Living Forgiveness in an Unforgiving World



Matthew 18:21-35


"Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?"

Did you ever wonder why - in this particular passage - Peter mentions a member of the “church” in a conversation with Jesus? Think about it. Jesus never formed a church. While he walked the earth, there was simply a loosely organized group of disciples that travelled with him and spread his message.

For this, and many other reasons, most biblical scholars believe that the gospel of Matthew, and all gospels for that matter, were written a considerable time after the physical presence of Jesus. The theory goes that the disciples told the stories of Jesus to the communities of believers they formed... the communities that would eventually become churches. They told these stories over and over again until they were finally written down in what we now know as the gospels.

Because the Gospel of Matthew is oriented toward the Hebrew bible and culture, most scholars believe that the community from which it was written was mostly Jewish... Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. And, most scholars believe that the collection of stories found in the gospel of Matthew was written down sometime after 70 A.D.

For those of you who don’t know this date, it marked a turning point for the Jewish faith. It was the year when the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, quashing a rebellion that had been going on for four years. They did so brutally and decisively. Joesphus, the historian, claimed that 1,100,000 people were killed during the siege – can you imagine? – and that 97,000 were captured and enslaved.

He writes:

“Men and women, old and young, insurgents and priests, those who fought and those who entreated mercy, were hewn down in indiscriminate carnage... The legionaries had to clamber over heaps of dead to carry on the work of extermination.



Now as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury, Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and Temple... there was left nothing to make those... believe it had ever been inhabited...”


These very same Jews - who gathered to share stories of the Messiah – would have been reeling from the Roman slaughter and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Even if they hadn’t been there to witness the horror, the ripples of this awful event had spread throughout the Jewish world. Their beloved Temple - the center of all things sacred and holy, the house of God! – had gone up in flames. It is hard to imagine the hurt, the fear, and the anger that these early believers had in their hearts from that awful, awful day.

Of all the stories they told of their Messiah, they chose the story of Peter asking Jesus about forgiveness to write down as gospel... as good news.

“How about seven times, Jesus, is that enough to forgive someone who sins against me?” Anyone who originally heard this exchange between Peter and Jesus - and certainly the Jews who told and re-told this story - would have known that Peter was being very generous. From the Torah, the maximum forgiveness was three times. Three strikes and you are out. Peter suggested seven. That’s more than double than expected.

But Jesus responded that the expectation for forgiveness was so much more. "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” It was almost beyond comprehension.

And then, as Jesus does again and again, he brings the point home with a parable: the kingdom of heaven is like a king who is settling accounts with his servants.
One of his servants - it must have been someone way up in the royal court, maybe he was even close to the king - a servant with influence and power over important things... expensive things… because this servant owed the king an almost unimaginable debt. In monetary terms, a talent was roughly equal to about 15 years worth of wages for the typical worker. The servant owed the king 10,000 talents, or about 150,000 years worth of income.

Because the servant couldn’t pay, the king was forced to order the servant to be sold - him and his entire family. A harsh measure, to be sure, but the king had to recoup some of his financial loss somehow. But, after the seeing the servant begged for mercy – a man who had possibly been quite close to the king – the heart of the king was moved, he released him forgiving the entire debt owed him.

No doubt, word would have gotten out about such an outrageously generous gesture. There would be scuttlebutt, among the other servants to be sure. The people might question the king’s management capabilities... maybe even his backbone. But, the king had been moved by the pleas of the servant. He had taken pity in his heart.

But, immediately after the servant had been forgiven of his debt, he found another servant who owed him a hundred denarii. One denarius was roughly a day’s wage for a typical worker, so the servant is owed the equivalent of 100 days of work. This is no small change, but neither is it an earth-shattering amount... maybe $15,000 in today’s value, more or less.

Yet, this servant - who had just been freed of an unimaginable debt - grabs the other by the throat demanding payment. Nothing changes in his heart. All he sees is what he is owed. He throws the other servant in prison until he could pay the debt.

We can imagine the scuttlebutt in the kingdom now. It’s important to keep in mind that the behavior of the servant is always a direct reflection on the king. This guy is getting all legalistic with one who owes him money?!? And over such a small amount, compared to the enormous amount he owed the king!

The upset servants tell the king, and we can imagine his shame. I felt for this guy! I stuck my neck out for him! I took a hit for him! Now, look what he does! The heart of the king - once moved to pity - is now all anger.

“You wicked slave!” the king says in the confrontation, “I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn't you be compelled to be merciful to your fellow servant who asked for mercy?” And the king does what he needs to do to restore his honor - for his servants and for himself. He hands the servant over to be tortured until he can pay his entire debt.

As challenging as this parable is, it makes quite clear what forgiveness is NOT about. For the servant - the one forgiven - it’s not a “get out of jail free card.” It’s not a free pass to go on abusing. And, for the king - the forgiver - it’s not about being a door mat and letting someone walk all over you.

At the end, we are left with a haunting, hyperbolic word of caution from Jesus: “The same thing will happen to you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

From the heart. The ending note for our scripture, and the beginning of forgiveness.

In our parable - and in our lives - forgiveness starts with the heart. Actually, the heart of the king. Alexander Pope famously quoted, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” God - whose heart is moved by our struggles our suffering and our pleas - forgives our sins. God has forgiven our debt - an amount beyond our comprehension - and set us free.
We no longer need worry anxiously about how to pay what we owe or to fear the coming punishment because there is no way we could ever pay it. The debt has been forgiven... we have been forgiven... completely! This is good news!

And, our hearts get to be in on it. We’re expected to be in on it. In fact, to refuse to forgive - especially in those instances that are so minuscule compared with our own sins - reflects so poorly on our Master. And, don’t think that there’s not scuttlebutt when we refuse to forgive. People notice. Especially people looking from the outside. There has been a lot of talk lately about how we can get more people to come to our church. How can we proclaim a God of forgiveness with any ounce of credibility when we are unable to show forgiveness in our own lives?!?

Ah, if only it were so easy. Remember, we’re talking about the heart here.

On this tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, it’s hard for our hearts not to be moved... for the innocent victims, for the heroic first responders who selflessly gave their lives, for the families who grieve to this day. It’s also hard for our hearts not to be hardened... out of fear, out of anger... especially at the thought of such a horrific act being motivated by a religious conviction.

I must confess that I was more than a bit skeptical at all the talk of things never being the same after September 11th. And, yet, when one scans back over the past ten years, I can’t help but wonder... the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the Tsunami in the pacific, the devastation of hurricane Katrina, the burst of the housing bubble, the subsequent global economic recession... it’s been a rough ten years.

Yet, I thank God for those faithful Jews from Matthews community - those who dared to believe in a Messiah and passed down the stories. I thank God they chose to remember the story where their Master compelled them to forgive. Even after they lost it all, they understood the power of forgiveness. They knew fear and anger and violence, and yet they believed that forgiveness was the Way to the kingdom of heaven.

Remember, my sisters and brothers, that the arc of history is long. Even as we remember the events of September 11, when four hijacked airplanes wreaked such destruction and woe, let us also remember the events of 2000 years ago. Let us remember, as David Lose, reminds us:

… when God's own Son, surveying a field of broken lives and desolate hearts, chose to call down from heaven forgiveness, not vengeance, and in this way opened a future marked not by judgment but by mercy, not by calculations but trust, not by despair but hope, not by fear but courage, not by violence but healing, not by scarcity but abundance, not by hate but love, and not by death but by new life. That's what forgiveness can do. May God give to all of us a palpable sense of the forgiveness in which -- and by which -- we live and grant us the faith and courage to walk into the future such forgiveness creates.