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Grace, Forgiveness and Rebellion

Preached at St. Thomas of Canterbury Church, Houston, TX

Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, 2008

by The Rev. Stephen E. Stults

Matthew 18:23 "Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king
 who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.”

In today’s Gospel, we hear an amazing story of grace, forgiveness and neglect, all in one brief parable from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Matthew relates that Peter came to Jesus and asked, Matthew 18:21 “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" This is an interesting and valid question, although many of us might wonder why Peter sought to quantify forgiveness, or even to number the amount of times a person might receive it from another. One answer for this quandary on Peter’s part lies in the fact that some rabbinic teachers themselves set a limit on the number of times one might be forgiven. In fact, they limited forgiveness to three instances; otherwise, they thought, that repentance on the offender’s part might not be genuine.¹

In this case, Christ expands the degree of forgiveness to an almost unthinkable degree when he says, Matthew 18:22 “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” To the Hebraic mind, this would have carried a certain amount of resonance; because of the principle of vengeance being carried out seventy times seven was first stated in the Book of Genesis, chapter 4. Yet, Christ, characteristically, fulfills and perfects this principle by applying it not to vengeance, but to forgiveness. A Hebrew would understand this number as expressing a virtually unlimited amount.

Christ further expounds this principle in a parable, again making the profound simple and great truth transparent through the use of analogy. He tells us of a great king who was settling accounts with his servants. Some commentators saw this as the accounting due to a suzerain from his tax collectors. Interestingly, it was, evidently, a common practice to employ gentile tax collectors, or “tax farmers” to collect the King’s revenue, who made a bid on what they could collect. They then made a good profit, provided that all subjects paid their taxes.² This profit motive led, naturally, to great corruption and great brutality, even to the use of torture as a collection tool. (And we think that the IRS is bad!)

In the parable, the king is settling up with his debtors. One man owes ten thousand talents, an impossibly huge amount. Let’s put this into perspective. One commentator on this passage tells us: “Although the talent's worth varied in different periods, ten thousand talents represented between sixty and one hundred million denarii, or between thirty and one hundred million days' wages for an average peasant-a lot of work. The combined annual tribute of Galilee and Perea just after the death of the repressive Herod the Great came to only two hundred talents (Jos. Ant. 17.318; Jeremias 1972:30); the tribute of Judea, Samaria and Idumea came to six hundred talents (Jos. Ant. 17.320). This fact starkly reveals the laughably hyperbolic character of the illustration: the poor man owes the king more money than existed in circulation in the whole country at the time!”³

Even so, when the man falls downs and pleads for mercy, the King is moved and grants not just a reprieve in terms of time, but actually forgives him the entire debt. This is incredible. The man is free. Yet, he went out from the presence of the King and finds a fellow servant, who owed him a very little amount of money, 100 pence. A pence was worth about 14 cents, so the contrast to the amount the original servant owed to the amount he was trying to recover is ludicrous to the point of absurdity. The end of the story is just; his fellow servants inform the Lord of his outrageous behavior and he is delivered to the tormentors until he can pay the debt, which, as we’ve discussed, is not very likely. Thus, the man’s fate is sealed.

Christ closes this parable with a solemn statement: so our Heavenly Father will deal with us if we do not forgive, from the heart, those who sin against us. This is echoed in the great prayer that Christ gave us, the Our Father. In that prayer, we say, “Forgives us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trepass against us.” Thus, our forgiveness is conditional, as we forgive the sins of others.

Yet, to the true penitent, God’s love and forgiveness is not limited. In the parable, the King obviously represents God the Father, a figure that Christ often used in his parables to demonstrate God’s magnificence and power. Just as the King forgave his debtor an impossibly heavy debt, so God forgives us our impossibly heavy load of sin and guilt. Yet, one might say, “How do I owe God anything?”

To the unspiritual man, this is indeed an excellent question. What, thinks he, do I owe God; that is, even if the thought ever enters his head, which is probably unlikely. Not being negative or nasty, but St. Paul tells us in tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:14-15: “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.” The world thinks Christianity (true spirituality) is foolishness, yet the Christian in his/her walk with God judges all things, rightly, with the mind of Christ.

