Beyond Measure: SALT's Commentary for Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A): Matthew 18:21-35
Big Picture:
1) Last week, we explored Jesus’ teaching about a “deeper physics” of handling human conflict in healthy, life-giving ways. He frames that teaching with two parables: first, the parable of the lost sheep, in which God “leaves the ninety-nine” sheep in order to find and save the one that’s gone astray, such that not “one of these little ones should be lost” (Matthew 18:10-14). And second, this week’s reading, the parable of the unforgiving servant. The implication of this arrangement is that while conflict should be faced squarely and wisely, it should always be framed by mercy.
2) Peter poses the question that leads to the parable — and it’s worth recalling that Peter, just a few chapters later in the story, will desert Jesus and deny him three times. This week, he’s asking about how how often he should forgive; little does he know, he’ll be in need of God’s extravagant forgiveness soon enough.
3) Speaking of extravagance: in Jesus’ day, a denarius was about a day’s wage, and one talent was about (more or less) 6,000 denarii. “Ten thousand talents,” then, would be about sixty million denarii — sixty million days’ worth of labor! This astronomical amount functions in at least three ways in the story: first, it clearly signals that this is a hyperbolic parable, a rhetorical form that paints with broad, vivid, symbolic strokes. Second, it serves as an icon for “an incalculable amount,” an amount beyond measure. And third, it suggests that the servant is a high-ranking member within a pyramid-shaped system, with the members of each layer having authority over — and extracting payment from — the broader group of servants in the layers below.
4) And speaking of incalculable amounts: Jesus’ remark that we should forgive not seven times, but “seventy-seven times” is an allusion to Lamech, Cain’s great-great-great grandson, and an heir to Cain’s violent, self-centered ways. Lamech boasts that he takes draconian revenge on anyone who hurts him: “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamach seventy-sevenfold” (Gen 4:24). For those with ears to hear, Jesus’ call to forgive is a direct cooption and overturning of Lamech’s endless economy of vengeance.
Scripture:
1) Jesus has just counseled his disciples to confront church conflict directly and wisely, in effect creating constructive contexts for apology, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Peter asks a follow-up question that would occur to any of us: OK, but how much do we have to put up with people who keep sinning against us? How often should I forgive? Seven times?
2) Seven times seems pretty generous, after all. When did you last forgive someone seven times in a row? But this only makes Jesus’ answer all the more mind-bending: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22). So mind-bending is this answer, in fact, that it requires some explanation — and so Jesus offers a parable.
3) But please note, Jesus doesn’t begin by saying, “Forgiveness is like this…” or, “There once was a king…” Rather, he begins by saying, “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to…” (Matthew 18:23). That is, he’s trying to give us a window not just into a technical question about forgiveness, but also into a whole way of life, a way of being and thriving, an entire climate and atmosphere — “the kingdom of heaven,” God’s realm of love and mercy — within which humanity may unfurl into its fullest, most beautiful form.
4) So, the story: A servant who owes the king an astronomical, virtually unimaginable amount is about about to be sold, along with his family and possessions. He pleads with the king, promising to pay in good time — and the king, out of “pity,” doesn’t just give him an extended timetable; he forgives the debt entirely. And yet, later that same day, the servant neglects to show the same mercy to another who owes him money (a much smaller sum: 100 denarii), maliciously throwing him into debtors’ prison. The king isn’t amused, and gives the the servant a taste of his own torturous medicine. “Should you not have mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” (Matthew 18:33).
5) There’s a conundrum here: Jesus endorses continual mercy (“seventy-seven times!”), but the king seems to have a “two strikes and you’re out” policy. But this is a parable, after all, and parables are meant to be understood poetically — and the poetic heart of this one is the glaring contradiction between the servant’s fervent desire to be forgiven and his stinginess in offering forgiveness to others. Here again we can glimpse the “deep physics” toward which Jesus so frequently points: there’s a kind of resonance, a mutual correlation, between the mercy we give and the mercy we receive. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged” (Matthew 7:1). “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).
6) It’s almost as if, when we’re merciful (or by contrast, when we’re stingy, or vengeful, or what have you), we create a kind of micro-climate around us, within which the people we interact with experience mercy (or stinginess, or vengeance, or what have you). But lo and behold, we, too, end up having to live in that very climate. If it’s an atmosphere full of mercy, we’ll experience mercy. If it’s full of judgment, we’ll experience judgment. Forgiveness, it turns out, is an environmental issue: the world we make is the world we’ll inhabit.
7) Here’s another way of looking at it: like a loving parent, God continually calls us to be our best selves, and at the same time generously forgives us when we fall short. And this generosity itself is also a call for us to do the same with one another, not least because we are created in God’s image: in short, we’re made to be merciful. When we withhold forgiveness, then, we contradict both a) who we really are, and b) our actual situation as beneficiaries of divine mercy. It’s a form of obliviousness to both God’s grace and our true, graceful identity.
8) Finally, an important caveat: because “forgiveness” can be distorted into death-dealing dynamics (say, when an abused person is pushed to “forgive” and remain in an ongoing abusive situation), it’s worth underscoring that, in order to exemplify forgiveness in this parable, Jesus chooses situations in which the forgiver stands in a position of power and security, and so does not by forgiving prolong unhealthy circumstances, harm, or injustice. Indeed, forgiveness should not be confused with acquiescence, and forgiving is entirely consistent with taking steps to discontinue perilous or damaging arrangements.
Takeaways:
1) If God forgives us, and we (who are created in God’s image, after all) forgive one another, together we may create a realm and atmosphere of mercy, a taste of what Jesus calls “the reign of heaven.” This doesn’t mean we abandon accountability; this week’s passage needs to be held together in balance with last week’s. But if mercy without accountability is unacceptable, accountability without mercy makes for a grim reign indeed: as Gandhi put it, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” The trick is to hold up both justice and mercy in our communal lives — with mercy always having the last word.
2) This is true in our personal lives and communities, of course, but it’s equally true in the wider world, so full of division, resentment, and cycles of recrimination. Each of us is called to model sacramentally the blessings of forgiveness, since even the most minor moments of mercy have ripple effects far and wide. Jesus’ allusion to the story of Cain and Lamech is no accident: the spirals of vengeance are seductive and endless, wreaking havoc in human life — unless and until we create pockets of mercy, habits of mercy, whole lives of mercy: “seventy-sevenfold”!
3) In the end, then, Peter’s question is on the wrong foot, as usual (God bless him!). Forgiveness isn’t something you can quantify; in practice, both “seventy-seven” and “ten thousand” are essentially uncountable quantities. Counting, after all, is an avenger’s game. Instead, Jesus calls each of us to leave the quantities behind, and embrace forgiveness as a quality of mind and heart, a ongoing bearing, a way of walking, a skillset for living, seventy times seventy times seven. For then forgiveness won’t be something we do. It’ll be part of who we are, givers and receivers of mercy, children of God living by the grace of God — and thus living in tune with the “deep physics” of creation, the love beyond measure at the heart of all things, on earth as it is in heaven.