"If you can’t forgive, then come to the places where Christ gives His forgiveness" Wednesday of Trinity 22 2025

19. November 2025

Wednesday of Trinity 22

Mark 11:20–26

“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mk 11:25–26).

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

When we gathered on Sunday, the Lord confronted us with the ugliness of an unforgiving heart. The parable of the unforgiving servant was not an abstract warning about bad behavior—it was a scalpel. Jesus drove it straight into the hard places of the soul where we excuse our grudges, justify our resentment, and pretend that we are victims while refusing mercy to our brother. He exposed the truth: if you will not forgive, it is because you have not really received His forgiveness. That parable wasn’t aimed at “other people.” It was aimed at us.

Tonight, the Lord has more to say on that same theme—but not by parable. Now he speaks through a sign. He takes us to a fig tree, a dead tree, a fruitless tree. And then He takes us into the Temple to watch the religious elite interrogate Him. It is one continuous warning: fruitless faith is no faith at all, and prayer without forgiveness is a lie.

The disciples notice the withered fig tree and are astonished. They shouldn’t be. Jesus wasn’t surprised when He saw it on their way into Jerusalem earlier. He wasn’t impatient. He wasn’t impulsive. He didn’t lose His temper. The Lord of heaven and earth does not act out of irritation. Everything He does, He does deliberately.

The fig tree with its leaves but no fruit is Israel in miniature. The prophets condemned this same thing: religious show without repentance. Isaiah warned Israel that the Lord looked for justice but found bloodshed; for righteousness but heard the cry of distress. Jeremiah spoke of the fig tree with no figs, the branches withered, and the harvest ruined. Hosea lamented that God searched for fruit in His vineyard and found nothing but emptiness.

Jesus is not introducing a new message. He is delivering the same verdict the prophets delivered: A tree without fruit is a dead tree. A religion without repentance is a dead religion.

And that should strike us in the same way the parable last Sunday did. Because our problem is not that we don’t know Christian vocabulary. It’s that we often have leaves without fruit—ritual without repentance, prayers without trust, worship without forgiveness. We can be active in church, generous with our opinions, confident in our familiarity with Scripture—and yet slow to show mercy, slow to bend, slow to be humbled, slow to pray honestly.

Jesus wants His disciples to see something unmistakable: the dead tree represents what unbelief produces. It withers. It dries up. It collapses from the roots outward. And everyone is shocked—except Jesus. When your faith dries up, when prayer becomes an afterthought, when grudges become your constant companion, when you treat repentance as optional—you should not be surprised when your heart withers. That’s exactly what Jesus shows us in the fig tree.

Then comes the command: “Have faith in God.” Not “Have faith in faith.” Not “Believe hard enough.”
Not “Visualize the miracle.” Not “Manifest what you desire.”

Have faith in God—because you and I are painfully unreliable. We trust our anger more than God’s promises, our bitterness more than His mercy, our fears more than His providence. Jesus is not coddling us. He is commanding us. Trust your Father. Stop trusting yourself.

And then He speaks of moving mountains: “If you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and do not doubt… it will be done.”

Do not misunderstand this. Jesus is not teaching magical thinking. He is not handing you a supernatural lever to manipulate reality. Every time God “moves a mountain” in Scripture, it is His work, not ours: At creation, He speaks light into the darkness and shapes the world by His Word. At the Red Sea, He divides the waters—not Israel. At Jericho, the walls fall by His command—not the volume of Israel’s shouting. In the valley of dry bones, He breathes life through the preached Word—not through human effort. And in the greatest miracle of all, He rolls the stone from the tomb of His Son.

So when Jesus says that prayer moves mountains, He is saying this: Your Father is powerful, faithful, and good. Trust Him enough to ask. Trust Him enough to submit. Trust Him enough to believe that He hears.

Prayer is not about your strength. It is about God’s mercy. Now comes the punchline—one that directly ties back to Matthew 18: “When you stand praying, forgive.”

This is not an optional add-on to prayer. It is the foundation. It is the air prayer breathes. The unforgiving heart cannot pray faithfully because it does not believe the God to whom it is praying.

You cannot cry out to God for mercy while condemning your brother in your heart. You cannot ask God to overlook your sin while magnifying the sins of another. You cannot receive the Lord’s Supper while sharpening your resentment like a blade. This is exactly the point of Sunday’s parable. The servant who was forgiven refused to forgive. And because he refused to forgive, he lost the very mercy he had been given.

Jesus is consistent. The command is the same: Forgive because you are forgiven. Forgive because the blood of Christ has covered your sin. Forgive because the Judge of all has justified you freely. Forgive because the cross has settled accounts in a way you never could.

And if you can’t forgive—then the place to go is not deeper into your resentment but deeper into Christ. The lack of forgiveness is not a moral deficiency; it is a spiritual emergency. It is unbelief expressing itself in hatred.

The fix is not to “try harder.” The fix is to repent—to receive again what Christ won for you on the cross, what He pours on you in Baptism, what He puts into your ears through Absolution, what He sets upon your tongue in the Holy Supper. His forgiveness is the only thing that makes your forgiveness possible.

After the teaching on prayer, Jesus enters the temple and the chief priests and elders challenge His authority: “By what authority do you do these things?” They are not asking because they want to believe. They are asking because they want to trap Him. These men are masters of religion. They know Scripture backward and forward. They have the leaves of piety, ritual, and reputation—but no fruit of repentance or faith.

So Jesus answers their question with a question about John’s baptism: “Was it from heaven or from men?” They refuse to answer. They fear the people more than God. They fear losing control more than losing their souls. And so they expose themselves: they care more about appearances than about truth.

This is the same posture as the unforgiving servant. It is the posture of anyone who demands that God explain Himself before they will trust Him. It is the posture of a heart withered like the fig tree. And Jesus leaves them in their unbelief. He does not indulge them with a debate. He does not negotiate with pride. He speaks the truth and lets their hardness condemn them.

So what does all of this mean to us? First, repent. Repent of your grudges. Repent of your silence in prayer. Repent of treating the grace of God as something owed rather than something given. Repent of demanding mercy for yourself and justice for everyone else.

Second, pray. Pray not as a ritual but as an act of trust. Pray because the Father invites you. Pray because Christ intercedes for you. Pray because the Spirit groans for you with words you cannot speak. Pray boldly, not because your faith is strong but because your Father is faithful.

Third, forgive. Forgive not because the other person deserves it, but because Christ has forgiven you when you deserved nothing. Forgive not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. Forgive because bitterness is poison. Forgive because you live from the wounds of the crucified Christ.

And if you can’t forgive, then come to the places where Christ gives His forgiveness. Come to the font. Come to the Word. Come to the altar. Come to the absolution spoken in Christ’s name. He does not ask you to manufacture mercy—He pours it into you. And what is poured into you flows out of you.

At the center of the Gospel is not the mountain you want God to move. It is the mountain He has already moved. The mountain of sin—He carried it on His back to Golgotha. The mountain of death—He shattered it by His resurrection. The mountain of the devil’s accusation—He silenced it with His own blood. The mountain of your guilt—He cast it into the depths of the sea. This is the mountain that defines your life. This is the mountain that assures you that God hears your prayers. This is the mountain that guarantees that your forgiveness is real.

So hear the Lord’s words again, not as law alone but as promise: “Have faith in God.” Because God has faithfulness for you. “Forgive.” Because Christ has forgiven you first. “Pray.” Because the Father delights to hear His children. The fig tree withers. But those who trust in the Lord are like trees planted by streams of water—bearing fruit in season, sustained by the Word, fed by the Sacraments, alive in Christ.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin