Forgiveness, But Who’s Counting?

The parable Jesus tells of the unforgiving servant imagines a king who is the king of all bean counters. He is not only exceptionally rich—the king keeps track of every dime in every ledger. Now, he has everything (as kings tend to have), but he will not settle for being shortchanged. He calls in all his accounts, even though he does not need the money. Nonetheless, he knows what is his!

One by one, his accountants are brought in, and the bean counters go through their records, and the money matches up. Then he calls in his executive vice president and sits back with anticipation. This guy is the king’s right hand man: the big money winner, the one who drives the convertible to work every day, the one who calls up Warren Buffet and Bill Gates for golf. This guy gets the biggest bonus at the office Christmas party. So, let’s bring in the big man to give his report.

So, where is he? Well, if you must know, the executive vice president has been caught slipping out the window on a rope made out of the drapes.

Eventually, standing before him is the accountant with his briefcase, stuck between two big guys in shades wearing well-tailored suits, the seams about to burst with their muscles straining the fabric. The “Employee of the Year” is stammering his way through the last quarter earnings’ report, and he tells the king, “I got nothing.”

Now, this is not what the king wants to hear. The executive vice president worked his way up from mail clerk to file room flunky to accountant, junior grade, to head of accounting, and then gets the keys to the executive washroom. This guy should know what he is doing, and yet he stands there, the spotlight squarely on him, the king seated before him. “I got nothing.”

The king had entrusted this underling with a big project. In the first century world of Jesus, slaves were used in all levels of life, and indeed, empires were run with many slaves in positions of authority and management. In the first century, a person with a debt like this was not dealing with the same sort of debt that we think of when the bill comes in the mail every month from the bank or the credit lender. This slave was collecting not a personal debt, but the national debt! The amount owed was ten thousand talents, which is the equivalent of saying hundreds of millions of dollars were owed. The slave has not one dime to show, and the king is not amused. Just consider what would happen if the IRS discovered that all of the taxes for New England went missing. Somebody, somewhere (most likely in Washington) would be not be amused!

So, the king does what kings do. He brings down the full force of the empire on those who have displeased him. He tells the slave to pack his bags—that is, the bags of all his family. They will be sold off, and the debt will still hang over his head. The king continues his list of punishments, until the slave asks for mercy. To everyone’s surprise, the king decides to go easy. He forgives the slave and the debt.

This does not seem to make much sense. The king should have sent him off to debtor’s prison and his household off to parts unknown. There should have been an absence of forgiveness, but suddenly, the king offers forgiveness of the debt and releases the slave from due punishment. Astonishing!

The parable, however, is not soft and cuddly with a lost sheep that is found or a lost son that is embraced. No, this parable has a harsh edge. We read onwards that the story is not about the king’s sudden change of heart. It is really about the lack of change in the heart of the forgiven slave, and the even greater punishment that the slave receives from the king. But then Jesus complicates the story even further by saying, “That’s what God will do to everyone of you if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Oh boy! What a scandal! Equating God with a vengeful king is not one for Rally Day, when we send the kids upstairs to learn about the basics of faith for another year in the care of our loving and talented Sunday school instructors. Yet here is the text nestled in the middle of all of the stories of faith that we hope our children learn and keep close to heart as faithful followers of Jesus. This parable disturbs, giving us a note not of grace but of punishment. How do we deal with this?

If we tell this one to the kids (and I think this parable needs parental guidance!), we tell them that the parable is set in the midst of the messed up world, just like all the other parables. In his teachings of the Reign of Heaven, Jesus helps his listeners imagine a different world, one filled with hope, grace, and justice, by planting the stories of God’s kingdom in the middle of the world we know all too well!

Long before the Star Wars films, it was common knowledge that empires always “strike back!” Empires get what empires want, and this king of the parable is just like the empire at work in Matthew’s day. Remember Herod, who slaughters the innocent, and Pontius Pilate, Rome’s man on the scene in Jerusalem, who impassively sends Jesus away to the cross. The world of kings and heavy taxation and the exploitative system that oppresses the many for the benefit of the powerful few is not just in the parables, it is the world that Jesus’ disciples knew under the thumb of Rome, and arguably, these are still the ways of the world today.

In the parable, the king is a harsh ruler who never really releases the slave from his captivity. Once forgiven, the slave does not leave the long arm of the king. Other debts will be demanded by the king for the slave to collect, and the slave and his family are no safer from retribution than they were before. The parable highlights how messed up that world can be where mercy can become rationed out but never fully “free”, where people who are shown grace rarely return it themselves. The forgiveness of the king, strings attached, is soon spoiled by the recipient—and in record time!

Indeed, no sooner has the slave dodged his sentence that he is back in the halls of power and brings down the hammer on one of his own flunkies for failing him. In the tradition of the parables with their broad humor and cartoon-like contrasts, the slave who was irresponsible with great debt and is forgiven shows no quarter or no mercy to the guy who is just a few hundred dollars in debt. Indeed, Jesus says that the forgiven slave grabs the lesser offender by the neck, sort of a reveling in power (the power of the king)!

The king gets wind of it from his staff, and soon the unforgiving slave finds himself back in the throne room. Without fanfare, the king sends him to a worse fate than first promised. The parable claims that the slave is there until the debt is paid. And considering the size of the debt, that must have been nearly a life sentence—not of hard labor, but torture!

How is God like this king, who authorizes torture and presumes that this is the best way to get results? How does an empire that condones the interests of the kingdom being kept by punishing and terrorizing anyone in its path remotely resemble the empire of the heavens that Jesus teaches about and tells his disciples to pray regularly for its haste in coming to pass?

The story of the punishing king and the unforgiving slave is a mixed bag, intended to give insight about forgiveness in a way that instructs as much as it sobers. We should not be like the slave who receives forgiveness and forgets to do likewise at the first opportunity. We can be too much like the empire we know, and too little like the one where God is king. We remember with due caution that we are to forgive, erring on the side of grace and compassion, not just until we feel like it or a chance at revenge or personal gain is at hand. God has given us a way of life in the gospel of Jesus Christ, who teaches us to forgive abundantly.

The forgiveness found in the gospel still requires a person who has wronged another to be accountable for their actions and words. Forgiveness is not about cheapening the reality of suffering and shame that one inflicts on another. Forgiveness seeks to restore a relationship between persons, a relationship without many strings attached. Forgiveness seeks to restore wholeness to a broken situation and bring together what has been torn apart.

Where God is like this king regards the reality that God does not want equivocation about forgiveness. You cannot harbor long grudges that fester into anger or violence. You cannot settle for just cutting another person off or finding ways to keep the spiral of violence spinning out of control. Forgiveness is not a quantity (how many times must you forgive?); it is a quality of life. You are free to forgive, slow to anger, and never to seek retribution. Gregory Jones, a theologian who has written extensively about forgiveness, writes, “The practice of forgiveness is not only or even primarily a way of dealing with guilt. Instead, its central goal is to reconcile, to restore communion with God, with one another, and with the whole creation.” (Practicing Our Faith)

The harshness of God being like this king who casts us into torment is part of Matthew’s understanding of what matters in the end of things. Read this gospel, and you will encounter Jesus’ teachings about how God will not let wrongdoers or the inattentive go without consequence. There will be justice for the wronged, there will be blessings for the vulnerable, there will be welcome for the scorned. We are all sinners, and we are all able to receive God’s forgiveness.

The parable gives us this stark image of a forgiven slave clutching the neck of someone he does not care to forgive in the least. To commit an unkind act is bad enough, but to continue through life never forgiving, what must that be like? I would daresay this is the beginning of hell.