Matthew 18:21-35 In 1947, at a church in Munich, Germany, Corrie Ten Boom
had just finished speaking about forgiveness, assuring her audience that when
God forgives, our sins are cast into the depth of the sea. As she was being greeted by the crowd, she
saw a familiar face: the face of a guard
at Ravensbruck concentration camp where she and her family had been
imprisoned. He didn’t recognize her, but
she recognized him. She and her sister
had been forced to walk in front of him naked while he beat them with a
club.
He admitted that he had been a guard there but had
since become a Christian and wasn’t it a blessing that God forgives us and
would she please forgive him too—and he put out his hand. When she told this story she recounted how
she struggled in that moment but then these words of Jesus entered her
mind: ‘If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father
in heaven forgive your trespasses.’
And she grasped the hand of this man who had shamed and beaten her and
told him he was forgiven.
On May 13, 1981 John Paul II entered St. Peter’s
Square in Vatican City. A man named
Mehmet Ali Agca ran up to him and shot him four times. After the Pope recovered from his wounds
recovered from his wounds he went to the prison where Mehmet was being held,
took him in his arms and forgave him and asked the world’s Christians to pray
for him.
On October 6, 2006 Charles Roberts IV drove up to an
Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, blockaded the door with his truck,
went inside and killed five little girls, seriously wounding a number of others,
and then killed himself, making his wife a widow and his three children orphans. That same day members of the Amish community
came to his home. They assured his widow
that they forgave him and bore his family no ill will.
To take the hand of the man who beat and shamed you
and those you loved—to embrace the man who shot you and tried to kill you—to
support and care for the children of the man who killed your own children—the
world cannot understand these things and truth be told, we struggle to
understand them as well. But we at least
know why: Jesus Christ has forgiven us
our sins and we are to forgive those who sin against us. St. Matthew writes that:
Peter came up and said to [Jesus], “Lord,
how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many
as seven times?”
Last week
we heard Jesus tell us that we are to go to those who have sinned against us and
forgive them and bring them back to God’s flock.
We understand the greatness and difficulty of that
task. We live in a broken world. We are surrounded by fallen and frail
people. Surely there must be some kind
of limit to this call to forgive—particularly
when we are the ones who are wounded.
The rabbis of the day put the number at three—three
times we can be expected to forgive the same sin by the same person. And so with seven times Peter was being quite
generous! But Jesus said: “I do
not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.
Several thousand years before this moment, a man name
Lamech had promised that he would seek vengeance against his enemies seventy
times seven. Of course we know Lamech
wasn’t really talking about 490 acts of vengeance and not one more-- and
neither is Jesus talking about 490 acts of mercy and not one more. Unlimited, unending vengeance and hatred is
set aside by Jesus for unlimited, unending forgiveness and love. Jesus explained why. He said:
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.
I have
seen various ways to calculate this debt but what we need to know is that the
amount is beyond imagination, a debt beyond the man’s calculations-- but not
the king’s. Such is our sin debt in
God’s sight. Such is the ledger of our
lawless deeds.
All of us can point to this failure or that in our
lives. All of us can bring to mind our
pet sins. All of us have some regrets
about the past. But none of us can truly
know the greatness of our sins. The
psalmist says, “Who can discern their
errors”? No one! But that we cannot reckon
our sin debt, does not mean it is not owed.
That we cannot pay it does not mean that a payment will not be required.
Jesus said that:
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.
The man
in the parable owed a debt that he could never repay but that did not mean that
a payment would not be required. The
justice of the king demanded it and so does our own sense of justice. For example:
Bernie Madoff stole billions of dollars from
investors. That money is long gone. Thousands of people will never be
repaid. But that does not mean we do not
want our pound of flesh. Madoff is in
federal prison and will die there.
Justice demands it and the law requires it.
At the
close of the Ten Commandments, God says:
I, the Lord your God, am a
jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and
fourth generation of those who hate me.
In Romans chapter six Paul says that the wages of sin is death.
We owe a
sin debt that cannot be paid by the generations that follow us. We owe a sin debt that is greater than our
own life. We owe a sin debt that an
eternity in hell still will not remove.
Such is the judgment of the king’s law.
Such is the king’s justice. Jesus
said that:
The servant fell on his knees, imploring
him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’
It is
only because of the greatness and majesty and nobility of the king that he does
not fall out of his throne, holding his sides, laughing out loud, saying, “You
fool”!
