Matthew 18:21-35 Dear Partner in Preaching, I find sermons on forgiveness challenging. Not because I don’t think forgiveness is important. It is central not just to our life of faith but also, I’d argue, our life together in this world. Absent forgiveness, how could we possibly stay in relationship with each other? Forgiveness isn’t something that only restores, even frees, the one forgiven. Forgiveness also restores and frees the one who forgives. Forgiveness creates possibility, keeps the future open, offers paths forward formerly not imaginable, and breaks the cosmic law of relentless cause-and-effect to create something new....

Dear Partner in Preaching, Given the choice, which would you choose, love or justice? I know this is a hard choice, as both are really important. So if you’re anything like me, you understandably want both. And yet every once in while, we are forced to make a choice. And that can feel really, really hard. I think that’s part of what is going on in this quite remarkable parable. You know the contours of this story as well as I do, but lets tarry for a few moments at the climatic moments of the story. Let’s first put ourselves in the place of the workers who were chosen last. Likely they had all but given up hope for work that day and...