Matthew 18:21-35
Today’s Gospel reading follows immediately
after last week’s reading from Matthew, which was about disciplining members of
Jesus’ community who harm each other. In
that case, the teaching was about confronting the offender in a progressively
public manner – first alone, then with another one or two, and then before the whole
assembly. It’s a way to resolve conflict
for the good of the order.
But the next question, of course, is the
one Peter raises in today’s reading.
What about the personal side? What
about the harm someone’s done to me? How am I supposed to deal with someone
hurting me personally, not just disrupting things in the church? What’s the scope of forgiveness, Jesus? And how are disciples like us supposed to do
it?
Even asking the question, Peter
understands that the bar will be uncomfortably high. He asks, how often must I forgive? Seven times?
Jesus, of course, sets the bar much higher – unattainably high, it’s
always felt to me. We must forgive seventy-seven
times? Or, as the verse also could be
translated, seventy times seven
times? Really?
So then, in classic Jesus style, he
illustrates this hard teaching with a parable.
Now, of course, parables are notoriously bad for explaining things because they’re really not intended to explain
things. That takes a different kind of
illustration – a diagram or a flow chart maybe.
But that’s not where Jesus is going.
Instead, he’s telling a parable, and parables invite the person hearing them
to interpret their meaning. Parables
aren’t cut and dried; you’re supposed
to wrestle with them. So, how I
interpret today’s story may not be just the way you’d interpret it. And I think Jesus would say, that’s OK. Struggling to understand God’s intentions and
purposes – well, I think that’s the point, at least in this chapter of eternal
life. We’ll have an eternity to find the
clearer answers.
Anyway, Jesus tells this parable of the
king and the unforgiving servant. I’d like to title it, the parable of the forgiving
king and the unforgiving servant, but I think the story is a little muddier
than that.
So, this king is settling up accounts with
his slaves who owe him money. One slave owes
him 10,000 talents. Now, that amount doesn’t
mean anything to us; but you have to know that one talent was the equivalent of
about 15 years’ wages for a laborer. So,
owing 10,000 talents is a debt you couldn’t even conceive of paying. But the slave wants to try to make things
right, and the king has mercy on him for his good intention. Then, the slave gets the opportunity to show
similar mercy to another slave who owes him 100 denarii, basically three
months’ wages. It’s a lot of money, but
it’s a debt that a worker might be able to pay.
But the forgiven slave fails to return the favor of grace, and he throws
his debtor into prison. The king gets wind
of it and confronts the forgiven slave for his failure to forgive. So, the story concludes, “his lord handed him
over to be tortured until he would pay the entire debt” – which, of course, he
could never pay. And then Jesus adds the
bitter icing on the cake: “So my
heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your
brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18:34-35)
I was good with this story right up until those
last two sentences. I think I can
understand the first part of the parable: God wants us to forgive just as we’ve
been forgiven, to show grace that mirrors God’s amazing grace. And the other side of the coin is also true,
as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer: We will
be forgiven as we forgive those who hurt us.
But I have trouble with the conclusion Jesus offers, that if we fail to forgive as our heavenly Father
forgives, then God will hand us over to be tortured until we pay the debts we
owe.
So here’s where the wrestling with the
parable begins. I guess I’d ask this: Is that torture at God’s hands, or at our
own? At least in my experience, refusing
to forgive someone is its own torture, because refusing to forgive is choosing
to bear a burden that eventually will crush us.
Hanging onto righteous indignation over someone else’s failure doesn’t
hurt the offender. It hurts the
victim.
But, of course, the huge challenge from
this reading is that it sounds like we’re supposed to forgive people over and
over again as we endure the consequences of others’ sinful choices. That might sound like we’re supposed to be
doormats, forgiving someone’s selfish acts seventy times seven times, not
counting the cost but letting it go.
Letting it go…. Now, that’s where forgiveness gets
interesting. Is Jesus really asking us
to let ourselves soak up other people’s sinful behavior, over and over
again? Is that letting it go? Not at all.
