Forgiveness Parable

One of the most honest questions in the bible is from Peter:

“Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often should I forgive him? As many as 7 times?” When we hear this we may think 

          Peter is asking a math question.

He is asking, is there a limit to how much we forgive?

At some point does the person we have been forgiving over and over

drain the offer? At what number can we finally say, that’s it. I’ve done my part, I have forgiven enough times, and now I am done?

Peter thinks 7 is generous. And in his tradition it was. Rabbinic teaching in Peter’s day held that 3 times was the standard for forgiveness. Peter doubled that and added one, thinking he is being generous.

And then Jesus’ answer: 77 times.

There is something about that answer that changes everything.

Jesus is not really answering math. He is not saying 77 is the right number.

He is saying, “You are asking the wrong question.”

Forgiveness is not something you count. And the moment you are counting, you have already stopped forgiving. Think about that for a moment.Forgiveness is not keeping score.

To make the point stick he tells one of the harder parables.

The king wants to settle accounts with his servant. One servant owes the king the equivalent of 200,000 years of wages, It is a debt that no human being could ever repay. The king orders him to sell everything he and his family have.

Imagine owing a debt so large because your work wage was the state standard. You had to borrow to try to make ends meet and it still isn’t enough. You are notified you are being evicted, your utilities and water is be shut off, your automobile repossessed, your SNAP benefits stopped.

You have no means to pay for your mental health medication or see your mental health specialist because your Medicare premium tripled in price?

Now, you don’t have transportation to get to the food bank. You don’t have a place to live. You only have the clothes you are wearing,

worn out shoes, smelly socks, work clothes that need washing. You feel helpless, powerless, vulnerable in a world where you are supposed to be able to live on a decent wage.

 In this circumstance, you would  probably do what the servant did. He asked for patience to pay everything back, which is impossible,

knowing he wouldn’t be able to pay his debt. The servant is speaking the language of hope, grace, mercy in the face of an impossible situation.

He is asking for time he does not have and a future he cannot reach.

What happens next—the most beautiful sentence in the parable—“Out of pity” for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.

No restructuring with a budget billing plan. No giving him more time to pay. He forgave the debt. Wiped it off the books.Erased an impossible obligation with his word.

The servant was forgiven. I think intellectually we know that God has forgiven us. We say it in worship. We have sung it in hymns. We have heard the words of “you are forgiven” spoken over us.

But if we are honest, we haven’t really done anything so bad.

We’ve failed a little here and there. We picture ourselves as basically decent people making small mistakes, and are trying to be better.

This parable is wants us to feel and see something. This parable

is trying to get us to feel  the actual scale of what God has forgiven in us.

 Not the mistakes we like to focus on, but the whole shape of a life lived

 away and disconnected from love: The ways we have failed to show up.

The ways we have been cruel without noticing. The ways we have benefited from systems that have crushed people we will never meet.

The way we have wasted years we were given. The way we have loved ourselves more than we have loved our neightbor. The way we have loved ourselves more than we have loved God.

What the parable says is these debts have been forgiven. No restructuring

No payment plan. Forgiven. Wiped off the books.

Next in the parable is what the forgiven servant does.

He’s walking on air, there is a bounce in his step. He’s updated his

wardrobe, moved to the best side of the tracks, has wheels to get around,

eats the best fish and figs. He’s a free man,and he runs into a fellow servant who owes him about three months of wages. It is a debt to pay

but chump change compared to what the the one servant owed.

What does our free man do to his fellow co-worker, he grabs him by the throat and tells him to pay up. He literally grabs him by the throat.

Can you see the picture of fingers pressing into someone’s neck

over a debt that is miniscual to the one you were just forgiven?

I want this picture to stay in your head this week because I think it is one of the most convincing images in the gospels. The person who was just forgiven the impossible sum is choking someone over a smaller sum.

Why? We don’t know. But what I do know is that he did not understand what mercy, grace, and love meant to his heart and spirit. He had received mercy, grace and love, but he did not know how to pay it forward.

This is a physical enactment of what score-keeping looks like when we are not paying attention to the scale of forgiveness we have been given.

What happens next is very dark.The king finds out, confronts the servant,

reminds him of his forgiven debt, calls him wicked, and hands him over to be tortured until his debt is paid, which will never happen because he owes lifetimes of debt.

Jesus is not making a small point here. He is not saying, “please try to be more forgiving.” He is naming a link between the forgiveness we receive.

and the forgiveness we hand out.

Forgiveness is a decision, made over time, to release what is owed.

to let go of score-keeping that keeps you tied to the person who hurt you.

It is a gift you give yourself as much as it is a gift you give the other.  Forgiveness releases debts of pride, jealousy, dishonesty, judgmentalism, doubt, fear, insincerity, worry… and a million other debts that harden the heart.

Mercy, grace, and love are shown to you on a scale that you have never really let yourself feel. Feel  our compassionate God. Feel the warmth when you are alone in anger. Feel the hug when you are in emotional pain

God has forgiven your hardened heart.

If you still have someone by the throat over your expectations of the other

you have been unable to release—that is not the moment you grit your teeth and try harder.

This is the moment you go back to the throne of the King and sit for ahwile

reflect what has been forgiven in you. Because the forgiveness we hand out grows over time, out of the forgiveness we have felt.

You have been forgiven. Let it change you. Amen