Yes, I appreciate the fact that I’m teaching on forgiveness on the 10th anniversary of terrorist attacks on this country. Yes, it is intentional. Yes, I stand by my conviction that forgiveness is one of the most important things a Christian can and should be doing. Therefore, it is incredibly appropriate.
Matthew 18:21-35; Romans 14:1-12; Psalm 103:1-13; Genesis 50:15-21
The gospel lesson for this week really is an immediate follow-up to last week’s lesson. Remember last week, Jesus was teaching his disciples how to deal with conflict, with the main goal of reestablishing relationship with the person who had sinned. So it stands to reason that one of the disciples, and of course it was Peter, asks Jesus for some clarification: “Ok, Jesus,” Peter likely said, “You just were teaching us what to do when someone sins against me. But you also teach that it’s really important to forgive. So, if someone keeps sinning against me, and doing the same thing, how many times should I forgive him? If I forgive him, say, seven times, is that enough? After that can I stop?”
Now at this point, Peter likely thought he was being generous by saying seven times. At the time, three times was considered sufficient when giving forgiveness to someone, so seven was more than what was expected. But, of course, Jesus steps up the game. Now things get a little confusing here, because Jesus either said seventy-seven times or 490 times. But really the exact number doesn’t matter; the real meaning is you forgive and keep forgiving, even when the person keeps sinning against you in the same way.
Then Jesus tells a little parable. “The kingdom of God is like a king wanting to settle accounts with his servants,” he says. The day begins and there was one servant who owed a nearly unimaginable amount of money. Let me put these ancient terms and measurements in modern units: 1 denarius, a standard day’s wage for an unskilled worked or common soldier, using today’s minimum wage for reference, is approximately $58 dollars. A talent was somewhere around 20 years worth of denari, so, again using our working standards, that talent is $301,600. This man owed 10,000 talents, so this adds up to $3,016,000,000. Note that: this servant owed his king 3 billion dollars. There is almost no way that this man could ever dream of paying back the king the amount that he was owed. The king, knowing this, ordered the man, along with his wife and children, sold into slavery, and all his possessions also sold, though it would only make the barest dent in a debt of this magnitude.
The man pleaded with the king, begging for patience and more time, promising that the whole debt would be paid off if only he had more time. Now the king heard the man’s plea, and had mercy on him, forgiving the servant of his debt. His 3 billion dollar debt. Remember that. The king forgave a 3 billion dollar debt. This is a big deal.
Now, you’d think that the servant would go out and throw a party, or tell everyone how awesome the king is, or something to that effect. Instead, he finds one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, right around $5,800. The forgiven man grabs his fellow servant around the throat and, choking him, demands his $5,800. His fellow servant begged him to be lenient, and promised repayment. The second servant was doing exactly what the first servant had done, only on a vastly smaller scale; last time I check there was a big difference between $3 billion and $5,800.
So instead of the expected, the first servant had the second thrown in debtor’s prison. The other servants saw what was going on, and were rather miffed by it, and word got back to the king. The king called the first servant in and said, “You wicked servant! I cancelled your 3 billion dollar debt and you turn around and throw someone in jail over $5,800?! I had mercy on you, you should have had mercy on your fellow servant.” And so he ordered the first servant handed over to be tortured until he could pay back his debt.
And then, Jesus tops off the story with: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” This is right in line with another thing Jesus says in Matthew, one that should be very familiar to us, “Forgive us our trespasses (or sins) as we forgive those who sin against us.”
In the eyes of God we are all the servant with the impossibly high debt. We are horrible, miserable sinners after all, given mercy by the King of Kings even though we deserve no less punishment than what was offered to the servant at the beginning of the parable. But just like God forgives the massive debt of the first servant, he also forgives us our debt of sin.
Unfortunately, we also take after the first servant far too often. Having been forgiven of our debt to God, we too often turn around and metaphorically grab others by the throat and demand payment of their debts to us. We hold grudges; we maintain our anger; we never offer forgiveness to those who sin against us. Sometimes the grudges we hold are from significant events: murdered loved ones, years of abuse, acts of war, and the like; however, far too often the grudges are born from very small things: not getting an invite to a wedding, a scuff on a shoe, a fence between properties.
Yet we pray so often, “forgive us as we forgive those who have sinned against us.” We ask God to forgive us based on how we forgive those around us. While it is how Jesus describes how God works in this parable, we actually pray in the Lord’s prayer that that’s how it is. It’s amazing when you think of it, and scary at the same time. Think of people or groups of people who you have not forgiven for something — no matter what it is — and then think that we ask God to forgive us based on how we forgive them. I don’t know about you, but it makes me not want to hold grudges against others, because I don’t want God to hold onto something He has against me. We’re called to forgive, because we have been forgiven from a great debt.