Our Gospel reading has quite a parable to it. One that has a lesson that seems so simple and practical, yet, when the rubber meets the road, we find out it’s not so easy. It even seems as if Peter doesn’t quite get it at first. And on this day, 10 years after the terrorist attacks in our country changed our lives forever, it’s a topic that perhaps many of us don’t want to have to think about or talk about. Today’s lessons give us a chance to speak about forgiveness, and in particular, the reason why we are set free to forgive other people.
In the previous part of this chapter, Jesus had just told His disciples how to go about trying to restore a brother or sister who was caught up in sin. You’ll remember the process that our Lord gave was 1) speak to that person one on one, 2) if that doesn’t work, take one or two others along to try to show that person the danger of their sin and achieve reconciliation, 3) if that didn’t work, tell it to the church so that the body of believes in that place can do what they can to restore the erring brother or sister in Christ, and finally, if after several attempts at speaking the truth of God’s word of Lawto that person, the person chose to cling to their sin instead of turning to Christ in repentance and faith and seek to be forgiven of that sin, that person is removed from the fellowship of believers because they chose to cling to the sin instead of cling to Christ. Now as we begin today’s text, and this talk about sin and forgiveness, of Law and Gospel if you will, in this conversation we have in today’s text, we’re not dealing with open, unrepentant sinners who refuse to acknowledge what they are doing to themselves or to someone else is sinful and against the will of God. We’re dealing with someone who fits into the first or second category who sins against you, you’ve told them what God’s Word has to say, and they say “You’re right. What I have done is sinful and against God’s Law. I shouldn’t have done it I’m sorry, I repent, I will not do it again. Please forgive me.”
In this case as today’s text opens, Peter has a good question. “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Peter thinks he’s being pretty generous here. Once, yeah, sure. Twice, okay. Most of us though would usually go with the three strikes, you’re out policy. Peter thinks seven times is being pretty forgiving, but what does Jesus say? “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Let’s see…do the math…and that comes to 490 times! You can just picture the look on Peter’s face when Jesus says that. “490 times! Even if he does the same thing to me over and over and over again? Jesus, you can’t be serious? Okay, 490 is a lot, but just wait until he crosses me for the 491st time, then I can cut him off!”
But is Jesus really putting a number on forgiveness here? No. In the parable, Jesus makes that clear by giving us a picture of a king who wanted to settle some of his accounts. One of the debtors was brought before him, and this man owed him “ten thousand talents.” To put it in modern terms that we can understand, let’s just say he owed the king bazillions of dollars. The size of his debt was such that there was no hope of ever possibly earning enough income to even pay the interest on it, let alone repay the debt itself. Now this debtor knows he’s in big trouble. And now he has to answer for his debt. He knows he has no way he can ever earn enough to repay the debt. The king considers the situation, and orders that the man be sold into slavery along with his wife and children, all of the man’s possessions be sold, and that the proceeds go toward repaying his debt. The debtor makes a last ditch plea for mercy “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” Now everyone there knows that the debt is such there’s no way this man can ever possibly hope to repay everything. He’s simply appealing to the master to have mercy on him. Undeserved mercy of some sort, even if his attempt to pay back the debt will be feeble at best. And what does the master do? “Out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.” That crushing weight of that huge debt was gone! Forgiven! Meaning it wasn’t there anymore. He no longer owed the master anything. For this man who was looking at losing everything, the Master in His mercy has given him not just freedom, but literally his life back!
Now put yourself into the shoes of that debtor. If that were you, how would you feel to have that large of a debt simply wiped off the books, never to haunt you again? If any of you have ever or currently have a large debt hanging over your head, you know what that can do to you. The wonder “will I ever get out of this? Will I ever have financial freedom to do the things I want to do with my money instead of having to send so much of it off to someone else each month?” You’d probably be extremely relieved at having that debt cancelled, wouldn’t you? I think we’d all agree that feeling would be a feeling of great joy in having that debt cancelled.
And so, in his great joy in having his life back, and having that debt forgiven, the servant leaves, and what does he do? “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.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put in him prison until he should pay the debt.” Wait a minute. That’s not the reaction you’d expect, would you. This fellow servant owed this man a very small fraction of the debt he had been forgiven. He had just been in that fellow servant’s shoes. And what does he do? Instead of having mercy, instead of sharing the joy he had in having his debt forgiven by having mercy on his fellow servant, he refuses and has him thrown into debtor’s prison until he has worked off his debt. His fellow servants who witnessed this were upset! They didn’t think it was right. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? The master wasn’t too pleased and what did he do? He told the servant “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” Then he has the servant thrown into debtor’s prison to work off every last bit of his debt.
Well, at this point, it’s time to figure out who is who in this parable Jesus tells us. The Master of course is God, our heavenly Father. The debtor is us. The debt is our sin. Our many transgressions against His law. Our sin of thought, word, and deed, known and unknown, that separate us from Him. That weight of sin that is so great, that no matter how many good works we may try to accomplish in this life, it will not even make a dent in the debt we have against God. A quick review of the ten commandments will quickly lead us to the realization that it’s not possible for us to keep that Law perfectly, the way God commands of us, and that when we stand before him on our own, we are in the same boat that debtor was in the parable to the Master. We could give everything, even our own life, and still not be able to atone for our debt of sin.
