MATTHEW 18:21-35
The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[a]
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[b] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[c] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Let us pray,
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts, be pleasing and acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer…
Today’s Scripture reading is a parable about forgiveness. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus often speaks in parables. To teach his disciples how they are to follow him in their daily lives. As far as parables go. The parable of the unmerciful servant is a relatively straightforward one. We are to forgive others the way that our Father in Heaven has forgiven us.
I said this parable is straightforward. Straightforward does not mean easy to apply to our daily lives. Forgiveness is hard. Like really hard. Forgiveness is hard because it requires us to let go of the hurt another person has caused us.
But forgiveness is also a necessary discipline in the life of faith. Because if we don’t learn to let go of our hurt, we will turn around and look for ways to hurt others. Hurt people hurt people. Worse still, forgiveness appears to be pretty important to Jesus. If we don’t forgive those who have trespassed against us, we anger God.
The parable of the unmerciful servant begins with a king forgiving the debt of one of his servants. The servant owes the king 10,000 denarri. Each denarri is a day’s wage for a laborer. Basically the servant owed the king 27 years of labor. This is a ridiculous amount of money the king forgives. It is an amount of money the servant may never have been able to pay back. The king teaches us what it looks like to forgive an unforgivable debt.
The servant is supposed to be a changed man as a result of the king’s extravagant forgiveness. Since the king forgave him, he is to go out into the world and forgive others. But the servant behaves as though the king didn’t forgive his debt. He refuses to forgive his servant’s debt.
This servant owed him 100 denarri. Labor that could be paid off in 4 months or so. A much smaller amount that the servant owed the king. Still the servant refuses to forgive this debt. When the king hears of the servant’s actions, he hands him over to jailers to be tortured.
Why doesn’t the servant forgive his servant’s debt? I think it’s because the servant has been hurt by a system that forces a laborer to take on a debt he can never repay, in order to survive. Even though the king forgave him, this one act of forgiveness isn’t powerful enough to undo the trauma that comes from selling yourself in order to survive. In the end it feels safer for him to hurt his servant than to trust in the healing power of forgiveness.
I think this is why Jesus tells Peter we are to forgive one another seven times seven times. Jesus says this not to give Peter a goal number of times he should forgive another person But to show Peter that we are to think about forgiveness as a well that never runs dry. When we forgive someone, we extend to another the forgiveness that God first showed us. It is not us doing the forgiveness but Christ acting through us. Since there is no limit to God’s forgiveness of us, neither should there be a limit of our forgiveness of our neighbors.
Now, forgiveness would be great if a life of discipleship only involved me and Jesus. But, as we learned last week, we live our discipleship in the context of Christian community. So I have to deal with you. And all the things about you that drive me crazy. And you have to deal with me. And all the things about me that drive you crazy. And forgiveness is really, really, hard when you have to forgive all the things that drive you crazy.
Thankfully, forgiveness is not dependant on our own strength or character. Forgiveness comes from God. God, in Christ, gives us the gift of forgiveness. And God, in the Spirit, helps us share that gift with others. When we forgive others, we get in on what God is already doing in our midst.
Now I think for many of us, it is much harder to forgive the little things that annoy us about someone else than it is to forgive the big things. It’s often easier to forgive large debts that we know will never actually be repaid. Then it is to forgive my friend who cannot, for the life of him, show up to a meeting on time. But my unwillingness to forgive my friend has far greater consequences for the person I am becoming. Because I have far more opportunities to practice forgiveness with my friend who is always late than to forgive a debt I never expected to be paid back for.
In our daily lives we are much more likely to need to forgive someone, again and again, for the little things then for the big things. My friend is going to be late again. And I am going to be annoyed by his lateness again. And I am going to need to forgive his lateness again. So that my annoyance of his behavior doesn’t derail our friendship. While holding on to small grievances (He’s late AGAIN!) may not feel like a big deal in the moment, over the course of our lifetimes, these petty grievances define who we are.
If forgiveness sounds like lifelong, daily work, it is. On the days where I’m really struggling to forgive someone who is late for a meeting AGAIN. I have to remind myself of two things:
This parable challenges us to consider who we need to forgive. And what small steps we might take to bring about peace and reconciliation within our communities of faith. I believe that forgiveness is at the core of our call to Christian discipleship. We cannot say we follow Jesus if we are unwilling to forgive those who hurt us.
As witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we proclaim not just that God loves us. But that in Christ, God forgives and reconciles and makes new. And we live that out in our lives by forgiving those who have sinned against us.
Friends I hope you will practice forgiveness in your own lives because it will free you to live fully in the present. You will no longer be bound by your past hurts. You will no longer look for opportunities to exorcise your past hurts on other people. Instead you can get in on what God is already doing in our church, our community, and our world.
Thanks be to God,
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.