Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?” Mt. 18: 34
Debt.
It is somewhat astounding to realize how much of Jesus’ teaching has to do with the issue of debt.
The extent of it may surprise us, but in Roman Palestine during the time of Jesus’ life, debt was a very real, agonizing, often brutal reality.
As one scholar puts it:
“The specter of debt was feared by everyone …. The Galilee that Jesus knew was trapped in debt. When families lost their land to debt, alienation and degradation set in. Some sold themselves into slavery. Some became beggars, or prostitutes. A few joined gangs of bandits or highwaymen.”
Unlike you and me, people in that time period were not mailed forms from the Roman Revenue Service. Instead, strong men who could break knees showed up and demanded payment.
The unfairness of it all, the desperate craving for mercy, the enormous amount of debt people at that time would amass was precisely what Jesus wanted to use as a door through which he could walk in trying to help people understand the richness of God’s willingness to forgive.
To get his point across, then, Jesus used monetary figures that were astonishing. Even laughable. In fact, the amounts are so absurd that there is no way of translating them into modern dollars. We’re left to do nothing more than guess.
A “talent,” for example, was the largest denomination of money in the ancient world. 10,000 “talents,” then could most likely be reckoned to be the equivalent of roughly 100 million days’ wages for the average worker!
The point that Jesus is trying to make in using numbers so bountiful and lavish is that God is willing to forgive each one of us – without limit!
His further point is:
Because of that abundant generosity, you and I cannot claim the right to withhold forgiveness from one another. A community of people that has been forgiven, as we believe ours to be, must be a forgiving community.
Today’s gospel story is meant to emphasize to each one of us that we are not to hold grudges; we are not to seek revenge; we are not to require compensation or redress.
Instead, our behavior is to mimic that of God’s toward each of us, and then to seek out the offender and bring about reconciliation.
Reconciliation – resolving conflicts – repairing differences was fundamental to the message and mission of Jesus.
For example, in the parable read in today’s gospel, the servant receives punishment. But he does so not because he is evil, but because he wants to get even; he wants revenge; he wants to return meanness for meanness.
What this tells us is:
Failure to forgive is not just bad form or something God frowns upon. Failure to forgive is failure to be like God. As such, failure to forgive creates a massive gulf between God and us.
If we take Jesus seriously, the parable is not merely saying that God wishes we would be a little better. Instead, the king sends the unforgiving debtor for torture. Jews at that time did not believe in torture. But the Romans did!
Consequently, this reference by Jesus to torture had to shock his original listeners. But Jesus’ searing demand for forgiveness, his tender invitation to reconciliation was so serious that he pressed the limits to underline the awful results that would be experienced by those unwilling to forgive.
Forgiveness is at the very heart of Jesus’ preaching and teaching – and his life.
While on the cross, amid unimaginable pain, Jesus forgives the man crucified with him. After his resurrection from the dead, Jesus’ first words to those who had abandoned him and denied him was all about forgiveness.
Jesus lived what he taught:
No scolding. No retribution. No shaming. No getting even.
Only forgiveness – to the point of 70×7.
Each one of us has been forgiven abundantly.
Now it is our turn to be equally generous.
Perhaps the Christian author C.S. Lewis says it best:
“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
“Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?”
NOTE:
Fr. Jose Pagola’s words in his superb book, Jesus: An Historical Approximation, puts the same idea this way:
“We begin to encounter Jesus when we begin to trust God as he did, when we believe in love as he did, when we come to suffering people as he did, when we defend life as he did, when we look at people as he did, when we confront life and death with hope as he did, when we pass on the contagion of the Good News as he did.”
