Peter approached Jesus and asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
Some would say that traffic is equivalent to entry into Dante’s Inferno. To reach our destination, we must encounter all sorts of obstacles, namely, other travelers, car accidents, and sometimes crowning bad weather. Entering the interstate, coming from downtown, you literally must rely upon the kindness of strangers to let you into the narrow and confining traffic line, or aggressively push your way into the traffic. And, I find it interesting that many times once I have been let into traffic by a kind soul, the opportunity arises for me to return the favor. It amazes me how quickly I “forget” the deed done for me and focus again on my hurried agenda with little to no regard of the person in the car next to me, who is trying to enter traffic and relying upon me to respond with kindness. I am tempted many times not to “return the favor.” And sadly, sometimes I don’t.
This same situation arises I believe at many levels in our daily lives on a quite regular basis. It becomes perhaps more sobering when we move from the so-called “courtesy” situations to ones that can have far-reaching consequences. We tend to get into a “quid-pro-quo” or “this for that” mindset that not only collapses in on itself, but actually many times becomes a shift from “I owe you because you did something for me” to “I don’t owe you anything, regardless of what you may or may not have done for me.” This is really all about me and that’s final! The scenario is – no transformation, only expectations either met or not, and my reaction to such.
Enter Jesus in today’s Gospel (MT 18: 21 – 19:1), answering Peter’s question above, by telling the parable of, shall we say, the less than appreciative forgiven debtor. We are told up front that the debt owed was a huge amount and the one who owed it realized that “he had no way of paying it back.” It is interesting to note that the king, to whom the huge debt was owed, starts out by intending to sell this debtor along with his wife and family and property, in order to “even the score.” However, at the bidding or begging of the servant debtor that the king be patient and that the servant would pay back the king in full, the king compassionately let him go and “forgave the debt.”
It wasn’t long after this compassionate scene that we hear how the forgiven servant comes across someone who owes him money and quite violently demands that the debtor pay him back. When this fellow servant, who owed a debt to the forgiven debtor, pleaded for patience until he was able to pay back the debt (indeed a quite small amount especially in comparison to what the forgiven debtor had owed), the one who had been forgiven everything refused to show compassion and promptly had this fellow servant thrown into jail until the debt was paid in full. Now, other fellow servants, who witnessed this, were horrified at this behavior and reported it to the master, who then confronts the forgiven servant asking why he could not have offered the forgiveness given him to another. In the end, the forgiven servant is also thrown in jail until the debt is paid.
I think we may be tempted to look at this parable strictly as a tale of retributive justice, wherein someone who had been granted mercy and forgiveness, would not offer the same to another, and for that reason, the original mercy must be taken back. But remember, we are talking about the original debt, which is so great that it can never be paid back. Recall that the “king” did not respond to the servant imploring patience and promise to pay back in time by agreeing to “these terms” of the servant “in debt,” but instead forgave the entire debt. Nothing is owed! The “king” himself seems transformed by the expressed need of the servant in imploring forgiveness of a debt, but, as we find out shortly the forgiven debtor is far from transformed in that, given the same situation, he refuses to respond with compassion to someone who owes him.
What is owed? Jesus seems to be pointing up the ridiculousness of the “numbers game” that we tend to play with each other in terms of how we relate. We relate to each other many times in the vein of “settling of accounts.” I know that I have felt myself in “debt” to people before because of something they have done for me regardless of the giver’s intent. It has been the case that the giver has expected something in return, and in other cases, nothing was expected from the giver. On the other hand, I have expected a certain response from people to whom I have given something and actually assessed the value of the gift in terms of how the person appreciated it. There you have it – expectations! We tend to calculate gifts in terms of something exchanged and in the process saddle the whole scheme with expectations that fall prey to either a sense of worthiness or equality based upon the receipt of something we feel we are owed.
The on-looking servants, who see the second story play out, can’t wait to go back and tell the “king” what the forgiven servant has done. They are also operating within this “quid pro quo” or “this for that” mentality. And let’s not forget that the story ends with the “king” himself now requiring this perhaps ungrateful forgiven servant to pay back the debt that had originally been forgiven. Jesus closes out the parable by saying “So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.”
So why would Jesus be telling us that God our Father is going to act like the “king” in the story. The answer I believe is because we “expect” that he would! It’s the only way that it could possibly play out given the energies in play. Expectations of things whose value is determined by a sense of entitlement whether it be something or even appreciation expressed by another for something we have done/given, structure a system that will not allow for the “no debt” situation – the unfathomable notion that nothing is “owed.”
It doesn’t matter how many times we fail at something, but it does matter how many times we will accept forgiveness, and accepting it in a way that embraces the Source of the forgiveness that is unconditional Love with no strings attached. You are loved and forgiven. When we begin to learn how to accept forgiveness in this way, it is our hearts that are touched with healing and that touch immediately radiates outward, so we can begin to treat others in this same way. Then we can release counterfeit expectations and see the Loving GOD Who has no scales for weighing what we owe, but only has open arms that embrace and send forth each of us one to another, including and forgiving ourselves and each other over and over again.
It’s the difference between counting and Loving. Seventy Times Seventy is not a number. It’s an image of Infinite Mercy that is tangibly transformative at every moment – if only we receive it!
Peace
Thomas