Forgiveness [Proper 19A]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Matthew 18:21-35

Forgiveness

Peter could really use a win. Like many students, he just wants to impress his teacher. And if we're being honest here, some of his previous attempts have not gone terribly well – especially that time Jesus called him Satan, in front of the entire class. That stung.

But you have to give him credit, he is persistent. Once again today, he musters up his courage and goes for it. I imagine he studied late into the night, scrutinized the exact wording he would use, practiced in the mirror. He probably played out the scenario in his head dozens of times – just to be absolutely sure that this comment would not again earn him a satanic nickname, but would instead, garner that most precious prize: a gold star from his rabbi, from his teacher.

It's a good question and goes off without a hitch: How often should I forgive someone who sins against me? As many as seven times? Now, a lot of people struggle to forgive someone who wrongs them even once. The ancient rabbis suggested three times – which is fairly generous. But Peter, he is willing to go the extra mile: seven times. And then he waits for Jesus' answer – trembling with anticipation. Just sure that Jesus will come back with something along the lines of, “Seven times. Well, Peter that is truly above and beyond. I was going to say once is enough. Your generosity astounds me. I mean, seven times! Did you hear that guys?!”

Poor Peter; he really just asks the wrong person. Jesus' standards are always ridiculously high. If he would have asked someone else the same question, he would have likely received that gold star. I know I'm impressed any time someone chooses to forgive because many people prefer vengeance or hold grudges instead. And we understand that because we all know that forgiveness is incredibly difficult. It always feels a little like a loss. Seven times then sounds like a lot of times to forgive someone.

Jesus' response to Peter seems, at first glance, rather arbitrary, as if he is just being difficult: “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” But it's not. You see, there is a little poem found early in the book of Genesis attributed to one of Cain's descendants, Lamech, that reads, “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” The poem traces the escalation of violence in human history. It details, poetically, this cycle of violence in which injury begets death, in which one wrong is avenged seventy-seven times over. The poem brazenly challenges the divine inclination towards forgiveness. It flexes its muscle rather than dare take the loss.

Jesus' response is not arbitrary, neither is it accidental. Biblical scholar Stanley Saunders, concludes, Jesus is calling his community of disciples to participate in undoing the curse of Cain and Lamech that has kept their offspring trapped in spasms of envy, hatred, violence, and retribution across the generations to this day.¹ Jesus imagines that forgiveness has the power to break the cycles of violence and vengeance. Jesus imagines that forgiveness frees us from an economy of debt to live in an economy of mercy.

The parable that Jesus tells drops us directly into an economy of debt. Before we look at this parable though it is important for us to remember that it is in fact a parable – not an allegory. And there is a difference. Parables are stories that teach by using familiar situations with just enough of a twist to keep the listeners' minds churning and puzzling. An allegory is different; it assigns a defined correlation to each character in the story.

This story is a parable. The basic economic system found in the parable would have been familiar to Jesus' audience. It was something like a pyramid – with money and power flowing steadily to the top, in this case the top is represented by the king. Under the king were levels of servants who were expected to collect debts and taxes from those below them. As the money flowed to the top, each new collector would take a cut. That was how they supported themselves. As long the person above you in the pyramid, in the hierarchy, was getting what they expected, everything was good. I mean, not for the person on the very bottom of the scheme, but in the sense that the system was sustainable.

One example of the model with which we are familiar in the Bible is the story of Zacchaeus. We remember in the Gospel of Luke, Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was obviously close to the top of the economic pyramid – not unlike the unmerciful slave in Jesus' parable today. You might also remember that Zacchaeus was not well liked. That was not because he was rich and folks were simply jealous; it was because he extracted taxes from his fellow Jews that supported the occupying Roman government; and not just that, he also made sure to extract extra to pad his own pockets. He charged them for the privilege of paying for their own oppression. It wasn't illegal; in fact that was just the way things were. It was an economy of debt in which everyone owed someone something. And that of course was the cause of a lot of bad blood.

