Release Your Neighbour, Release Yourself

If you ask people, “What is your favourite Bible verse?” Nobody ever says a verse from today’s gospel passage.  Even if you narrow it down further and ask people, “What is your favourite parable?”  Nobody ever says it’s this parable.  The parable we are reading today appears only in the gospel of Matthew, so apparently it wasn’t popular even among the four evangelists who wrote the four gospels.  Still, I’m glad we have this unpopular parable, because it has important gifts for us.

The context for it is that we’re in chapter 18 of Matthew’s gospel, which begins with the disciples asking Jesus “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”  In response, Jesus explores various forms of one-upsmanship and arrogance, contrasting them with the call to humility.  In the passage right before this one, Jesus has been teaching what to do if a member of the church sins against you: talk to the person directly, then with a couple witnesses, then tell it to the church, then if the offender refuses to listen to the church, let the person be as a Gentile or tax collector to you.  After hearing this, Peter asks the question, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive?  As many as seven times?”  

Notice that here Peter asks Jesus a specific question about what to do when another member of the church sins against me, and that is the specific question Jesus answers.  Peter and Jesus are not talking here about the sins of someone who doesn’t even know your name.  They’re not talking here about the sins of Hitler, or terrorists, or some horrible person you’ve seen on the news.  Peter and Jesus are talking about people with whom you have a personal ongoing relationship in the church community.  And this person’s sins are not something that you simply disapprove of; Peter and Jesus are talking about someone who has sinned against you.

We note that Jesus gives a direct answer to Peter’s question.  He says, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”  Some translations say “seventy times seven” which is 490.  So a lot.  And then, Jesus follows up his direct answer with a parable.  He begins by saying, “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.”  As William Barclay notes, historical records show that the total revenue of the province that contained Idumaea, Judea, and Samaria was only 600 talents; the total revenue of even a wealthy province like Galilee was only 300 talents.  It is ludicrous that a slave would be able to pay off a debt of the total revenue of 20 provinces.  This is a gazillion dollar debt.

As I was looking at this parable this week, what jumped out at me is how perfectly it fits with what we were talking about in last week’s sermon.  Last week’s sermon was on the passage in Romans, and today’s sermon is on the passage in Matthew, and this connection was not something I planned, it is a gift from God.  Both passages are talking about the debts we owe.  Last Sunday we were looking at the passage in Romans 13 in which the Apostle Paul says, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.”  He then goes on to talk about the way that loving our neighbours is the fulfillment of the commandments.  We noted that the 3rd century theologian Origen points out the paradoxical nature of the debt of love when he says, “The debt of love remains with us permanently and never leaves us; this is a debt which we both discharge every day, and for ever owe.”  During our earthly lives, we consistently fail to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and we consistently fail to love our various neighbors as ourself.  That’s why we have to keep coming back Sunday after Sunday to confess that we have not done either of those things, and why we constantly need God’s mercy.  

When I look back at my life, the times I have not loved God with my whole heart and soul and mind, and the times that I have not loved my neighbour as myself, it’s a gazillion times.  The debt of love I owe to God and my neighbours is more than I could ever possibly pay, even if I had some source of income to pay it back with, which I don’t.  It is only by God’s extravagant mercy that I have a relationship with God.  And when I am fully aware of the fact that I so often fail to pay the debt of love that I owe my neighbour, I will have a glimmer of understanding that my neighbours are just as likely to fail to pay the debt of love that I think they owe me.  

That glimmer of understanding is so much better than shaking my fist at the sky shouting “Human beings should never sin!”  Yeah, sure.  And the reality is we all do.  It’s like a theological verb conjugation:  I sin, you sin, he she and it sin, we sin, you all sin, they sin.

That glimmer of understanding is so much better than wailing in self-pity that someone hasn’t loved me as they loved themselves.  Yeah, everybody fails to love our neighbours as ourselves, just like I do.

That glimmer of understanding is so much better than stomping around in a rage that someone hasn’t loved me as they loved themselves.  Yeah, everybody fails to love our neighbours as ourselves, just like I do.

We might say, “But that person’s sin is so much worse than my sin.”  But remember, when you look at the big picture, ultimately there are only two sins.  One: not loving God with your whole heart.  Two: not loving your neighbour as yourself.  We all commit the same two sins.

