Tag Archives: parable of the unforgiving servant

On Becoming Forgiving Servants

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The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Mt. 18: 21–35) obviously teaches us to forgive one another as God has forgiven us, or we’re really going to get it. End of sermon? Not quite. The excessively harsh treatment of the servant who does not forgive his fellow servant the debt owed him is deeply unsettling. The king who hands the unforgiving servant over to the torturers doesn’t come across as all that forgiving. Is being unforgiving the unforgivable sin? Let’s look at this again.

It is often assumed that the king in the parable stands for God. But curiously, although some translations don’t catch this, it actually says “A man, a king.” This creates some distance between God and the man who happens to be a king. This allows the parable to open up several dimensions that make it hard to pin down.

Most importantly, we end up with a cycle of vengeance. That is precisely what lack of forgiveness causes. The king’s act of clemency had the potential to stop the cycle, as one act of forgiveness makes further acts of forgiveness easier, but the opportunity was lost when the forgiven, but unforgiving, servant demanded what was owed by the servant under him. An unforgiving act makes forgiveness harder than it was before. One could see the violent ending, not as an act of divine vengeance, but the natural consequences of unforgiving behavior.

That the second servant owed a much smaller sum of money to the other servant than what the unforgiving servant owed the king, reminds us of Jesus’ admonition to remove the log in our own eye before removing the speck in the eye of another. (Mt. 7: 3–5) Perhaps the greater our own sin, the better we can see even the small sinfulness of others, but correspondently do not easily see what is good in another. This makes forgiveness harder.

In another brief parable, Jesus asked Simon the Pharisee if the debtor, who was forgiven a larger amount than another debtor, would love the master more. (Lk. 7: 42) Simon assumed he would and Jesus agreed. The Woman Who Was a Sinner, who had been washing and kissing Jesus’ feet at the time was a perfect example of this supposition, but in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, that is not the case. The unforgiving servant fails to rise to the challenge of grace as did the Woman Who Was a Sinner. This suggests that although being a great sinner can make one aware of one’s need for mercy and forgiveness, being a great sinner can also so harden a person that mercy and forgiveness are knocked off the table.

We also would do well to examine our reaction to the comeuppance the unforgiving servant receives. We tend to think people like that should come to a bad end, so we feel satisfied, perhaps smug, about what happens to the unforgiving servant. If that is the case, what grounds do we have for criticizing the man, a king, who hands the unforgiving servant over to the torturers? This gives us cause to reflect on how forgiving we are, or aren’t, and how difficult forgiveness can be.

It is also worth noting other parables where a Master or King acts in an unforgiving way. The King who acts violently against the invited guests who don’t come to the banquet is one example. (Mt. 22: 1–14) The Parable of the Evil Workers in the vineyard is another. (Mt. 2-: 1–16) But, as Raymund Schwager points out in Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, these unforgiving acts in the parables are NOT what happened in real life when Jesus rose from the dead after being tortured and put to death. Instead, Christ acted in a much more profoundly loving manner. In the preface to the parable, Jesus tells Peter he should forgive someone who wronged him, not just seven times, but seventy-seven times. I get the impression that, unlike us, God doesn’t use a calculator for forgiveness.

So perhaps the parable doesn’t establish a Law: Thou shalt forgive. . . . or else. Rather, the parable gives us a rich sampling of the human muddle on the subject, but puts it in the comforting context of God’s initiating of forgiveness. Since God initiates forgiveness, we don’t have to come up with forgiveness all on our own. God does it for us. Let us treat the parable as an invitation to a world of forgiveness that, foreign as it seems now, is destined to become our native land.

Forgiving the Unforgiving Servant

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It is obvious that the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant is about forgiveness, but what it actually says about forgiveness can be a bit elusive. It seems to say that if you do not forgive the sins of others; your own sins will not be forgiven. Fair enough. The trouble is, forgiveness isn’t fair; it’s totally unfair. That’s the whole point of forgiveness. We often complain about unfairness if we are blamed for something we did not do, or if we think the punishment is out of proportion to the offense. But forgiveness is an opposite unfairness; we are not given the punishment we deserve. We don’t complain about the unfairness of it except for when it comes to other people who obviously deserve a harsh punishment for what they did to us,

Fairness and unfairness aside, this parable seems to pose the conundrum about the forgiving god being unforgiving. We could say it isn’t God but the Master in the parable who is unforgiving. There’s no question about the Master, but does the Master stand in for God? The concluding verse seems to suggest it: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Mt. 18: 35) But how can we speak of God being forgiving if God does not always forgive? Of course, if we aren’t inclined ourselves to forgive the unforgiving servant, who are we to judge God for not forgiving him?