And what does God do? What does He do when we cry out to Him, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner?” (Luke 18:13) He says “I already have. Just look at the cross. Look at the nail marks in my only Son’s hands and feet. Look at the place where the spear pierced His side. Look at the empty tomb. He has paid that debt for you. Every single last penny. And because of what He has done for you at the cross, you do not owe me a thing. You are forgiven. You are set free. You are no longer my debtor. You are my son. You are my daughter. You are my heir.
That’s the good news that we have to proclaim to repentant sinners. And it would make sense that Christians, who are the most forgiven people in the world, would also be the most forgiving people in the world as well. That we would in turn, pass that forgiveness on to those who transgress against us and ask us to have mercy on them too just as the one servant did who owed that small little debt to the forgiven servant.
But unfortunately, all to often, it doesn’t work that way, does it? And that’s the part of the petition of the Lord’s prayer “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” that we tend to have a lot of difficulty with. We don’t always forgive as easily, do we? In fact, instead, too often, our forgiveness is like Peter’s. We want to keep score. We want to have a magic number that we can finally say “Yeah, you did it again. Yeah, I’ve heard this whole ‘I’m sorry’ thing before, and I’m not buying it this time. Forget it. I’ll NEVER forgive you for what you’ve done.” And with today being a day where we mark attacks on our nation that killed thousands of innocent people, it is worth asking the question: what would you say if one of the terrorists, or one of the terrorist organizations that master minded the attacks of 9/11/2001 were to come up to you as an American and say “I’m sorry for what we did to you and your country. God’s law says “thou shalt not kill” and we did. We’re sorry.” Would you be willing to forgive them?
Well, what does our Lord say? You forgive them. From your heart. We’re not talking about the kind of “I forgive you” that a parent forces a child to say when their sibling first forcefully says “I’m sorry” for hitting you when you both know he’s not sorry for hitting you and you don’t forgive him. We’re talking about sincere forgiveness. The kind that says “I will not speak of this again. I will no longer dwell on this. I will not allow this to cause further damage to my relationship with you. I will no longer hold this over you.” It’s the kind of forgiveness that shows others how much we value the forgiveness God has first shown us through Jesus Christ. Because without Him first forgiving us, we are not able to forgive others, either.
Look at our Old Testament reading for this morning for a powerful real life story of forgiveness. If anyone had reason to hold a grudge against someone, it was Joseph against his brothers. After all, look at everything his brothers did to him. They shoved him in a pit, sold him into slavery, and then went back and told their father that “Joseph is dead” all because they were jealous that Joseph was their father’s favorite. Joseph ended up spending time as a slave, then later languishing in a prison cell in a far away land when he refused to be a party to the sin of adultery with the wife of Potiphar. Yet through it all, through is ability to interpret dreams, Joseph ends up becoming second in charge in all of Egypt, preparing the land during a 7 year period of prosperity so that they may endure a 7 year famine that is to come. And in the midst of that famine, Joseph’s brothers, of all people, have come, begging for him to have mercy on them. Mercy they don’t expect Joseph to have on them as they say “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” And that’s the reaction we would expect for him to have. None of us would blame him if that’s what Joseph did. Even his own brothers realize this. But what does Joseph do? “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Joseph pronounces forgiveness. Forgiveness they certainly realize they didn’t earn by any of their work or merit. Yet, Joseph forgives them and restores them as brothers, not relegating them to the low role of servant they would have been happy to have after what they have done to him.
Joseph is, in a way, a foreshadow of the forgiveness for the world that was to come. The religious leaders of Jesus day wanted him gone. So they trumped up charges, had him stricken, smitten, and afflicted, and put him to death. As you read the passion narratives, you quickly realize that indeed, those who worked so hard to put Jesus to death on that Good Friday had evil intentions, and certainly ignored several of God’s commandments for us in getting the job done. And yet, despite their evil intentions, at the cross, God says “the world meant evil against my son, but I used it for good, to bring it about that many people should have forgiveness of sins and eternal life, as you do today.”
That’s the kind of forgiveness that we are called to speak to afflicted sinners yet today. Those who understand what they have done, and the damage that it has caused. To such people who know that they have broken God’s law in thought, word, and deed, who confess the truth that they are poor, miserable sinners, we have the joy of saying to them “Indeed, what you have done is against God’s will for you. But because of what Jesus Christ has done for you at the cross, your debt of sin is paid. You are set free. You are forgiven. Now when He looks at you, your sin is as far as the East is from the West.”
You see, the bottom line with the readings for today is this: God’s forgiveness is not like our forgiveness. God’s forgiveness is free. It’s not a forgiveness based on what we do. It’s not a forgiveness that’s conditional. When God says to you through His called servant of the Word “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, he means it. It’s forgiven. Never to be brought up again. Where we would keep score, like Peter was seeking to at the beginning of the text, God doesn’t. His forgiveness is a never ending supply. He even forgives us for our sin of failing to forgive those who come to us and ask for our forgiveness for their small debt of sin toward us in comparison with our great debt of sin that has been paid by Jesus Christ. Forgiveness isn’t always easy. And in this world, forgiveness doesn’t always mean that the damage caused by the sin will magically go away. We may have to live with the consequences of it, such as a relationship that will be permanently broken, or still face punishment from civil authority if civil law has been broken, or we may still have lost a job over sin that couldn’t be tolerated in the workplace and was grounds for termination. But eternally speaking, God’s forgiveness releases you from your debt of sin, and brings you into paradise forever.
Thanks be to God that His forgiveness isn’t like our forgiveness. And thanks be to God that He has set us free through Christ to pronounce and share that forgiveness with others for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
