[Jesus said:] For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him, and, as he could not pay, the lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. (Matthew 18:23-34)
I know that's a stinger of an ending, and I don't mean to ignore it, but let's not miss the forest for the trees here. Here Jesus tells an utterly outrageous story about the audacity of mercy, and even the punch at the end cannot erase the scandal of a God who forgives impossibly large debts without so much as a second thought.
That's what happens. The first enslaved person comes to the king with an absolutely astronomical debt: ten thousand talents. We are no longer in the realm of coins and currency here--a talent was a unit of measurement of precious metals like silver or gold, and our best guess is that one was roughly equivalent to about seventy-five pounds! Do a little bit of rough back of the envelope math and you'll see that a single talent of silver might have been worth more than an entire year's wages for a day laborer, possibly two years or more. A rough estimate might be about $30,000.00 in our money. And that's just one talent--this debtor somehow has racked up a debt of ten thousand talents! We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars in today's money, or hundreds of lifetimes' worth of wages, assuming he didn't get to spend any money on his own needs!
Jesus is sketching out a comically large sum, something you can't imagine anyone racking up unless they tried to make omelets out of Faberge eggs or dropped the Hope Diamond into the ocean. Right from the get-go, he has invited us to imagine a debt so impossibly large that you could never lose that much money in your lifetime, much less ever hope to pay back, not even in a hundred lifetimes. And yet--and this is the hilarity of it all--the indebted servant pleads, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything!" But of course he cannot and he never will. Not even old Methuselah lived long enough to pay back a debt like that.
So out of nowhere comes grace--sheer, utter grace--as the king in the story just up and decides to write the whole thing off. The debt is forgiven, in its entirety. No monthly payment plans. No "Just do the best you can, and we'll see how much you pay back." Not even a garnishing of wages or a bit of relief on the interest rates. Just complete and total wiping away of the whole debt, all with just a word from the king.
This should be life-changing. Really, it should. The previously in-over-his-head-with-debt servant should have seen everything with new eyes: it was like he had been given his life back! Instead of the prospect of being sold along with his family (possibly to different new masters for each of them--slavery has been known to be particularly cruel that way), he is released from the debt. No collection agency will be hounding him. No debtors' prison. None of that. Only grace. Only mercy. And the gift of keeping his family together. You would expect someone like that to be changed by such an act of impossible forgiveness. You would think he would let such graciousness become his whole way of life now, since it had saved him from certain calamity just a moment before.
But the servant just doesn't get it. He sees a co-worker who owes him a pittance in comparison--maybe a few month's worth of wages, if that--and he refuses to listen when his fellow servant pleads in the exact same words he had spoken to the king: "Have patience with me, and I will pay you." The same words that had fallen on merciful ears when it was a plea to the king now fall on stingy ones, and he refuses to give any mercy to his fellow servant. Everything should have been different--and instead, this once-and-future debtor has made a damn fool of himself by staying stuck in the old rut of keeping score and holding grudges. He refuses to forgive as freely as he has been forgiven, or even to be patient with his associate, even though the amount owed to him is miniscule by comparison. He refuses to live as though everything has changed because of the forgiveness already granted to him. It's as foolish as getting married and then locking yourself alone in a room as if no one loved you. It's as nonsensical as being declared not guilty by the judge but then shutting yourself in a jail cell. No one needs to send this guy to hell--he's already made one for himself by refusing to live as if the forgiveness he has already been given really means something.
And in the end, that's the question Jesus' story compels us to deal with: will we live as though God's forgiveness of us actually means something? Will we take God's grace as more real, more true, more essential, about us and our identity, than the things other people have done to us? Will we allow God's forgiveness of us--as mind-bogglingly large as it is--to change everything in our lives? Or will we insist on being damn fools ourselves (and I mean that literally) who cannot take seriously what it means to have been forgiven already?
My life will change if I live like someone who has been forgiven. I will see grace as the current flowing through everything. I will see mercy as the currency on which my whole life has been redeemed. And I will extend that same kind of mercy back to the people around me. If I refuse to live like I have been forgiven, and if I refuse to let that forgiveness make everything new for me, well I've already chosen to be miserable.
I suppose the choice is up to us today. Will you and I choose to take God's already-granted forgiveness as the defining truth of our lives, or will we insist on staying stuck in the childish and petty mindset of bean-counting and score-keeping?
I know which sounds like a better choice to me.
Lord Jesus, enable us to live as people who have already been forgiven, and let your forgiveness of us be the determinative truth of our lives.
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