|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Genesis 50:15–21 |
|
Romans 14:1-12 |
Matthew
18:21–35 |
Like last week, the word “church” in Matthew’s Gospel this morning indicates historical circumstances much later than during the actual lifetime of the original disciples. However this very well could have been a question that Peter asked Jesus and that Matthew applies to this new situation. Certainly it is a question that comes up over and over again within Christian communities of every age.
“Lord, how many times must one forgive someone, as much as seven times?” “No! says Jesus not seven times but 77 times.” Jesus is probably alluding to a passage in Genesis where Lamech, a descendant of Cain and the father of Noah, serves as a symbol of burning revenge. Lamech is the Bible’s original tuff guy who bragged to his two wives that he even killed a boy for striking him. Lamech boasts that for every injury done to him, he will injure back 77 times harsher. This ancient story was likely included in the tradition to teach the horror spawned by the endless cycle of escalating revenge. Israel was warned from its very beginning against disproportionate retaliation. At Mount Sinai, Moses received the Law from God that included the principle of proportionate reparation for injury and damages. The tribes of ancient were given extensive instruction, that in effect said is was only one eye for an eye, or only one tooth for one tooth, not an arm and a leg too. Later as the Mosaic Law was expanded, Israel was solemnly reminded that vengeance per se belonged to God alone, not to any of us, not even to kings or their armies.1
For forgiveness, Peter wants Jesus to name limits. Instead, Jesus tells a story that replaces our limits with a vision of the kingdom of God. The king in this story is a sheik who decides to audit the tax collections of his subordinates. The word used for these provincial officials or regional subordinates is slaves, but what are meant is appointees who are some trusted servants of the sheik. The appointee of one of the regions s is found to have embezzled millions of dollars. Restitution was impossible. Instead of publicly executing this scoundrel, the sheik decides to round up this guy’s family and sell them off for a lifetime of torture and hard labor. The hapless subordinate issues one last desperate and completely ridiculous plea. Have patience, “trust me” and you will get back all your lost revenue.
Then something happens. It is as if the sheik sighed and thought to himself, this won’t solve anything. The money is lost forever. No matter how many of this scoundrel’s relatives I torture or kill, there will be always someone who will escape and always remember. In turn they will wait for the opportunity to sabotage or seek vengeance on me, or future members of my family. The cycle will just go on and on.
The sheik does a completely unexpected and astounding thing. He says to the scoundrel and his family, get out of here, go home, and start over. Period! That is the first part of Jesus’ story.
In Jesus’ stories we will have to be careful in simplistically identifying all the characters. For example, God is not like a sheik who considers selling families into slavery and then decides against it. Rather Jesus is telling us that the vision of the Gospel breaks the past cycle of retribution and revenge. It is not business as usual. The vision of God’s commonwealth does not contain provision for God getting even. The healing of the nations is not going to come about by balancing the books. In a real sense, we are called to be like the sheik that has a total change of heart. As citizens of God’s new commonwealth, our old ways of thinking will have to die and be reversed as dramatically as the sheik did. Baptism into the body of faith involves going down into the water and washing or drowning all the old stuff of the world and coming up again a new person. .
The second part of Jesus’ story is about this forgiven scoundrel who is unable to understand what has happened. He seems to believe that it was his own clever persuasiveness to make good the debt that made the sheik change his mind. This guy incredibly just doesn’t realize the new lease on life he has been given. So this same guy goes out to a minor assistant of his who owes him a smaller and easily repayable sum of money. The assistant pleads with him, but the scoundrel refuses to budge. We realize that the former appointee is still trapped into a dismal cycle that ultimately spirals down into death. In effect, he condemns himself, rejecting the vision of a new way offered him and insisting on the old order of things. He is Lamech’s true heir.
The bottom line is Jesus is telling the disciples across the centuries that the church is not established to get even with the world for rejecting the Gospel or to settle the score for humanity’s sin. The church too has to die to the old ways of getting even and old limits of dispensing forgiveness. The disciples are citizens of a new commonwealth. The church is called to live and proclaim that reality, a reality of God’s redemption. That is why this story of Jesus is not only a story about an unforgiving servant, it is a contrast about two people, a story about a sheik who was willing to completely turn, repent, and choose the life that leads to a new existence, and a servant who was offered the same gift of new life, but refused it. Jesus asks today: which one are we like?
1Cf. Genesis 4:23, Exodus 21:24-25 Deuteronomy 32:35.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