Real forgiveness requires the offender to own the harm. You know it’s true on a personal level; if someone
cheats you but doesn’t own it, it’s awfully hard to forgive. It’s also true on a broader scale: In South Africa, after apartheid, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu didn’t just call his flock to forgive their oppressors; he put
together the truth-and-reconciliation process, which allowed those who
benefited from apartheid and those who suffered from apartheid to hear each
other’s experience. Full forgiveness is
about love and justice. It’s about grace as well as contrition and repentance and action to amend your life.
But even when the offender does own the
harm, forgiving is hard. For some of us,
at least, we want to hang onto the
hurt. Righteous indignation sometimes
feels a little too good. Or, even if we
want to let it go, we don’t know how.
The hurt just won’t go away; and every time we hurt, we remember what
caused it. Even though Jesus asks us to,
we just can’t shake it. And we end up
living in that torture the parable spoke about – the torture that comes from
being unwilling, or unable, to let the offense go.
It probably won’t surprise you to know I
don’t have a quick-and-easy prescription for forgiveness. But let’s play a game. Let’s create a parable of our own. Just for a moment, remember some harm you’ve
endured. Don’t remember it too deeply,
but just remind yourself of it. Now
imagine that harm against you as a backpack full of rocks – a hundred pounds of
rocks that you’re consigned to carry, day in and day out. So, here’s the parable of the backpack full of
rocks.
* *
*
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away
– something like that; not in our world, at least – there was a woman who’d
been hurt by someone close to her. In her
world, people carried that kind of pain in the form of a backpack full of rocks,
a backpack that you couldn’t take off. Carrying
that load felt like a sentence, ultimately unfair. The woman would sometimes get down on her
hands and knees and try to shake the rocks out all at once; but try as she
might, she couldn’t because the opening was so small. And the longer she carried her backpack full of
rocks, the heavier they seemed. What she
really wanted – and what she felt was her due – was for the person who’d hurt
her to take her backpack and carry those rocks instead. It was his fault, after all. He should bear the weight, not her. So she waited and hoped and prayed that he
would come to his senses, and see his obligation, and take the rocks off her
back.
Now, this person who’d hurt her was pained
by what he’d done. So, he came to her
and poured out his heart; and he promised to walk the path with her in a new
way from there on. But he couldn’t
figure out how to take the backpack of rocks off her shoulders.
Finally, as they walked sadly together,
with the woman laboring under the weight, a stranger approached and began to
walk with them. They came to the edge of
a cliff – and frankly, by this point, the woman was done; she was miserable
enough she just wanted to jump off, into the ravine. But the stranger said to her, “Why don’t you
reach around, and throw a few rocks off the cliff instead, and lighten your
load.” The woman could only reach a few
because her shoulders were stiff, but she threw them over the edge, into the
ravine. She felt a little better, so she
turned to the stranger and asked, “OK, now what?” The stranger said, “Come back to the ravine
tomorrow and the next day and the next, and I think you’ll be able to reach a
few more each time as your shoulders loosen up with practice.”
And day after day, for what seemed a
stupidly long time, the woman came to the ravine each morning. She struggled to reach back and grab as many
rocks as her loosening shoulders would allow.
Each day, she could reach back just a little further. Each day, she could throw the rocks just a
little farther into the ravine. And each
day, the backpack felt just that much lighter … until one morning, she forgot
it was there. Every now and then, one of
the few rocks at the bottom of the backpack would poke her uncomfortably, and
she’d remember the time she’d been hurt so badly. She’d have to struggle to reach way back, and
dig down deep in the backpack, and pull out that offending rock; and she’d have
to go to the ravine that day to throw it in.
But afterward, she’d forget about the backpack again. And she and the person who’d hurt her could
keep making their way, along with the stranger … who, by this point, had become
a companion.
Here endeth the parable.
* *
*
So, here’s the truth I know about
forgiveness: It can’t be a one-time
thing. It’s a seventy-times-seven-times
thing. We’ve got to throw rock after
rock into the ravine, each time we’re able to put our hands on one. Because the torture would be to keep carrying
them.
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