Matthew 18:21-35 - An Impossible Parable - September 27, 2020

“Really? Another sermon on sin and forgiveness? Isn’t two weeks in a row enough? Don’t we understand forgiveness by now?” When this text came up, those were my first thoughts…And then I read this parable. And then I realized that yes, we need to hear about forgiveness at least one more time. Because unless we see how impossible forgiveness is, we can’t truly understand it.

Jesus begins his parable by illustrating our impossible debt to God. Why does he have to do that? Don’t we already feel guilty enough? After all, we’re in church, aren’t we? No matter how badly we feel about our sins; no matter how often we pray forgive us our debts (Matthew 6:12); no matter how many nights we lay awake feeling guilty – not one of us thinks we owe God as much as we really do. Why not? Because there are so many other things that feel more pressing, that feel like bigger debts, bigger burdens than our debt of sin – things like mortgages and credit card bills, pandemics and presidential elections and judicial appointments. Jesus destroys the idea that our sins may be bad but not that bad by picturing our debt of sin as 10,000 talents. In ancient times, a talent was the largest unit of currency in circulation and 10,000 was the highest number used to count. (Kind of like when we say a “bazillion” to describe an indescribable amount.)

Debt-relief companies understand this. You’ve seen or heard their commercials, right? “Feeling like you’re drowning in debt?” “In over your head in debt?” “Buried in debt?” They understand that financial debt, though intangible, is a weight we can feel. Maybe you know and feel that weight in your life. But do you know and feel the weight of your sins? Do you truly recognize what you owe God? Do you understand that it’s an amount that you can never, ever repay? No matter how hard you try, how sincere you are, how good you appear in the eyes of others, you owe God more than you could repay even if you were able to spend an eternity trying.

But the skeptic in each of us argues: “That’s impossible. My debt can’t possibly be that much. I come to church every Sunday. I don’t cheat on my spouse. I love and take care of my kids. I’m not a terrorist, a pervert, a rapist, an unbeliever.” Maybe not. But neither was Peter. And it’s Peter to whom Jesus is telling this parable, telling him in no uncertain terms that his debt of sin amounts to 10,000 talents – an impossible debt to pay.

But our impossible debt to God is not the only impossible debt in this parable. He also informs us that the sins of others against us are impossibly small. They are represented as 100 denarii. To put that in perspective: there are 60 million denarii in 10,000 talents. In terms we can actually grasp: the amount we owe God is 60 million days’ wages; the amount others owe us is 100 days wages. Does that seem right? Tell that to the person who was abused for years as a child. Tell that to the wife who just found out that her husband has been cheating on her for months. Tell that to the parents who’ve just lost their child to a drunk driver. Are we really supposed to believe that the sins committed against us are a mere drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of our sins against God?

The world – and maybe your own gut – says “No!” The world believes that if you’ve been abused as a child, cheated on by a spouse, or otherwise sinned against in some horrible way – then you have license. If you’re a victim then you have a license to not believe in God, to be bitter against God – and above all, a license to not forgive. You have a license to hold on to the sins committed against you and rub them in everyone else’s face, saying, “Look at all the awful things that have happened to me, and tell me that I don’t have a right to be bitter, unbelieving and unforgiving.” I’ll admit, it’s really hard to disagree with that sentiment. But I should – because Jesus clearly does. His mathematical ratio is 600,000 to 1. Whatever hurt, pain, injury or sin against you that you’ve been nursing, holding on to, going back to is microscopic compared to your sins against God.

I told you this is an impossible parable. There’s impossible debt – one impossibly large and another impossibly small – and impossible responses to these debts. The first response puts to death any thought that we might have that our faith, our repentance, our sincerity is what causes God to forgive us. The servant fell down on his knees in front of him, saying, ‘Master, be patient with me, and I will pay you everything!’ This servant is clearly delusional. Rather than beg for mercy he begs for patience; instead of asking for forgiveness he asks for more time to pay a debt he could never pay. In spiritual terms, he believes he can make up his debt to God if he just has enough time. If you believe that, you’re not a Christian. And yet how does the king respond? The master of that servant had pity on him, released him, and forgave him the debt.

This servant is us. Long before we ever came to Christ; long before we ever started coming to church, giving to church, repenting or confessing Jesus as Savior, long before we realized that we could never pay our debt – God saw our impossible situation and had pity on us. He did the unthinkable, the impossible – he charged our debt to Jesus. Our debt of not trusting God to work all things – even bad things – for our good (Romans 8:28). Our debt of throwing God’s name around like an exclamation point. Our debt of not regarding God’s Word as holy and gladly hearing and learning it. Our debt of sins against authority, life, sexuality, property and reputation – God laid them all on Jesus. And Paul says in Colossians 2 that God erased the record of our debt brought against us by his legal demands. This record stood against us, but he took it away by nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:14). And with his shout of it is finished (John 19:30) Jesus assures us that he has paid our debt in full.

Do you realize how impossible that is? I mean, aren’t we satisfied with so much less? Weren’t we happy to receive that stimulus check a few months back or a partial refund of our car insurance from the lock-down? But who of us wouldn’t prefer to have our mortgage and credit card debt completely forgiven. Of course no bank would ever do that – but that’s what God did! God had an impossible response to your impossible debt: he freely, preemptively, completely, permanently wiped it out, forgave it.

