THE UNGRATEFUL SERVANT

A sermon given on Sunday, September 13, 2026

by the Rt. Rev. Alan M. Gates, Bridge Pastor

Even as a child, this story made me uneasy.  I understood that the Exodus was about God being on the side of the enslaved Hebrew people.  I knew that this exciting and miraculous moment at the Red Sea was a victory of good over evil.  Hurrah!  Still, I couldn’t help thinking about all those drowned Egyptians. I had once watched my neighbor catch rabbits in his garden and drown them; it was grim.  I had friends whose dads were soldiers; my dad was a veteran.  I wondered if the Egyptian soldiers had kids back home. I knew that Pharoah was the bad guy in this story.  But it seemed in the end that he was safe on the shore, while all the soldiers got drowned.

Of course, as a child, I did not have any language for this.  I had not learned the Just War theory; did not have the concept of moral ambiguity; had never heard about the end justifying the means.  Certainly, I’d never heard the phrase “collateral damage.”  I just sensed that this tale of triumph also seemed to be full of grief.

That story of disposable enemy lives played out again and again in biblical times: in the Land of Canaan, at the Battle of Jericho.  That story is still playing out millennia later: in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Ukraine, in Iran.  So many lives lost, so much so-called “collateral damage” in the name of a cause deemed righteous by one side or the other.

We have had a somber week recollecting with renewed grief the horrific tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 3,000 people who died, and the countless others whose lives were affected that terrible day.  To the 9/11 perpetrators, those deaths were the justifiable consequence of a battle they deemed to be righteous.  That, of course, is a horrifying and morally repugnant rationalization.

The Rev. Stephen Harding, a colleague of mine in eastern Massachusetts, was a priest in Manhattan on 9/11, and served for many subsequent months as a Red Cross chaplain at the Ground Zero recovery operation.  Upon this week’s 25^th anniversary, Stephen reflects:

The whole thing is enormous.  As we get further and further away from it, it is important to remember … that the people who were killed that day were real people.  They had families; they had children.  ...  We need to remember that hundreds of first responders and others at the site are still suffering and dying from 9/11-related diseases.

This is very much an ongoing wound. … It’s still happening, and we are still living with it, and still living with the causes – hate, terrorism, violence, ideology.  … When tragedy on this scale happens, it speaks to the need for human connection in the midst of devastation and affirms our common humanity. … The concern for our common humanity that was present that day is something we have lost in our world.  In response, as church we can move forward in faith to honor and restore our common humanity.  At the end of the day, in the face of calamity, [what] matters is living in a way that is worthy of the love of God and the promises of Christ.

The Gospel lesson assigned for today is the Parable of the Ungrateful Servant.  In this familiar tale, a slave with tremendous debt has that debt forgiven by his master.  But the slave turns around and prosecutes someone who is in much lesser debt to him.  For that refusal to share the same mercy shown to him, he is roundly condemned.   The parable is introduced by Jesus as a lesson about forgiveness.  Of course, it is that.  But I find myself asking, Why?  Why must we forgive – sometimes so counter-intuitively?   What is the deeper value driving Jesus’s command to forgive?

I think it is love.  I think that beneath forgiveness this is a story about compassion and love.  Forgiveness is the action; love is the motivating core value.  Listen to what Jesus says:  His [master] ordered [the slave] to be sold, together with his wife and children … so the slave fell on his knees, saying, ‘Have patience with me…’  And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave forgave him the debt.

It is when the master sees the servant not just as a debt calculation, not just as a financial liability on a spreadsheet, but as a real person, with a real wife and real children – it’s then that compassion kicks in and mercy prevails.  It’s when the man is seen by the master as a fellow human being.  And it is the servant’s own failure to see his debtor as a fellow human being by which the servant condemns himself.

Forgiveness is a virtue demanded of us – but it grows out of something even deeper and more basic: the discipline of viewing others as fellow human beings.  Not seeing people as people was the deep and hideous failure of the terrorists on September 11^th.  And if, as individuals or as a nation, that event is used as an excuse to do the same in return – well then, of course, the terrorists will have won.  In our national and global politics there has been much to decry in this regard.  Racist and Islamophobic rhetoric and behavior has been on full display this past week.  And more broadly, economic policies, immigration solutions, and military actions are promoted which ignore devastating consequences on real human beings.  This should not be what we learned from 9/11.  Becoming haters and acting with callous indifference to human lives should not be our take-away.

On a more mundane scale, perhaps, at the individual and personal level it’s sometimes a challenge to recall the humanity of someone who opposes us.  Or even just annoys us!   The person with a different candidate’s lawn sign; the couple with a parenting philosophy that I abhor; the indecisive slowpoke in the narrow grocery aisle who is driving me nuts … all of these (and more!) have a claim on me.  Not necessarily to be liked, or appreciated or agreed with – but simply a claim to the patience and mercy which reflects both their identity and mine as a human person.

Returning to the reflections of my friend Stephen Harding:

The anniversary of 9/11 reminds [us] of the worst and best that human beings can do.  The worst is the ideology of hate, which uses murder and devastation as its tactics.  The best of human beings, for September 11 and its aftermath, is the response of people throughout the world to seek the welfare of one another, and to overcome evil by doing good.  I am reminded that God’s mercy and love mean that evil and hatred [must] never win.

It’s a celebratory Sunday here at St. Philip’s Church today!  Once again, we begin a renewed season of Church School, worship and music, events, and – central to all of it – the building up of Christian community with one another.  The context of 9/11 remembrance might seem a somber way to greet such a joyful occasion.  But in another sense, it reminds us of exactly why we come together.  The world will tell us that, like the Ungrateful Servant in today’s parable, you and I should be constantly reckoning what is due to us, toting up past wrongs; that we should be out for all we can get, doing battle with those who oppose us or are different from us; finding ways to impose our will everywhere we can.  But in church, at our best, we learn and affirm and practice a different way.

Dear friends!  We are not here for calculation, denigration, aggravation; we do not come for fragmentation, abdication, defamation.  We are not here to hate.  Here we are for celebration, adoration, toleration; we’re at the church for contemplation, restoration, liberation.  We’re here to learn to love.

So, if you have been away from the parish for some period of the summer: Welcome home!  If you are new to this fellowship, or renewing a relationship with the church after some absence: Welcome home! Or if you have been in the pew week after week, but have simply experienced what we all experience – that ebb and flow of confidence in the nearness of God’s love – then, Welcome home!  Come with praise and prayer.  Come with thanks for the blessings of heart and home.  Come with present sorrows, past disappointments, and future fears.  Come with prayers for those you love, and for those you don’t. Come with a mind to stretch, and a heart to serve.

Through the fellowship of Christ in this place. Welcome home!