18 Pentecost, Year A

“COULDN’T WE JUST SKIP THIS ONE?”
Proper 19 -- Ecclesiasticus 27: 30 – 28: 7; Psalm 103: 8 – 13; Romans 14: 5 – 12; Matthew 18: 21 – 35
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker. given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Couldn’t we just skip this one?

This Gospel text makes me uncomfortable.

It reminds me of my own hard-heartedness, my own stubbornness and unwillingness to forgive.

“How often should I forgive my brother”, Peter asks…..

Thanks, Peter.

We could have done without this question, couldn’t we?

But Peter is the one who’s constantly barging into the difficult situations. He’s the one who’s not afraid to jump over the side of the boat, into the raging waters. He’s not the least bit shy about getting in Jesus’ face about His prediction of His coming suffering and death: “This shall never happen to you!” Peter said.

Maybe Peter’s head wasn’t screwed on tightly when he asked the Lord this question, “If my brother sins against me, how often should I forgive him?”

Or, maybe Peter was simply picking up on an important thread that was part of Jesus’ teaching about discipline within the body of Christ, that is, the Church, the text we read last week.

Remember that bit about “regaining your brother or sister”, which we read last week? That seems to be one of the main reasons for the detailed instructions our Lord gives us about how to treat a brother or sister who’s offended us (or the Church) in some way…. “Keep reaching out to him or her” seems to be the idea… “Treat them as a Gentile or a tax collector,” Jesus says. After all, that’s what Jesus did: He kept reaching out to these outcasts, these outsiders, trying to restore the ties of love which can conquer any obstacle, any barrier of human making.

So, last Sunday’s text about discipline in the Church, and this Sunday’s reading, which begins with Peter’s question, “If my brother sins against me”, are linked. The word “my brother” is the link.

Having linked the two ideas: church discipline and forgiveness, let’s move on now to the text itself.

Notice, first of all, that Jesus gives an astronomical answer: Forgive your brother or your sister 77 times! (Or, as some manuscripts read, “seventy times seven” = 490 times).

No doubt Peter thought he’d provided the perfect answer as part of his question, “How many times should I forgive my brother, seven times?” You see, in biblical reckoning, “seven times” of anything was a complete unit, just like the creation of the world is described as having taken seven days, at the end of which God rested from all His labors. Seven is the number of completeness.

But Jesus’ answer, outlining a multiple of that complete number, is followed by a parable in which He describes the debt owed by the servant to the King in astronomical terms….10,000 talents was a lot of money in biblical times, about equal to the wages of a day laborer for 150,000 years.[1]

Jesus uses this parable to dramatize the great forgiveness that is ours when God lays aside our debt and burden of sin. That’s the point, I think.

Moreover, the king in Jesus’ parable not only forgives the debt, but recasts it as a loan.[2] (Notice that the stage is now set for the king to recall the unforgiving servant, in order to assert his continuing control over that servant through the recasting of the debt as a loan….Our Lord is a master storyteller!)

But, by way of hyperbole, Jesus turns the tables, casting the light of our eyes on the unforgiving ways of the servant, who refuses to forgive a very small debt of only 100 denarii, equal to about three-to-four-months’ wages for a day laborer in Jesus’ day.

“Pay what you owe!”, the unforgiving servant demands of his friend, grabbing him by the throat.

It is then that the unforgiving servant’s fellow servants, acting in accordance with the mechanisms our Lord outlined in last week’s Gospel reading, use those mechanisms to take their witness to the man’s actions to the king: Having observed the actions of this hard-hearted man, they take their notice of the offense to the next higher (and only other) level, just as Matthew 18: 15 – 20 says they should.

As usual, Jesus’ parable ends with a “zinger” that is so typical of Matthew’s writing style: Just at the end of the parable, we read this, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or your sister from your heart.”

Matthew really wants us to get the point, doesn’t he? That’s the purpose of this one-line summary of the meaning of the parable. No possible interpretation of the parable is left to chance, none at all: “So will my heavenly Father do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or your sister from your heart.”

Matthew’s desire for clarity is also found in his fondness for repeating himself….Matthew often includes two of Jesus’ teachings on any given subject, just so we are entirely clear about Jesus’ meaning and intent.[3]

With regard to Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness, the other passage Matthew relates to us in which Jesus deals with the issue of forgiveness: ours and the Lord’s, may be found in chapter six, beginning at verse 14….This passage follows the Lord’s Prayer, and it explains the line (which we say week-by-week on our Communion service), “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Here (verse 14), we read, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive you.”

Couldn’t we just skip this one, too?

It makes us uncomfortable, because it reminds us that we are to be a channel of God’s forgiveness.

Apparently, if we do not forgive others, God will not forgive us.

God’s forgiveness stops with us, if we hoard it.

God’s forgiveness cannot be our personal, private possession, according to this text.

God’s forgiveness means that we control the “tap” of God’s forgiveness….For if I forgive others, then God will open the floodgates of forgiveness for me. We hold the key, we are in charge.

We can choose to block God’s forgiveness, or we can choose to be conduits for God’s forgiveness.

God’s forgiveness is the lifeblood of human relationships, and it is the lifeblood of our relationship with God.

God’s forgiveness flows out of His overwhelming love for us. Like the king in today’s parable, the depths of His forgiveness stem from His mercy and His love. How else can we explain the cancelling of the debt, and its recasting as a loan?

We’re on the hook!

The God who is more ready to hear than we are to pray, the God who is more ready to forgive than we are to ask for forgiveness, or to offer it to others, stands, waiting for us to realize that the blessings of God’s forgiveness do not flow in one direction only, that is to say, only to us.

No, God’s forgiveness can flow into us only to the extent that we allow forgiveness to flow out of us to others.

For we are called as Christians to be conduits, channels of God’s grace, God’s love, and God’s forgiveness.

I don’t know about you, but this text makes me uncomfortable. I’d just like to skip it and go on to next week’s reading.

For it reminds me that I fall short of God’s standard of forgiveness. I fall short because of pride, because of shortsightedness that makes me think “it’s all about me”, and because I have a short memory that forgets God’s blessings.

May Almighty God enable us to see the larger picture, to remember God’s past faithfulness and generosity, and to soften the soil of our hearts, that we may be instruments of God’s grace and God’s forgiveness.

AMEN.

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[1] A talent was equal to about 6,000 drachmas. A day laborer, who was paid one denarius per day, could earn one talent in about 15 years’ worth of work. One report suggests that the entire tax burden exacted by King Herod was about 900 talents per year in Jesus’ day.
[2] Alas, this detail is missing from the Revised Standard Version (RSV) translation we use, as it is in other renderings, as well. They characterize the amount owed as a “debt”, but the Greek states it is a “loan”.
[3] A good example of Matthew’s fondness for including two of Jesus’ teachings may be found in Jesus’ teachings on marriage and divorce. Compare the teachings as they are found in Matthew 5: 31 – 32 and 19: 3 – 10, for example.