I find the Swiss theologian Raymund Schwager helpful here. In his book Jesus in the Drama of Salvation he develops a dramatic theology in five acts. The first act is the proclamation of , forgiveness, most powerfully expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. The second act is the refusal of the message of forgiveness on the part of Jesus’ hearers. This parable and many others that include acts of violence fall into this second act. That Peter asked if he had to forgive as much as seven times is an example of resisting the teaching on forgiveness. Schwager suggests that the weeping and gnashing of teeth that crops up in several parables refer to this refusal of Jesus’ message. Schwager emphasizes the point that Jesus is not just talking about small-scale relationships; Jesus is preaching a System of forgiveness. Society is to be made up of forgiveness rather than blame and retaliation. If God really is a forgiving God, then God forgives our lack of forgiveness, but God does not save us from the consequences of sticking to the old system of blame and retaliation. All this old system ever got us is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Gnashing of teeth is an apt image of blame and retaliation; Paul admonished his corespondents to stop devouring one another. (Gal. 5: 15) On a more positive note, in Romans, Paul gives a concrete illustration of what it means to live and die for the Lord: Do not judge our brothers and sisters or hold them in contempt because we all stand under God’s judgment seat. (Rom. 14: 8, 10)

If Jesus does indeed want us to develop a system of forgiveness as Paul clearly believes, then it only takes one unforgiving person to short circuit the system and knock over all the dominoes of forgiveness in quite a spectacular crash. The effect is much the same if someone commits what seems an unforgivable act. Even worse is an act that combines vengeance with lying accusations. The only way to keep the system from crashing in a situation like this is to remain open to God’s gift of forgiveness as a free gift for ourselves and for the offender in the midst of the crash. If Jesus is indeed enjoining a system of forgiveness, then he isn’t telling Peter, as an individual, to forgive offenses seventy-seven times or seven times seventy times; he is asking Peter, as he is asking us, to counter offenses and vengeance by starting a counter chain reaction of forgiveness. Easier said than done. We need to be focused on God and not the one who has hurt us and certainly not on our own hurt. The judgment seat we stand under is a judgment of forgiveness, but forgiveness does shed light on what needs forgiving in the very act of forgiveness. That can be a painful and a built-in punishment for what we have done or not done. Forgiveness may get us off God’s hook, but it doesn’t take us off the hook we’ve hung ourselves on. We are easily distracted by thoughts (sometimes legitimate ones) that the other is the one who needs a lot of forgiveness, but we must remain grounded God’s forgiveness of us and use that free gift to participate in God’s forgiveness of others. Only then can we rebuild the system of a forgiving society.

In Schwager’s drama, the third, fourth, and fifth acts are the crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, far from punishing his unforgiving hearers, Jesus took on the wrath of their blame and retaliation on the Cross. And that is where accepting the gift of God’s forgiveness in the midst of blame and retaliation can take us as well. But what other way is there, really, to the resurrected life and the breath of the Holy Spirit which breathes God’s forgiveness of our sins?

Receiving Forgiveness

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buddingTree1As we have noted several times, granting forgiveness and receiving forgiveness go hand in hand. Although receiving forgiveness wasn’t listed in the process of forgiveness, it is receiving forgiveness that completes the new cycle and breaks the cycle of revenge. In looking at the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, we stressed the need to grant forgiveness in order to receive forgiveness. The circle works in the other direction just the same. We have to receive forgiveness in order to grant it.

Receiving forgiveness as a free gift sounds like a good deal until we remember that receiving forgiveness necessarily entails becoming aware of what we are being forgiven for. If we are convinced we have done nothing wrong, then we do not receive forgiveness no matter how often and ardently forgiveness is given us. If somebody tells us we have been forgiven, it implies that we have done something wrong to merit punishment as well as the forgiveness that is given us instead. That is to say, receiving forgiveness only makes sense when one is penitent. This does not negate the peremptory forgiveness given by God and imitated by those who imitate God as deeply as this. God’s peremptory forgiveness reveals the truth of the wrongs we have done and this forgiveness strengthens us to live up to the challenge to amend our lives.

I noted earlier that a major component of granting forgiveness is to renounce mimetic rivalry. The desire for revenge is a desire to win a victory against the person who has “defeated” us through personal injury. It is this desire to “win” that is renounced with forgiveness. There is a similar, but not identical renunciation of mimetic rivalry in accepting forgiveness. In committing sin that requires forgiveness, mimetic rivalry in the sense of seeking to dominate other people is often involved. This quest for dominance is one of the major things that need to be repented of in receiving forgiveness. Just as one becomes a “loser” in granting forgiveness, one becomes a “loser” in receiving it. This is the difficulty that Javert had in Les Miserables. (See A Miserable Gospel.) This gendarme had placed himself in perpetual mimetic rivalry through his determination to catch out Jean Valjean and bring him back to prison. This vendetta started at the moment of his release, without giving Valjean any opportunity to prove himself worthy of his release—or not. This mimetic rivalry on the part of Javert, which was never reciprocated by Valjean, made Javert relentlessly unforgiving and it made him just as relentlessly incapable of receiving forgiveness. He could not renounce his irrational quest to “win.” And so he lost everything.

Receiving forgiveness is essential for one who grants forgiveness. The temptation in granting forgiveness is to claim the higher moral ground over the one forgiven. If we think we have no need for forgiveness ourselves when we forgive others, we put ourselves above those we forgive, which is pride and, more importantly, a short-circuiting of forgiveness. This is why the Lord’s Prayer pairs praying for forgiveness with praying to receive it.

