Breaking Free
Scriptures Exodus 14:19-29
Matthew 18:21-35
In today’s readings, miracles abound!
The sea is split in two.
And a king forgives a debt that he is rightly owed.
In both stories, the miracles lead to concrete experiences of liberation.
Through the parted sea, the desperate Israelites make their final escape from Pharaoh’s grasp.
And thanks to the king’s mercy, the servant is freed from a crushing debt he could never repay.
Told together, as the lectionary invites us to hear them, these stories remind us that true liberation requires breaking cycles—
Cycles of oppression and violence, cycles of debt and inequality.
In the story from Exodus, God intervenes to break the cycle of Egyptian oppression, freeing the Israelites once and for all from Pharaoh’s grasp.
God's intervention highlights the asymmetry between the two parties—the Egyptian army and the army of Israel.
On one side stands the region's most powerful military force. On the other, a ragtag group of newly liberated slaves.
That brutal imbalance of power brings to mind other stories from more recent history—stories which illustrate just how deadly such an imbalance of power can be.
It makes me think of November 29, 1864, when 675 U.S. volunteer soldiers launched a brutal, unprovoked attack on a peaceful village of 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho, killing approximately 230—most of them women, children, and elders.
The Sand Creek Massacre remains a painful reminder of the cycles of settler-colonial violence that our nation is still far too caught up in.
One of the commentaries compared this imbalance to Guatemala during the political violence and civil war of the late twentieth century, when Indigenous Maya communities endured horrific persecution at the hands of the military, with support from the United States and Israel.
The Guatemalan Genocide is an example of how powerful societies caught up in cycles of violence often perpetuate cycles of violence elsewhere.
History is full of such terrible reminders of what human beings can do when power is wielded over those who have little power to resist.
But history also bears witness to God’s liberating presence an power among people struggling for freedom.
One shining example is Harriet Tubman—nicknamed the “Moses of her people.” Harriet liberated herself from slavery in 1849 at the age of 27. And, like Moses, Harriet returned to the land of her captivity to guide people to freedom. She would personally lead 70 enslaved people to freedom over roughly 13 trips. Her Civil War service helped liberate more than 700 enslaved people during the Combahee River Raid.
There are many similarly inspiring stories from history. You might find time to read about one of the following:
The Danish rescue of Jews. In 1943, when the Nazi authorities prepared to deport Denmark’s Jewish population, ordinary Danes organized to hide more than 7,000 Danish Jews and ferry them across the sea to neutral Sweden.
The People Power Revolution in the Philippines. In 1986, millions of Filipinos used nonviolent resistance—including prayer, flowers, food, and song—to help bring down the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship.
The Sanctuary Movement. In the 1980s, during the unrest in Guatemala and El Salvador, faith communities across the United States sheltered and transported refugees fleeing violence, sometimes openly defying U.S. immigration policy. A movement that continued in a new form throughout the 2010-20s during the crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
That last example powerfully illustrates to me the paradox of power—while the U.S. government helped prop up the regime in Guatemala responsible for such terrible violence, other Americans—many of them Christians—risked prosecution to help the victims of this violence find safety.
I think Jesus was well aware of this paradox of power.
And today’s parable plays with this paradox. It teaches us something about the values of God’s Kingdom by showing us their opposite.
A servant owes a king an unimaginable amount of money—a debt so enormous that he could never hope to repay it.
The king has all the power in this situation. And at first uses that power to punish the servant, ordering him to be sold off.
The servant falls on his knees, begging, “‘Have patience.” Just give me more time, and I will pay you back everything I owe you!
It’s unclear why, but the king is so moved by compassion. Perhaps he saw with shame the cruelty being done to this man in the name of what was right.
He is so moved that he forgives this un-payable debt and sets the servant free.
We should consider how the servant is not the only one liberated by this act! The king is now no longer captive to this endless cycle of debt collection.
We might expect that such an experience of mercy would change the servant. We might expect mercy to generate mercy.
But almost immediately, the servant encounters someone who owes him a much smaller debt. He grabs the man and demands, “Pay what you owe.”
He has been liberated, but now he refuses to free someone else.
He has received mercy, but when he gains the upper hand, he chooses punishment.
When the king hears what the servant has done, he becomes enraged and hands him over to be tortured until his debt is paid.
And thus, the king and the servant are trapped once again—in a cycle of debt, violence, and punishment.
While the servant is shown to be stingy, self-serving, and lacking in mercy. The Kingdom of God is defined by generosity, self-sacrifice, and endless mercy.
And while all the characters in the parable fall back into cycles of retribution, Jesus in the telling of the parable, invites his disciples to imagine another way.
Which brings me back to Exodus. For all the beauty in this story—for all the powerful ways it has inspired liberation movements—the ending raises a difficult question.
The destruction of Israel’s enemies becomes the foundation of their faith in God: “Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians…and they believed in the Lord.”
Throughout the Hebrew Bible, we encounter stories of violence told in sweeping, sometimes exaggerated terms. And we can understand why a people who knew slavery, conquest, and exile might find hope in stories about a God powerful enough to crush the powers that had crushed them.
There is something deeply human about that. But there is also something deeply troubling about it—especially for those of us trying to follow the Jesus who tells us not to crush our enemies, but to love them.
I wrestled with this as this week we honored the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
That day, 25 years ago, was a day of stark contrasts.
There were countless stories of extraordinary courage and compassion. Firefighters running up stairwells while everyone else was running down. Strangers helping strangers. Lines of people waiting to donate blood.
But soon there were also reports of Islamophobic attacks. Fear turned to paranoia. And before long, our country was engaged in wars that would seem to have no end. More innocent lives were lost.
Twenty-five years later, much has changed.
We still grieve the lives lost that day, but many Americans no longer hunger for retaliation. And in a remarkable sign of how much can change, New York City is now led by its first Muslim mayor.
But there are others who cannot break the cycle. They remain captive to fear and suspicion, racism and Islamophobia, greed and violence. And some of these people continue to wield enormous power.
And most of them want the rest of us to remain in captivity with them.
But the Gospel insists that we do not have to remain captive.
Because what Jesus says clearly to his disciples then—and to us today—is that the only thing that breaks these cycles is forgiveness. Forgiveness set us free.
“Lord, how often should I forgive?” the disciple Peter asks. “As many as seven times?”
“Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,” the Lord replies.
And perhaps this makes forgiveness the most necessary, and the most amazing, miracle of all!
Can I get an Amen?
Sermon preached by Rev. Delaney Piper on 9.13.26.
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