This
morning’s parable is full of outlandish details. The first servant owes his
master what would be about $600,000, equivalent to 160,000 days wages in Jesus’
day. His fellow servant owes him just 100 denarii - about $20; that was 100
day’s wages. That’s a lot too, but there’s no comparison. The message is clear.
And we cringe when that dumb servant who’s been forgiven so much can’t forgive
the smaller debt owed him. We know he is a fool who doesn’t know enough to do as has
been done to him. Empowered by the compassion of his master, he sees himself as
entitled now to push other people around. He doesn’t get it.
This
parable is ultimately a wisdom tale, begging us to choose rightly. With a
grateful heart, aware of all that God gives and forgives, we are invited to
gratefully go and do likewise - to love as God loves, to forgive as God
forgives - without measure. And when so much mercy has been lavished
upon me over and over again, since Jesus places no limits on his forgiveness,
how can I not forgive, not love, not show mercy and compassion? That would
simply be ungrateful and so foolish.
When
it comes to love and compassion, mercy and forgiveness, God always overdoes it.
That's how love operates; it expresses the "economy of gift, the logic of
abundance." When we ask for forgiveness, God says, “I remember your
sin no longer”? There is no proportion in it. It is pure gift. And the
reality of this excess and superfluity, this too-muchness of God, runs
through the whole of salvation history. And it all
reaches its perfection in Jesus. This too-muchness of God is
perfectly expressed in him, in his signs and words, in his passion, dying and
resurrection. It is Jesus who reveals this boundlessness and immeasurability of
God's love and compassion and forgiveness.
And
so once again this morning Jesus will fill us with an infinity of compassion, more than we deserve, in the Eucharist; squandering himself, becoming our food so that he can be
dissolved in us. It's what he did on the cross, giving everything, even
forgiving his tormentors. It's what lovers do; loving without measure, losing
themselves. Jesus assures us that kind of self-forgetfulness is possible for us
- with him.
Photograph by Brother Brian. Excerpts from this morning's homily with some insights from Gerhard
Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, pp. 242ff.