Genesis 50:15-21; Psalm 103: (1-7) 8-13; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35
Psalm 103:(1-7)8-13
Today’s readings are just chock full of indications as to how we are to treat each other. Beginning with Joseph forgiving his brothers for selling him into slavery, then to the Psalm, which describes God as slow to anger, and patient, to St. Paul’s advice that we are not to judge each other.
Today’s Gospel is a story we are familiar with, even though it’s not as famous as the “Good Samaritan” parable. Like most parables, it contains situations that are entirely ridiculous, something we don’t always pick up on. We are so used to hearing these stories, and we don’t have the same background as someone from 1st-century Palestine, so we often don’t get the sense of the absurdity of the situations Jesus sets up.
A king wants to settle accounts with his slaves, and one of them — let’s call him “Phil” — owes him ten thousand talents. Now, this is a HUGE amount of money. I don’t think we really grasp how much money thousand talents equates to. A denarius was a standard day’s wage for a laborer. A talent was about 6,000 denarii, so close to 20 year’s wages. If I’ve done the math correctly, that means Phil owes his master nearly 200,000 years’ wages. Can you even wrap your head around the size of this debt? I can’t. How could a slave – a slave – accrue that much debt to his master?
Jesus doesn’t explain. This is how he gets people’s attention: by setting up an entirely ridiculous situation, but one that has just enough familiarity that people can hang in there. People understood the master-slave relationship. They understood debts, and they knew very well how to compare talents to denarii. But the size of the debt is simply a ridiculous impossibility.
But the king forgives Phil this incredibly huge debt. Who is going to do that? Jesus is going from one unbelievable thing to a another here. It’s like he’s almost daring his listeners to keep up.
Now, by coincidence, Phil runs into Bob, a fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii, about 3-1/2 months’ wages. A much more reasonable debt! This is less than one thousandth of 1 percent of the Phil’s debt. Miniscule in comparison. Does Phil forgive the debt? Of course not! Even when Bob begs for just some extra time, Phil simply gets him thrown into prison.
Unfortunately for Phil, word gets around, and the lord does to Phil what Phil did to Bob, plus some.
Now, the obvious point of the parable is, if God can forgive us huge sins, we need to forgive your brothers and sisters the little piddling sins that we always commit against each other.
But I think there’s something else here too, something deeper. When Bob can’t repay his debt immediately, Phil no longer has any use for him. Their relationship is transactional,based on what they could do for each other. Phil did something for Bob — lent him money — but Bob couldn’t repay. So, to Phil, their relationship wasn’t worth having any more.
But forming relationships that way tends to turn people into things, objects that can be exploited for our own gain. And that is not the way the kingdom of heaven works. The kingdom of heaven works when we all recognize each other as having value in and of ourselves, not just for what we can do for one another.
When the king forgives Phil, he seems to be seeing him as a person. He has pity on him. He could have just given him extra time to pay the debt, although I’m really not clear on how such a monstrous amount could EVER be repaid. But he doesn’t. He goes all the way and forgives the entire amount. But Phil can’t even be bothered to give his fellow slave a little extra time.
Remember that “Golden Rule”? You know, the “Do unto others” thing? It doesn’t seem to have been operative in this story.
This is what’s wrong with Phil. He hasn’t treated Bob the way he wants to be treated. He has been given a huge gift, a gift of a magnitude that is impossible to imagine. And yet, he can’t bring himself to give a much smaller gift to his fellow slave. And we are the same, whenever we don’t treat others the way we want to be treated. We are the same whenever we fail to forgive others in the same way that we are forgiven. When we treat people as things to be used.
So, this being the Season of Creation, how can we connect this to our relationship with God’s creation? Well, in the same way that we often treat people as if their only value is what they can do for us, we treat nature as if its only value is what it can do for us. We treat God’s Creation as just things to be used for our own purposes and profit. And this is not good in God’s eyes. You see, we are supposed to be the caretakers of God’s creation. Creation has value in and of itself. It is not valuable just because of any used we can wring out of it.
Whenever we treat our fellow humans as things to be used, to be exploited and then discarded when they are of no more use, we fall short of God’s promise and plan for us. And by extension, whenever we treat any part of God’s creation as simply things to be used, we fall short of God’s promise and his plan for us. And using Creation in this way is how we end up with a world where precious, limited resources are being used up and climate is rapidly changing for the worse.
We must regain that sense of our calling as caretakers, as stewards of God’s creation. We must d what we can to heal the damage we have done. And not just for our own survival. We need to do it because taking care of the world that God has given us is a way that we can respond to God with thanksgiving for that very Creation — and for our own creation. It’s a way that we can show that we truly believe God created this world — and us — out of love.
Amen.
Becoming Dominican 