Jerome Kerviel was convicted by a French court in 2008 and officially became the most indebted man in the world. He was a stock trader, working for the Societe Generale bank, where he got involved in some shady dealing. He argued in court that the bank had allowed or even encouraged it. The bank ended up winning the case where they claimed it was all his own responsibility. And not only that, but he owed them back the amount he had lost. And how much had he lost? How much did Jerome Kerviel now owe? About 7 billion dollars.
The parable that Jesus told for our Gospel today about a guy a bit like Jerome Kerviel. Except it’s not really about money. It’s about the debt of guilt. And it’s not a debt owed by some guy you’ve never heard of from the other side of the world. It’s a parable about you. It’s a parable about how we must forgive from the heart.
We find this account in Matthew 18. It all started with a question from Peter. He asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother when he sins against me? As many as seven times?”
For us, especially those of us who grew up in the Christian faith, this might seem like a ridiculous question. Ever since we were little our parents taught us. “Say you’re sorry.” “Now say, ‘I forgive you.’” We didn’t count how many times we handed out forgiveness. Peter seems to us to be awfully stingy with forgiveness with this question.
But I think there are two things that are important for us to know to understand what Peter is asking here, and why it is that Peter actually was, in his mind, being very generous. See, you have to know that the common teaching from the Jewish rabbis at the time was less than half of what Peter was suggesting. They taught that you should forgive a man up to three times, and then no more.
But even that doesn’t seem so ridiculous if you think particularly about what we might consider “big sins.” If someone stole from you, how many times would you forgive him? The first time? Oh sure. The second time? That would be a little harder. A third time? That would probably be getting difficult. At least someone who has stolen from you can hopefully in some way repay what was stolen. But what about big sins that aren’t so easily patched up? What if someone has cruelly insulted you? A wound like that is not easily healed. How many cruel insults will you forgive? At what point are you done with such a person? “I don’t want to forgive you. I don’t want you in my life.”
That’s really the kind of thing that Peter was thinking about, and in that context it makes a lot more sense. Seven times is a lot for those kinds of big sins. But it’s not a lot compared to what Jesus says. Peter may have thought that seven was a particularly generous number, but Jesus said, “Not seven times, but I tell you as many as seventy-seven times.”
If Peter was being generous, then this is overflowing forgiveness. There’s a neat parallel here with Genesis 4:24 where Cain’s wicked descendant Lamech boasts, “If Cain will be avenged seven times, then Lamech will be avenged seventy-seven times.” Jesus is teaching the opposite thing. Instead of abundant vengeance, he’s preaching abundant forgiveness. And he launches from here into that great parable to teach his point.
A king calls his servants in to settle accounts, and one man comes to him owing ten thousand talents. This is an absolutely enormous amount of money. It would put Jerome Kerviel’s debt to shame. In today’s money it might be something like twenty billion dollars, depending on how you calculate it. No one would ever be able to pay a debt like this. And he couldn’t when he was called before the king, so the king ordered that he be punished. He and his whole family and everything he owned would be sold, made slaves. And so the man begged, “Master, be patient with me, and I will pay you everything!”
I don’t know that we would consider that a lie per se, but we all know it’s not true. There’s just no way. And the king knew it too, so he didn’t give him more time. But what he did do was even more amazing. He had pity on him and canceled his debt.
This is one of those parables where the meaning is pretty clear. The king, of course, is God. And who is the man who owes this great debt? That’s us. The debt is what we owe on account of our sins. Like with that man, it’s a debt that we can never pay. It doesn’t matter how many years we have. It doesn’t matter how many lifetimes we have. And that’s because even our best good works are not good enough. To be perfect, to match the holiness of God, is the bare minimum. Even our good works, then, are tainted by sin. We’re like a gambler who thinks he can pay off his gambling debts with more gambling. Every day our debt only grows deeper and deeper.
But then, just as the king forgave that man’s debt purely out of his own mercy and pity, God forgives our sins. And just like that, this impossible burden is lifted off of our shoulders. God says, “Your sins are forgiven,” and they’re gone. As Christians we get to live this man’s experience over and over again. You already know what you’re going to here when you come here to church, but that makes it no less significant. Even if you had a week where you barely sinned at all, which would be a nonsensical thing to claim, it’s still more than you could ever pay for. God’s forgiveness is still undeserved. It’s still superabundant. Seven times? Seventy-seven times? No, his mercy endures forever.
The parable has a second part then. What does this man do after receiving such mercy? And here’s where Jesus’ happy story takes a turn and becomes not-so-happy anymore. You would expect this man to be the most overjoyed man in the world, the most giving and forgiving man in all the world. But no, he found a fellow servant, one who owed him one hundred denarii. A denarius was a standard day’s wage for a regular worker. So this would be thousands of dollars, no tiny amount, to be sure. But quite small in comparison to the debt that had just been forgiven. And still this man chokes his fellow servant and demands that he pay the debt. The fellow servant uses even the same words he used, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back!” But he refused, and had the man thrown in prison. What happened was reported to the king and Jesus concludes the parable saying:
Then his master called him in and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt when you begged me to. 33Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had mercy on you?’ 34His master was angry and handed him over to the jailers until he could pay back everything he owed.
35“This is what my heavenly Father will also do to you unless each one of you forgives his brother from his heart.”
This parable doesn’t have a happy ending because Jesus wants to consider very carefully his warning. We too observe what happens in this story like the fellow servants who watched what this man did and we are distressed by it. But at the same time, how often do we behave in this same way? It is not easy for us to forgive, especially when someone has hurt us, or someone we love, deeply. But if we can’t forgive, if we refuse to have mercy, aren’t we asking for God to judge us accordingly? Isn’t that what we pray when we say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”?
But being easy has nothing to do with it. And forgiveness is not the same as having warm, fuzzy feelings toward someone. Our forgiveness isn’t even about the earthly consequences. You can forgive someone who has committed a crime against you and is still going to prison. What forgiveness consists of is your decision to absolve someone of his debt. It is to say, “I will not hold your guilt against you.”
That doesn’t have to be easy. It wasn’t for God. In Jesus’ parable the king simply cancels the debt, but the reality is that someone has to pay it. He was the one who came to pay our debt. This was a debt with a great cost, that he paid, “not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood, and with his innocent suffering and death.” God cancels our debt, not on the basis of warm feelings, but on the basis of the cross, by Jesus blood and merit.
Jesus’ forgiveness, in fact, is so great that when we forgive one another we are also forgiving on the basis of the cross. His forgiveness overflows to us so that it spills over into our relationships with each other. That doesn’t mean that it will be easy, but whenever I have been wronged I need to look back at the cross. Jesus died for me. He washed away my sins in baptism. He gives me a taste of heaven at his Supper. How could I refuse forgiveness when he has forgiven so much to me?
At this time of year the days are getting shorter and that reminds us of how this world won’t last forever. Judgment Day is coming, when all people will stand before God’s throne. But because of the forgiveness that is ours in Jesus, we won’t appear before God carrying a heavy burden of debt. No, our load is light. Our sins are gone. Our debt is paid.
May we live in that superabundant forgiveness of our God every day of our lives as we look forward to that day. As Jesus has forgiven us, may we forgive others, from the heart. Amen.
— Pastor Seth Georgson