Trinity
22
Mt
18:21-35
11/13/22
In
August of this year, President Biden announced a student loan forgiveness
program. Under this plan, up to forty
million borrowers can receive ten thousand or up to twenty thousand dollars of
loan forgiveness. Those who meet the
criteria of income for an individual or a couple will not have to repay this
money that was borrowed to pay for education.
Now
no doubt, the people for whom this opportunity is valid have been very excited
to receive this news – though now we will have to see if it comes to fruition as a
recent court ruling has put it on hold. Who wouldn’t want to learn that ten or
twenty thousand dollars of debt was suddenly gone? Not only does the money does not have to be repaid,
but it also means that the interest that would have been owed over the years is
gone as well.
On
the other hand, the reaction by many other people has been: “That’s not fair.”
All of the people who took out student loans over the years and faithfully
repaid them are asking why they didn’t receive this assistance. So for example,
Amy took out a student loan when we were married and she was doing her Master’s
degree to be a Nurse Practitioner. This
loan along with the interest accrued is something that we worked to pay
off. We are left asking: “Why don’t we
get any help? Why doesn’t the government
give us ten or twenty thousand dollars to make up for the money we already paid
back?” With three kids in college next
year, that money would sure be helpful.
The
other side of this issue is that while the term “student loan forgiveness”
sounds great, this “forgiveness” isn’t free.
Money was given out. Now it is
not going to be repaid. While our
politicians like to pretend that debt doesn’t exist, those of us who live in
the real world know that you can’t wave a magic wand and just make the money
owed go away. Someone has to pay the price.
Politicians of both parties have gotten used to dealing with government
debt by “kicking the can down the road” and ignoring the problem, but at some
point a day of reckoning will arrive, and it is frightening to think about what
that will look like.
In
our Gospel lesson today, Jesus tells a parable that is about debt being
forgiven, and also not being forgiven. Our Lord teaches us about the incomprehensible
act of forgiveness that he has given us in his death and resurrection. And in a powerful way, he leads us to
understand what this means for how we are to treat one another.
Just
before our text, Jesus had been talking about how Christians are to deal with a
fellow Christian who sins. He has
described a process in which first a Christian goes and speaks to that
individual. Next, the Christian takes
two or three others to see the person.
Finally, if the Christian does not repent, our Lord describes how the
individual is removed from the fellowship as he said, “And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him
be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Then he added, “Truly, I say to you, whatever you
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall
be loosed in heaven.”
Just before this our Lord has talked
about how the shepherd leaves the ninety nine sheep and looks for the one sheep
that has wandered off. Then he concluded by saying, “And if he finds
it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine
that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in
heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”
In this
section, the emphasis has been on repentance and forgiveness. So prompted by this Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against
me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Now on the one hand, Peter had certainly gotten
the point. Those who follow Jesus are to
forgive. And from a human perspective he
was really putting this into practice.
Seven times! Seven is the number of completion, and Peter showed a
willingness to go all the way.
Except “all the
way” from the human perspective missed the point. And so Jesus said to
him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” The point
here, is of course, not a number. Our
Lord was saying that forgiveness is to be unlimited – it can’t be numbered.
To illustrate
this, Jesus told a parable. He said, “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be
compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants.” As he did so a servant was brought to him who
owed ten thousand talents. Now this
amount owed is absurd. To put it in
perspective, it would have taken a man making the normal daily wage, 60,000,000
days of work to pay it off.
Naturally,
there was no way that the servant could pay. So the master ordered that the
man, his wife, children, and all that he had be sold in order get back what he
could. We learn that the servant fell down on his knees before master and was
imploring him as he said, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you
everything.”
In desperation
the servant begged the king. But what he said was laughable. No amount of
patience would enable the servant to pay it back. Yet then, something
incredible happened. Jesus said that the master had compassion for the
man. Instead of selling him and his
family into slavery, he released the man and forgave the debt. He forgave what
the man could never repay.
