Extravagant Forgiveness

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost                            13 September 2020

Sermon by Deacon Marsha Roscoe

(Matthew 18:21-35) Today’s gospel lesson is one of the most difficult teachings in the New Testament. Forgiveness touches the rawest part of our lives – our hearts — the hurts, the pains, the grudges, the resentments… truthfully, the areas in our life where we need Jesus the most.

We have Peter asking Jesus how often should I forgive? Peter is really asking about the extent, the limit to forgiveness. Surely there has to be a ceiling on forgiveness!

Peter suggest a number. Do you know the market rate for forgiveness? How many times can a family member hurt us until we no longer have to forgive? How many times can that coworker stab us in the back before we are qualified to bring out our righteous wrath?

According to rabbinic Jewish teaching, the market rate is three times. For Peter to suggest seven times, I am sure he felt generous.

After all — he doubled the market rate plus one. Whatever the rabbi said, Peter was going higher. Let me double it and make it a number scripturally signifying completion – 7.

Jesus must have shocked him. Jesus said, not seven times, but 77.  77 is a figure of speech. He is not suggesting that Peter begin to count and keep track so that when he gets to 78 times, he no longer needs to forgive.

It’s kind of like when I tell my family I have cooked 1000 times over the past few months, I really have not been counting or keeping track. It just feels like all the time.

When Jesus is saying 77, this is not about counting, measuring or recording, it is about endless forgiveness.

In a culture where we struggle with holding grudges and resentment, where the hurtful things we hold in our hearts leave us raw and defensive, Jesus calls us to unlimited forgiveness.

This is the tension we live in. Jesus knows this is not easy for us. However, Jesus gives us another reality to put our eyes on.

If there is someone that we are at odds with right now, how do we repeatedly forgive? Jesus gives us an illustration.

We have a scene between a king and a slave.
The king is reckoning with his debtors; and one particular slave owes him 10,000 talents. 10,000 talents is enormous! Not $10,000 – as this might be payable.

One talent is worth — not one year — but 15 to 20 years of wealth. Assume we live to 70-80 years old, working 60 of those years. We don’t buy anything, eat anything, spend money on anything. After working our whole lives, we give all our money to the king and we still owe 9,996 talents.

This is an unattainable figure.

Understandably, the slave begs for mercy desperately pleads for patience and pity and promises to pay the king back.  When we are desperate, we will say anything won’t we? Paying 10,000 talents is impossible!

So what does the king do? He forgives 200,000 years of wages – not take your time to pay – no need to pay anything at all. Imagine your house loans, car loans, credit card loans all instantaneously forgiven. This is incomprehensible.

This parable brings up a personal family story of ours. At the age of 14, my sister developed a rare form of kidney cancer. At the time, she was only the second case in the United States as someone under the age of 40 who developed this kind of cancer.

25 years ago, our family did not have the insurance we do today. All of her diagnostic tests, the surgery, follow-up care, racked up medical bills well over six figures. 

My family had no idea how we might be able to pay back the very fact that they saved my sister’s life.

Months after her diagnosis and surgery, my parents received a letter asking for her kidney to be donated for research. If they were willing, all of the medical bills up until that point would be paid in full and released from their obligations. This was such an act of extravagant forgiveness, one that prevented them from having to file bankruptcy, that makes this parable all too real.

If you’ve ever been forgiven such debt, or have ever received forgiveness for deep wounds you have caused someone else, you know how Holy forgiveness is.

Scripture is not a debt collector coming to collect payment. Christ is telling us that the enormity of our debt is paid by Christ on the cross – at Christ’s expense.  This is not fire insurance.

Let’s return to the forgiven servant and find out what happens next. Instead of celebrating, the servant who is forgiven that extravagant debt encountered a fellow slave who owed him 100 Denarii.

One Denarius is equivalent to one day’s wages. This means that 100 Denarii equals 1/3 of a year‘s wages — this is a long shot from 10,000 talents!

The forgiven servant grabs his debtor by the throat with ruthless ferocity — even as he hears almost his exact same words coming back to him — pleading for patience and time to pay him back, he extends no mercy and immediately throws the slave in prison.

If we aren’t careful this reads like a downhill journey of forgiveness.

The power to forgive comes from God.

CS Lewis writes, “to be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”

We suffer in our unforgiveness. Bearing grudges, holding resentments, often in the tyranny of the trivial, causes our own mental imprisonment.

Nelson Mandela says that resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

There are probably people right now we all feel owe us 100 Denarii worth of pain. Jesus did not come to conceal our pain. Jesus came to reveal love, grace and forgiveness through his wounds so that we can extend the same forgiveness to others.

Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest, says that when we forgive someone, we are forgiving them for not being God. Think about that for a moment. When we forgive, we are forgiving someone for not being God.

Instead of attributing each hurt and pain to labels, actions, and particular scenarios that hold us captive, what if we approach forgiveness like God does, as freedom from our humanness? This is how God forgives.

Jesus’ wounds, our wounds, are defined by God’s love and mercy.

As followers of Jesus, we get to realize that Jesus brokers unlimited forgiveness.

Anger, unforgiveness and resentment only result in separation from those who we love. Forgiving someone requires an act of faith.

God always goes first.

Our ability to forgive comes from God‘s forgiveness and calls us to reach for — and share – God’s forgiveness with others.

Getting down on our knees over and over again,
we allow God‘s sweet forgiveness to pour down over us like holy water.

Remembering that we are all beloved children of God, may we welcome others with the same compassion and forgiveness with which God welcomes us. Amen