There Is No Comparison!

 

There Is No Comparison!

The evangelist Matthew, in chapter 18:23-35, suggests there is something in this odd story that “may be compared” to the kingdom of heaven. First, Peter wants to quantify forgiveness. Next, a gentile king calls one of his top-level bureaucrats to settle accounts. The king reverses his decision to sell the man, his wife, his family and possessions to recoup some of his losses. Instead, he forgives the debt. The account manager, however, seizes a lower functionary in the kingdom’s economic resource accumulation apparatus who owes a paltry sum and puts him in the slammer. The rest of the bureaucracy complains, so the king reverts to form and withdraws the magnanimous forgiveness and sends the bureaucrat off to be tortured to the end of time. Ending with the ominous, “This could happen to you if you fail to forgive from the heart!” Just how does all this compare to the vision of God’s justice and peace, God’s Shalom, for all people that Jesus proclaims and lives?

First, a look at the numbers. When Peter tries to limit forgiveness to that mystical Biblical number seven, Jesus responds with the already absurd seventy-seven times. But in the Greek it can be interpreted as seven times seventy! That is 490 times! Which is Jesus’s way of saying, “You cannot quantify forgiveness any more than you can quantify the love of God I’ve been enacting wherever we go, Peter!”

Then there is the account manager’s debt: 10,00 Talents. A Talent was worth fifteen years of a laborer’s wage. So, we are looking at 150,000 years labor to work it off. There have been only 2,000 years since this story was told, so it’s two down, 148,000 to go! Considering Homo Sapiens has been around as a species approximately 195,000 years, the account manager would have had to start working it off near the very beginning of our time on Earth. And it turns out 10,000 was the largest number anyone could imagine back then, just as a Talent was the largest denomination of value anyone could imagine. It’s a big enormous debt! We might ask, however, what’s with this gentile king allowing one of his top-level producers get into such debt in the first place? Since this is money this gentile king depends upon to secure his power over the kingdom. I say gentile because in Israel one cannot sell a man’s wife and children.

Suggesting this king in the story cannot be God in allegory. His actions, his apparatus for collecting tribute and tax monies to maintain his power, is all typical of the time, and throughout all time really. We’re not told why he forgave such a ridiculous amount of debt. Perhaps it was a kind of public relations move to pacify the vast majority of the people of his kingdom who labor forever in debt to satisfy the needs of the kingdom. Perhaps the account manager was to model this forgiveness as well to make it look good. But so quickly do we all revert to type, to the ways that have been ingrained in us through years of being part of the apparatus; part of the system. How easy it is for the reader or listener to be lulled into the evil afoot, not necessarily intentional evil, but the systemic evil of how such economic oppression serves the interests of the ruling class – in this case the Herodian empire, the Temple hierarchy and aristocracy, all clients of the Empire of Caesar – and not the people of the land.

Surely when we compare this story to any idea or imagining we have of the kingdom of God’s justice and love for all people, we would not like it to play out like this: at best being eternally in debt to the apparatus of the ruling class, or at worst, tortured for eternity to satisfy the needs for those ruling the kingdom to maintain their power over all. The king and kingdom of this story cannot in any way, shape or form compare to the kingdom of God Jesus embodies. Jesus tells this story as an example of the way things are, not at all how it is meant to be in the kingdom of his Father. It is to be a contrast, not an example. There is no comparison – none at all.

 As to the question of forgiveness, Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” Implied in his absurd answer to Peter’s question is another question: how would you like your forgiveness? It is not the quantity of forgiveness that matters, Peter, it is the quality of forgiveness that matters – one time from the heart will do. Such forgiveness cannot be withdrawn as it is in this story. It is forever. Once and for all. Amen. It is so. It is truth.