Homily for Trinity 22

[Micah 6:6-8; Philippians 1:3-11; Matthew 18:21-35]

It is the way of the Law that it measures. Those given to law thinking want limits and boundaries to make clear so that they can know when they’d done enough. So Peter in today’s Gospel. He wants a limit. He’s been in the company of our Lord long enough to realize that our Lord is mega into forgiveness. Forgiveness, in fact, is His signature. Peter and the others are willing to think about that, but surely there’s got to be some limits, some safe guards, some number.

Peter proposes seven. Good biblical number, that. “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” That would be a charitable number, but without going overboard, getting fanatical.

Jesus blows the numbering out of the water. “Not seven time, but seventy times seven.” Which is as much as to say: “Lose the score card. Tear it up! Throw it away! Don’t measure the forgiveness you give your brother. Let it be boundless.”

As our Lord looks into the perplexed and astonished faces of His disciples, He tries to help them see it the right way round. And it comes to this: do you want your heavenly Father to set some a limit on the number of times He forgives you when you sin against Him? Then why do that to your brother? But He gets at that by way of a parable.

A King settling accounts. That’s judgment. And a person can be blithely in debt to the king and joking about it and never thinking it a matter of serious consequence at all. But when he is hauled off to give an account for the missing sum, then the joke is over. And make no mistake about it: you WILL be hauled off to answer for the debt. For you are the debtor in this story. Ten thousand talents doesn’t sound much in the age of billion and trillion dollar bills passed by congress, but to the hearers of Jesus’ story it would have been a staggering amount, an amount beyond belief almost. How could one person embezzle so much money? It’s as though half of Bill Gates’ fortune disappeared through one man’s mismanagement.

When it is manifest that payment could not be made, the Judge orders the man sold, his wife, his children, all he had. Even that would be but a pittance against the debt. Realizing his sorry plight now, and that his folly was the cause of his ruin and the ruin of those he loved, the man falls to his knees and pleads: “Have patience with me; and I will pay you everything.” So people foolishly begin attempting to bargain with the King when called to judgement. Was he still so self-deceived? He had no means of paying back everything. It was beyond the pale of possibility. But when people’s consciences are stricken by the Law, and they suddenly realize how much they owe, they grasp at straws. They make God all sorts of promises they cannot keep.

But here’s the miracle. The King, the Master of that servant, has pity. He does infinitely more than the man asked. He gets more than patience and a second try. The King unexpectedly looks on him in love and tears up the debt. He takes the loss, and lets the man go forth free. All forgiven.

How hard, Dr. Luther, said it is to believe this! How hard to believe that our debt has been completely wiped out and gone! And how it was wiped out, St. Paul tells us in Colossians the 2nd chapter: “And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us ALL our trespasses, by cancelling the record of the debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” Make no mistake about it, people loved by God, the forgiveness of your debt, your trespasses, is free to you, but costly to Him. As the nails were pounded into place His cry was not for vengeance, but for pardon. “Father, forgive them.” His blood still cries for this forgiveness and is the sure and certain proof of it. ALL our trespasses. Dr. Luther said “Forgiveness gobbles up sin.” Indeed it does. Swallows it down whole. And we walk out free men.

BUT you know the rest of the parable. The man whose debt had been wholly wiped out encounters the debtor on the much smaller scale. What does he do? Clap the lad on the back and laugh and say: Rejoice, man! Today your debt it wiped out wholly! You are free! No. His face clouds over and all he can think about is what he is owed. Forgotten the mercy received, and he slips back into the measuring way of the Law. “Pay what you owe!” he says as he chokes the man. And when the fellow pleads for patience and promises to pay, he’ll not hear of it. Off to jail with you, you wretch!

How grieved the servants who saw this spectacle. They return to the King with the news, and the King then does a terrifying thing. He revokes the gift that had been rejected. “You wicked servant. I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had on you?” And so off to the jailers for good. No escape, for no possibility of paying off the debt. “So my heavenly Father will do to everyone of you, if you will not forgive your neighbor from your heart.”

And He means it. Unequivocally, He means it. We have to ponder how it is possible to be so hard-hearted as to not pass on forgiveness for the hurts we bear when God has in His Son wiped out our debt to Him entirely. The only answer that we can come up with is that the unforgiving servant forgot the enormity of what had been forgiven him. He let it slip from his mind and heart. And that's when forgiveness to his fellow became impossible.

Because your Lord knows how easy it can slip from your mind or heart, He has set His Supper before you, where you might ever receive the price of your redemption; where you might never forget how much it cost Him to absorb your debt, and where His love might thus grow within you to turn you into a forgiver of those who have sinned against you. For here He testifies that all your debt is gone; all your sin wiped out; cancelled on a cross; blotted out in the broken body and shed blood of the Son of God. Taste the forgiveness that is yours - full and free - and you will find the strength to go forth and share it with others. To tear up the score cards, to turn from all keeping count, for seventy times seven and more you have received, and so you will be strengthened to give. To Him be glory with His Father and the All Holy Spirit forever and ever! Amen.