Pentecost 15A/Proper 19
Exodus 14:19-31
Psalm 141
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35
Gracious God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and work through them; take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen.
I’ve told this story before, but I’m telling it again because I will always tell this story. I am a lover of religious kitsch, as you may know if you’ve ever been in my office, and this very special (and now very sun bleached) dashboard Jesus has graced my last three cars.
Several years ago, when we moved cross country from California to Maryland, dashboard Jesus of course led the way. And as we drove on those stretches of long, straight, flat interstate, where the speed limit was 80 mph, we noticed something delightful.
When we would reach 77 mph, the vibrations from the engine in our Subaru Outback were the same resonant frequency as Jesus’ spring – and at that speed he would wildly bounce. I posted a video of it on Facebook at the time and a friend remarked, “Wait, Jesus dances at the number of forgiveness?”
Yes, Jesus does dance at forgiveness, because he knows that the costly forgiveness as a way of life that God calls us to will be a challenge, and it is something to rejoice about when we do it right.
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Our reading from Matthew today picks up where last week’s left off. Last Sunday we heard Jesus counsel his disciples to confront conflict directly and wisely, and to create frameworks for apology, accountability, and reconciliation – and ends with an example that seems to say mercy should continually be shown to all.
Peter’s follow up question, which opens today’s gospel, looks to test that hefty assertion: Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?
Seven is a holy number, and so in fact what Peter was probably asking was something like, “Must I practice perfect forgiveness?”[1]
It’s an important question, and it’s worth remembering that in a few short chapters Peter will desert Jesus and deny him three times, which makes Jesus’ answer of extravagant forgiveness even more powerful.
Because when Peter asks if seven times is enough, Jesus’ answer was not seven, but seventy-seven times. It’s as if he was saying, “Your forgiveness must be beyond perfect Peter; it must be beyond counting.”[2] And because he’s Jesus, he followed it up with a parable to show what he meant.
The parable of the unforgiving servant is only found in Matthew’s gospel. It begins with an illustration that would have been so over the top in Jesus’ day that it was sure to catch attention and drive home that message about keeping count.
We have the sense that the 10,000 talents the king demands from the slave is a large amount of money, but here’s some perspective.
A denarius was about a day’s wage, and one talent was more or less 6,000 denarii. Ten thousand talents, then, would be about 6 million denarii – 6 million days of labor.[3]
The fact that the king listened to the plea of the slave and forgave him the debt is an illustration of the extravagant nature of God’s mercy.
It would be great if the parable ended there, showing us a merciful and loving God, but Jesus wasn’t about to let his disciples – or us – off the hook.
The parable continues. Immediately upon leaving his audience with the king, the one who had been forgiven encountered a fellow slave who owed him 100 denarii. Instead of extending the same mercy he had received, he chose to seek retribution.
Those who witnessed that didn’t remain silent bystanders to such oppression, they acted as allies and reported it to the king. And the king had choice words and actions for the one who did not forgive as he had been forgiven, calling him wicked and handing him over to torture.
That is an image of God I am pretty uncomfortable with. It spurs the question, “Is God’s forgiveness conditional?” Whether we like it or not, Matthew’s gospel tells us yup, pretty much.
It’s a narrow condition to be sure, but time and again throughout this gospel we see that God’s mercy is, in part, dependent upon our own. Forgiveness, we are told, must engender forgiveness.
The most famous such moment occurs in the Lord’s Prayer, and in Matthew’s comment upon it. The prayer petitions God to “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (6:12). The conditional nature of God’s forgiveness suggested here is highlighted by Matthew at the end of the prayer: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (6:14-15).[4]
Christians, who live under God’s grace and forgiveness, will be judged by whether they show the same grace and forgiveness to others.[5] And every week we ask for this judgement, we ask God to forgive us just as we have forgiven others…
It’s a pretty sobering thought, isn’t it? And it points to the costly nature of discipleship, which includes the apology, accountability, and reconciliation laid out in last week’s gospel, along with mercy and forgiveness.
German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his classic work The Cost of Discipleship, coined the term cheap grace and defined it this way:
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance…communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.
In contrast, he defined costly grace thusly:
Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels [us] to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
In a roundabout way all of this points us back to the numbers at the beginning – and the way that Jesus challenges us not to quantify forgiveness. Instead Jesus calls each of us to embrace forgiveness as a quality of mind and heart, an ongoing bearing, a way of walking, a skillset for living. For forgiveness not to be something we do, but a part of who we are as followers of Christ.[6] Costly grace indeed.
When we do this, we stop keeping score and open our hearts more fully to God. When we do this, we can pray the Lord’s prayer without pause. And when we do this, I believe that Jesus does indeed dance. Amen.
[1] Feasting on the Word, Volume 4, Exegetical Perspective, Lewis R. Donelson.
[2] Feasting on the Word, Volume 4, Exegetical Perspective, Lewis R. Donelson.
[3] SaltProject Lectionary Commentary for the Fifteenth Week After Pentecost.
[4] Feasting on the Word, Volume 4, Exegetical Perspective, Lewis R. Donelson.
[5] Feasting on the Word, Volume 4, Exegetical Perspective, Lewis R. Donelson.
[6] SaltProject Lectionary Commentary for the Fifteenth Week After Pentecost.