Grace to you from God our Father and our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The
text for this meditation is written in the 18th Chapter of the
Gospel according to St Matthew: Verses 21 – 35:
21 Then Peter came up and
said to him, “Lord, how often will
my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As
many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven
times, but seventy-seven times.
23 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who
wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle, one
was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents.25 And since he could not pay, his
master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had,
and payment to be made. 26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I
will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him
and forgave him the debt. 28 But when that same servant went
out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to
choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 So his fellow servant fell down
and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 He refused and went and put him
in prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow servants saw
what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported
to their master all that had taken place. 32 Then his master summoned him
and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you
pleaded with me. 33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had
mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his
debt. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do
not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Jesus begins the parable with these words: “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be
compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to
him who owed him ten thousand talents.”
Ten thousand talents is a lot of money.
Based on historical and archeological records a talent is a unit of
weight of approximately 30 Kilos. Based
on the current value of gold that adds up to $12 billion dollars. Even Bill Gates, the wealthiest man in the
world would have to admit that this is a lot of money. There would be a very few people on earth
today who could even pay the interest on this kind of debt.
You can be sure that the servant was not carrying a $12
billion debt. Here Jesus is using symbolic language, that can be easily
understood, to convey His point. Within the context of this parable, Jesus is
saying, “This massive debt is the
equivalent of your sin. Your sin is a
debt that you can never, ever repay no matter how hard or how long you work at
it.”
Then there is the penalty for such a large debt. “His
master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had,
and payment to be made.” The king
had the right to sell this man and his family into slavery. Even that would not cover the debt. Once sold into slavery, the man and his
family would never be free again.
Within the context of this parable, Jesus is pronouncing
judgment. “You deserve nothing but the slavery of the eternal punishment of hell
for your sin. Just as the debtor in the
parable will never be free from slavery, you will never be free from your
punishment in hell.”
Then the debtor tried to bargain with the king. “The
servant fell on his knees, pleading to him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will
pay you everything.’” At this point
in time you might be tempted to think, “How foolish! There is no way that this servant can ever
deal with that debt. He is desperate and
lost touch with reality”
Within the context of this parable, Jesus asks us to imagine
that we are that man. With these words,
He asks, “How often have you tried to bargain with God? How often have you said, ‘I promise to do
better. I promise not to be so
bitter. I promise to explain things in
the kindest way. I will try really,
really hard to be a better person.”
Within the context of this parable, Jesus is telling us that we are just
as foolish as the servant in the parable when we even begin to think we can pay
back the sin debt we owe to God. Not
only can we not even make the interest payments on this debt, but our daily
sins continuously add to the principal of the debt we owe. Jesus is telling us that we have lost touch
with reality if we think we can pay God back.
The king had compassion on the servant, and out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and
forgave him the debt. No earthly
king would ever do something so foolish.
The generosity of this king is beyond human comprehension. To use an old Australian idiom, the king
appeared to be a ‘soft touch’.
One way to find God in a parable is to look for the person
who is the ‘soft touch’. Jesus tells us
that the king corresponds to God the Father, but we can also know that the king
represents God because He is a ‘soft touch’.
Think how big God is in the context of this parable. Each and every human being on the planet owes
that kind of massive sin debt toward God.
Not only that, but all the people who have ever lived on this planet and
already died also owe that kind of debt to God.
Then add in all the billions and billions of people who have yet to be
born between now and the day Jesus returns.
Each and every man, woman, and child owes that kind of sin debt to God.
If 10,000 talents represents just one person’s sin, then the
sin debt of the world is several orders of magnitude greater than the national
debt of the combined capitalist countries of the world. In fact, we are talking several orders of
magnitude greater than the combined total of all the debt of every government,
every corporation, every individual, and every other kind of debt that there
can be. Just think of that, and the
thing is, God has released and forgiven it all through His Son, Jesus Christ. It is all free and clear in His sight.
Near the end of His time
on the cross, Jesus said, “It is finished!”
This sentence, “It is finished,”
is one word in the original Greek, ‘tetelestai’.
That word was also used when a debtor paid his debt. The person who held the debt would write, “It is finished,” on the contract. That meant that the contract had been paid in
full. When Jesus suffered and died on
the cross, He did the impossible. He
paid the sin debt for us. When He said,
“It is finished,” He said our sin debt is paid in full.
