Matthew 18:21-35
21 Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him, 25 and, as he could not pay, the lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, 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 slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
As we talked about last week, the context of chapter 18 is Tsadikah. Tsadikah- is a Hebrew word that is usually translated: Righteousness, but really refers to the complicated intersection of Justice and Mercy.
The Lectionary Committee ended last week’s reading at verse 20, but I decided to extend it 2 more verses, so this week we are picking up at verse 21, even though we looked at it last week, because verses 21 and 22 are the question that the parable is meant to answer.
To review – Peter’s question in verse 21 is a reflection of the reality that even when we communicate really, really well, sometimes people don’t choose to do the right thing. And sometimes, even though we have come to a resolution, forgiveness takes time. The bigger the hurt and the longer the duration of the harm, the longer it’s going to take for forgiveness to come to completion. Completion being the spiritual meaning of the number 7 in Hebrew thought, because on the 7th day creation was complete.
But of course, Jesus never just answers the question. Jesus had this really frustrating habit of turning the question around.
Starting with verse 23 Jesus explains that what he is about to say is a parable, not a true story. Note where Jesus says, “the kingdom of heaven MAY BE COMPARED to.
But also, the word translated as “king” actually means, “lord.” In the first century, “lord” was a common title for any kind of person in authority, from a landowner, to the title of a Caesar – “Our Lord and Savior.” Calling Jesus Lord, was a very political statement for the first century – akin to the Barmen Declaration of 1934, where a bunch of German clergy stated that Jesus is our Führer and no one else.
The author of Matthew choosing the word “lord,” is a pretty spicy start to this parable, so I wonder if the interpreters chose King to soften this or to set it in a more European monarchy style of speaking?
Either way, it’s important to recognize that this is a parable, that is, a metaphor for how the Kingdom of Heaven works, not a literal description of how the Kingdom of God works – and yes, Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven mean exactly the same thing!
Jesus was using an example of how things worked in the first century, where enslaving people was common and enslaved persons often found themselves in the position of having to borrow money to pay their bills.
I do not believe that Jesus is endorsing the kind of unjust economic structures that causes crippling debt, nor do I think that Jesus is endorsing slavery. As Rev Dr. Wilda C. Gafney writes in her commentary, A Woman’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, “While the parable is about mercy and forgiveness, it also speaks to social and economic inequity.” (p231)
Jesus is not endorsing slavery and economic injustice, Jesus is using this all too familiar situation as a simile for how forgiveness works in the Reign of God.
Verse 24 – Talent is a measurement of weight. Kind of like the British pound used to mean a pound of silver. One talent is basically the amount of gold or silver that a common person could earn with 16-20 years of full time labor.
So Jesus was employing hyperbole right off the bat in saying that the enslaved person owed 10 thousand talents because at an average wage of say, 18 years of labor per talent, 10,000 talents of debt would equal 180,000 years of labor.
Putting that into today’s terms, with the average median income in Oregon being around $70,000 a year that would mean a person owing 180,000 years of labor would owe 12 billion, 600 million dollars.
Jesus often started his parables with some kind of outrageous situation, both to get people’s attention and to point out the impossibleness of the real life situations of the average working class poor person.
So there’s this enslaved person who owes an impossible amount of money, so the lord is going to sell him and his family. Being sold was a terrifying prospect, because you didn’t know how your next enslaver was going to treat you or your family.
What if the next enslaver invalidates your marriage?
What if the next enslaver decides to do something awful to your children?
I’m using the terms, “enslaved” and “enslaver” because Black theologians, like Rev Dr Gaffney have asked us to use this language, because calling someone a slave makes it sound like it’s just a state of being, not the horrible violation of human rights that enslaving a human being really is. I am happy to talk more about this later if you’re curious.
So the enslaved husband and father falls on his knees and begs for time.
Which is the right thing to do.
This is one of the most common pieces of advice I give to people who come to me who are behind on their rent. Tell your landlord, right now, today, I will even sit with you while you make the call! Tell your landlord that you don’t have the money to pay the full amount as soon as possible. Usually, even if you don’t have the full amount, if you offer to make a partial payment, your landlord might be willing to accept a partial payment and set up a payment plan where you pay an additional $100 a month until the back rent is paid in full.
A tale as old as time!
So, in this case, the enslaver has pity on the man and look at verse 27 – what did the enslaver do?
The lord forgave his debt.
No payment plan.
180,000 years of work worth of debt canceled.
That’s some serious Grace!
I see the character of God in that kind of Grace.
So the man’s debt is forgiven.
That means that this man now owes nothing.
He owes nothing!
Which is why it is so horrible that this man walks out with his debt completely forgiven and then proceeds to shake down his fellow enslaved coworker and has NO MERCY.
His enslaved coworker says the exact same thing to the man that the man said to the lord, and the man shows them no mercy.
Verse 31: The other enslaved workers see this and complain to the lord, because it’s awful. And because that fellow enslaved person was the lord’s property, so the man had basically stolen the lord’s property by throwing his enslaved coworker into prison.
Verse 32 and 33: The Lord is disgusted with the enslaved man for his lack of mercy. Because why would he need to shake down his fellow enslaved person, when his full debt was forgiven?
