Thursday in the Nineteenth Week of Ordinary Time, August 12, 2021

Matthew 18:21–19:1

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. That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.” 

When Jesus finished these words, he left Galilee and went to the district of Judea across the Jordan.

According to the Greek text, Jesus said that the first debtor owed “ten thousand talents”.  A “talent” was a measure of weight amounting to about eighty-one pounds.  Thus, the debtor owed approximately a half a billion dollars in today’s money.  While this would be a ludicrous amount for a potentate to loan to an ordinary servant today, it would be an unimaginable amount of money in the time of the Lord.  No single kingdom possessed this much wealth, and perhaps the wealth of all the kingdoms existing at that time did not come to that.  To gain some idea of the immensity — the sheer impossibility — of this kind of wealth in those days, we ought to think of, for instance, the mayor of a medium-sized town in Virginia loaning a trillion dollars to a fireman or sanitation worker.  We would be right to ask three questions: (1) Where did the money come from; (2) What does the fireman or sanitation worker need a trillion dollars for; (3) Where did all that money go that none of it was left to even partially repay the debt?  

Peter would have certainly raised his eyebrows when the Lord mentioned this amount of money, and maybe he thought for a moment that the Lord was laughing at him.  The Lord does not use a rational amount of money — an imaginable amount of money.  But that is just the point.  The parable the Lord tells is about the infinite debt we owe God for a single sin, and the infinite mercy with which God is willing to pardon us if we beg for forgiveness.  An infinite debt is incurred because the sinner acts against the infinite majesty of God.  This debt must be repaid at some point, in justice.  Since the sinner cannot possibly repay the debt, he has only one recourse: to beg for it to be canceled.  And this is a forlorn hope unless God is infinitely merciful.  Even so, the sinner must beg from his heart and not simply give a canned speech.  There is no forgiveness unless there is true repentance.

In the parable, the first debtor gets into trouble again when he refuses to show mercy to a fellow servant who owes him “a hundred denarii”, according to the Greek text.  This comes to about seventy-four dollars in today’s money.  It is a lot for a servant, but it is a realistic amount of money.  The first servant who has squandered half a billion dollars without batting an eye is enraged at the servant who owes him an amount that can actually be repaid.  This, in turn, enrages the king.  He has “given” to the first debtor an infinite amount of mercy, and so the first servant “possesses” this infinite amount out of which he can certainly bestow a relatively tiny amount on his fellow servant.  But he does not.  As a result, he “loses” the mercy that he was given and is put into the debtor’s prison where he will remain for the rest of his life.

We are all the possessors of the infinite mercy God has not only shown us, but given us.  We have benefitted from his largess and are infinitely rich with mercy as a result.  When we forgive our fellow servants, we give  to them from the infinite mercy we receive.  We can give in abundance too, for we need have no fear of our store of God’s mercy ever running out.  In this small way we act as he has acted with us, and we take another step to becoming perfect as he is perfect.