Pastor Tom Johnson, September 11, 2011
This morning we need to put our math hats on. It begins with Peter’s numerical question: “If someone wrongs me, how often should I forgive? Seven times?” How many times must I forgive? What is the threshold of enough forgiveness? When does asking for forgiveness over and over again become an unhealthy pattern and abuse of mercy? Seven times sounds pretty reasonable. Otherwise we run the risk of encouraging serial wrong-doers. Rather than helping them by our forgiveness, we may be enabling them. It seems reasonable, doesn’t it?
But Jesus does not think that Peter is nearly generous enough with his mercy and forgiveness. “Not seven times,” Jesus says, “but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” In other words, forgive over and over again—even until you lose count. Scripture says, “Love keeps no record of wrongs.” God himself says over and over again, “I will remember your sins no more.” By raising the bar of forgiveness, Jesus wants us to be generous and frequent in our forgiveness. And so he tells a story.
A king confronts a slave who owes him an enormous debt. The man owes the king 10,000 talents. One talent is 15 years of wages for a worker. In other words, the man owed him 15 times 10,000 talents. Today, the average worker makes about $40,000. That means that the slave owed the king, by today’s standard, 6 billion dollars. A year ago, that was the estimate of how much money Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook was worth. No explanation is given how this slave could have spent such a vast amount of money. Jesus makes no comment how this king could have let the slave get away with accumulating so much debt.
When the slave cannot pay the king, the king plans to sell the slave, his wife, children, and all that he has to help pay what he owes. The slave drops to his knees and begs for more time. And the king’s heart is filled with pity and compassion. The king does not just give him more time to pay what he owes. He completely writes the debt off. He wipes his financial slate clean. The slave has his freedom, family, possessions, and owes nothing to the king.
As the slave leaves, he comes upon a fellow slave. His colleague owes him one hundred denarii—that is one hundred days of wages. That is about $15,000 based on the same average yearly wage. That is 1/400,000th of what he owed the king. Like the first slave, this slave also begs for more time and promises to pay him back. The indebted slave cannot fall to his knees because the first slave has him by the throat. And rather than give him more time, he has him put in prison. When all the other slaves see what he did, it absolutely knocks the wind out of them. They are “greatly distressed” and tell everything that happened to the king who is just as shocked as everyone else. It’s in the king’s rebuke where we find the principle of forgiveness: “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” “Shouldn’t my forgiving you your billions encourage you to forgive someone else’s thousands?”
And here is the twist to our story: the slave is not in prison for his debt but for his unforgiveness. It is a prison of unforgiveness—the bonds and shackles of a merciless and uncompassionate heart. The great tragedy of this story is that what the king forgave did not result in life-transformation and a compassionate heart. And that is the point of the story to Peter, to the other disciples, and to me and you. God, in his mercy, has forgiven us billions of dollars of sins through Jesus. If we truly understand how much mercy and love we have received, how can we withhold mercy and love toward others?
If we are unable or not willing to forgive others, it is because we are trapped in our own prison of unforgiveness. We only have ourselves to blame for our incarceration. And that is the warning of this passage, that harboring bitterness, anger, resentment, and unforgiveness does just as much harm to ourselves as it does toward others.
A little over twenty years ago, my sister was living in Manhatten and took me to the top of one of the trade center towers. The images of those towers in flame and collapsing deeply impacted me. I still cannot fathom the enormity of that crime against humanity—the loss of life, the grief, and the unanswered questions. And yet, Jesus is talking about sin on a colossal scale—crime against humanity truly of biblical proportions. He reminds us that God’s forgiveness is even more colossal and able to cover the vilest offender. Many of us cannot even begin to imagine the grief and visceral outcry of those who lost loved ones. But for all of us, Jesus reminds us that victimization can lead to greater tragedy—the prison of unforgiveness, vitriolic anger, and vengeance.
On our journey from the events of 9/11 into the future, we must remember to go by the way of the cross. The King has forgiven the enormity of our sin and brokeness. Forgiveness is the only thing that will motivate true heart change. We have been completely forgiven. And we have the opportunity to spread that same forgiveness around us to transform the world. As the hymn born out of tragic loss says:
“When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride. Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.”
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