Why? Anxiety.
When we have been harmed, we are often afraid to forgive.
We are afraid that if we forgive the person who harmed us that they will just harm us again because of how we define forgiveness.
We tend to mis-define forgiveness as letting it go.
Forgive and forget basically means to pretend that no harm was done.
Which is fine, when somebody ate the last piece of cheesecake in the fridge that you were saving for an after work snack, but I didn’t even bother to label it as mine. Just for example.
But forgiving and forgetting — pretending that no harm was done, does not work when serious harm has been done.
Serious harm, like when vows are betrayed.
Serious harm like when trust has been broken.
Serious harm like when the harm has been repeated again and again and again.
As I mentioned last week during our talk back, forgiveness and reconciliation are not the same thing.
One of my favorite definitions of forgiveness is from the novel, Christy, by Catherine Marshall.
“Real forgiveness includes total acceptance.”
What it means is that in order to really forgive someone you need to accept that what they did was actually as bad as it was.
Tutu and Tutu address this in The Book of Forgiving, as well. They break the process of Forgiveness into the Fourfold path:
Forgiving:Granting Forgiveness
Thank you to Rev Jenny Smith for this slide:
Anxiety can cause us to take the typical route of the Revenge Cycle:
- We experience hurt, harm or loss,
- Which causes us pain,
- Which makes us want to harm the person who harmed us – because hurt people hurt people
- But in order to justify hurting another human we must reject their shared humanity as a fellow Beloved Child of God
- Once we’ve justified ourselves we do the revenge, retaliation or payback
- Which is an act of violence or cruelty
- Which causes hurt, harm or loss
You will notice that Pain is the decision point
In our pain, do we choose to accept our own vulnerability or do we choose to show “them” that we aren’t vulnerable.
Anxiety tells us that if we choose to accept our vulnerability then others will take advantage of us.
Anxiety tells us that if we don’t show them who’s got the power, then they will think they have the power and hurt us again.
And we have a whole culture telling us not to show vulnerability.
A whole culture to tells us that if we are behind on the rent that its our fault, not the fault of an unjust economic system where according to the Labor Department:
corporate profits have risen 45% since 2020,
while wages have only risen 12% since 2020
And:
Groceries have gone up 35%
Rent is up 40%
And utilities have gone up 28%
Wages rose 12% and and bills grew 35%
That’s not laziness or a failure to budget on the part of the worker.
That’s an economic system that is designed to extract wealth from the poor and funnel it to the Billionaire class.
Anxiety isn’t lying about our vulnerability!
Anxiety wasn’t lying about the vulnerability of the enslaved man who owed 180,000 years worth of wages in debt.
The problem is, that vengeance gets us nowhere.
And that, just like the enslaved man in the parable, because we are so ridiculously vulnerable in the hands of the Billionaire class – the Lord’s who own the system we live within, we often take out our anxiety on our fellow workers.
We mis-direct our pain at our fellow enslaved workers who are just as caught in the system as we are.
Like the man in the parable, we can’t go after the system of economic injustice that allowed the Lord to enslave the man in the first place, so we go after the person who owes us, and make their life worse.
Then we’re so busy fighting each other, that no one holds the people who make the rules accountable.
The Four Fold Path sets us on the path to real change.
If we choose to heal then we:
- One, tell the story of what really happened.
- The enslaved man was so deeply in debt from just trying to survive that he was never going to get out of it. So out of his anxiety he had his co-worker put in prison for debt, even though the Lord had forgiven the debt
- Two, Name the Hurt
- The enslaved coworker was in prison which left his family without his support
- Grant Forgiveness
- The coworker accepts the reality of the hurt and chooses to forgive to set himself free from the anger.
- Renew or Release the Relationship
- The question of whether to renew or release the relationship is dependent upon the behavior of the enslaved man going forward which we don’t see in the parable.
What we see in the parable in verse 35, is that God expects us to choose vulnerability instead of anxiety.
Imagine with me that the enslaved man had encountered his co-worker in verse 28 and chose to be vulnerable.
What if the man had grasped his co-worker’s hands and shouted, my whole debt has been forgiven!!!
Since I don’t owe him, you don’t owe me!
Let’s get our families together and celebrate!
The co-worker was not the one who did harm to the enslaved man, anymore than a person who can’t pay their rent has done harm to me.
And the Lord, or the Landlord who is willing to forgive the debt has not done harm either.
The harm was done by the unjust economic system that is held together by the anxiety of those who cannot imagine the world working in a different way.
This is why Grace matters.
Grace and Forgiveness, instead of Anxiety and Blame, opens up new ways of thinking and being.
Grace and Forgiveness creates a path forward in relationship where our shared vulnerability helps us to imagine a more just world.
But when somebody is so invested in propping up systems of injustice that they can’t participate in the vulnerability of telling the story, naming the harm, and doing the work of Reconciliation by changing how they think and act…
Then we can forgive them, but we can’t reconcile with them.
We can be kind to them, but we can’t trust them.
We can protect our peace, not by forgetting the harm, but by naming the hurt for what it is.
Hurt people hurt people.
And hurt people don’t heal until they choose to.
…until we choose to
