To even begin to understand this morning’s parable, we really have to do the math. The sum the debtor owes the king, blandly translated as “a huge amount,” is in the original Greek an astounding 10,000 talents. A single talent was worth about 6,000 denarii. A whole day’s work was required to earn just one denarius. So, 6,000 denarii or one talent amounts to at least 20 years of hard daily labor. To repay the 10,000 talents in the parable, the servant would have to work for about 200,000 years! It is this absolutely impossible debt that is forgiven by the compassionate king in today’s Gospel. It is absurd for the servant to say that he will “pay back everything.” As a day laborer, he had no hope of ever repaying such a debt. It’s ridiculous, and he knows it. And so does the king, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Deeply moved by the servant’s pleading, feeling this pity even in his very guts, the king forgives him the entire gigantic loan.
We can well imagine the astonishment of the crowd as Jesus told this parable, their jaws dropping. What is he talking about? This doesn’t make any sense. Well, that’s the point – it makes no sense at all, it’s way beyond good sense. It’s all about the too-muchness of grace, the mad, extravagant excess of God’s tenderness and mercy, which are far beyond our understanding. It is all about love. The preposterous amount of the forgiven debt clearly points to the incomprehensibility of God’s mercy. The tragedy is that the conniving servant who had the sense to fall on his face before the king and beg for mercy, doesn’t have the sense to remain in that interior posture of deep gratitude and indebtedness. Forgiven so extravagantly, he comes away not humbled and grateful but suddenly entitled and unwilling to forgive a debt only a fraction of the size of the one he owed. He grabs his coworker and chokes him, “demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’” This part of the story always makes me cringe. I think it’s supposed to.
In the kingdom that Jesus is trying to bring about, it’s never about what we’re entitled to; it’s about noticing with awe and gratitude all we have received. For “nothing that we have to forgive can even faintly or even remotely compare with all we have been given and forgiven, for we have been forgiven a debt beyond all paying.” That’s why “How many times?” is simply the wrong question. God’s mercy is beyond calculation. And as God delights in forgiving us, we are invited to go and do likewise, over and over again. Mindful of the flood of mercy that is incessantly available to us, we are expected to love as God loves. It’s beautiful, the ideal, we’ve heard it a million times, but it can break you down when you know you’ve been hurt or mistreated. So hard. But Jesus expects it of us, even demands that as his followers we will have a mercy-filled hearts like his own. The harsh words at the conclusion of the Gospel make this very clear: “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 your brother from your heart.” From your heart. God in Christ has a wounded, pitying heart, a heart of mercy, misericordia. We are called to have hearts like this, hearts like God’s heart. I may think this is way beyond my ability, Jesus does not.
Sad to say, but grudge-nurturing ran in my family- there was always someone who wasn’t talking to someone else for some reason; certain families you couldn’t visit, long-standing vendettas were always in the air; the tragic-comedy of it all was that oftentimes people had even forgotten the reasons or how it even began. I used to think I was way beyond all that, but I notice that deep inside there’s a part of me that wants to throttle people who have hurt me and demand repayment.
So writing off debts is not my first impulse. I can’t seem to do get the hang of it. Of course not. And again, that’s probably the point. It is impossible for us, but not for God. And it is our friendship with the poor Christ that will transform us. It is only this love for the person of Christ that can “undermine the (fearsome) tyranny of self,” and knowing that we are loved by him beyond all telling; only this love can erode resentment. Only Jesus can wean me away from my tendency to endlessly nurse a grudge and withhold mercy. For it is not in my own “power not to feel or to forget an offense.”
Jesus appeals to us, even demands that we be overwhelmed by the sheer beauty and the pure gift of who he longs to be for us. Only mindfulness of the gift and the giver can transform our hearts, so that injury can flip into compassion, forgiveness and even prayer for those have offended us. It takes doing and redoing- perhaps that’s part of what the seventy times seven means.
Make no mistake, writing off our debts, endlessly forgiving us, cost God very much, even his own Son’s battered body and the last drop of his most precious blood. Jesus is the 10,000 talents, one lump sum, up front, paid in full on our behalf. And he’s so blinded by his love for us, he doesn’t think twice. He thinks we’re worth it. If we dare to let this sink in and try to love and forgive like he does, the kingdom can happen, and the breadth of God’s beauty and real presence will become more real, and really present. Sharing this Eucharist together seventy times seven times, we are learning how to love as God loves.
