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“The Forgiveness-Challenged”
Matthew 18:21-35
A Sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Don’t you love it when people start changing designations in order to be politically correct? I mean that is one change too. We don’t want to say the right way so as to offend those on the left who are right and vice versa.
We’re not
unemployed, we’re employment-challenged.
We’re not poor, we’re economically-challenged. We’re not suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, we live in a sunlight-challenged season. When Kim and I were dating, she was living in
Think about
it. We know that other people are supposed
to forgive us, but it’s a whole lot harder to forgive those who have wronged
us. We hang on to that anger, that hurt, that bitterness, that distraction. Anne Lamott said
that refusing to forgive someone is like taking rat poison and then waiting for
the rat to die.
It can be a toxic thing for us to
hang on to our anger, disappointment and resentment. Think what our world might look like if we
channeled all of that energy which we expend upon our rage and our
disappointment and righteous indignation into something that gives life. Our priorities as a people, as a nation, as a
world might look very different.
Jesus told
today’s parable to illustrate the catch-22 of forgiveness. First he tells the people that we need to
forgive people not once, twice seven or seventy times, but rather 70 times 7
times: 490 times. That’s easier said
than done, but a worthy goal nonetheless.
But then he tells a parable
about someone who tried to forgive. The
person who forgave was likely not used to forgiving, but he tries it anyway,
just for fun.
Bill Herzog,
who wrote the book Parables as Subversive
Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994),
contends that this and many other parables have a vastly different meaning when
read from the perspective of those who are the poor and marginalized—those who
were seldom if ever forgiven their debts by the wealthy people. Herzog asks us to read the parables as Jesus’
method of exposing the brutality of the world and siding with the poor.
According to Herzog, Matthew added
the depiction of God as the allegorical forgiving one in order to soften Jesus’
harsh words. As Herzog says, “If he had been the kind of teacher popularly
portrayed in the North American Church, a master of the inner life, teaching
the importance of spirituality and a private relationship with God, he would
have been supported by the Romans as part of their rural pacification program”
(p.27). In other words, there would have
been no reason to execute him as a revolutionary, which is for whom crucifixion
was reserved.
So let’s
listen to the parable again and see what we can get from it.
Jesus tells
of a king who goes to settle accounts with his underlings. Now, the language gets in the way here
because the underlings of the king are all called slaves. In point of fact,
there are different levels of slaves here.
The king was the elite of the elite and likely owned a lot of land. The king usually got this land by collecting
from others—a system of debt which kept him in his place and all of the others
in their place.
It was literally impossible for people to pay off their
debts and as a result the king got richer and the poor got poorer.
I heard on the news yesterday that while the economy grew in the past year, the only people whose real wealth grew were the top few percent, all the rest of us statistically lost out. Our income did not meet with inflation and the higher interest rates. And of course, our debt increased.
In Biblical times, there were to be
no permanent landowners except for God.
In fact, every 50 years, the Torah commands that all of the land should
be redistributed amongst the people. All
debts must be forgiven and all slaves shall be set free. By the time of Jesus, this Biblical jubilee tradition
has been usurped by kings and rulers taking land, keeping debts and being at
least forgiveness-challenged and at worst brutally indifferent to the plight of
the poor majority of the people. When
Jesus told us to pray “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” he was
speaking at least in part about reestablishing the jubilee tradition which was
designed to make sure that everyone was treated in a fair manner.
The King
goes to the first slave. Now this slave
was no pauper. This slave was likely an
upper-level manager, but in the king’s eyes, he was still a slave and owed
money to the king. This slave owed a lot
of money. 10,000
talents to be exact. Now a talent
is a year’s wages. So the slave owed the
king 10,000 years of wages. The manager
probably had some other people that owed him money, too which financed his
debt. It’s kind of a like the World Bank
asking a third world country to pay back all of its debts. It’s really impossible.
So the king threatened to do what
kings do, that he be sold along with his family and his possessions and then
make the payment, as if that would even make a dent in it.
The slave
fell on his knees and asked for mercy and patience from the king. He even promised the impossible, to pay the
king everything. Then the king did
something odd for kings to do. He had
pity on him and forgave the debt. He
acted like the Messiah: the big guy
actually looking out for the little guy.
He took seriously “forgive us our debts as forgive our debtors.” What a great story. Hooray for the king, long live the generous
king. And we would be happy if the story
just ended there. But it doesn’t.
