The Unforgiving Servant¹
Matthew 18.21-35
Rev. Matthew M. Fry

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Gracious One, you and you alone are holy, and in your holiness you are gracious and forgiving. Help us to seek your holiness, to learn your graciousness, and to practice forgiveness, so that we may grow into the creatures that you would have us be. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in the Gospel of Matthew. Listen. Matthew 18.21-35.

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 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.”

The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God.

When Jesus addresses forgiveness he bases his most telling words and deeds squarely on death and resurrection. I do recall a fantastically handsome person preaching on the Prodigal Son, three times. One of the main points of those sermons was that the gift of forgiveness proceeds solely out of God’s love and is therefore what is at play instead of any qualifying action on the part of the receiver. God, like the Prodigal Father, waits for nothing; not for repentance and not for reform. God asks for no reponse, no life glued halfway back together, nothing before God extends pardon. God needs only the death that sin has caused, for the simple reason that the power of Jesus’ resurrection does everything else that needs doing.

In Matthew, immediately after the parable of the Lost Sheep, and right before today’s passage, Jesus gives an interesting discourse. “If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he refuses to listen to you, take with you one or two others, so that ‘every accusation may be upheld by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ But if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

So much for the losers of this world. Sure, Jesus seeks them as a shepherd seeks lost sheep, but Jesus is not about to overdo it. What Jesus really has in mind is that you should give your personal lost sheep – your sinning brother – exactly and only three shots at getting found. If he doesn’t make it under that wire, you just tell him, ‘Tough luck, Chuck.’

Which is where the church worked up its 2,000 year love affair with excommunication, its enthusiasm for running persistent strays off the Good Shepherd’s ranch. Granted, that approach ignores the parable of the Lost Sheep and the section today about the Unforgiving Servant, but hey, who cares about the whole of scripture when you’ve got proof-texts? That said, I invite you to notice Jesus’ final words in verse 17, “Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

See, I think the conclusion that Jesus must have been saying to make your unrepentant brother an outcast like the Gentile or tax collector, is the theological equivalent of a short stack of half baked waffles. First half baked waffle is the lack of attention to context. Jesus has just finished a discourse about actively seeking outcasts, not giving them the boot. Even if he was thinking outcast when he likens them to Gentile and tax collector, well, Jesus seeks them out while leaving the good sheep behind. Certainly Jesus is not telling his followers to shun such types. Second half baked waffle is this; you’ve got to pay attention to who is talking. Jesus is no average Jew, nor is he an average Messiah. Look at Jesus’ actions. Jesus actively sought out the Gentile and the tax collectors. I take these words of Jesus, the “let him be to you as Gentile and tax collector” as ironic. Made more so in that they are in the Gospel of Matthew, a known tax collector.

See, I think Jesus is playing the rabbi game here, which is a questioning way of getting people to understand you. Like this.

Statement from Jesus. “…so the shepherd seeks the lost sheep unconditionally.”

Question from the Disciples “You don’t mean that as practical advice, right?”

“Okay, here’s practical. The shepherd gives the stupid sheep 3 chances to get found, then gives up on it.”

“Hey, maybe that’s a little tougher than you meant to be. How about 7 chances, nice round biblical number 7?”

“What makes that better than 3. Not 7, but 70 times 7. Checkmate. You thought I didn’t really mean unconditionally, huh?”

See, all that practical advice about how to get a brother back in the fold or how to excommunicate him is hazardous to your health. Because if you go around pointing out sins and defining people by their sin, and if you insist that at any point forgiveness will run out after 3 times, or 7 times even, then that deadly limit of forgiveness will be all you have. If you treat your brother like an outcast instead of joining him in his lostness as Jesus has joined Gentiles and tax collectors in theirs, than you will find that there is a division between you and your brother. It’s just that tricky part of which side of the division you are on, since Jesus is always with the lost.

Which brings us to the passage before us today. Obviously we needed to go through the point that Jesus emphasizes unlimited forgiveness as opposed to limited forgiveness, and he tricks Peter into proposing a seemingly generous seven chances before saying 7 times 70 is about right.

In the parable itself, Jesus sets up the law, not grace, as the first element. A king is settling accounts. The king is a bookkeeper, pure and simple. He wants what is due him, and we can do this the easy way, or the difficult way, but payment shall be made. As such, when the stone broke servant who owes 10,000 talents, our equivalent of 10 million give or take to stress the unrepayability of the sum, the king orders him to be sold, lock stock barrel, wife and children for restitution. There is no forgiveness to this point and no reason to expect it.

But the servant begs for patience, and for some reason, the king’s mind changes. He goes from Tony Soprano to softy. The servant is released from his debt and the king forgave him. Notice, the servant has nothing more to do than to ask for grace and to receive grace. He does not earn grace with his extravagant promise to repay everything as some future date. The king cancels the debt for reasons entirely internal to himself.

The problem the servant has is that he thinks that his master is actually responding to his ridiculous offer of repayment. He has no idea of the notion of grace in his mind, only his earning of his master’s goodwill. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The most important thing is that the master forgives the servant on the master’s own power for the master’s own reasons, not the impossible promises of the servant. Promising to pay 10,000 talents, or 10 million dollars, is what is equated to you and I making right by our sin. I’ll tell all my friends about you, dear God, and go to church every Sunday, and stop drinking, smoking and chewing, is not going to cover that debt. The servant in this parable assumes that the king is a stupid bookkeeper who thinks that the magic beans of promises to repay is better than the work cow that can be trusted everyday. The sinner, no matter how repentant, who tries to earn God’s love with promises and human effort, presumes God the king to also be a stupid bookkeeper. You don’t win any pennant with the promise of magic beans traded for the milk cow.

The king in the parable responds to nothing the servant says about repayment. Instead, he moves from bookkeeper to forgiveness. Wipes the debt out. Does what the servant could never do for himself, even with all his best efforts. The king ends the bookkeeping life, even though the servant does not.

Which is the tragedy in the parable. The servant, having been forgiven a 10,000 talent debt, a multi million dollar bill, goes out and tried to get a hundred bucks from another slave. Notice that in spite of the fact that he was an important enough servant to run up a whopping debt, no mere servant would have that opportunity, his first thought on being released was not how to die to his old life and live into a new one. Rather, it was to go on with his bookkeeping manner. He misses the whole new life he might have lived into.

So do we, when we refuse grace, try to live into God’s favor by our actions, and consequently, demand the same of others that they live into God’s favor to be allowed equal status in the community.

In heaven, there are no good people, no upright successful types who, by force of will and amount of their integrity, have been deemed acceptable. There are only failures, only those who have accepted the grace of the King. In short, in heaven there are only forgiven sinners.

But, in hell too, there are only forgiven sinners. On the cross Jesus does not sort out people based on merit as to who is worthy of forgiveness; Jesus just forgives all.

The sole difference, then, between heaven and hell is that in heaven the forgiveness is accepted and passed along, while in hell the forgiveness is blocked and rejected. In heaven the grace and forgiveness of the King is welcomed and becomes both the doorway into new life and becomes the marker of that life. In hell, the old ways of bookkeeping are insisted upon and becomes forever the pointless torture it always has been.

There is only one unpardonable sin; to withhold pardon from others. The only thing that can keep us out of the joy of the resurrection is to join the unforgiving servant in a refusal to accept and pass on grace and forgiveness. Amen.