves, and each
retelling assures us that we were right and they were wrong. That may very well be true, but after a while
we discover that the person who hurt us has moved into our imagination and is
living there without paying rent. They,
most likely, won’t be thinking about the incident at all, while we are still
allowing it to shape our every waking hours and even rob us of peaceful
slumber.
Forgiveness does not mean that trust is
instantly restored. Trust is rebuilt
slowly through truth, accountability, changed behavior, and time. Forgiveness does not require a person to
return to an unsafe relationship, remain in an abusive home, or pretend that
appropriate boundaries are unchristian.
Joseph could forgive his brothers partly because the balance of power
had changed and he was no longer the helpless young man in the pit. We should never use this story, or Jesus’
teaching, to pressure a wounded person into renewed contact with someone who
continues to cause harm. Reconciliation requires the participation of more than
one person; forgiveness can begin within one heart. Sometimes the most faithful words a person
can say are, ‘I release my right to revenge, but I will not give you another
opportunity to wound me.’ Grace and
boundaries are not enemies.
Peter’s question in Matthew’s Gospel
brings this teaching into the life of the church: ‘Lord, if another member of
the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Peter probably thought he was being
generous. Seven is a holy and complete
number, and forgiving someone seven times sounds far better than the ordinary
human impulse to forgive once, perhaps twice, and then declare that enough is
enough. But Jesus answered, depending on
the translation, ‘seventy-seven times’ or ‘seventy times seven.’ Either way, Jesus was not handing Peter a
larger notebook and telling him to keep a more accurate count. The moment we are counting toward the limit,
we have misunderstood forgiveness. Jesus
was describing a life in which mercy becomes a habit rather than an exception.
Then Jesus told a deliberately exaggerated
story about a servant who owed a king an impossible debt. The amount was so enormous that no ordinary
servant could repay it in a thousand lifetimes.
When the servant begged for patience, the king did more than extend the
payment schedule; he canceled the debt.
But that same servant walked outside, found a fellow servant who owed
him a much smaller amount, seized him by the throat, and demanded immediate
payment. He had received mercy as though
it were merely a lucky escape, not a gift meant to transform him.
That is Jesus’ challenge to us. We can sing about amazing grace, pray for
forgiveness every Sunday, and receive the bread and cup as signs of a mercy we
could never earn, yet still walk out the door and seize one another by the
throat—hopefully not literally, of course, but through grudges, gossip, public
humiliation, cold silence, and the quiet determination to make someone
pay. We may never raise our voices, but
we know how to withhold warmth. We know
how to bring up an old failure at precisely the moment it will cause the
greatest pain. We know how to reduce a
complicated human being to the worst thing they have ever done.
Imagine a family gathering where two
relatives have not spoken honestly for years.
Everyone knows the history, so the seating is carefully arranged,
certain subjects are avoided, and every innocent comment is examined for hidden
meaning. The original disagreement may
have lasted five minutes, but the family has spent a decade organizing itself
around it. That is what unforgiveness
does: it recruits people who were not present for the original wound and asks
future generations to keep paying interest on an old debt. Forgiveness may not lead to a dramatic
embrace across the dinner table. It may
begin with something smaller yet more difficult: refusing to recruit another
person to your side, speaking truth without exaggeration, praying for the other
person without asking God to straighten them out, or deciding that the next
family gathering will not be controlled by a quarrel from ten years ago.
We see the same pattern in public
life. Our culture often rewards outrage
because outrage keeps people watching, clicking, donating, and choosing
sides. We are encouraged to believe that
the person who disagrees with us must be not only mistaken but malicious, not
only wrong on an issue but unworthy of compassion. Forgiveness does not require us to surrender
our convictions or become neutral in the face of injustice. Joseph’s forgiveness did not erase his
brothers’ responsibility, and Jesus never asked the oppressed to call
oppression acceptable. But forgiveness
refuses the lie that justice and vengeance are the same thing. Justice seeks repair, accountability, and a
future in which the harm is not repeated.
Vengeance wants the person who caused pain to suffer, even if no one is
healed. One creates a path forward; the
other chains everyone to the moment of injury.
Joseph chose a path forward. He told his brothers, ‘So have no fear; I
myself will provide for you and your little ones.’ Those words show us that forgiveness is more
than a private feeling. Joseph’s mercy
took visible form. He spoke kindly. He provided food. He protected the children of the very brothers
who had stolen his childhood from him.
He did not merely say, ‘I am no longer angry.’ He acted in ways that broke the cycle of
fear. The brothers had expected
repayment, but Joseph gave provision.
They expected punishment, but he offered a future. They expected the family story to end as it
had begun, but Joseph wrote a different ending.
Perhaps that is the miracle of
forgiveness: it interrupts the repetition of harm. Without forgiveness, pain tends to reproduce
itself. Those who have been humiliated
may look for someone else to humiliate.
Those who have been excluded may gain power and begin excluding
others. Families pass wounds from one
generation to the next, and churches inherit conflicts whose original causes
few people can even remember. Someone
has to decide that the pain will stop here.
Someone has to say, ‘What happened was wrong, and because it was wrong,
I will not repeat it. I will not become
what wounded me.’ Joseph became that
person in his family, and Jesus calls the church to become that kind of
community in the world.
Of course, this is not easy, and it is
rarely accomplished in a single moment.
Sometimes forgiveness is a decision we must make again every
morning. We may believe we have released
the debt, only to feel the old anger return when we hear a name or remember a
conversation. That does not mean we’ve
failed. It means healing is a journey,
and some roads have to be traveled more than once. ‘Seventy times seven’ may describe not only
how often we forgive repeated offenses, but also how often we must release the
same offense as it rises again within us.
We place it in God’s hands today, and when we discover tomorrow that we
have picked it up again, we place it in God’s hands once more.
There may be someone whose name came to
mind as soon as these scriptures were read.
There may be an old wound that still shapes more of your life than you
want to admit. The invitation today is
not to deny the pain, rush a reconciliation, or manufacture a warm feeling you
don’t have. The invitation is to take
one faithful step. Perhaps that step is
telling the truth to a trusted friend or counselor. Perhaps it is establishing a boundary that
prevents further harm. Perhaps it is
admitting that the apology you deserve may never come. Perhaps it is praying, ‘God, I am not ready
to forgive, but I am willing to become willing.’
May we trust that God can bring good even
out of what others intended for harm.
May we speak kindly where the world expects retaliation, provide a
future where fear expects punishment, and forgive not because the wound did not
matter, but rather because it matters too much to let it keep ruling our
lives. And when forgiveness feels beyond
our strength, may we remember that we do not begin with our own goodness. We begin with the immeasurable mercy of God,
a mercy that meets us in the pit, walks with us through the prison, feeds us in
the famine, and leads us, one difficult and gracious step at a time, into
freedom.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
These offerings we present to You, O God. May they be used for ministries of love and
reconciliation through this community of faith.
AMEN
Closing Hymn – I Sing the Mighty Power of God #128
Brown Hymnal
Benediction –
May the grace of Christ soften
your heart, the love of God sustain your spirit, and the Holy Spirit give you
courage to forgive. Go in peace, to love
and serve the Lord. Amen.
Postlude
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