March 22, 2015
Matthew 18:21-35
“Forgive”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
The 18th chapter of the gospel of Matthew; it’s full of the teaching of Jesus. No healings. No exorcisms. No conversations. No taking, breaking, and blessing of bread. Just teaching. Jesus teaching and two brief questions from the disciples. Before the text we read just now, right at the beginning of chapter 18 the disciples asked Jesus “who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And then that question from Peter, “Lord, how often should I forgive.” All the rest, here in Matthew 18, all the rest is from Jesus. It’s all Jesus.
He calls a child over and puts the young one there among the disciples; “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me,” he says. Jesus goes on to warn about putting a stumbling block before a little one and he does one of those rhetorical hyperbolic riffs about cutting off body parts and tearing out eyes that cause you to stumble. And he tells that one about the shepherd who has a hundred sheep and leaves the ninety nine to go in search of the one that went astray. “I tell you, he rejoices over it more than the ninety-nine that never went astray. It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost,” Jesus says.
But he’s not done! Here still in the same chapter Jesus offers that teaching about taking one or two of the members with you to visit a brother or sister who has sinned against you. It’s a rather detailed process he gives. “If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.” If the offender still refuses let them be like a tax collector to you. “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” If two or three of you agree on anything you ask, Jesus says, it will be done. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” There’s that priceless promise about the presence of Christ forever sealed into the church’s collective soul. It comes not in a vignette about the disciples at worship or an exhortation about them doing mighty things with just small numbers, in comes in Jesus’ teaching about discipline, accountability, and forgiveness.
“Then Peter came and said to Jesus, ‘Lord if a brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy times seven” times”. Which, in terms of biblical numbers, any way you shape it, it’s Jesus telling Peter you have to do it this many times (fingers flashing). Put another way, you have to do it every time, forgive every time. “For this reason” Jesus says, “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to…”.
Here in this chapter that’s pretty much all from the lips of Jesus, after Peter asks about how many times he needs to forgive, Jesus doesn’t look around the room to find someone to use as an object lesson on forgiveness so that Peter can practice. He doesn’t lay out a step by step process on forgiveness that involves this member and then these members and then the church. He doesn’t try to parse the word “forgiveness” in a Sermon on the Mount kind of way like he did with “adultery” (defining it as in the heart). He doesn’t give a real life example like when teaching on generosity he pointed to the poor widow who put in the two copper coins, all the living that she had. He doesn’t get practical and specific, like when he tells the disciples to “pray then like this.”. No, when Peter asks Jesus how often he had to forgive someone, Jesus says “for this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to….” And he goes on to tell them the parable about the king and the unforgiving servant.
A king decides its time to settle up with all the help. One slave has run up a debt so large it is beyond calculation. The text says “ten thousand talents”. That’s 150,000 year’s worth of wages for a worker. The debt was a million-zillon-gazillion. After the king orders the man and his family to be sold, all their possessions liquidated in order to salvage a “million-zillion-gazillioneth” of a basis point on the debt return, the slave asks for patience and promises to pay back everything; which of course is insultingly impossible. The king, however, has pity on the slave. Releases him. AND FORGIVES THE DEBT!
That same slave, that same day, or as the bible might put it elsewhere, “immediately” that same slave went out and came upon a colleague, a fellow servant, another slave who owed him ten or twenty bucks. The freshly forgiven slave grabs the other by the throat demanding to be paid. “Give me a break. I will pay” was the response of the slave being choked. The one who couldn’t breathe. The debt free slave refused and demanded that the one who had borrowed something like a day’s wage be thrown into prison until he paid, which of course he would not be able to do from prison with any earnable income now off the table. Some other slaves, they captured the whole thing on their cell phones and went and showed the video to the king who was so mad at the wicked slave’s unwillingness to pass “debt forgiveness” forward that he handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt of a million, zillion, gazillion. Which means he was to be tortured forever. “So my heavenly Father will also do to everyone one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or your sister from your heart,” Jesus offers the editorial exclamation point to the parable. And Peter looks at the other disciples, and asks in somewhat of a whisper, “The word of the Lord?”
All the ways and the things Jesus taught in Matthew 18, all that form and content about being humble like a child and not being a stumbling block and searching for the one lost and taking members with you to confront someone who has wronged you, after all of that, when it comes to forgiveness, Jesus tells this blasted parable. It was like Jesus somehow knew that humankind forever would have much a more visceral reaction to and have a harder time forgiving debt than forgiving sin. It’s interesting how many commentators, preachers, and teachers point to Jesus use of humor here. Humor, I guess, in the hyperbole of the size of the debt. But as the saints in my first congregation would say, “it might be funny, but it’s not “ha-ha”. There are many other adjectives one could use to describe the parable before getting to “funny”. Chilling. Disconcerting. Violent. Assertive. Absurd. Upsetting. Sure, the debt is a crazy amount but what about the seizing around the neck and the thrown in jail for 20 bucks and the tortured part. The only other reference to torture in the four gospels is the suffering of Jesus.
Oh, and then Jesus comments on the parable mentioning that the heavenly Father will do that to you also if you do not forgive. Jesus is wickedly serious about forgiveness! You don’t explain away a parable like this. You certainly don’t chuckle it away either. All you can do is let it knock you off kilter, make your head spin, and jerk the chain of your heart over and over again. Because God’s forgiveness of us is absurd and God’s call for us to forgive is chillingly assertive.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Forgive us our sin as we forgive those who sin against us. Debts. Trespassses. Sins. Translation confusion abounds. As Carol Wehrheim notes, “perhaps the best thing to do is to focus on the verb in the prayer: forgive”. When it comes to forgiveness, Jesus isn’t messing around. While you and I are trying to figure out which is the best word to use, what works best with children, what makes sense up here (in the brain) what offers the better connotation and reflects our Lord’s intent (sins, trespasses, debts), Jesus is off telling the parable about the king and the unforgiving servant. While you and I are still talking about how difficult forgiveness can be, and whether or not one can or has to forgive and forget, Jesus has already moved on to tell the parable about the king and the unforgiving servant. While you and I are engaged in healthy and meaningful theological banter about whether forgiveness comes only after someone asks, or whether repentance is a prerequisite for forgiveness and necessary for justice to flow, Jesus is yet again telling the parable about the king and the unforgiving servant. While you and I are rightly regale one another with stories of famous forgivers like Nelson Mandela or Ernie Zamperini, Jesus tells the parable about the king and the unforgiving servant yet one more time. “Jesus what does it mean, ‘forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”. Jesus responds, “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to…”
It happens pretty regularly in an ecumenical gathering where the Lord’s Prayer is said. Ecumenical gathering, not a meeting, but a wedding or a funeral or an occasional community worship service. The Lord’s Prayer is said and all the Methodists and the Roman Catholics and the Episcopalians and the Baptists and the Presbyterians all join in. There is that awkward moment in the cadence, right? It happened again yesterday at Margaret Merrill’s memorial service. Those in the room who say debts and debtors, they have to wait, they have to pause, for the others to catch up; as we forgive those who trespass against us, who sin against us. Call it the debtors pause. What if the pause was more than just an act of hospitality and a good practice for successful unison prayer? What if everyone praying the Lord’s Prayer, what if we all (trespasses, sins, debts), what if everyone just stopped at that point? There ought to be a pause, a break, a silence. Forgiveness: it’s all so beyond words. And when you are confronted once again with the absurd forgiveness of God and God’s chillingly assertive expectation that you will forgive, it ought to knock you off kilter, make your head spin, and jerk the chain of your heart over and over again.
© 2015, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.