And so Jesus' audience would have been very familiar with this economic system; it was the one under which they lived. Again, parables begin with a familiar concept. But then things get wacky. The first twist in Jesus' story is the impossibly large debt the first slave has accumulated. This is where 2000 years really obscures the original impact of the parable. Ten-thousand talents would have been a comically outrageous amount to Jesus' listeners. To us, ten-thousand talents means nothing. We don't talk in talents. To put it in perspective though, one talent was equal to approximately fifteen years' wages for the average laborer. This slave is short ten-thousand talents. It would take him about 150,000 years to pay off his debt. That is a lot of years. The audience would understand that the debt was impossible, absolutely impossible, to pay back. And then would be amazed, shocked, that the king would forgive that extraordinary debt.

They of course would also find it shocking that that same slave would then throw a man in prison who owed him just one-hundred days worth of money. The first guy was forgiven, remember, 150,000 years worth of debt and then is absolutely unforgiving, unmerciful, towards the one who owed a very manageable debt equivalent to 100 days' wages – something like a car loan. And to add to the absurdity, the harsh slave throws the other slave into prison where of course he will be unable to work and therefore unable to pay.

Many years ago, in the ancient desert, there was a meeting [in a monastic community] about a brother who had sinned. The Fathers spoke, but Abba Pior kept silence. Later, he got up and went out; he took a sack, filled it with sand and carried it on his shoulder. He put a little sand also into a small bag which he carried in front of him. When the Fathers asked him what this meant he said, 'In this sack which contains much sand, are my sins which are many; I have put them behind me so as not to be troubled about them and so as not to weep; and see here are the little sins of my brother which are in front of me and I spend my time judging them. This is not right, I ought rather to carry my sins in front of me and concern myself with them, begging God to forgive me for them.' The Fathers stood up and said, 'Truly, this is the way of salvation.'²

In the parable, the first slave was released by the king from the economy of debt – an economy that was destroying him. But he chose instead to cling to the system. He was freed and yet chose to enslave himself once again. He was forgiven an impossible debt and yet chose not to forgive others.

Jesus imagines that forgiveness has the power to break the cycles of violence and vengeance. Jesus imagines that forgiveness frees us from an economy of debt to live in an economy of mercy.

This parable is actually quite simple. But it does require us to be honest about our baggage. If we forget that God has freed us from the heavy bag of sand we carried on our backs, we will be confined to a merciless existence – one in which we are trapped in a cycle of vengeance. Ready forever to inflict our pain on others, who will in turn pay that pain forward. It is a story as old as Cain.

But that is not what God wants for us. God is a God of liberation. We see this in today's Old Testament lesson. The God who freed the people from slavery in Egypt, longs also to free us from the economy of debt and bring us into an economy of mercy. Every absolution is a lesson. God is teaching us to be merciful by example.

Jesus is calling his community of disciples to participate in undoing the curse of Cain and Lamech that has kept their offspring trapped in spasms of envy, hatred, violence, and retribution across the generations to this day.³ He is calling us not only with this parable, but also by the example of his life and his death. He forgave even those who crucified him from the cross.

We are all debtors – both victim and perpetrator – with nothing to do but collapse into the mercy of God. And that means, in life, we have a choice: to obsess over all the ignorant, mean, hurtful, misguided things that other people do, to hold tightly to our grudges, to enact vengeance on those who cause us pain or we can look past all of that and gaze into the overwhelming mercy of God. Which is not to say that we don't confront sin in the life of the Church and the World; we do have a responsibility to confront evil and injustice. We just have a strange way of doing it. We are called to overcome evil with good; we respond to violence with love; and we answer the cycles of vengeance with forgiveness.

It's not easy. But as those old desert Fathers might say, “This is the way of salvation.” - for both the one who forgives and for the one who is forgiven.

1 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3393

2 The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 469.

3 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3393