Text: Matt 18:21-35
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant is a cringe-worthy lesson from Jesus involving being forgiven, but refusing to forgive. It should pop into your mind when you pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
For in this fallen world, we are both the trespassed against, and the trespasser. We are both the forgiven and the forgiver. It’s all about perspective. It’s all about where we are at any given moment.
And there is a mismatch between how we see ourselves, and how we really are. And especially in our current society, if we can make ourselves out to be the victim, the trespassed against, we can parlay that into a lot of power, into the ability to bully others. And so we are tempted, dear friends, to see ourselves as always the ones who are sinned against, instead of seeing ourselves as people who constantly sin against others, not to mention who sin against God.
This distortion is made plain in the person of the king’s servant in our Lord’s story.
Jesus tells this parable as a way to answer Peter’s question about his moral obligation to forgive others. Peter is asking what is reasonable? How many times? If a person continuously sins against us, should we forgive him again and again? And Jesus puts the question back on us. If we are the one doing the sinning, how often do we want to be forgiven? How many times? If we do sin many times every day, do we want God to put a cap on our forgiveness? And if we want God’s mercy to be so great that He forgives all of our sins, how can we be so unloving and unyielding to treat others the same way?
And to make this more concrete, Jesus tells the parable.
The king’s servant owes a comically large sum of money. It is such a large debt that it boggles the mind. Jesus is making it very clear that we are talking about an unpayable debt. And so the king, looking to cut his losses, resolves to sell his servant and his family, and at least make a little bit of his money back on the sale.
At this point, the servant pleads, falling on his knees, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” Of course, he is making a promise that he can’t possibly keep. But what we see here is not the servant who is in debt miraculously coming up with a way to generate billions of dollars, rather we see the miracle of the king’s grace and mercy, his compassion, his “pity” as Jesus words it. And this is indeed a miracle, dear friends. For in this world, how often would a person discharge a debt? If you slammed into someone’s car, how many people would tell you not to worry about it? If you got into credit card debt, how often would Visa just tell you that they just zeroed it out and restored your credit limit?
And considering that this king in the story represents God, who is perfect and almighty, who expects perfection from all of us, who shows us mercy, and forgives us an entire lifetime of sin – this is indeed a miracle. For we know that this king, our Father who art in heaven, is willing to wipe out all our debts by the blood of His only beloved Son. And this love toward us, toward His servants who can never pay our debts, is a manifestation of His extraordinary love and mercy and goodness.
But in our Lord’s story, the man who was forgiven a huge debt “found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii” – and this, dear friends, is not a small amount. But it is nothing compared to what the servant had himself been forgiven. So the servant “began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’” And replaying his own very actions, this servant who owes him money pleads: “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.”
Instead of seeing himself in the pleading eyes of his debtor, he thinks only of himself and what is owed him. He has already forgotten that his own massive debt was wiped out. And instead of showing the same compassion to his own debtor, “he refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt.”
And we, outside of the story, join the characters in the story in being “greatly distressed.” For this angers us. We see the discrepancy between being forgiven, and refusing to forgive. It is grotesque and immoral. It is monstrous. And the king rescinds his offer of grace, and treats this unforgiving servant with the same un-forgiveness that he rendered his brother servant.
But the point is not to be appalled at a fictional character in a story, dear friends, but for us to see ourselves in the story, and to be appalled with ourselves. For we want God to forgive us. We want others to forgive us. But we want to hold onto grudges. We want to paint ourselves as the victim, and justify ourselves for not forgiving those who sin against us – even as many as seven times, or as many as seventy times seven times.
And listen to what happens to those who will not forgive: “Then the master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?”
God’s logic is unassailable, dear friends. For we can fool ourselves, and make excuses before men. But we cannot fool God, or make excuses before Him. Have you not been forgiven much, dear friends? So how dare you hold grudges to others? From God’s perspective, when we do this, we are telling Him that His mercy is no good. “And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
So when we look at our own thoughts, words, and deeds from God’s perspective, when we examine our hearts and see a refusal to forgive the sins of others, we should be alarmed, dear friends. This parable should cause us to grieve over our sins and seek forgiveness, even as we should be looking out for opportunities to forgive others, lest we end up like the ungrateful and unforgiving servant in the story.
The good news, dear friends, is that in His unbounded mercy toward us, Jesus calls us to repent, and gives us the opportunity to live a life of forgiveness and mercy, both that we receive from God, and that which we show others. The good news is that very forgiveness shown to us is that which empowers us to show forgiveness to others.
So our Lord answers Peter’s question by teaching us that as God’s forgiveness is without limit to us, we should adopt this gracious attitude toward others. When we see ourselves not as victims, but rather as sinners forgiven by the victim of the Lamb whose blood was shed on our behalf, and when we ponder just how merciful God is to us, what else can we do but forgive our brother from our heart.
And when we do, we are set free, dear friends! So go in peace and love and mercy, for we have been forgiven that comically large debt.
So let us call to mind the words of our catechism: “We daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment. So we too will sincerely forgive and gladly do good to those who sin against us.”
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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