Thus, the natural or carnal man does not consider things that the Christian takes as items for great thanksgiving: things such as common grace, which actually restrains us from being as bad as we could be, or God’s wonderful sunshine and water that produce the fruits of the earth. Or, even man’s ability to offer love to his fellow man, which is merely a faint reflection of God’s love for us. All of these things the Christian appreciates, while the carnal man may, and the operative here word is may, have some vague sense of gratitude to some impersonal force of nature for producing the good of the world. There is a world of difference between the Christian mindset and the natural man’s worldview.

Thus, we return to the question, “What do we owe God?” How are we debtors to Him? Aside from the common blessings that He pours on all men, we Christians do indeed owe a debt that we cannot pay. This debt incurred a payment that is both truly incalculable and truly universal. This payment allows us, who desire to be children of God, to escape our old nature and become something new. Not only in this life are we to demonstrate newness, both in our fresh and frank acceptance of the things of the Spirit and our conduct in the world, but also someday to be glorified and perfected so that we may see God. The reason, of course, for our indebtedness to God is that He gave us the very, very, best that He had to redeem us, His Only, Holy and blessed Son. God redeemed us so that we could enjoy Him forever. That, my beloved brothers and sisters, is a payment worth more than anything in this world. That is why you and I are debtors to the extreme, in regards to God.

With this thought in mind, let us return to the parable. After having been forgiven this incalculable debt, this same man forgets, or rather, rebels against everything he has just been taught about forgiveness and grace. Finding a fellow servant, He “laid hands on him and took him by the throat, saying, 'Pay me what you owe!” Wait! Is this not simply incredible? How could he do that? Did not he realize what the King had done for him? How could he be ungrateful, so mean-spirited, and so downright petty?

Well, I have a confession to make. As you know, Della, Justin, Alex and I have been coming here, to this place, for well-nigh fifteen years, driving a ways to get here and of course, to return. There have been many, many times when we have left this little “island of Grace” to re-enter the world that, no sooner than I began the journey home, some fine citizen of Houston had offended me with some interesting maneuver on the road. Often, I would respond with some flush of anger, even perhaps uttering an impolite word or two. And then, I would feel something else: shame. I felt shame that I, who had just received the life-giving Sacrament of the Eucharist, who had just been shriven of my sins through confession and absolution, could so soon rebel against the miracle of grace and forgiveness that I had just experienced. Perhaps you can relate to this too.

The point is this: we, who have been given everything by Him who forgives us completely through the sacrifice of His Son, cannot afford to withhold forgiveness from others. We have been forgiven; thus we must forgive others their trespasses, or we risk the abrogation of God’s gracious forgiveness to us.

Even if that weren’t the case, we would still be guilty of the most heinous, the most callous, the most extreme ingratitude of all. When we acknowledge our transgressions and offer humble repentance, “Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all those who with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him “, forgives us. Can not we, who have received this grace, do the same? Can not we return a little bit of grace to the one who sins against us? The answer to this is rhetorical, of course, and can only be answered in the quiet recesses of our own souls.

We recognize that forgiveness is difficult, forgiveness is hard. Sometimes, it is the hardest thing to do, simply because we do not want to do it. Maybe the hurt is too deep, maybe the trauma, physical or otherwise, is too extensive. Maybe, God forbid, we want to cherish our hurt a little while longer, denying the forgiveness we know that we should give. I was once told by a teacher that while children will usually forgive you quite readily, adults are a different story. Once you get on a person’s “list” so to speak, it’s usually very challenging to get off.

Yet, in the miracle of the grace of God, forgiveness is exactly what we must do in order to be healed. When we offer true, from-the-heart forgiveness, something miraculous happens to us as well. God, in His mercy and grace, begins to heal us. The forgiveness we give to others is like a balm to the soul for ourselves. It is life-giving, health-affirming goodness that we accrue to ourselves as we give it away. In the incredible, wonderful superfluity of goodness that is God, when we do what we should, God rewards us with His Grace. God rewards us with Himself.

This is the miracle of forgiveness. This is the miracle of God.

Matthew 18:35 - 19:1 "So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses."

¹www.Biblegateway.com, “Commentary on Matthew," Chapter 16

²ib id.

³Biblegateway, op cit.

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