Matthew 18
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Rev. William Miller in his book, “The Gospel according to Sam, Animal Stories for the Soul,” tells of an experience he witnessed while on a mission trip with a youth group he was leading in Galveston, Texas. He tells a story of taking his youth group to a miniature golf range after a long day of service projects. There in front of them is a five year old boy with an older man, perhaps his grandfather. The man whose face is weathered perhaps suggested a man of the seas, a fisherman or shrimper. The boy proceeded to play his game, hacking repeatedly on a weathervane-themed hole. The object to get the ball through a passageway in the weathervane, coordinating your strike so that the arms of the vane would not impede the ball! Well, time after time, stroke after stroke, the unforgiving weathervane knocked the ball back to the little boy! The group of teens grew impatient when finally the little boy got the ball onto the other side! Finally! Yet on the other side, the horror continued. The boy slapped and hacked at the ball! Off of a bench, innocent bystanders, and finally off of the plastic Octopus gunslinger mounted on a nearby hole! Finally, the boy picked up the ball, put it in the hole, threw his putter into the air and declared, “A two!” The weathered face of the gentlemen with the young boy tightened and he said, “Now you know you didn’t get a two.” Bill Miller writes, “At that the boy looked right up at him recognizing the mess he’d made of the hole, a bogey to the fourth power, as close to par as a distant galaxy is to earth, and asked, “Won’t you give me a two?”
Miller continues, “I believe it was Jung who said, “the brighter the halo, the smellier the feet,” for even the best among us have gone to the dogs. If the truth be told, we’ve made a mess of most of the course, and we missed the mark more often than not. There’s no use pretending we even belong at the tee. Nonetheless, for some strange reason, God can be trusted to look down and write on the only scorecard that matters – an undeserved, unmerited, unbelievable par. God cheats on our behalf and gives us a two. “My grace is sufficient,” God has said.
In today’s Gospel lesson according to Matthew, we pick up our theme of last week, where Jesus is in the midst of teaching his disciples about the cornerstone on which God’s Kingdom is to be built – that is the cornerstone of forgiveness. You’ll remember that last week Jesus, that while giving his disciples a mechanism to reach out with intention to forgive those of the church who had aggrieved them, he also set as a foundation that to be disciples of the kingdom was to have a heart and world-view that seeks at all costs to forgive! Forgiveness, Jesus seems to be saying, is the power that holds together, that union with God and with one another is far more powerful than alienation. So, how hard do we go about the business of forgiveness? Very, very hard! So hard that even the most difficult and alienated among us are worthy to be treated in Kingdom principle as the mission field (a Gentile or tax collector), for God’s preference is for the lost!
In today’s scripture, Peter, who once again seems a step behind the action, in a follow up question, naively, or maybe even stubbornly begs the question…“now Jesus, tell this again? How many times do we forgive someone who has offended? Seven? (That seems a lot). No Jesus says…….seventy times seven! Now, Peter’s question, through the lens of a human sense of justice, seems reasonable. Perhaps you are aligned with Peter in this thought process about one who repeatedly offends and seems undeniably resistant to a path of forgiveness. First, like us, experience probably has taught Peter that there must be limits to patience with misbehaviors! How many times does this person get away with this after all? Okay perhaps Peter thinks to himself…seven times seem a reasonable limit!
Or – perhaps one has to ask if it is in my best interest to seek forgiveness when it seems clear to me that my brother’s and sister’s repentance is suspicious at best, and a path toward change seems iffy at best!
This, we all would agree, is legitimate questioning on Peter’s behalf! Particularly in a human experience that leads to a worldview and understanding of justice that may even lead to our need to “count,” keep score as it were!
When I asked a friend recently, tongue in cheek, “How many times are we to forgive? Seven?" The response, was, “I think a lot more than that and I am pretty sure my spouse is counting!” When it comes to forgiveness, however, Jesus’ response does not address Peter’s concern with an “economy of counting,” instead Jesus’ response takes the conversation from the sphere of ordinary human relationships to the mysterious realm of the holy.
For the kingdom followers, the cornerstone of forgiveness will not be found in such an economy of counting, but rather on a radical, unprecedented, even seemingly irrational ethic of forgiveness! One which will challenge them and challenges us deeply in the human sphere! For at the heart of the matter lies a reality that in God’s world-view, a world-view of mercy, even the most undeserved will find new life through pardon!
C.S. Lewis wrote, “The essential act of mercy is to pardon; and pardon’s very essence is to recognize guilt and the ill-dessert of the recipient!”
To live in the Kingdom is to come to grips that God’s heart is a merciful heart, there is no economy of score that makes any traditional sense, for the unforgiving courses of life, where we my be hacking above what any scorecard would hold, “God indeed seems to cheat on our behalf!” Par…or even better sometimes “My grace is sufficient.”
This radical merciful forgiveness seems to be what Jesus invites his followers to understand and to form a heart for! Not only will God’s grace be sufficient, but it is beyond understanding, especially when understanding is built upon a system of human expectations and an economy of justice built upon “counting.”
The parable of the unforgiving servant provides the theological framework that grounds forgiveness at the center as we engage the astounding magnanimity of the King!
After all, as a King decides to be faithful about his business and in his accounting of all his transactions, he calls to his court all those who have been entrusted with the workings of his Kingdom business (slaves and servants).
Here we encounter one such worker of the Kingdom who seems to have held back profit for his own benefit! How much! Oh about fifteen years worth of salary! The legal consequences for such an action would of course be immediate death, but the King in a moment of anger, thinks to send him and his family into slavery. But the servant implores, begs for a deal! What comes next, of course, is the unheard of, unbelievable, even irrational action of the King! He pardons the act and sets him free! What he will do with this amazing, irrational, freedom from pardon, of course, is the teaching for kingdom followers. The unforgiving servant will squander it, ignore it, abuse it, and clearly not understand it! When in similar circumstance with roles reversed, one who owes him a day’s salary, he will follow the letter of the legal law and prosecute! The unforgiving servant has missed the opportunity for the heart of the matter! And so for Jesus’ listeners, they are implored not to do the same! For they live in a Kingdom where God’s Mercy of Pardon is at play! They know themselves they are undeserving of such grace and yet they receive it, and so they too must live with such a radical ethic of forgiveness!
Jesus understood the ethic of his day, the economy of counting, a justice system based where “the counting of things” often meant a “settling of scores.” The ethic of forgiveness is polar opposite the ethic of “settling scores,” or of revenge. So, Jesus implores, we’ve had enough of settling scores, you must work toward an ethic of forgiving from the heart!
And so you and I are invited to the magnanimity of God’s Kingdom! Cornerstone built upon forgiveness! The hard road of forgiveness calls us away from a scorecard of transgression! “God’s mercy is sufficient!” As we receive it, so we are open to the possibilities of freedom that comes through forgiving from the heart! Again, C.S. Lewis…“By remembering where we stand (with God’s ethic of forgiveness), by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” we are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint or exception, and God means what he says.
