Any Limits to Forgiveness? —Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost 16A/Proper 19A (Matthew 18)

Matthew 18:21-35 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

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.”

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                According to Jesus, if someone sins against you, as a member of the church, there is a process of restoration/forgiveness. That process, which looks a bit like excommunication, is designed to restore those who, like the lost sheep in an earlier parable, go astray (Mt. 18:10-20). If we didn’t get the hint that this process is designed to restore and not exclude, we come to the next reading in the Revised Common Lectionary. Peter, who had been given the keys of the kingdom so that he and his companions could bind and loose those needing forgiveness, comes to Jesus with a question of clarification concerning this forgiveness business.

                Peter has a good question for Jesus. After all, he’s been given a commission to serve as a church leader and he’ll need to know how often he should engage in this process of restoration, which requires an act of forgiveness. So, when someone offends you, how often must you forgive them? Peter even has a suggested number, which he thinks (and we might think) is rather generous. Is seven sufficient? I’m sure that Jesus’ answer disappointed Peter. I can see him standing there in shock when Jesus told him that instead of seven, try seventy-seven times or maybe even seventy times seven, which is 499. Whether seventy-seven or one shy of five hundred, that’s a lot of times to forgive. I’m not sure any of us has the wherewithal to keep track of that many times. So, let’s just say that you can’t keep track. That’s the point. As Fred Craddock and Eugene Boring write: “The difference between Peter’s proposal and Jesus’ pronouncement, however, is not a matter of math or linguistics but of the nature of forgiveness. Whoever counts has not forgiven at all but is only bidding his or her time (1 Cor. 13:5). The kind of forgiveness called for is beyond all calculation, as the following story communicates” [The People’s New Testament Commentary, p. 76].  So, if someone offends you, forgive them. That would be every time. That might not seem fair, but that’s the way Jesus sees the issue. If you and Peter have problems with this answer, take it up with Jesus.    

                Peter’s question leads to another parable that describes and defines God’s realm. It’s a parable of forgiveness or the lack thereof. The link between Peter’s question and the parable that follows makes a lot of sense. After all, if you’ve been forgiven then it makes sense that you would forgive others. That doesn’t mean forgiveness comes easily, but the connection makes sense. Now, Peter might have thought that when he suggested that seven times, he thought he was being generous. If I’m honest, I would agree. Perhaps you do as well!

                When we consider Peter’s question in context, we need to remember that the question follows Jesus’ instructions about restoring the wayward church member (lost sheep). We often read texts like this individualistically, but contextually this needs to be understood in the context of the community of faith. We should not take this as a blanket get-out-of-jail-free card. We shouldn’t use this to excuse a husband’s behavior who abuses his wife. The husband might be restored to fellowship, but not to the marriage.  Peter’s question is set in the context of the church and a process of accountability.  Of course, as I noted last week, we struggle in the modern church with accountability in the church. 

We move now to the rather hyperbolic Parable of the Unforgiving Servant which is intended to shock us into recognizing our own inconsistency when it comes to forgiveness. As with many of Jesus’ Kingdom parables, Jesus begins by letting us know that he is about to compare the message of the parable with his understanding of God’s realm. While that reference to the realm (the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew) might lead us to think eschatologically, such that this might apply in some future realm but not the church. Such thinking, however, would be wrong. This has this world application and is designed to address how the folks in the church get along. Yes, it does speak of judgment, but the point of the parable is how folks in the church relate to each other. In other words, we’re all numbered among the slaves in this parable.

                While God’s realm might be larger than the church, the church as it stands is an expression of God’s realm. Therefore, according to this parable, an important dimension of the realm is forgiveness and restoration. The principle of forgiveness illustrated here should prove helpful since anyone who has experienced community knows, we tend to step on each other’s toes and worse. 

This parable is filled with hyperbole. That’s intended to get our attention. The parable begins with an announcement that a king wants to settle accounts with his slaves (subjects?). The first one up owes a tidy sum of 10,000 talents. To get a sense of the debt owed, a talent was the largest denomination of coin in that part of the world, and he owed 10,000 of them. So, we’re talking billions of dollars in modern currency if not much more. Alan Culpepper notes that the annual tribute (taxes) owed by Judea, Samaria, and Idumea came to around 600 talents. He owes considerably more. Based on the exchange rate at the time, it would take a day laborer earning a denarius a day over 150,000 years to pay it off.  How a slave or servant could rack up that big a debt is not revealed, though this slave must have been a rather high-ranking slave, maybe a tax collector [Matthew, NLT, pp. 350-351]. Whatever the amount owed, it’s too large a number to ever be paid off.   Whatever the amount, it’s much too large to ever be repaid. So, the slave, who cannot repay the debt is in dire straits. The king orders him, his wife, his children, and all his possessions to be sold as payment. It might not be 10,000 talents, but what else could be offered? I’m assuming that there are not any bankruptcy laws on the books that would allow the man to dissolve the debt. The slave is in such a desperate situation that he doesn’t have anything to lose, so begs the king to show compassion to him. Just be patient he tells the king, and I’ll pay back what I owe.  With nothing to lose, the slave begs for compassion. This must be a rather gracious ruler because the king is so moved by his pleas that he grants the debtor clemency. The king simply writes off the debt. Even if there aren’t bankruptcy courts, the king has the power to wipe out debt. Therefore, the man gets to start afresh. We read something similar in 2 Corinthians 5, where Paul tells us that in Christ all things become new (2 Cor. 5:17). This is the gospel of God’s realm, and therefore the message of the church.  This is the message of the kingdom and therefore of the church as well.   