And do we see the irony that when I am furious at my neighbour for not loving me, I am in that very moment not loving my neighbour.  I am hating my neighbour in that moment.  Why do I think my neighbour should love me while I am in the middle of hating him? 

And I have to choose: do I want God to forgive me for hating my neighbour?  Or do I want to choose to hold on to my hatred and hold on to my grudge?

This choice shows why, when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray by giving them the Lord’s prayer, he says, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  Jesus offers us the alternative, to say, “yeah, ideally everybody owes me complete love all the time.  But they can’t pay that debt all the time, just like I can’t pay that debt all the time.  God’s forgiven me for the gazillion times I haven’t loved my neighbour.  So instead of grabbing my neighbour by the throat to demand he love me, which doesn’t have an especially high success rate, I can say, I release you from that debt.  I’m going to cross your debt off on my account books and quit spending my precious time and energy sending you obnoxious dunning notices.  I’m canceling the debt and turning my mental energy to better things.   That is so much more peaceful.  It enables you to heal.  It enables you to move on with your life without the weight of a heart filled with resentment.  It enables you to love again.  

In this parable, the fellow slaves are the ones who get it, who understand.  They have watched the slave who fell on his knees pleading with the king to have patience with him to pay the debt of a gazillion dollars.  They have watched the king have pity on him (this is the gut-level pity again, splagchnizomai) and they have watched the king show extravagant mercy to him to forgive him the gazillion dollar debt.  And just as he’s going out of the room with the king, instead of being overcome with gratitude, he sees a fellow slave who owes him fifty bucks.  They have watched as he grabs him by the throat, insists that he pay it, ignores the pleas for patience, and throws him into prison.  No wonder the fellow slaves are horrified by how deeply wrong this is.  The fellow slaves understand that this is the exact opposite of gratitude, the exact opposite of love, the exact opposite of justice, the exact opposite of holiness.  The king has been so, so, so, so extravagantly merciful to him, and he’s responded by being hateful and vengeful.  If there’s anybody who deserves punishment, it’s this guy.  

The image of the king handing him over to be tortured is not an appealing one, obviously, and it’s the reason this parable isn’t popular.  However, when extravagant mercy is given to us, and we respond to people with a life of resentment, grudges, and hostility, that sounds a lot like torture.  I’ve had times when a person has insulted me once.  And I was hurt and angry, and I repeated that insult in my head once, twice, five times, ten times.  I imagined various aggrieved replies to the person.  I repeated the insult in my head twenty times, thirty times.  I complained to my friends.  I repeated the insult in my head fifty times, a hundred times.  So I felt insulted by that person once.  I felt insulted by myself a hundred times.  I’m the one who’s causing 100 times as much pain to myself by holding on to that resentment, grudge, and hostility.  I’m the one torturing myself.

I’ve had times when someone has mistreated me once.  And I was hurt and angry and I replayed the mistreatment in my head afterward once, twice, five times, ten times.  The person isn’t even in the room anymore.  I replayed the mistreatment in my head twenty times, fifty times, a hundred times.  Now I’ve been victimized by this mistreatment a hundred times.  To be victimized 100 times feels like torture.  And who’s the perpetrator of all that mistreatment?  I’m the perpetrator.  

We talk about releasing someone from a debt, and we do that when we forgive a debt. And in addition to releasing our debtor, we also release ourselves.  We set ourselves free.  We can release our hands from our neighbour’s throat.  We can release our neighbour from prison, and release ourselves from the unpaid job of jailer.  We can release ourselves from the role of torturer, and the role of tortured. 

There’s a beautiful simplicity to it.  I acknowledge that I fail a gazillion times to love God wholeheartedly and to love my neighbour as myself.  I receive the extravagant mercy of God.  I acknowledge that my neighbours also fail a gazillion times to love God wholeheartedly and to love me as themselves.  And knowing that we’re all a bunch of sinners here on earth, and I’ve been forgiven a gazillion times, I release my neighbours from my resentment, grudges, and hatred, which means I release myself from my resentment, grudges, and hatred.  

Yes, it’s an unpopular parable.  Still, it offers us the gift of extravagant mercy, extravagant love, and extravagant freedom.