There are many people who do not come to church because they
do not understand this parable. Some do
not understand the massive sin debt they owe and they actually believe they can
pay it off. They believe that they do
not need the forgiveness of sins that Jesus gives away in this place.
Then there are those who understand that the debt of their
sin is a crushing debt, but they believe they must deal with the debt before
they can gather with God’s people. They
do not understand that the church is not a debt collection agency, but a debt
forgiveness agency. They do not
understand that church is the place for sinners who carry an impossible debt.
Then there are those who do attend church regularly, but still don’t understand how serious
their sin is. One of those sinners in
church is the ordained leader of their church who stands before them and pronounces
that God’s forgives all their sins in the name of Jesus. Never the less, these people do not really
appreciate the magnitude of that forgiveness because they do not appreciate the
magnitude of their sin. They hear the
words of forgiveness, but they do not value the forgiveness. The rest of the parable is a warning to these
people.
You see, as Jesus continued the parable, the servant who
received the forgiveness of that unimaginable debt did not pass that
forgiveness on to his fellow servant. “He found one of his fellow servants who
owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying,
‘Pay what you owe.’” A denarius was
the going wage for one day’s labor. So,
a hundred denarii would be a hundred days’ pay … about the equivalent of the
price for a small hatchback car. It is
not a small debt, but it is payable. It
is certainly miniscule compared to the massive debt that the king forgave
earlier in the parable. Never the less,
the servant had no mercy on his fellow servant.
He demonstrated that he did not appreciate the forgiveness his king had
for him.
We live in a culture that surrenders a lot of power to those
who are easily offended. There is a
great temptation to follow the lead of our culture and get offended at our
fellow men. We all sin against God daily
and most of those sins are also against our neighbor. This also means that people sin against us
daily. Sometimes those sins hurt … a
lot. It would be easy to take offense at
those sins … to hold a grudge. After
all, someone has violated our rights.
Jesus warns of the danger in such an attitude in the
parable. When the king learned of the
ingratitude of the servant, “[He]
summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt
because you pleaded with me. And should
not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the
jailers, until he should pay all his debt.”
With these words, Jesus teaches us that those who receive His massive
gift of forgiveness have an obligation to share that gift with others. Jesus not only gives forgiveness to us, but
He also gives forgiveness through us.
The forgiven sinner will readily forgive those who sin against him.
This is impossible for
the natural human being. We enjoy our
grudges too much. A well-known quote of
the eminent US First Lady and Diplomat was Eleanor
Roosevelt was ‘that it is better to
light a candle than curse the darkness’.
The only problem is that many of us really, really enjoy cursing the
darkness. Even though anger, malice,
spite, revenge, and all the other aspects of an unforgiving heart will eat us
alive from the inside out, we still seem to get some justification out of
nursing that grudge.
That is the reason the cross is so important, for it is on
the cross that Jesus earned the lavish, generous, outrageous forgiveness that
He pours out on us every day. We receive
that forgiveness by faith as we hear the Word preached and consume the Word in
Christ’s body and blood. It is that
forgiveness that frees us from our destructive desire to nurse that grudge.
The Old Testament reading from Genesis 50: 15-21 gives
us a wonderful example of the Holy Spirit at work in the life of Joseph. Joseph looked forward to the salvation that
God promised to Adam and Eve and to his great grandfather Abraham. He looked forward to the Seed that would
crush the serpent’s head. By that faith,
Joseph saw God’s hand at work even when his brothers sold him into
slavery. His brothers hoped that a life
of slavery would kill Joseph, but Joseph loved and forgave them. By his faith in the coming Messiah, Joseph
freely and lovingly forgave his brothers.
While we live in this world, we live in a war zone. We are both saints and sinners. One of the battles in that war pits our
natural desire to nurture a grudge against our holy desire to forgive. Only the reconciliation with God that Jesus
provided through His death on the cross gives us the victory. Once again, we see that God does all the
work. It is His forgiveness working
through us in Word and Sacrament that forgives our brothers and sister in
Christ. It is His forgiveness that gives
us the victory and reconciles us with God and all humankind forever. Amen.
The
love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding,
keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