In my spiritual imagination, I see this man running out of the courthouse and skipping down the steps shouting praises for his good fortune. The debt is gone. He’s a free man. He can go home to his wife and kids who aren’t getting sold off. Yes, all is good. That is until he spots another slave who owes the forgiven slave a small but relatively easily repaid debt. It’s only one hundred denarii. That’s about three months’ wages, not the 150,000 years’ worth of wages the forgiven slave owed. Now, you would think that the slave who was granted clemency would walk over to his fellow slave and tell him that all is forgiven. But that’s not the way things worked out.

Instead of showing the fellow slave the same grace and mercy shown to him, the slave who had been forgiven ran over to his colleague, seized him by the throat, and demanded immediate repayment. How could this be? Especially the violent reaction. His colleague pleaded with the forgiven slave for some extra time, and he would repay the loan. Just be patient. But for some reason, this Scrooge-like character won’t be persuaded. He wants it now. Since he didn’t have the money at that moment, this character has the man thrown into debtor’s prison. Now, you would think that a person who had been forgiven a debt that would take a couple of lifetimes to repay would be more understanding. But that’s not the case here. Unlike the king who had compassion on him, he had no compassion for his colleague.

  As you might expect, this didn’t sit well with the other slaves who these two events. They saw how the king showed compassion and completely forgave the unpayable debt. They also witnessed this same man throw a fellow slave in prison over a repayable debt. They decided to tell the king what they had witnessed. This report, as you can imagine, greatly distressed the king. Therefore, the king had the man arrested and brought before him. He asked the man why he didn’t show the same mercy to his fellow slave as the king had shown him. It’s a good question.

Although earlier in Matthew 18, Jesus told Peter that one should forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven or seventy times seven times, this king who had shown great mercy to this slave who owed him such a great sum couldn’t extend mercy in this case. To quote a former President, it wouldn’t be prudent. That’s because the slave did not understand the true nature of forgiveness. If you have been forgiven much, surely you can show mercy/forgiveness to others. Since the once-forgiven slave had acted inappropriately, he faced a great penalty. The king called him wicked and told him he should have shown mercy to his colleague. Here’s where things get a bit unsettling. You see the king handed him over to be tortured until he paid that unpayable debt. You know, the one that would take 150,000 or more years to pay off.

                Having revealed the fate of the unforgiving slave, Jesus makes an application. “So my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (Mt. 18:35). It would seem, if we take this literally, that if we, whom God has forgiven much, do not forgive others who owe us a debt (not necessarily financial), we face substantial time being tortured. This is one of those passages that is often used to underscore a “biblical” defense of the doctrine of hell. The parable doesn’t mention fire and brimstone, but torture that goes on forever is like hell. So, the moral of the story is this: Since you have been forgiven, be sure to forgive others. The consequences of failing to do this pose a danger to each of us. This final sequence is troubling and probably needs to be approached with care.

                So how might we read this parable, especially in relation to Peter’s question about forgiveness? One thing we likely ought to do is to bring into the picture the Lord’s Prayer. Consider that we pray that God would forgive us our debts/trespasses/sins, even as we forgive the debts/trespasses/sins of others. As far as taking on debt, Paul tells us to owe no one anything except to love one another because if we love one another, we fulfill the Law. That Law is a call to love our neighbor as ourselves, for love does no wrong to the neighbor (Rom. 13:8-10). Perhaps the slave would have been better off if he had remembered that Law of Love.

It is appropriate that we keep in mind the larger context of these verses. The concern present in Matthew 18 is the welfare of the congregation. How is someone who goes astray restored to fellowship? What is the process? When Peter asks how many times an offender should be forgiven, Jesus gives a rather uncountable number. In this parable, the assumption here is that the king represents the compassion of God. We owe God an uncountable debt, which has been wiped away (and note that no blood is required) simply out of God’s compassion. That compassion shown to us is to flow through us to others so that we might forgive even as we are forgiven. While Jesus seems to suggest that there should be an unlimited number of times, that we should forgive, the parable suggests there might be some limits as well. Since Jesus begins the parable telling us that the realm of God is like what we read in the parable, we may want to ask what the parable reveals when it comes to God’s realm, which is larger than the church but includes it.

The passage is both enlightening and troubling. While we may find parts of the story difficult to process, including the call to forgive without limits, even if God (in the king) does seem to have limits. Nevertheless, John T. Carroll does offer us some helpful words that can help us process the passage.

The incongruous action of the forgiven yet unforgiving servant in this parable does make some sense in a culture in which reciprocity of obligation structured social relations. Yet the servant doesn’t realize that his experience of radical generosity obligates him not toward the master but in relation to others. What is now asked of him? To extend grace outward to others. He is to pay it forward, not back! Whatever quibbles we may have about this parable and the God-image Matthew seems bent on hammering home, we do have this as a take-away: as those who have benefited from the generous mercy of God, we are called to extend generous mercy to others. It’s important.

May we, who have been forgiven much, extend that grace and forgiveness to others because we have not reached perfection, forgiveness will be the lifeblood of the community. There will not be a time, at least in this life, when graciousness and forgiveness are not needed for the church to exist and thrive and minister.