Sermon: Ridiculous, Extravagant Love

Matthew 18:21-35

Ridiculous, Extravagant Love

James Sledge                                                                           September 14, 2014

How many times? When Peter asks that question he is speaking of forgiveness, but his question could have been about a number of things. How many times should I help someone? At what point do I say “No”? How many chances should I give someone? What’s the limit?

But Peter asks about forgiveness. Presumably the forgiveness here is for something significant, not some imagined slight or inadvertent failure. Someone has sinned against another, has told lies about her, gossiped about her, cheated her out of something. And it has happened repeatedly. At what point does forgiveness turn into foolishness, making someone an easy mark and a target for more abuse? Seven times?

But what prompted Peter’s question? Perhaps one of the other disciples has done something that really riled him. Of course Jesus had just finished teaching about disciplining members in the church, telling them that when someone sins against you, you should go and point it out to the person. And if the person doesn’t listen to you, take a couple of others to talk to him, and if that doesn’t work put it before the congregation, and if the congregation can’t convince the person to behave, shun him.

All of this is meant to turn the person back, to ask for forgiveness and reenter life in the community. So maybe Peter is just following up, wanting to know how many times this process is to be used. Seven times?  I suspect that Peter thinks this is exceedingly generous. Perhaps he’s trying to score a few brownie points with Jesus by being so forgiving.

If he’s trying to impress Jesus, clearly he fails. Not seven, but seventy-seven. Or maybe it’s seventy times seven. Either translation is possible. Scholars say “seventy-seven” is more likely, but the over-the-top “seventy times seven” would certainly be in keeping with the ridiculous numbers found in the parable Jesus tells.

When Jesus first told this parable, he used examples that were familiar and easily accessible to his listeners. But we do not live in a world of kings settling accounts with slaves, and none of us has ever received a paycheck that was in written out in talents or denarii, so maybe a bit of updating is in order.

The kingdom of God may be compared to the manager at a large securities firm who was settling up the accounts of some of the traders. There had been a big merger and they were cutting staff. As the manager was going through the paperwork, he was astounded to discover that one trader they were laying off owed the company 3.1 billion dollars.

Now if you think this is ridiculous, that no company would ever let an employee somehow end up over 3 billion in arrears, I’m inclined to agree. But you’ll have to take that up with Jesus. He’s the one that told this story of a slave who owed 10,000 talents. A talent was about fifteen years of wages for a worker in Jesus’ day. So I just converted that using a laborer in our day who makes ten dollars an hour. That’s a little over $20,000 a year, and fifteen years of that is a bit over $300,000. And Jesus says 10,000 of those, so that’s just over 3 billion dollars.

So anyway, the manager calls this guy who owes the company 3 billion dollars into his office, and he goes after him, demanding the money that instant. The man doesn’t have it, of course, and so the manager begins to tell the fellow what is going to happen. They are going to sue him into oblivion. He will never work in the industry again, and they are likely going to turn him over to the authorities for prosecution on embezzlement and fraud.

The trader begins to sob, saying he never meant for this to happen, that he will pay every penny off if it takes the rest of his life. “Please, please,” he begs. “Just give me a chance.”

And for some strange reason, the manager is moved to pity for the fellow and says to him, “You know what… It’s a tough economy out there, and I’m going to give you a chance to make another go of it. You’re free to go; you don’t owe us anything.”

Stunned, the former trader stumbled out of the building. As he walked down the sidewalk in a daze, he happened to meet a fellow he had loaned $8000. (I used the same ten dollars an hour formula to get this number, too.) He threw the guy up against the wall and demanded the money. “I’ll pay you; just give me time,” the man pleaded. But the former trader refused to listen. “You’ll pay me now, or you’ll regret it.”

3.1 billion; 8000. The comparison is beyond absurd. Who could possibly have just been forgiven a 3 billion dollar debt and then show no mercy to someone who owed him a mere $8000? Why on earth does Jesus tell this ridiculous parable?

I can think of a several reasons. First off, Jesus knows very well the creative accounting we humans sometimes use when it comes to debts and forgiveness. Our ledgers often have meticulous records of every slight, hurt, or offense received from others, intentional or not. We review these debts periodically and nurse them. They grow larger as we remember them and stew on them, creating an odd sort of compound interest.

We tend to keep less careful records with our own debts, and they rarely compound with time, often the opposite.

Secondly, Jesus doesn’t think we appreciate the degree to which God is generous and merciful and gracious to us. Religious folks have a special problem with this. We imagine that our religiousness makes us appealing to God. But Jesus’ own experience would suggest the opposite. It is the religious people that Jesus has the hardest time with, who seem unaware of how far they are from God, who most easily dismiss “sinners” as beyond hope.

But most of all, I think Jesus wants to impress upon us the strange ways of our God, and how we are called to be imitators of this strange God. It makes absolutely no sense economically or from an accounting standpoint simply to wipe away a 3 billion dollar debt. But this is what God is like, says Jesus, and what we are to become like. As he teaches in the Sermon on the Mount, in what we now call the Lord’s Prayer, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus expects that in receiving the ridiculous grace and mercy and generosity and tenderness of God, we will become imitators of God, ridiculously gracious and merciful and generous and tender toward all.

This is no formula for getting ahead in the world, but Jesus does not expect that his followers will fit easily into the world. After all, we are called to show the world God’s kingdom, that radically different and wonderful new community where love reigns, forgiveness flows freely, the poor are lifted up, the oppressed find release, the last are first and the first are last, a community where we discover the true meaning of human life as it becomes reoriented around love of God and love of neighbor.

And all that starts right here, in the church, when we love and forgive each other with a ridiculous extravagance that boggles the mind, and shows the world another way.