Matthew 18:21-35

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost | 17 September 2023 | Matthew 18:21-35 | Paul Bieber |

Matthew 18:21-35 Revised Standard Version

            ²¹ Peter came up and said to Jesus, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” ²² Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.

            ²³ “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴ When he began the reckoning, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents; ²⁵ and as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. ²⁶ So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ ²⁷ And out of pity for him the lord of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. ²⁸ But that same servant, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ ²⁹ So his fellow servant fell down and besought him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ ³⁰ He refused and went and put him in prison till he should pay the debt. ³¹ When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. ³² Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you besought me; ³³ and should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ ³⁴ And in anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. ³⁵ So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

also

Genesis 50:15-21

Psalm 103:[1-7] 8-13

Romans 14:1-2

The Power of Forgiveness

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

We heard last Sunday the verses just before today’s Gospel, from Jesus’ Discourse on the Church in St. Matthew chapter 18. We heard that if a brother or sister—another member of the Church—sins against us, we are to go to that person to reason with him, to rebuke without rancor but with a view toward reconciliation. Jesus lays out the whole process: first one-to-one, then with one or two others, finally bringing the matter before the whole congregation.

Now Peter asks, How many times do I have to do this? Doubtless he thought himself generous in offering to engage in this process as many as seven times with the same sinner. By taking that seven times seventy, Jesus is not suggesting that 490 times is sufficient, but rather that we should drop dead to the whole business of counting sins and reconciliation attempts.

Then Jesus proceeds to tell a parable—a parable of the kingdom, a parable of grace, a parable of judgment. No other parable confronts us so starkly with the contrast between God’s mercy and love, and our merciless lovelessness. It’s a parable of the kingdom; it begins: “the kingdom of heaven may be compared with a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants,” as in the harvest that concludes the agricultural parables; the drawing ashore of the net; and the last parable, the Son of Man coming in his glory to separate the sheep from the goats.

When it comes to settling the accounts, though, one who owes ten thousand talents is brought before the king. This is an impossible sum ever to repay. Ten thousand was the largest unit of number, and the talent was the largest unit of currency. The servant owes an impossibly large debt to the king, beyond the biggest stack of money imaginable. The servant’s death is incalculable—as is our debt to God. As we sing in the hymn, “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy,” “’Tis not all we owe to Jesus; it is something more than all” (LBW 290).

The king does not “settle the account” by canceling the debt because of the servant’s extravagant promise to repay everything someday. The king makes no calculation of profit or loss or payment schedules. He drops dead to bookkeeping. And the servant has lost his old life by the grace of the forgiving king. He leaves the throne room ready to enjoy his new life, set free and forgiven, right?

Wrong. The servant wants to hold on to his old life. This is the only way to make sense of his mercilessness to his fellow servant. He has not experienced forgiveness—finding by losing—at all. He missed the new life forgiveness gave him. This servant and God’s grace somehow passed each other like ships in the night. What about us? Do we demand from others what we think they owe us, forgetting the immensity of the debt God has forgiven us?

This inability to recognize grace leads to judgment. The fellow servants, quite rightly distressed, lay the matter before their lord. The lord, the king, hands the unforgiving servant over to the very justice he had insisted on for himself. Judgment is the effect God’s infinite love produces in an all-too-finite loveless person. A loveless person who closes the door to divine mercy out of a narrow, calculating understanding of justice condemns himself. God’s love judges no one; the judgment is the man’s refusal truly to accept God’s love that does not keep score, when it came to what the man thought he was owed.

All of us who are called to live the values of the kingdom find ourselves in this place of both grace and judgment. St. Augustine asks, Is there anyone who is not God’s debtor? Only a person in whom no sin can be found. Is there anyone who has no one in his debt? Only one who has never suffered any wrong. Do you think there is anyone who has not in turn wronged another in some way, incurring debt? All are debtors and have others in debt to them. Just as you want to be forgiven, so someone is in need of your forgiveness. Jesus’ answer to our indebtedness is his death on the cross, and we are called to do likewise with those who have offended us. Unless we are willing to die to ourselves, we will miss the new life.

St. Paul drives the irony deeper. We who sit in judgment on others do not even belong to ourselves. We owe our very selves to the forgiving goodness of Christ, who has already gone to the cross to take away our debt to God. None of us lives to himself. We owe our very existence to God who made us. We owe our future, opened by forgiveness, to the one who canceled our debt.

True forgiveness doesn’t keep score. Every time you forgive someone, you pass on a bit of the forgiveness that God has given you, yet somehow you don’t have any less of it. But if you’re still thinking about how many times you have forgiven, you haven’t really forgiven; you’re just postponing revenge.

Joseph’s brothers thought that maybe he was just postponing revenge. He had brought his famine-stricken family down to Egypt where he had risen from the slavery into which they sold him to a place second only to Pharoah. But now that their father Jacob has died, the brothers are thinking that revenge, that dish best served cold, is on Joseph’s mind. So they concoct a story: before he died, Dad said you should forgive us, please. Just to sweeten the deal, they offer to be his slaves—what a turnaround! But Joseph has come to understand, through his innocent sufferings, that God writes straight with crooked lines. “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” Joseph has suffered wrong but he has died to bookkeeping with his brothers and so freely forgives.

In the tenement churches of Rome to which St. Paul writes his great Epistle, there are Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. In this last part of the letter, Paul writes of the way people who observe different individual practices can live in harmony. In the Lutheran Church we call questions about what Christians eat or what holy days Christians observe adiaphora, “indifferent things.” But we know that it is precisely the differences over these practices that can cause church members to judge each other and refuse forgiveness to those they believe are making secondary things into primary things.

The primary thing, Paul says, is to do all that we do in honor of the Lord and to give thanks to God. All our living, and all our dying, are to the Lord. Christ’s death and resurrection are the reference point for our lives, not our preferences and rules. Forgiveness and reconciliation are at the heart of the life of the Christian community. In the Church, in our families, throughout our lives, there is no power greater than forgiveness.

The weak in faith in Rome are an example of the poor in spirit, like Joseph’s fearful brothers or a man overwhelmed by debt. Jesus’ parable preaches to these the good news of forgiveness, sola gratia. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom. The parable teaches that a new life flows from this forgiveness: blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. But unblessed are the unmerciful. Following Christ entails a lifelong pilgrimage of blessing as we receive and give forgiveness; there is no power greater than forgiveness.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber

San Diego, California, USA

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net