One of the tricky things about Jesus’ parables is where to situate ourselves, especially when the parable is a familiar one. As soon as we hear the words, “…the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts…” our brains jump ahead, “Oh, this is the one where the guy is forgiven of his debts and then two seconds later turns around and refuses to forgive someone else’s debt.” We may have felt pity for the first slave who owed so much, we may have been shocked by his poor behavior toward the other slave, or we may have even thought, “That guy deserved what he got!” But the thing that is the hardest to do when reading this familiar parable is to situate ourselves in the shoes of the first slave. And yet, that is the entire reason Jesus tells the parable today.
We know where to situate ourselves because of what happens before the parable. If you remember our gospel last week, we talked about Jesus’ conflict resolution plan. In the very next verse after Jesus explains how the community of faith is to handle conflict, Peter asks a question in today’s text. The question is a fair one, and when we’re really honest with ourselves, one we may have asked God ourselves. Peter asks, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” The parable Jesus tells today is in response to Peter’s question about conflict, sin, and forgiveness in the community of faith. Essentially, Jesus says, “Let me tell you a little story about forgiveness.” So, we, who have resisted forgiveness ourselves like Peter, can situate ourselves with not just Peter, but with the slave who fails so miserably at forgiveness.
Now, before you get too defensive about how you would never treat a fellow human being like the first slave treats the second, we need to think about Peter’s question first. Theologian Stanley Hauerwas explains, “Peter’s question presupposes that he is the one who has been sinned against. He assumes that he is in the position of power against the one who has wronged him. But Jesus’s reply reminds Peter that he is to learn to be the forgiven.”[i] Before we begin to think about offering forgiveness, we operate from one foundational truth: we are a people who have first been forgiven.[ii] Our forgiven status is at the heart of our ability to be a people of forgiveness.
But before we even talk about being a people of forgiveness, we need to talk a little bit about what forgiveness is not. Some of us believe that forgiveness means excusing or overlooking the harm that has been done to us and saying that everything is okay. For those who hold that belief, forgiveness can be equated with stuffing our feelings down deep inside or downright lying in order to keep the peace. Others of us believe that forgiveness means allowing those who have hurt us to persist in their behavior. For those who hold this belief, forgiveness is so important, that we become recurring victims of offenses. Still others believe that forgiving means forgetting what happened. For those who hold this belief, forgiveness is pretending an old hurt does not still hurt. Finally, others see forgiveness as something that we can do at will, and always all at once. For those who hold this belief, forgiveness must be immediate and offered quickly. The problem with all these models of forgiveness – of overlooking the harm, saying everything is okay, of allowing recurring behavior, of trying to forget, or forgiving once and for all – is that these models of forgiveness would have been totally foreign to Jesus. According to author Jan Richardson, in Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness, “…nowhere does Jesus lay upon us the kinds of burdens we have often placed upon ourselves—burdens that can make one of the most difficult spiritual practices nearly impossible.”[iii]
So, if we know what forgiveness is not, we need to know what forgiveness is. I like what scholar Debie Thomas has to say about forgiveness. She says, “I think forgiveness is choosing to foreground love instead of resentment. If I’m consumed with my own pain, if I’ve made injury my identity, if I insist on weaponizing my well-deserved anger in every interaction I have with people who hurt me, then I’m drinking poison, and the poison will kill me long before it does anything to my abusers. To choose forgiveness is…to cast my hunger for healing deep into Christ’s heart, because healing belongs to him, and he’s the only one powerful enough to secure it.” She goes on to say, “Secondly, …forgiveness is a transformed way of seeing. A way of seeing that is forward-focused. Future-focused. Eschaton-focused. …abuse and oppression are [n]ever God’s will or plan for anyone. But I do believe that God is always and everywhere in the business of taking the worst things that happen to us, and going to work on them for the purposes of multiplying wholeness and blessing…Because God loves us, we don’t have to forgive out of scarcity. We can forgive out of God’s abundance.”[iv]
So how many times are we to forgive? Not seven times. Not even really seventy-seven times or seventy times seven, as some translations say.[v] The forgiveness that first slave receives is hyperbolically abundant – the forgiveness by the king of ten thousand talents (or the equivalent of 150,000 years of labor)[vi] is almost ludicrous in its generosity. But that is how abundantly God loves us. We are invited today to love with that kind of ludicrous abundance too. For our health, for our faith in the better world God is creating, we pray for the strength to ask God to “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” We are a forgiven people, who, because God loves us, can forgive not out of scarcity, but out of God’s abundance. Amen.
[i] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew: Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006), 166.
[ii] Hauerwas, 166.
[iii] Jan Richardson, “The Hardest Blessing,” September 9, 2014, as found at http://paintedprayerbook.com/2014/09/09/the-hardest-blessing/#.VBOogcKwKi0 on September 16, 2023.
[iv] Debie Thomas, “Unpacking Forgiveness,” September 6, 2020, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2748-unpacking-forgiveness on September 16, 2023.
[v] Lewis R. Donelson, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 69.
[vi] David Lose, “Pentecost 14A: Forgiveness and Freedom,” Sept. 7, 2014, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/ 2014/09/pentecost-14-a/.
Seeking and Serving 