Overwhelming forgiveness

I was in New York last week, flying home on Friday late morning – which means I flew home on September 11. All over the city people were commemorating the 25-year anniversary. As I drove to the airport I heard coverage from the main event at the World Trade Center, including the reading of the names of those who died in the towers and moments of silence to remember. Family members spoke. First responders in dress uniform were everywhere. Never forget, is the motto you still see painted on the sides of FDNY trucks and elsewhere. And yet there were other ways people were marking the day. Along the river I passed volunteers gathering for a day of service, where they would be packing millions of meals for the food banks. Other volunteer efforts were happening around the city, with neighborhood cleanups and school supply drives. Sometimes ‘never forgetting’ a terrible thing can impel us to try to make the world better – instead of just rehearsing the tragedy and anger of our loss. We can choose to stay in the hurt – or we can work to turn darkness into light.

That choice is there in our scriptures today. Our gospel gives us a parable: A slave who owes his king an absurdly huge amount of money is forgiven his debt when the king takes pity on him. That same slave then turns around and refuses to forgive the much smaller debt a fellow slave owes him. He’s thrown into prison and tortured for his hardheartedness. And so it will happen to you, Jesus says, if you don’t forgive from the heart.

Maybe now you’re mentally combing through a list of grievances you need to work on forgiving. Members of our own family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, public officials, maybe even God. All of us feel at odds with others in our lives, for reasons both small and great. Forgiveness is hard, and there’s a lot to say about that, about how each of us in our lives learns to forgive, and what that forgiveness can do.

But forgiveness is also something for the church as a whole to live into and to witness to – the ministry of forgiveness, of reconciliation, is a profound part of what the church has to offer the world. This is a light that people are looking for. Our world is a long way from forgiveness and reconciliation.

There’s a lot of quantifying in this passage. Peter wants to know exactly how often to forgive – he suggests seven times, which would really be quite a few times to forgive the same person hurting you over and over again. Jesus’ story offers some specific numbers in return, and it’s worth drilling down to understand what he’s saying.

A slave owes his king 10,000 talents; a "talent" is a measure of weight, close to about 130 lbs. As a weight of silver, this would be about equal to 15 years’ worth of wages for the typical worker. 10,000 talents, then, is about 150,000 years’ worth of income (like, say, $18.5 billion if you use the median income of our area). (How did the slave borrow this much? Beside the point.) The king forgives his slave this colossal debt, this mind-boggling amount.

Meanwhile, another slave owes this one 100 denarii. A denarius is a small silver coin, roughly the daily wage for the typical worker. 100 denarii, then, is 100 days’ wages – maybe around $15,000 or so, still a significant debt, but one that’s more reasonable. So to compare the two: One talent is equal to 5,475 denarii. A debt of 100 denarii is not forgiven; a debt of 54,750,000 denarii is. The first slave would rather throw his fellow slave in jail than forgive him 100 coins; the king forgives his slave a debt of 54,750,000 coins.  

Ok, so the math majors are still with me, right? The rest of you are glazing over. Peter must have been glazing over too when Jesus finished telling him this story. You want a number, Peter? Jesus is saying. Here’s a whole lot of numbers. Overwhelmed? Well, yes, that’s the point. These are overwhelming numbers. We’re even more overwhelmed by that imperative command to forgive – and how hard that feels for us to live out. But I think Jesus is actually saying something more than this: what’s really overwhelming is how much we ourselves are forgiven. 100 days’ wages is a lot. 150,000 years of wages is overwhelming.

So yes, first of all, we do need to acknowledge that embedded in this story is the command and the expectation that we forgive. It’s central to Christian practice that we are supposed to forgive one another. And yes, it’s hard to do. Forgiveness, true forgiveness, requires us to be honest with ourselves and with the other person about the hurt of what happened. It takes bravery to face that hurt, and to speak it aloud to someone. And then it takes the effort of letting it go – of looking at it clearly, and then setting it down and moving on, so that new life can happen for us.

All of this could be our main takeaway today – because we all have something to forgive someone else for, or maybe a lot of somethings and a lot of someones. But the parable is also telling us that there’s a prior step to being able to forgive. I think that slave would find it easier to forgive 100 denarii if he really took in the amazingness of being forgiven 10,000 talents. But he hasn’t. He’s taken the king’s mercy for granted, perhaps, or he’s focused on the money, gathering as much of it as he can to himself. He hasn’t stopped to realize with deep gratitude the gift he has been given. The king has released him, and released his wife and children also, given him back all of his possessions, everything that was seized from him. He has been set free from this enormous burden – literally set free. He’s been given a new start, a new life. It’s a gift beyond measure. And he’s acted like it’s all been owed to him all along.

What the parable says is that what give us the ability to forgive is the vast overwhelming generosity of the forgiveness that we are offered. The overwhelming generosity of the love that gives us life. When we can accept this kind of forgiveness, then we are free, and free to forgive others without worrying over our own losses. The first step, the biggest and truest and most important step of all, is to know for ourselves how profound God’s love is; to know how fully and completely we are forgiven for not measuring up; for all the stupid things we’ve said and done; for all the hurt we’ve caused and all the ways we’ve been something less than what God would have us be. To feel the overwhelming-ness of powerful, profound, unconditional, neverending love – the love that God has for you, for me, for every single human being in this world. That’s more than 150,000 years of wages. That’s everything.

And to show that and share that is the work of the church. To witness to God’s grace and goodness and generosity; to bring light to dark places; to hold out hope when everyone is inclined to rage and despair. To speak the truth over and over of God’s love and the wideness of God’s mercy, particularly when others are quick to point the finger and sow division. To invite the world into the hard, difficult, life-giving work of forgiveness, as individuals, as communities, as religions and cultures. With God’s help, we can do this. Because with God’s help, we ourselves are forgiven.