Matthew 18:21-40
(Please forgive typos and editorial errors. This was the product of a unsatisfactory manuscript when I went to bed, a restless night's editing in my sleep, and a re-write this morning. Since the subject is forgiveness, I ask that of the reader as well. -JFM)
I wonder why Peter asked the question of Jesus. What
happened that he had to ask Jesus, “How often will my brother sin against me
and I forgive him?” Did John take the last piece of grilled fish again? Did James
leave the fishing nets tangled up in a wet ball on the boat floor instead of
hanging them up to dry overnight? Perhaps Peter’s mother in law complained one
too many times about the hours he was with Jesus and away from the family. Put
yourself in Peter’s sandals for a second: your spouse, your parent, your child,
your co-worker keeps doing the same thing to you and will continue to do it over
and over and over again. How many times must you forgive him or her? What’s
your answer?
“How often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?”
Forgive… You’ve all heard the old adage, “Forgive and forget,” right? As if to
say that to forgive, you should have amnesia of the event that took place
against you. Forgiveness does not mean that at all. Your memory is a very
powerful tool and a gift from God – even if it recalls things you wish you
could forgive and forget. Some sins are, simply, so painful that they might
never be forgotten. To forgive, as is used in today’s Gospel lesson, means to
leave an issue alone and not concern one’s self with it any longer. Another way
to say this is to refuse to take up the offense again in order to hurt the one
who sinned against me. There’s a sense of letting the sin go, leaving the
offense behind, and canceling the demand for equal payment. That’s what it means
to forgive.
To be very fair, Peter’s answer of seven times is quite
generous: the rabbis at the time taught that forgiving three times was
sufficient. But while it may be generous in human terms, Jesus speaks of the
generosity of grace that only He can give: “I say to you, not seven times, but
seventy times seven.” Jesus doesn’t mean we should keep a score card and once
we hit #490 we can take the gloves off for the next one. The point is made to
the extreme: do you think you could keep track this long, Peter? Do you think
you could count each and every infraction, Peter? Is it that important that you
need to keep score? Of course not, Peter. Let forgiveness overflow. (Just a
quick note…some translations say “seventy seven times.” The better translation
from the Greek text is “seventy times seven.” Either way, the same point is
made.)
To help explain, Jesus tells this simple parable. A king is
owed ten thousand talents. If you’re curious, using modern comparison values, it
would take a working man about 16 ½ years, with no time off, to earn one
talent. Remember, he owed ten thousand talents. Again, Jesus is using the
extreme to illustrate the point: how could one man accrue 160,000 years’ worth
of debt? Only because the king has been that generous to begin with. That’s the
remarkable point: the servant cannot pay, yet the king continues to deliver
grace upon grace in extending both the time of the note and the balance due. Finally,
the servant was summoned and accounts were demanded, and he begged for more
time with the foolishly impossible pledge to repay the entire amount (remember,
160,000 years of work). And the king, generosity compounded upon generosity,
takes the man’s unsurpassable debt and the king himself surpasses it by
forgiving the debt: it will no longer be held against you.
This is the image of what God has done for us in Christ
Jesus. He takes all of your sins away from you. All of them. We categorize
them, don’t we – the Catechism uses words like actual sins and original sins; omission
(when I don’t do what I should), or commission (doing what I shouldn’t); we
speak of sins of weakness and sins of desire or deliberate, willful sins; we
talk about public sins and private sins; we say we have sinned against God and
we have sinned against man; we even admit there are sins we have done and we
don’t even realize them as sins. Yet, all of them – however you might
characterize or categorize them – all of them are a damnable debt. The
Scriptures tell us that the wages – or, in this case, the debt – of sin is
death; not merely the heart stop beating, but eternal deadly separation from
God.
In the parable, the king takes the debt and, the text says,
“released him.” That sounds so clean, doesn’t it? Like you see in the movies: a
store owner takes a receipt and tears it in two, or a loan agency hits the
DELETE button on the computer. No…that’s too clinical, to neat, too simple. If
that’s your idea of forgiveness, then your understanding of forgiveness is way
too neat and tidy as well. Forgiveness isn’t neat…well, maybe to the recipient,
but not to the one who must pay the debt. Think about it…the store owner who
tears up the receipt for his customer, he is covering the expense from his
profits. The loan officer is paying the note from his own salary. But
forgiveness? Who pays that debt? The debt is sin, remember? It can’t be just
whitewashed away. It must be paid, in full, by someone.
There is an unspoken behind-the-scenes
story to the parable. This is the part that happens off-script: the part of the
debt being settled, out of sight of our friend, the servant. There was another
Servant – this one, with the Capitol S – who also enters into the King’s
presence. In fact, he wasn’t even a servant, He was royalty Himself, but He
made himself out to be nothing more than a common servant. This Servant was
debt free, with no sins to be held against Him. No sins, no debt; no debt, no
death was demanded. Yet, the Servant negotiates with the King: I’ll take my
brother’s debt and in exchange he can have my freedom. I know the debt demands
life; I’ll trade my life for his; I’ll buy his debt with my blood. That is what
Jesus did at the cross. His death, in your place, paid the debt of sins – every
sin you have ever committed in thought, word and deed, what you have done and
what you have left undone, from not loving God with your whole heart to not
loving your neighbor as yourself – in full. And there was nothing clean about
this payment: there was spitting and swearing and nail-piercing and sword
stabbing and total abandonment by God so that you – you – would not have to pay
that terrible price yourself. The result? God remembers your sins no more. You
are forgiven in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I imagine that the king expected this servant to become a
deliverer of forgiveness, an ambassador of grace, if you will, likewise releasing
all of the loans and notes that he had given out over the years. Having been
freed from the inescapable burden of his debts, surely he will want to share
this freedom with others!