The servant still had no idea as to the gravity of
his situation—no real idea of what was owed—no ability to calculate what was
required to pay back his debt. He thought
that what he needed was just a bit more time and then he could make things
right. Sounds familiar…
“Just one
more chance Lord, then I will straighten out for good”. “Give me one more opportunity to love those
around me and then I’ll have it down pat”.
“Lift me up just this once Lord, and I’ll never fall again”. “Have
patience with me, and I will pay you everything.”
But of course we can’t. The ledger of the law not only reveals our
debt—it reveals our spiritual bankruptcy—that we have no spiritual assets to
offer for our lawless liabilities. If
there is any hope, it must come from outside of us. Jesus said that: out
of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him
the debt. Please understand…
It wasn’t because the man was overwhelmed by the
greatness of his debt—not because he was grieved over what his debt would do to
his family—not because he was afraid of prison—not because sorrow drove him to
his knees-- that the king forgave him his debt.
It was because of the mercy and pity that resided in the king’s heart
that the man was set free that day. A
debt that the man could never repay—was wiped clean by a word from the
king.
So it is for us.
Our freedom and our forgiveness do not begin with us or continue with us
or end with us. Our freedom and our
forgiveness are found in the mercy and compassion of a king who was crowned
with thorns—it flows from a heart that was pierced with a lance—it is given by
word that was spoken from a cross: Father, forgive them. Father,
forgive them spoken from the font and altar and pulpit. That is how our sin debt is paid. That
is how the kingdom of heaven works.
Jesus said that:
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.’
Let’s be
clear: a debt was owed and simple justice demanded that it should be paid. But where the first debt owed to the king was
unimaginably large, this second debt owed to a fellow servant was incredibly
small—especially in comparison.
Let me ask you, what debts are you owed? Is it the debt of an unkind word spoken about
you by a co-worker? Is it the debt of a
friend who has failed you? Is it the
debt of a family who has treated you badly?
That debt is real.
Justice demands that it be paid.
But grace asks: what is that debt
owed to you, compared to the debt you once owed to God? How do your demands for justice sound compared
to the king’s words of forgiveness?
Jesus said that:
his fellow servant fell down and pleaded
with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison
until he should pay the debt.
What is
so shocking about this scene is the complete inability of the first servant to
see himself in the second servant. But
they were mirror images of one another.
They had the same need for forgiveness of a debt. They take the same posture of a
supplicant. They spoke the same words begging
for mercy. All of us stand as equals at
the foot of the cross, beggars all.
In that moment, the first servant had a remarkable
opportunity to extend the mercy and generosity of the king into the life of a
fellow servant-- but all he could see, was not the love of the king for this
servant too, not the desire of the servant to be forgiven, but only what he was
owed. It is an ugly but familiar
picture.
Christian spouses
alienated from one another. Congregation
members at odds with one another. Battle
lines drawn through church bodies. Fellow
Christians who won’t speak to one another at church. And you can be sure that those around us take
note. Jesus said that:
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.
When
Christians forgive—the world takes note.
A book was written about Corrie Ten Boom and her ministry of forgiveness
after WWII. Newspapers all over the
world carried the stories about the forgiveness of John Paul II and the Amish
in Pennsylvania.
But as much as people take note when Christians
forgive—they also take note when we don’t.
The world may not know all the details of Christian doctrine—but even
unbelievers know that forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith. They know that we Christians are supposed to
be different than the angry, vengeful world around us.
How much more
do we Christians know that what
defines us and makes us who we are, is forgiveness—forgiveness received and forgiveness
given. And so, when the world howls in
protest at our lack of forgiveness—when a brother cries out to God because we
hold a grudge against him—you can be sure that the complaint makes its way to
the king. Jesus said:
Then his master 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. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of
you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Our
text today began with a question: how
often do we have to forgive others when they sin against us? And the answer of Jesus is that we are to
forgive and keep on forgiving. As long
as there are sins against us, there will be forgiveness from us.
That is a
difficult thing to do! Our flesh rebels
against it. We are tempted to fall back
into the pattern of the world: standing in judgment over others—demanding a
strict accounting of every word and action—and seeking to hurt rather than to
heal. In essence, living just like this
unforgiving servant.
With this stern
warning that concludes the parable, Jesus wants us to make sure we understand
that when we choose to live like that, we are also choosing to leave his
kingdom, outside of which is only judgment and punishment and death.
How much better to
live under our King’s gracious rule and receive his forgiveness and extend that
to others! May we forgive as we have
been forgiven! Amen.
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