The forgiven servant also had an impossible response: he grabbed [his fellow servant who owed him one hundred denarii] [choked him] and threw [him] into prison until he could pay back what he owed. Can you believe this guy? How could a person who had been forgiven (if my math is correct) 164,384 years of work demand repayment of the 100 days owed to him? No one could be that merciless after receiving that much mercy, could they? The question is not really whether a person can be that merciless – we all know people who are – but how they can be that merciless? Only an unbeliever, only the person who doesn’t believe God has really forgiven his impossible debt can be this vindictive toward others. The person who doesn’t recognize the mercy he’s received from God hasn’t actually received it. He still thinks that God is eventually going to collect on his debt and he has no problem serving as a debt collector to others. It’s a fitting ending for this servant then to be thrown into prison until he could pay back everything he owed. In fact, it’s fitting that anyone and everyone be thrown into hell unless they forgive as they have been forgiven.

“But how? It’s impossible for me to forgive others as God has forgiven me!” That leads us to the last impossibility in this impossible parable: an impossibly happy ending. “Happy?” you may be thinking. “This parable doesn’t have a happy ending at all!” “What’s so happy about a master who was so angry that he handed him over to the jailers (really “torturers”) until he could pay back everything he owed? What’s so happy about Jesus’ clear warning that this is what my heavenly Father will also do to you unless each one of you forgives his brother from the heart?” It’s true God will accept nothing less than perfect forgiveness from you; nothing less than forgiveness than is on par with his own. None of this mumbled “Don’t worry about it.” None of this forgiving but not forgetting. No more of this thing that good, church going people like us are especially good at: pretending to be nice to our fellow Christians and yet deep down harboring grudges against them for something they’ve said or done in the past. That’s the truly impossible part, isn’t it? Forgiving as God has forgiven us.

Why? Why is it so difficult for we who have tasted God’s forgiveness to freely forgive others? Well, we often say things like “I can’t forgive them,” “I don’t feel like forgiving them,” “I don’t think I can forget what they’ve done.” But let’s be honest. It’s not that we can’t forgive, it’s that we don’t want to. Jesus gets there when he points out that forgiveness comes from the heart. (In the Greek mind, the heart was not the center of emotions but of the will; the seat of decision, not emotion.) Forgiveness is not an emotional act, it’s an act of the will. And for that, we need nothing less than a new heart.

How does one get a new heart? Only through the dramatic transplant surgery worked by Law and Gospel. In fact, this surgery is just what Jesus was performing in telling this parable. With the scalpel of the law he shows Peter and us that our situation is absolutely hopeless – that we owe God more than we could ever repay, that left to our own devices we are doomed. And then, once our old, sinful heart has been removed, he reveals to us the heart of God. A heart which freely and completely forgave our impossible debt – before and apart from anything we could do. Through faith in the Gospel, the Holy Spirit plants the very heart of God, a heart that sees each and every sin – both ours and others – as forgiven, inside of us.

You see, Peter was stuck on this idea that forgiveness was something to be measured, counted, and, eventually, limited. And in placing limits on God’s forgiveness, he was comfortable placing limits on his own. So Jesus teaches the two-fold lesson: if you want to start measuring sin, start with your sins against God and compare them to the sins of others against you. And, if you want to start measuring forgiveness, start with God’s forgiveness of your impossible debt before you begin measuring your forgiveness of others. And in both cases, you’ll see that there is no comparison.

And that’s how we reach the impossibly happy ending to this parable. Imagine that the servant who had been forgiven 10,000 turned around and forgave the one who owed him 100 denarii. Granted, the parable wouldn’t be quite as interesting – but that’s the point. Since God proactively and permanently removed sin from the picture on the cross of Calvary, he doesn’t want it to become an issue in our marriages, our homes, or our church. Don’t misunderstand, we will continue to sin against one another, but he wants those debts to cancelled as quickly as they come. He wants us to understand, like Joseph did (Genesis 50:19), that if Jesus has died for every single sin – then the sins others commit against us aren’t only insignificant, they are in fact non-existent. And when our marriages and homes and congregation are filled with forgiven sinners who are eager to forgive each other – then we will have the impossibly happy ending Jesus wants for us.

One final practical note. As we said above, forgiveness is not an emotion but a decision. Your feelings towards another person, your memory of what they’ve done may not change immediately when you forgive them. In fact, they may never change. You may have been hurt so deeply, so permanently that you will have to forgive that person every day for the rest of your life. That’s ok. If there’s one thing this parable makes clear it’s that God’s supply of forgiveness is unlimited. So when you feel your well of forgiveness running dry, come back here to the Word and Sacrament where your Lord will refill you with the boundless forgiveness that is already yours in Christ.

This is an impossible parable. Because of the impossible depth of God’s love for us he has forgiven our impossible debt of sins against him by the impossible sacrifice of his Son. Use God’s forgiveness as the lens through which you look at life. Through that lens you’ll see God’s forgiveness as huge, your sins as small – and the sins committed against you as not even worth mentioning. All because Jesus makes the impossible, possible. Amen.