The servant is heading home to tell his family the good news
– “Hey, honey…we just avoided debtor’s prison…you can keep the good silver!” –
and he runs across a fellow servant who owes him 100 denarii. A denarius was a
day’s wage, so this is about 3 ½ months of work. Having been forgiven 160,000
years’ work, surely he’ll release this debt. He will forgive as he has been
forgiven. No… Not only does our friend not
see the debt owed to him within the framework of the grace he has just received,
he also sees himself as someone who is to meter out a sense of justice. He demand
the cash immediately and, when it can’t be paid, he throws this servant and his
family into debtor’s prison.
Who would do such a thing as this – having
been forgiven so much, yet refusing to forgive so little. We would never do
such a thing! Surely, not I! Yet we do exactly that thing, don’t we. We stand
here, in front of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and confess our sins and
we hear the beautiful, sweet words that, baptized into Christ, our sinner’s
debt is paid in full, removed as far as the east from the west. Yet, as we
leave here, we see those who have sinned against us. We see the sister who
insulted our potluck offering. We see the brother who did not let us sit on a
committee. We see the Sunday school teacher who hurt our feelings. We see the
people who didn’t accept our ideas, we see the people who voted opposite us, we
see the people who left us out of the group. During the week, there’s the boss
who called us in to HR for something we didn’t do; the team member whose
mistake cost the contract; the former church members and former pastor who left
Zion behind and began a new church just down the road. And when we see them,
the anger flares, old feelings arise, and we want justice. We want what is owed
us. We five times five (making fists), not seven times seven.
Here is the Christian life of discipleship: having been
forgiven much, all of our sins, all of our debts, completely forgiven by God’s
grace through faith in Christ Jesus, we are called to forgive those around us
who have hurt or harmed us. Forgive…easy to say, hard to do. That’s because, in
large part, forgiveness is no longer something that is natural to mankind. It’s
ironic, if you stop to think about it --- before the fall, forgiveness wasn’t
needed; now, after the fall, we are unable to do it by ourselves. In Christ, we
are called to be ambassadors of the King of King’s grace and mercy, forgiving
as we have likewise been forgiven. Yet, out human nature, in what is a very
logical, rational, and understandable frame of mind, demands what is owed to
us. With our eyes centered only on what is owed us, we lose sight of what has
been forgiven us. If my forgiveness is grounded in my own heart, my own mind;
if your forgiveness is grounded in your own heart, your own mind, you will find
this part of discipleship a terrible burden – another debt that is impossible
to keep. So, Christ rushes in. By the power of the Holy Spirit He exposes our unforgiving
heart. He performs radical heart
surgery, using the Word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword. He doesn’t
just tweak what is within us, tuning it up a bit. He creates a new heart within
us and renews us with His Spirit. He delivers baptismal grace into our lives so
that, filled with Christ’s love, we life fully, freely, forgiven.
This is the life of repentance: confessing our sins and
being absolved; and then living in joy-filled, sanctified life day in and day
out, returning to be forgiven again and again to a King of Kings who never
tires of forgiving our sins against Him and against others. And that
sanctified, forgiven life transforms not only our hearts, but also our eyes so
that we are able to see others through the cross-centered eyes of Jesus. Through
the eyes of Jesus, we no longer see a servant who owes us. Instead we see a fellow
sinner who also stood before the King, who was also called to give account for
his debts, and who also received the amazing news that his debts have been
released. He, too, she, too is forgiven. And here we stand, a new heart beating
within us filled with the love, mercy and grace of Christ – what else can we do
except be an ambassador of that same love, mercy and grace to those who are
around us?
There is a big difference between, “There’s
just no way I’m about to forgive that so-and-so for what he did to me” – in
other words, “I won’t forgive,” and “I wish I could forgive, but the pain is
just so deep, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to really forgive” – in other
words, “I just can’t forgive.” “I won’t forgive,” is what
the unforgiving servant said and those are very dangerous words. “Then his
master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all
that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 And should not you have had
mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And
in anger his master delivered him to the jailers,[e] until he should
pay all his debt. 35 So also my heavenly
Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from
your heart.”
But
to the Christian who says, “I can’t forgive,” and does so with sorrow,
humility, and the desire to be able to forgive – in other words, this is the
real anfechung where faith and world are grinding together; a new heart that
says “I forgive,” but an old heart that beats right next to it unable to
forgive – dear Christian, confess that as well. Just as the disciples prayed, “Lord,
I believe! Help my unbelief!” we join with a similar petition, “Lord, I
forgive! Forgive me my unforgiveness.” And sometimes you will do that day after
day, hour by hour. You may do that for the rest of your life. Pray for that
brother or sister who hurt you – not about them, “God – you need to make them
sorry…” – but about them – “Heavenly Father, look with mercy upon…” What you
discover is that your own heart will begin to soften as you look with
cross-centered eyes. And, to strengthen you as you wrestle with this life of
forgiven and forgiving discipleship, the Lord Jesus gives you His own blood to strengthen
you in the sanctified life of forgiving. But He doesn’t leave it there. He also
reminds you, dear brother and sister, to depart in peace for your sins have
been forgiven.
Depart
in peace. And, in peace, be an ambassador of forgiveness.
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