In the
interaction between the master and the servant, Jesus describes what God has
done for us in Christ. In the Sermon on
the Mount Jesus said, “You therefore must
be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” If you want fellowship with the holy God –
the Creator of all things – “pretty good” doesn’t cut it.
In that section of the Gospel Jesus
reveals the depths of our sin before God.
To murder is not simply to kill a person – it is to be angry with that
individual. To commit adultery is not merely the physical act, but to look with
lust. The holy life required to be with
God takes in every single thought, word, and deed. We know that we sin again,
and again, and again. If fact, we are so
sinful that we don’t even recognize all the ways we sin. In ourselves, we are completely and utterly
sinful. And because God is the holy and just God, if God did things in the way
of the Law there could only be one outcome for us. We would receive God’s
eternal judgment and damnation. Like the servant in the parable, we would have
no chance.
Like the master in the parable, God had
compassion on us. Yet because God is the just God there was no way to pretend
that the sin had never happened. Every sin is a sin against the holy God. It is sin that must be judged and punished.
And so God the Father did just that. He
sent his Son into the world as he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of
the virgin Mary. Jesus Christ went to
the Jordan River and submitted to a baptism of repentance, even though he was
holy and had no sin. He did so because
there he took on role of the Servant of the Lord. He, the sinless one, took our
place.
Jesus died on the cross on Good
Friday. There he drank the cup of God’s
wrath against our sin. God punished sin in the person of Jesus, and he did it
all the way. Jesus was the fulfillment
of Isaiah’s words about the Servant: “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our
iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with
his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
turned--every one--to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the
iniquity of us all.” That is why Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?”
And then on
Easter, God raised Jesus from the dead. Sin brings death. Christ received God’s
judgment to win forgiveness for us, and then he emerged from the tomb in the
resurrection as he defeated death. In the resurrection God vindicated Christ as
the One who had carried out the Father’s saving will. Because Jesus has risen from the dead we know
that we have forgiveness and eternal life.
We know that Christ will raise up our bodies on the Last Day.
Yet the
forgiveness Jesus has won is not only about me.
And our Lord teaches this powerfully in the second half of the parable. We learn that the servant who had received
this unfathomable forgiveness went out and found a fellow servant who owed him
one hundred denarii. This was a hundred days wages. It was not a small sum, but in time it could
be repaid.
However, we learn
that servant seized this man and began to choke him, saying, “Pay what you owe.” Then the fellow servant did the exact same
thing that the servant himself had just done before the master. He fell down and pleaded with him saying, “Have
patience with me, and I will pay you.” However, the servant refused to show
compassion. Instead, he had the man thrown in prison until he paid the debt.
The fellow
servants heard about what happened, and were understandably disturbed. They reported it to the master. He summoned
the servant and said, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because
you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant,
as I had mercy on you?” Then he delivered him to the jailers, until he should
pay all his debt. Jesus concluded by
saying, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not
forgive your brother from your heart.”
In the parable,
we learn about the incredible act of mercy that God has shown us in the death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We did not deserve forgiveness. We could
never have a holy standing before God on our own. But God had compassion on us and paid the
most costly price. He redeemed us
through Christ’s holy precious blood, and innocent suffering and death.
We learn in our
text that forgiveness is God’s gift, and so it is the strangest of
commodities. One can only receive and
possess it, by giving it away. If
you refuse to share it with others, then finally it becomes something that is
no longer yours. Jesus teaches us to
pray in the Lord’s prayer, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who
trespass against us.” Then, in the very
first verse after the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus adds, “For if you forgive others their trespasses,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others
their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
We can never
lose sight of the essential fact that the Gospel is not fair. It is the love and forgiveness that God has
given to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the gift that we did not deserve and
could not earn. And because that is the
way God has dealt with us, it now becomes the way we deal with others. The Holy Spirit who has called us to faith in
the Gospel has made us a new creation in Christ. He is the One who leads and enables us to
share this forgiveness with others. Because we have received forgiveness in
Christ, we now forgive those whom we meet in our life.
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