After Peter, James, and John witnessed Jesus in his transfigured glory, Jesus led them down the mountain and began to teach them about life's truly important things. He taught them about faith and the sufficiency of God. He taught them about the cost of discipleship and his coming death for righteousness sake- and the resurrection which would follow. He taught them about the true nature of heavenly citizenship and what it meant to be a pilgrim in a sometimes hostile world. He taught them about the need for humility and about the destructive nature of what today we might call addiction. He talked about God's love for his children, and how we ought to deepen our relationships with honest forthrightness in the community of faith, and he talked about the authority of the Church and the power of Common Prayer. It was a lot to take in. Peter, who so often did the nervous talking for them all, hazarded to say, "Lord, how often shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Is seven times enough?" Jesus said, "No Peter, 77 would be enough. (70x 7 in some translations)" And that is the background to today's Gospel lesson from St Matthew 18.
Blessed Augustine of Hippo tells us that in St. Luke's Gospel, The generations recorded in the genealogy of Jesus are 77 in number. I counted them, and he is right. Augustine goes on to say that Jesus was telling the disciples that we need to be willing to forgive the sins of all mankind, as many as they may be. All the sins of history must be forgiven if we truly aspire to be the sons and daughters of God. That is a tall order, but Jesus allows no exceptions.
In the parable which follows, Jesus tells the disciples about a servant, a businessman or overseer of sorts who owed his king ten thousand talents. That is a lot of money. A talent was a measure of weight, what an average man could carry. To put it into perspective, in I Kings 16:24, Omri purchased the village and hill of Samaria for two talents of silver. In I Kings 9:13-14, King Hiram of Tyre paid King Solomon 120 talents of gold for several cities near his land. When Sennacherib came down "like a wolf from the north" in II Kings 18:14, he demanded of Hezekiah 300 talents of silver and 30 of gold to withdraw his armies from Jewish land. Indeed, this servant owed his Lord a veritable King's ransom.
Obviously, it was more than the man could pay, and so the Lord ordered his wife and family to be sold into slavery, a thing which sound onerous to us today, but which in the ancient world, where slavery was the economic engine which petroleum provides for us today, preachers and teachers saw this reference in a more metaphorical light. Cyril of Alexandria maintains that the servant's separation from his family shows the "complete and utter separation from the joys of God." When faced by a situation in your life which seems bigger than you, have you ever experienced such a sense of alienation and aloneness, or darkness and hopelessness? John Chrysostom, "the golden tongued," goes even further. He maintains that selling the family into slavery only made official what already was in fact, for this man and his family were already slaves to the debt he owed. They were in his words "slaves to his folly." Have you or the people you love ever been there? Have your financial decisions, or you use of alcohol or drugs, or a purchase you made when you could ill afford it, or an ongoing quarrel with someone you had to live or work with, or your sexual license ever landed you in a place where you felt enslaved and without prospect or hope of change?
Chrysostom continues that the King, presumably God at this point, sold the man and his family into slavery to get their attention, in his words "to affect his transformation. His purpose is to frighten him by his threat, so that he may come to supplication." I believe our phrase is "give him enough rope to hang himself." How did God get your attention when you lived in sin? It was probably painful at the time, but in retrospect, I imagine many of us count the salvation of our souls of much more worth than the punishment we received for our sins which enabled us to see our need of God. In short, the man did see the error of his ways. He renounced that arrogance and self-reliance which had characterized his life, and in grateful humility he made obeisance to his Lord. And the Lord "forgave him the debt." Blessed day that Jesus washed my sins away and taught me to live in his mercy and not by my own conniving wisdom or imagined strength!
But unfortunately for our forgiven servant, this is not the end of the story. He had a fellow servant who owed him a much smaller sum, about 100 denarii. Now a denarii is what an average workman made in a day in a peasant economy. If we assume that the poverty level here in the States is in the neighborhood of $28,000, 100/356ths comes in at right around 26 or 27% of that annual wage, which means that this man owed his fellow servant about $7, 560 in today's money. That's a far cry from the King's ransom the first man had just been forgiven. His debt had, in the eyes of many, been a lot closer to that debt of which Jesus spoke and which Saint Augustine illustrated, than was the much smaller, and actually pretty serviceable debt that the second man owed.
You know the rest of the story. The first servant, the forgiven one, showed no mercy to his fellow, and threw him into debtor's prison. Other servants, knowing the situation, went to the king and told him all. "Then his lord summoned him and said to him, You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you? And in anger his Lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."
Chrysostom, the great Bishop of Constantinople continues his commentary in his Homily on St. Matthew 61.4: "In anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt. This means forever, since he will never pay it. For since you did not become better by receiving blessings, it remains for you to be corrected by punishment. For since you have not become better by the kindness shown to you, it remains that you will be corrected only by vengeance."
If we do not accept the change of heart and motive and behavior that God offers us when he shows us mercy, and if we do not show to others that same mercy he has shown to us, we will in the end lose our souls. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that as God forgives us our sins, he also transforms us into his own ethical image. This is not to say that we are ever perfect this side of the grave, or that the transformation occurs overnight, but it is to say that if we are not different after Jesus comes into our lives, then he is probably not really there.
How are you doing today with that grudge you have held for so long? What about that hatred you have nursed carefully since high school? Are you holding onto some well deserved anger in the hope that vengeance or pay back will come to that person who hurt you and your child so badly or so often? Such thoughts and feelings will separate you utterly from the joys of God. They will keep you a slave to your folly. But there is a way out. Name your sin before God the Father and ask him to forgive it. Believe that Jesus died for your sins and that God the Father raised him from the dead. Go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit to live as you have never lived before, having forgiven your enemies as God has forgiven you. He will heal your memories and bring you peace, and you will know the joys of God. Now is the time. As we say the Creed, believe it in your heart, even if you do not understand it. As we pray the prayers of the people, imagine in your mind's eye that person you dislike and pray God's best for them. As we confess our sins, acknowledge your own specifically. When we pass the peace, go to that person you have resented if they are here, and embrace them and make your peace with them. Offer yourself to God at the offertory. And then come and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the sure knowledge that you are, and you will from this time forth act like, a child of God, and a joint heir with Jesus Christ.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment