Matthew 18:21-35 “Who is Jesus Christ for today?”
Jesus has just counseled his disciples to confront church conflict directly and wisely—he has just called his disciples and, by extension, each of us to the work of apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It is Peter, then, who asks the obvious follow-up question. “That’s all fine and good Jesus, but how much do we have to put up with people who keep sinning against us?” We perhaps have asked this very question to God: “Lord, do I have to?” Do we have to forgive, and, for that matter, how many times do we have to forgive? Seven, eight, maybe even nine times? In a day-in-age of a-la-cart convenience, Amazon delivery, and the echo-chambers of social media Jesus’ words are striking, “Not just seven times, but as many as seventy-seven times.” Little does Peter know; as the hen cries, he’ll be in need of God’s extravagant forgiveness soon enough. Little do we realize that it is often us who are in need of God’s extravagant forgiveness. Little do we realize that we are the unforgiving servant in Jesus’ parable.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is…” Jesus begins by reiterating that his command to forgive is neither ideal nor acquiescence. Forgiveness is a window into the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven and who we as the church are called to be. This is not just a moral question about forgiveness, but a window into the world as it was created to be. Our parable begins with a king settling accounts and calling forth a servant who owed ten thousand bags of gold. In other translations, Jesus describes this amount as ten thousand talents. Talents were roughly equal to about 6,000 day’s of labor. Put in perspective, the king calls the servant’s debts totaling sixty million days' worth of labor. In other words, the debt that this servant had racked up was unimaginable and astronomical. No matter how hard the servant worked, they would never be able to pay off their debt. This servant, mere moments from being sold with his family and possessions, gets down on hands and knees pleading with the king, promising to pay in good time. In his desperation he promises, “Please, be patient with me, I’ll pay you back.” The king, knowing that the servant will never be able to pay this some has compassion on the man. He doesn’t just give him an extended timetable, the king goes a step further and forgives the debt entirely. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who had compassion on his servant, released him, and forgave his crushing debt.
The parable continues with the now debt-free servant turning toward his fellow servants demanding repayment. Although this man is a servant, we find that he is a high-ranking member within this trickle down, top-to-bottom system. A system with members of each layer having authority over—and extracting payment from—the larger group of servants in the layers below. He finds one of his fellow servants and, without saying a word, grabs this man by the throat. Inches from his face, we can feel the rage, “Pay me back what you owe me.” Struggling for air and turning purple, we hear the servant begging, “I can’t breathe. Stop. I can’t breathe.” The forgiven servant releases him and leaves him gasping for breath. In between gasps he utters, “Be… patient with… me…I’ll…pay…you…back.” The forgiven servant grabs him, pulls him to his feet, and refuses. “No way.” The Kingdom of Earth is like a forgiven servant who had no kindness or compassion on his fellow servant and threw him into prison.
The king is not amused. He gets wind of this interaction from bystanders who saw what had happened and immediately summons the forgiven servant. “Shouldn’t you also have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?” Exasperated we can hear the king’s thoughts resonating through this parable, “How could you do this when I had just forgiven you?” The king is taken aback at the glaring contradiction between the servant’s fervent desire to be forgiven and his stinginess in offering forgiveness to others. The parable is a window to the kind of resonance and correlation between the mercy we give and the mercy we receive. This resonance which we know but so often ignore in its application. “Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged”, “have mercy as I had mercy on you,” and the prayer we pray each week “Forgive us our trespassers, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It’s almost as if, when we’re merciful (or by contrast, when we’re stingy, or vengeful, or what have you), we create a kind of micro-culture of mercy around us. In the same way, when we’re stingy or vengeful we create a kind of micro-culture of stinginess and vengeance around us. The sticking point is that we, too, find ourselves living in these micro-climates. When we create an atmosphere full of mercy, we’ll breathe the fresh air of mercy. When we pollute it with judgment, condemnation, and stinginess, we breathe in the smog of that polluted air. Forgiveness, as it turns out, is an environmental issue, wherein, the world we make is the world we’ll inhabit.
What is the world we wish to inhabit? What is the church we wish to call home? Our collective answer to these questions informs how we understand ourselves as a people of faith, how we relate to one another, and how we respond to the needs in our community. Forgiveness moves us from a cold hearted, inward-focused, fear driven people to a warm hearted, outward-focused, grace filled people. Forgiveness is the way to becoming the people that we want to be. Forgiveness multiplies forgiveness, compassion, grace, and joy. It cultivates the ground for a culture of renewal, lightens the air for a culture of joy, and dissipates the smog so that we might see the bright shining rays of hope in our midst. We are the forgiven and reconciled people—the people whose hearts are warmed, minds are renewed, and doors are unashamedly opened. If this is who we wish to be, then it is up to us to cultivate the land and plant the seeds. If we wish to be a thriving community, then it is up to be a people who truly and imaginatively embrace the possibilities before us.