Forgive Us Our Debts
Scripture Reading: Matt. 18:21-35
Like peanut butter and jelly, forgiveness and reconciliation go hand in hand. Perhaps that’s why the organizers of the lectionary follow up last week’s Gospel reading, in which Jesus taught about reconciliation, with this week’s passage in which he talks about forgiveness. Last week’s reading didn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, but let me give a brief recap anyway because we’re picking up right where we left off.
Last week we heard Jesus instruct the disciples quite matter-of-factly on how to reconcile with a brother or sister who had sinned against them. First, try to meet with the person one-on-one. If that fails, bring one or two witnesses. If that also fails, present the matter to the church. Failing even that, Jesus says treat the offender like a tax collector or a Gentile. While on the surface that seems like a three-strikes-and-you’re-out policy, we have to remember that tax collectors and Gentiles, a.k.a., sinners, were precisely the people with whom Jesus hung out on a regular basis. In fact, that’s one big reason that the religious authorities found him so objectionable.
So, having heard all about reconciliation, Peter now asks for clarification on the matter of forgiveness. You can always count on Peter to cut right to the chase and say what all the other disciples are likely thinking. “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” You can almost hear Peter doing the math in his head. Let’s see, there’s three steps to reconciliation, and if I forgive someone up to seven times, (which certainly seems more than generous), we’re looking at twenty-one—call them, units—of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Peter is thinking, How much do I have to do? What is the limit of my forgiveness? How far do I have to go before I can say that I’ve gone far enough? In other words, Peter is treating forgiveness like a transaction.
Peter is thinking, How much do I have to do? What is the limit of my forgiveness? How far do I have to go before I can say that I’ve gone far enough? In other words, Peter is treating forgiveness like a transaction.
This is interesting because a common metaphor that we use to describe forgiveness involves a financial transaction of sorts, namely the concept of indebtedness. “Forgive us our debts,” we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. I grew up, as I imagine some of you might have, saying “trespasses” rather than debts. When I later attended a church that used “debts,” I found the change jarring. “Debts” somehow felt too limiting. Granted, “trespasses” wasn’t ideal either. It’s archaic. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “trespasses” as a noun outside of the Lord’s Prayer. That’s why I later came to think that going with the simple and straightforward “sins” would be best. “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Simple. To the point.
But recently I’ve warmed to using “debts.” It’s specificity gives it a power that the more general “trespasses” and “sins” both lack. If you’ve ever taken out a loan of any kind (a home loan, car loan, student loan, etc.), if you’ve ever carried a balance on your credit card with interest, or if you’ve ever had bills that you couldn’t pay, you know what it means to be in debt. Like a shadow, debt follows you wherever you go. Even if you change your address, your job, your school, or your name, your creditor will still come knocking, or calling, or writing to collect. You won’t be free until the transaction is complete and the debt is paid in full.
In responding to Peter, Jesus wants to challenge his transactional way of thinking about forgiveness.
In responding to Peter, Jesus wants to challenge his transactional way of thinking about forgiveness. This is why he tells Peter that he is to forgive not seven times but seventy-seven times. This isn’t about numbers. Basically, Jesus is telling Peter that his forgiveness for others should have no limit because God’s forgiveness for him, and for all of us, has no limit. It’s infinite. Like Buzz Lightyear in the movie Toy Story, forgiveness goes to infinity and beyond.
To illustrate the point, as Jesus often does, he tells a parable. Unlike some of Jesus’s other parables, this one about an unforgiving servant is pretty easy to grasp. A servant whose debt is forgiven refuses to forgive the debt he is owed by his fellow servant. Easy. But let’s dig a little deeper and see if there’s a bit more going on here.
First, let’s note that this parable describes the kingdom of heaven, which is to say that it describes the nature of God’s reign, or put more crudely but in line with today’s theme, it describes how God conducts business. A king wishes to settle accounts with his slaves. Perhaps, as occurs in another parable, he has entrusted them with various sums of money to invest. He now wants to collect the earnings or receive payment for any debts that he is owed. Looking through the books, he finds that one slave owes him ten thousand talents.
Now, ten thousand talents was an astronomical amount of debt. Just an absurd amount. One talent was equal to 15 years of wages for the average laborer. So to pay back 10,000 talents would take a few thousand lifetimes for the average person. How the slave ran up this much debt is beside the point—maybe he invested in the first-century equivalent of crypto. The point is that he is hopelessly in debt with no chance of ever repaying it.
But what does he do when he’s about to be sold along with his wife and children and all his possessions? He falls to his knees and begs for mercy. “Have patience with me,” he pleads to his master, “and I will pay you everything.”
I don’t think that even the slave believed what he was saying. He could live a thousand lifetimes and not earn enough to pay back his debt. His master knows as much because the mercy that he shows his slave doesn’t take the form of a payment plan. There are no monthly installments to be paid with interest. Instead, he does something radically, almost incomprehensibly generous. He forgives the debt. All of it. He regards it as paid in full.
You might think that having received such lavish and unexpected generosity, the slave might himself be feeling generous toward his own debtor. That’s right. Despite running up more debt than he could ever pay, this man has still somehow managed to lend money, or more likely his master’s money, to another slave from whom he intends to collect. The amount he is owed—one hundred denarii—was equivalent to about three months of wages, a drop in the ocean compared to what he himself owed. Yet despite the fact that he had received mercy for his own debt, the slave shows no mercy to his debtor.
The ending of the parable almost writes itself. The man’s fellow slaves are scandalized by his ingratitude and unforgivingness and report as much to the lord, who then throws him in prison until the debt is paid, which given the staggering amount that he owes, will greatly outlive him.
It would be easy—far too easy—to draw the conclusion that the point of this parable is simply “forgive or else!”
It would be easy—far too easy—to draw the conclusion that the point of this parable is simply “forgive or else!” On the surface, that does appear to be what Jesus means when he says, “So my heavenly Father will also do to you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” But if the message we hear is “forgive or else,” then what we’ve done is turned the whole concept of forgiveness into just another law. And anytime we confuse the gospel with the law we’ve missed the whole point of the gospel.
When forgiveness becomes law, the church says to victims of abuse, “Yes, what he did to you is wrong, but Jesus says that you must forgive him.” Rather than good news that liberates us, the gospel then becomes a burden that further weighs us down with guilt, shame, and resentment. When forgiveness becomes law, we turn forgiveness into an act of our will rather than a miracle of God’s grace. When forgiveness becomes law, we put the focus on ourselves, on what we must do (forgive others) rather than on what God has freely chosen to do for us (forgive our sins).
We cannot speak meaningfully about forgiving anyone without first coming to terms with the fact that we ourselves have been forgiven through the cross of Jesus Christ. Put simply, to treat forgiveness as a command is to deny the cross. It’s to say that the cross wasn’t enough; we still have to contribute something ourselves to truly and fully be forgiven. It’s to make forgiveness a mere transaction, something done without any effort or reflection, like withdrawing twenty dollars from an ATM.
If you take nothing else from this sermon, please hear what I’m about to say loud and clear. Forgiveness is not a command, it’s not law. It’s gospel. Forgiveness is our response to having been forgiven of a debt that we could never pay. We are all the servant whose debt was forgiven. We were all hopelessly in debt, our greed, our envy, our ingratitude, our anger, our spitefulness, our indifference to suffering all weighing us down and drowning us in a debt of sin. But all of that debt…all of it…down to the very last penny, God has forgiven and wiped from the books.
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” is a prayer and also a promise: We whose debt has been freely forgiven have in turn been set free in order to forgive.