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Living the Jesus Creed: Forgiving and Reaching Out in Jesus
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Matthew 18:21-35 New International Version
The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.a
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talentsb was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.c He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Living the Jesus Creed: Forgiving and Reaching Out in Jesus
A number of years ago I attended a workshop for pastors at which Don Posterski of World Vision Canada was one of the presenters. Don told us of something that he thought was worthy of long-term analysis regarding the attitudes of Canadians.In any major survey over the past number of decades in this country, when Canadians are asked about values which they hold in high esteem, forgiveness comes out at or near the top every time. Posterski went on to say that this was quite understandable given the high percentage of Canadians who were given at very least an introduction to the basics of Christian faith. Even those who know nothing more than the Lord’s Prayer know forgiveness stands at the heart of what God offers to us and what we are asked to offer to one another.
But, said Posterski, what is going to happen in the future? As fewer and fewer Canadians have any sort of involvement with the church and little awareness of Christian values, will forgiveness continue to be held in such high esteem by Canadians? If the inclination to see forgiveness as positive and desirable declines, will this not have a negative effect on society as a whole?
What brought this memory back to the forefront was a comment made by Scot McKight in The Jesus Creed. Some of you may recall that at the beginning of this sermon series we looked at how Jesus had taken the Shema—the love of God creed of Judaism—making it the creed of those who followed him with this addition, love of others.
In the sermon on April 18 we looked at how Jesus had taken a well-known prayer of Judaism, the Kaddish, and again added love of others petitions: give us our daily bread; forgive us our sins; lead us not into temptation.
In the chapter in his book dealing with forgiveness, McKnight says that Jesus has done something similar with this spiritual quality. Because the internet has made such study so simple, I checked what he had to say. When you ask biblegateway.com to give you a list of references for the word forgive, it comes up with 109, 51 from the Hebrew scriptures and 58 from the Christian scriptures. The overwhelming focus through the whole of the Bible is the forgiveness that God offers to us, but it is only in the Christian scriptures that those who are faithful to God are specifically asked to forgive one another.
In the Hebrew scriptures, there is the story at the end of Genesis about Joseph’s brothers who, fearing for their own safety, come up with a fabrication telling Joseph their father’s last wish before he died was that Joseph would forgive his brothers their crime against him. The strong implication is that Joseph does so but it never specifically says that. “So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them” (Genesis 50:21).
The other story concerns David, the aptly named Nabal (the name means “fool”) and Nabal’s wife, Abigail. The story is told in 1 Samuel 25. David has been anointed as Israel’s next king but Saul is the current king and still has ideas about getting rid of David so that Jonathan can become king. David and those loyal to him are in the wilderness. David discovers that one of the local landowners is throwing a party on a feast day. David sends ten of his men to Nabal with a message which basically says, “while your men were in the wilderness with my troops, I made sure no harm came to them or the animals—so how about letting us join in the party?”
Nabal sends word back that he has no idea who this David is and he isn’t about to share the feast with these ruffians who are hiding out in the wilderness. When David hears about this he tells 400 of his men to get their swords on because they are going to show Nabal exactly who David is.
Meanwhile, Nabal’s wife, Abigail, who is evidently as beautiful as her husband is surly, hears what has happened and she packs up some food on the donkeys and sets out in hopes of intercepting David before he and his men fall upon the unsuspecting Nabal. When she meets David, she asks him to accept the gift of the food and to forgive the wrong done by her husband.
David thanks both God and Abigail for preventing an impetuous action. “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who sent you to meet me today! Blessed be your good sense, and blessed be you, who have kept me today from bloodguilt and from avenging myself by my own hand!” (1 Samuel 25:32, 33). The end of the story is that when Nabal is told about how close he came to the wrong end of David’s sword, he suffers a heart attack and dies ten days later. David then asks Abigail to become his wife. However, nowhere in the story does it say or even imply that David forgives the foolishness of the fool. Forgiveness is God’s business.
I think this puts our text in something of a different light. I think Peter is quite genuine when he asks Jesus about this forgiveness business. “How often should I forgive—seven times, will that do?” Peter, I think to his credit, wants to get this forgiveness business right.
It’s possible that Peter had heard what some of the rabbis said. I think most of us would agree that forgiveness can only be offered in response to repentance and that such repentance needs to be genuine. Some auto insurance companies are now advertising policies which include forgiveness for the first at-fault accident. But that’s it. You bust up car #2 and you can forget about forgiveness.
The rabbis wanted to discourage any false repentance, so some of them had said a particular sin should be forgiven no more than three times. Peter likely figures he’s made a spiritually admirable suggestion—he’s doubled the suggestion of the rabbis and added one more!
We need to look at the story Jesus tells as something with both a laugh and a tear. Let me explain. First of all, Jesus tells Peter and the others that forgiveness is of primary importance because he prefaces the story by saying the kingdom of heaven is like this. The kingdom of heaven is what Jesus came to begin. His ministry is to announce that God’s kingdom or rule is breaking into the life of this world. But as serious as the beginning is, he quickly adds a laugh.
When he began the reckoning, one who owed him then thousand talents was brought to him. If you look at the bottom of the page in your Bible you will find something like this. It’s in that print many of us have trouble seeing but it will tell you “a talent is worth more than fifteen years’ wages of a labourer.” Let’s do a little math—for ease of calculation we’ll say this labourer earns $10 per hour or $400 per 40 hour work week. He gets two weeks holiday and the shop shuts down for two weeks at Christmas; he works 48 weeks, which works out to $19,200. In 15 years that would be $288,000. The fellow in the story owes 10,000 of those talents or $2,880,000,000. Remember, we are not talking a member country of European Economic Union, we’re talking the guy that rents the farm just north of Stouffville on the Ninth Line. How did he manage to rack up a debt of almost three billion? How is he ever going to repay that amount? It wouldn’t matter if his wife, children, first, second and third cousins were sold as slaves. The only chance he has is forgiveness. Jesus, this is the silliest story you have ever told.
Which I think is the point. Stay with me for another few minutes and I’ll try to explain. C. S. Lewis once said, “Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” You see the whole story Jesus tells has this bizarre quality to it. Someone is forgiven a debt that is beyond calculation, that could have never been paid back. That should mean an inclination to offer forgiveness to others would then become as natural as breathing. But it doesn’t. Someone owes this fellow a little more than three months wages and he turns him over to the debtors prison.
I think Jesus is telling us something like this: forgiveness is God’s business. The Hebrew scriptures are right! If humans try to make forgiveness a matter of human attitude and inclination, what happens is calculation—how many times should I forgive? What do you think of three? How about seven?
The Jesus Creed is about bringing others into the mix of our relationship with God. We are to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbour as ourself. We are to keep holy the name of God and to pray for his kingdom and we are to include our relationships with others in our prayers. We are to offer God our repentance and welcome his forgiveness and we are to make this godly attribute, this willingness to forgive part of our make-up also.
In his book, The Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight tells about the vesper service in the Orthodox churches on the last Sunday before Lent. It’s called “Forgiveness Sunday.” As McKnight recounts the details, after the formal part of the liturgy, worshippers form two lines facing one another. Bowing to the other person, each asks forgiveness and then one of the lines shifts so that by the end everyone in the congregation has asked forgiveness of everyone else.
As with any liturgy or ritual, this too can become a form without real meaning. However, the intent is admirable and worthy of imitation. For this demonstrates one reality at the centre of our faith: we have a debt that can never be repaid, it can only be forgiven. The God of grace has done just that. Because we are seeking to be those who love God and make God’s business our own, we are invited to be the forgiven who also forgive.
