The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 13, 2026

St. Pauls - Proper 19 - September 13, 2026

With the measure you use, it will be measured to you. (Matthew 7:2)

Most of you probably remember the story of Snow White. Written down in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm, the story has been adapted over and over again. But the Disney version most likely has influenced most of us. No matter the adaptation, the story is essentially the same.

Baby Snow White’s mother dies, and her father remarries. As Snow White comes of age and becomes more and more beautiful, her stepmother, seeing her own beauty fading with age, becomes more and more jealous and spiteful of her young stepdaughter, eventually putting her to eternal sleep by means of a poisoned apple. In all versions of the story, though several end differently, Snow White survives and goes on to thrive, and the wicked Queen comes to a violent end, caused by her own jealousy.

Fraught with symbolism, the apple -- obviously one of the most obvious, the most evident metaphors in the entire story -- revolves around the Magic Mirror.

The Queen stepmother, a superficial woman and always been fascinated by her own beautiful image, would use a mirror to satisfy her insecurities about herself by gazing into the mirror and reassuring herself that she was indeed truly beautiful. This, she thought, was what made her lovable and desirable.

That all changes, however, with coming of age of her stepdaughter Snow White. In every version of the story, the kindness of Snow White was emphasized to be the true core of her visual beauty. Snow White, focused not on herself but on helping others more unfortunate than herself, did not require a mirror. Her eyes instead saw through the psychological surface of others (in her case the dwarves’ personalities) and accepted them as they were. The glass case in which she lies reassures us of just how transparent her beauty truly is.

Interesting is that later in the story, the Queen becomes so transfixed and focused on staring at her own image that she ends up seeing herself for what she truly is – not beautiful at all but distorted with envy and rage.

The interesting thing about this is that psychologists actually have a name for this phenomenon. It’s called the Troxler Effect. If a person stares unmoving at one’s reflection for minutes at a time, the brain will begin to filter out parts of the image, and that person’s reflection will seem to distort. While true brain science, what an amazing metaphor for too much self-focus!

While introspection is important, and we need to sometimes shift our lens to see ourselves honestly, at the same time, experience tells us that we find our best peace and wellness within ourselves when we are in the process of doing something kind for someone else. Our levels of dopamine and oxytocin actually increase the more we engage in acts of kindness and mercy to others. 

By the same principle, the more we focus only on our own needs, desires, and greed, the more we degrade our emotional, spiritual, and even physiological health. The more we shift our lens from self-observation and self-evaluation to seeing and bonding with others, the more we will understand what Jesus is trying to tell us in this continuation of his lessons in mercy, communication, forgiveness, and what it means to be in community with others.

For Jesus, the act of judging will always result in broken relationships. It is in effect a kind of mirror-gazing –measuring self and others by a self-prescribed standard. On the other hand, acts of mercy break down these kinds of barriers and instead establish true bonds of relationship, true seeing of ourselves and others as flaws yet beautiful human beings, and true and lasting restoration. So vital to community is forgiveness and restoration that this scripture today is one of Jesus’ roughest most shocking stories!

The shock value is his purpose. He needs to help people see that holding onto bitterness and a judgy heart are just as deadly to us as that poisoned apple! And that inner bitterness and wrath will end up eating us alive! Or in Jesus’ terms, dooming us to death!

The heart that sees beyond the deed, recognizes all people as beautifully human, and desires forgiveness, restoration, and kindness will naturally prevail. For kindness and mercy beget kindness and mercy. We have another phrase for that – kindness evokes something within us that nudges us to pay it forward.

Or as the Jewish tradition would name it –midahkenegedmidah ……Middah K'neged Middah (measure for measure). This Hebrew phrase sums up a great deal about how people should behave with each other and how vital communities are formed – how kingdom communities flourish. They understand and honor measure for measure.

If we want to measure others and compare them by standards. If we create hierarchies for sins and judge others on how they measure up in comparison to the self-righteous ways we see ourselves, we have already failed to remove that famous log from our own eyes in order to see others as equal sinners in praxis.

Measure for measure is God’s way of stunning us into a place of humility and helping us to understand that, as Jesus once said, none of us are fit to throw a first stone. In fact, all of us receive with great mercy the gift of salvation that Jesus’ gifted us in our undeservedness through his own humble sacrifice. Our judging needs to end right there.

Jesus with this story is not depicting a vicious God who desires to smite us down and demolish us for our sins! Jesus is trying to shock us into seeing ourselves truthfully in the mirror and shifting our lens to a better and more truthful and realistic vision of those around us. Because like Cain in that original story, if we allow our own self-righteousness, our attitude of self-elevation over others, or our feeling that we have a right to judge others reign within our hearts, that sin will begin to eat us alive and distort our hearts right before our eyes!

Midahkenegedmidah! The measure you use to measure will then be measured to you! 

How important is mercy to Jesus? How important must be our focus on the mercy and not judging of others? 

So much so that Jesus embedded the concept of midahkenegedmidah right into his disciples prayer (the one we call the Lord’s Prayer).:

Our Father in heaven, may your Name be always kept holy. May your kingdom and your will  prevail upon the earth, just as it exists within the heavens. Give us this day our daily bread (everything we need), and forgive us our sins as (to the extent that) we forgive others. Keep us from temptations that would harm us and save us from all evil we may inflict or intend….

Did you catch that middle part? That part, where we ourselves deliberately ask God in prayer to treat us exactly and to an equal degree as we are willing to treat others? If you read that and understood it, that should chill your bones a little bit. Because I can tell you this for sure – we as human beings spend a good deal of time thinking to ourselves that others should get their just desserts for whatever we think they have done. And we cheer when we believe others have been justly punished for deeds they have committed. 

But when it comes time for us to stand at God’s gates of heaven, I am certain that each and every one of us is not going to say to God: Here I am God, please treat me exactly as I deserve for all of the ways I have sinned during my lifetime!

No. None of us are going to say that. Each and every one of us is going to stand at those gates, fall to our knees, and say, Jesus, Son of God, forgive me for my sins, and show me mercy!

This is the difference between our human concepts of justice and God’s justice. God’s justice has always been overridden by mercy. And Jesus’ gift of salvation was meant to assure forgiveness and restoration for all whose heart desires forgiveness, kindness, and mercy.

As we will learn once again in next week’s scripture – God is not interested in our concepts of fairness. God is interested in helping us to see that true reflection on ourselves, on others, and most of all in the grace of God always results in humility and in mercy.

The point is this. The mercy that has been shown to you is on a scale that you have never really let yourself feel. God has not forgiven you seven times. God has not forgiven you seventy-seven times. God has forgiven you a debt that would run past any counting we could do, a debt as large as your whole life, a debt that you could not pay in fifty lifetimes.

And the invitation of the parable is to let that mercy actually land. To feel it. To live from it. To become the kind of person who cannot easily grab someone else by the throat for a hundred denarii because you cannot forget what you were just released from.

This is not a threat. It is a description of how a forgiven person naturally lives. Someone who has actually felt the weight of what has been forgiven them tends to forgive freely, not because they are trying to be a good person, but because the score-keeping no longer makes sense. Once you have felt what mercy really is, holding a debt against someone else feels absurd.

May our merciful God grant you with gifts of love, kindness, forgiveness, humility, and above all, mercy. Or as Jesus would say, may you have eyes to see.