September 17, 2017 – Matthew 18:21-35
Matthew 18:21-35
To Forgive is Divine
Lectionary 24A – September 17, 2017
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
10,000 talents.
Is that a lot?
Is that a big debt?
Let’s do some math.
One talent is about equal to about 130 pounds of silver.
Yes: one talent is worth 130 pounds of silver.
It would take the average person in the ancient world 16 years of work to earn that amount.
16 years! To earn 1 talent!
So: 10,000 talents?
We’re talking about 160,000 years of labour at an average wage!
This is an outrageous amount!
It is astronomical! Unimaginable!
Just for fun, I did a little calculation.
Now: assume a very modest yearly wage of $25,000.
If you multiply that by 160,000 years, do you know what the grand total of debt is?
Anyone? Anyone? That would be 4 billion dollars!!!!!!
Or, as Dr. Evil might say, “4 billion dollars!”
And you thought your mortgage was bad.
A huge astronomical debt . . . 4 billions dollars . . . and the king forgives it.
All of it.
That is a lot of forgiveness.
Probably more than Peter can imagine.
Peter comes to Jesus with a question about forgiveness.
He is starting to get this Jesus guy.
He is starting to figure out that forgiveness is important to Jesus.
And is important to his whole program of saving the world.
So he says to Jesus, if someone sins against me, how many times should I forgive?
Seven times?
Now to Peter, and to you, and to me, 7 times seems plenty.
It seems pretty generous!
I mean, forgiving once is hard enough, twice seems like a lot,
and three times is maybe more than most of us can contemplate.
7 times seems amazing! Way to go Peter! Jesus is gonna love that answer!
But what Jesus says is very surprising: No, Peter, not 7, but 70 times 7!
And by 70 times 7, Jesus just means, a lot.
As Scott Evans who spoke at the CLAY gathering a few years ago says,
what Jesus means is, “Peter, just keep forgiving. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
We live in a world of limits.
We like to think – we all think – there are an appropriate number of times for things.
There ought to be an appropriate number of times to forgive someone for wronging you.
But that is just not how Jesus thinks.
Jesus has a fundamental insight into the nature of God.
And Jesus has discovered that God is an infinite, unimaginable well of mercy and love . . .
and forgiveness.
Peter wants a number, Peter wants a limit.
But Jesus is saying that God is love, and love is never about numbers.
Forgiveness is not about numbers – forgiveness is about love.
And love is never about the numbers.
I have said many times that, for a Christian, there are three reasons we forgive.
Sometimes we forgive to free the person who has sinned against us from their guilt,
so they can get on with their lives.
This can be very difficult.
Sometimes we forgive in order to be free ourselves from the terrible things that
have been done to us, so that we can be free from the anger that can consume us.
This too can be very difficult.
And sometimes, sometimes, when we do not need to forgive for our own well-being,
and when we cannot forgive the person who has sinned against us because
we have been hurt so bad – sometimes, sometimes we forgive simply because
Jesus commands us to.
But this can be very very difficult.
Two years ago Dylann Roof shot and killed 9 people in Charleston, South Carolina.
A white supremacist, he entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and
shot 9 black people at Bible Study, into which they had welcomed him.
His intention, he said after the shooting, was to start a race war.
Just days after the murder, the families of the 9 people had a chance to speak at his bond hearing.
Everyone who spoke on that day forgave Dylann Roof for what he had done.
The daughter of 70 year old victim Ethel Lance said this:
You took something really precious from me. I will never talk to her again.
But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people.
But God forgives you. I forgive you.
The grandson of 74 year old victim Daniel Simmons said,
Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof,
everyone’s plea for your soul is proof they lived in love and
their legacies will live in love. So hate won’t win.
(https://www.yahoo.com/news/familes-of-charleston-church-shooting-victims-to-dylann-roof–we–forgive-you-185833509.html)
This was, as you can imagine, very very difficult for the families of the victims.
But what they did right there was prevent the race war that Dylann Roof wanted from happening.
Forgiveness is hard for us. Forgiveness is very hard for us.
Forgiveness is hard. But life without forgiveness is probably harder.
Can you imagine the violence that would have erupted had they called for vengeance?
Or even if they had called for his soul to burn in hell rather than for God to have mercy on it?
I’m guessing, though, that the people in those families had probably experienced
some significant forgiveness in their lives.
And they wanted to pass it on.
It seems as if they were compelled to pass it on.
Okay: maybe that kind of forgiveness they offered seems unimaginable for us.
But the thing is: in this story, we are not really, not primarily called to be the king,
the king who forgives and forgives and forgives.
The king in this story is God.
God is the one who forgives an unimaginable debt.
As David Lose notes this week in his commentary on this story,
the real failure of the servant is not so much that he doesn’t forgive the second servant;
his real failure is that he has been given the most magnanimous,
greatest, outlandish gift he will ever receive –
the gift of total, complete, absolute forgiveness of an astronomical debt –
and is completely untouched by it.
(http://www.davidlose.net/2017/09/pentecost-15-a-forgiveness-possibility/)
To err is human. To forgive is divine.
We’re good at erring. God is good at forgiving.
As W.H. Auden has Pilate say in his play,
“I’m good at sinning; God is good at forgiving. The world is perfectly arranged!”
Which is true, except like the servant, Pilate can’t feel the tremendous,
life-changing gift forgiveness is.
I have said many times I am quite sure that God is forgiving each one of us
every single moment of every day as we walk around and go about our business.
And God is not keeping count.
All the little things.
And all the big things.
Every harmful thing you have ever done or ever thought – is completely forgiven. [pause]
We could, I guess, like the servant, go on our way untouched by that.
Or, we could take a moment, and let that sentence sink into us, and settle deep inside us,
and take it to heart.
Every harmful thing you have ever done or ever thought – is completely forgiven.
Feel the force of it.
The shock of it.
The life-changing nature of it.
And maybe be a little more ready to forgive another erring human being the next time
one crosses our path.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
What that means, I guess, is that we are never more close to God than when we forgive.
We are never more divine.
Never closer to what we were intended to be: exact images or likeness of Jesus,
who is the exact image of the infinitely merciful and forgiving God.
Be forgiven.
Let go of all that stuff that is dragging you down.
God forgives it.
Be forgiven – and then pass it on.
And together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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