To Heal Divisions: Forgive Proper 19A

 

To Heal Divisions: Forgive

Chapter 18 in Matthew addresses our tendency to be a divided people. Whether it is a divided society, or a divided church. The antidote appears to be forgiveness. Mutual forgiveness. Which Jesus highlights when teaching us how to pray which in Matthew 6:9-15 goes like this: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors…For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive others their offenses, neither will your Father forgive your offenses.”

 

It is in this context that Peter wants to know how often one must forgive another. Which, let’s be honest, is the kind of question that really means “how little forgiveness, or, how few times, can I get away with forgiving someone?” The Greek of Jesus’s answer is ambiguous as it can mean seventy-seven times, or, seven times seventy times. Which is to say, there is no limit. We are to just keep on trying and trying to forgive one another until it works. Until we truly behave as if we really mean to live are in the presence of God, God’s reign, God’s kingdom.

 

Matthew then has Jesus tell a story, which as it turns out seems simple, but in the end leaves it up to us to decide. A king decides to settle accounts with his doulos, translated “slaves.” Given the amount of debt owed by our particular doulos in Matthew 18:21-35, ten thousand talents, it seems he is among the highest level of the retainer class who provided bureaucratic services for the elites. Like the king who has succeeded the power struggles among equally ambitious elites so and is now “king.” He has won the most lucrative prize of all, control of the state or political apparatus. To maintain this power and protect himself from those who would usurp his power would require immense resources in the way of taxes, tribute payments (what in Chicago we would call “protection money”), and confiscating landholdings. Once one achieves kingship, the resources of the state were his to plunder for his gain. These agrarian kings stood at the apex of an authoritarian system, and believed themselves to be above the law, and beyond restraints.”

 

The retainer class like our doulos would head-up agencies, especially collection agencies, as operatives of the royal court. Below them were scribes, lawyers, and accountants who kept records of the king’s acquisitions and debts owed to him. At the lowest level were porters, jailers, and those who would run the most mundane errands of kingdom. All three levels owed their loyalty and existence to the king, and those in the top rung also shared in some of the wealth.

 

Our doulos-retainer is brought to the king. He owed the unimaginable amount of ten thousand talents and could not pay. No one could, really. The king ordered that the he, his wife and family, and all their possessions be sold to pay off the debt. The doulos-retainer falls to his knees and begs saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’  Despite the impossibility of raising such an enormous sum, the king has mercy on him, forgives the debt, and sets him free. He could be grateful, but instead the doulos-retainer runs across a man who owes him 100 denarii, an infinitesimally smaller amount than the ten thousand talents. He demands to be repaid. The man falls to his knees and begs, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He appears to have no appreciation for the king’s mercy and he orders the man to be jailed until the debt is paid. Some of the king’s other retainers were alarmed and told the king what had happened. Furious and in a rage, the king says, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. Referring back to the teaching on prayer, Matthew has Jesus pronounce, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

 

Everything in the parable is beyond measure and beyond limit! Lots of hyperbole! There was no torture allowed in ancient Israel, other than not being forgiven by God. The doulos-retainer would simply have been demoted to the lowest level slave in the king’s apparatus. And even the lowest of those in the king’s bureaucracy had more power and status than those outside of it: peasants, artisans, tenant farmers, women and children. His offense threatened to disrupt the king’s entire bureaucratic system. But as it turns out, the king himself resorts back to type when the doulos-retainer makes just one misstep in failing to forgive his debtor. The king does not forgive him seventy-seven times. Not even two times. Together with his final pronouncement about torture, makes this a truly strange story.

 

By inviting people to a kingdom of God life, Jesus proclaimed a total reset to the status quo, and spent most of his time with those outside the bureaucratic system of people like our king; those who were victims of a brutal system that sought to consolidate all resources and wealth among the elite. Which is why the world awaited a messianic figure like Jesus to inaugurate a new age of forgiveness and love for all; especially the forgiveness of debt, which in Torah had been specified to occur every seven years. It seems, however, that the bureaucracy had internalized the system to such a degree that they, including the king, were irreducibly creatures of it. Retaliation and revenge remained the only behavior the elites could imagine to maintain their power. The dynamics of the system alone would force the cancellation of forgiveness of debts and any other policy that threatened the existence of the bureaucracy itself. Everyone, including us, the readers, are then ensnared in the experience of a kind of evil; not necessarily intentional evil, but the implicit, unanticipated ‘systemic evil’ of policies that ensured deep divisions within society.

 

The people with whom Jesus spends most of his time both hated and feared the retainers as the visible figures who carried out the policies of the elite, while they also prayed for someone or something that might force or inspire the elite to change their policies. The character of the kingdom Jesus announces is one of mutual forgiveness. This is the behavior required by the indwelling presence of God’s kingdom, and the presence God’s Son. The story seems to say that to receive forgiveness both enables and obligates one to offer forgiveness to others, not as an occasional exception to the rule but as a habit of life, and not without an awareness of the forgiveness one has received, but as a response to it. “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you.”

 

The surprising answer to Peter’s question, the parable seems to say, is that the Christ the Messiah has come, but so far nothing has changed. And that it is up to people like us, as disciples of God’s Son to adopt a behavior of the forgiveness and love we have received from Christ; to respond with more forgiveness of others than we can possibly imagine. For it will take ten talents worth of forgiveness to begin to heal the divisions that plague society; for the entire system to change from one of retribution and revenge to forgiveness and love – love of neighbors and love of enemies. The parable seems to ask: How might we embrace love and forgiveness not as an occasional exception to the rule, but as a habit of life that can make the presence of God and God’s kingdom of mercy real for all of us?  For everyone? For ever and ever? Amen.