The manager
or slave, went to his co-workers. The gospel calls them him fellow slaves. The other people of the
same rank. The formerly indebted
manager is not like Zaccheaus giving back what he has
stolen and four times more. He is
forgiveness-challenged. He doesn’t know
what to do with his new-found liberation.
So, he goes back to doing what he has always done. He seizes one of his co-workers by the neck
and demands that he give him the debt he owes to him, 100 denarii. A denarius is one
day’s wages. He was forgiven 10,000
year’s wages and yet still demands 100 days wages from his brother
manager.
The other manager does what the
first one does, he gets down on his knees and pleads
his case. But this time it falls on deaf
ears.
The formerly indebted manager threw
him in jail until he paid his debt, which is pretty dumb if you think about
it. How are you going to work while
you’re in jail.
The other
managers ratted him out to the king and the king
decided that one moment of forgiveness was enough, thank you very much. The king proved to be forgiveness-challenged,
too. He scolded him, told him to show
mercy and then showed him no mercy. He
tortured him until he could pay his debt.
Again, it’s pretty hard to pay when your arms are broken.
So what are
we to make out of this parable? Matthew
says, God’s like the King, so look out if you are not merciful. Because God is not. The implication is that we need to forgive
490 times, but God’s number is a whole lot less than that. If this is the case we all have a hot future
ahead of us. Theologian John Dominic Crossan says that the image of God the torturer is a
difficult image. Crossan
says “I might fear this God, but why would I worship this God?” Why indeed would we worship a forgiveness-challenged
God? Maybe Jesus was pointing us to a
different kind of God than Matthew gives us.
Bill Herzog
thinks Jesus told parables like this one to being debate and to stir people up
to look not only at their own lives, but also at the world in which they lived.
Jesus was
speaking by and large to the people who were on the margins. These were the victims of the debt system. These were the people who didn’t get to make
the decisions about who got their debt forgiven and who didn’t. And the popular depictions of religion showed
God colluding with the land-owners over the poor. All the poor majority had the power to do was
to be on the receiving end of the decisions of the kings and the managers.
If the king forgave a debt, that might work out well for them but kings tend to do what is in the best interest of the king. It is to the king’s advantage to have people beholden to him. It is to the manager’s advantage to threaten, intimidate and rip off the peasant majority. So when the king changed his mind and decided that pity was not as good a strategy as torture, the people Jesus was talking to were nodding in agreement. Yes, Lord, that’s how it is. Jesus was making it plain to the people. He was describing their sorry condition. By doing so, he was also saying that God sees all of this.
Like the prophets of old, Jesus’
parables lift up the poor and expose the idolatry and collusion of religion
with elitism. Jesus’ religion, his
depiction of God, doesn’t let us get away with accepting the so-called divine
sanction of forgiveness-challenged leaders.
God sees how forgiveness-challenged
our rulers and their underlings really are.
Jesus exposes their corruption and their moral bankruptcy.
And he was
also saying that we don’t have to play by their rules. Lifetimes of being forgiveness-challenged
begets a world which is sick and dying.
And God became human in Jesus to say, “I see what it’s like and the
reign of God has to be different.
And then in
true enigmatic fashion, he leaves it there and asks us to imagine what a world
might look like where we were beholden to a different set of rules.
Where the first shall be last and
the last shall be first.
Where the meek
inherit the earth.
Where all of the
people have enough to eat.
Where there is no more debt.
Where people are
not judged by their indebtedness, but by their mercy.
And this is the life Jesus calls us
to imagine.
And if we can imagine the life,
then we are on our way to imagining a way to get to that life in such a manner
that is lived by mercy, compassion and even forgiveness.
For such is
the reign of God.
So realize that we are in a forgiveness-challenged world.
Realize our tendency to be forgiveness-challenged.
Realize also, that our purpose is to work alongside God to redeem this forgiveness-challenged world.
As the hymn-writer says:
“Forgive us our sins as we forgive,” you taught us, Lord, to pray.
But You alone can grant us grace to live the words we say.
How can Your pardon reach and bless the unforgiving heart
That broods on wrongs and will not let old bitterness depart?
In blazing light Your cross reveals the truth we dimly knew:
What trivial debts are owed to us, how great our debt to You!
Lord, cleanse the depths within our should and build resentment cease.
Then, bound to all in our bonds of love, our lives will spread your peace.
(Forgive Our Sins
as We Forgive, text by Rosamond E. Herklots,
1969)
May it be
so with all of us.
Amen.