These considerations help us understand the puzzling verse in Romans 12:20. Paul tells us feed our enemies who are hungry and give water when they are thirsty for by doing this we will heap “burning coals on their heads.” Paul is quoting Proverbs 25: 22 here, which only pushes the puzzle back to the Wisdom Sage. If we are truly forgiving one who has wronged us and have renounced the desire for revenge or for someone else (God) to avenge us, then we truly wish to restore connections to the person who wronged us and to enhance that person’s well-being. Feeding and giving water to such as these as much as we give them to our own family and friends is enhancing their well-being. But what of those who cannot or will not forgive and cannot or will not receive forgiveness? Javert is an example of one who experienced a free act of forgiveness as the heaping of burning coals on his head. Valjean’s forgiveness seared his soul. Paul, and the Wisdom Sage before him, realized that forgiveness will burn the person who does not accept it. Such is the teaching of Jesus in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant who was not tortured by the master but by his own inability to give and therefore receive forgiveness.

Receiving any kind of gift puts us in an inferior position to the one who gives the gift. Since forgiveness is rooted in God’s Desire, receiving forgiveness as a free gift always puts every one of us in an inferior position before God. Likewise, receiving forgiveness keeps us on the same level with other people as we forgive them and receive forgiveness from them. The Satan’s kingdom, the Empire, is fueled by the cycle of revenge. God’s Kingdom is fueled by the cycle of forgiveness. Both cycles are just as infinite but the cycle of forgiveness is infinitely larger than the other.

 

The Sin Against the Holy Spirit

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???????????????????????????????????????????The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant takes us to the heart of the question of forgiveness in Matthew’s Gospel. A dialogue between Jesus and Peter sets the stage and gives us a sense of direction for interpreting the parable. When Peter asks if he should forgive someone who offends him seven times, he seems to think he is putting a high ceiling on the matter. Forgiving somebody seven times seems an awful lot but Jesus breaks his bubble by saying that he has to forgive an offender seventy-seven times, or seventy times seven, in some manuscripts. Taking the higher number, one might think that counting up to 491 offenses legitimizes taking revenge after the magic number is passed, but that obviously misses the point. Jesus’ reply is an allusion to Lamech’s savage song where he boasts that if Cain is avenged seven times, then he is avenged seventy-seven times. The working of revenge cycles indicates that the revenge is infinite. Jesus’ counters the infinite revenge cycle by making forgiveness just as infinite.

Then Jesus launches into the parable of the unforgiving debtor. After being forgiven outright a large sum of money owed to the master, the forgiven servant refuses to forgive a much smaller sum by a fellow servant. Having just been forgiven a large debt, the servant hardly has the excuse of being desperate for money. The point of the parable is clear enough: if you don’t forgive, you won’t be forgiven. But there is a small hitch here. The “forgiving” master suddenly becomes unforgiving. The forgiving Father in Heaven is not forgiving either, at least for this offense. Not forgiving is the unforgivable sin.

Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus says that every sin and blasphemy can be forgiven with the exception of “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” which is the one thing that cannot be forgiven (Mt. 12:31). It seems odd that God’s hands should ever be tied in any circumstances in forgiving anybody for anything, so what gives? Saying that unforgiving people cannot be forgiven suggests that withholding forgiveness would be the sin of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ final discourse, he promises that when he leaves, he will send the Advocate to guide them in all truth. An Advocate is a lawyer for the defense. So the Advocate Jesus sends is the defender of all who are accused. The Advocate “will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment” (Jn. 16:8). Of course, the world runs by the fuel of accusation and revenge. If we bring Jesus’ words about the Advocate to his words in Matthew, it appears that sinning against the Holy Spirit by not forgiving others cuts us off from our Advocate who would plead our case.

In the parable, the unforgiving servant is handed over to be tortured until he has paid his entire debt. The servant had been invited to a new way of living based on forgiveness and rejected it. Living without forgiveness, which is tantamount to living by vengeance, is torture. It isn’t God who is unforgiving; it is the servant. If refusing the way of forgiveness is the sin against the Holy Spirit, then we do not need to worry about what thing we might do wrong that brings us to eternal damnation. Forgiveness is a process and so is vengeance. Clinging to vengeance in the face of God’s forgiveness tortures us with our vengeance for as long as we are imprisoned in it. All the while, the Advocate continues to defend us, hoping that we will allow the Advocate to prove us wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment. Ultimately, Jesus and the Heavenly Father forgive us our unforgiveness in the hope that we will accept this free gift. Likewise, St. Paul says that Christ is at the right hand of God interceding for us (Rom 8:34). Just ahead of the parable, Jesus has told the Parable of the Lost Sheep for whose sake the shepherd left the ninety-nine to seek out the lost. Surely God searches out each one of who tortured by vengeasnce. Then, immediately before this the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, Jesus has instructed his disciples about seeking reconciliation and treating delinquent members like Gentiles and tax collectors. Judging by the parable that follows that we have examined, the way to treat Gentiles and tax collectors and all other people is to forgive them. Truly accepting this free gift of forgiveness entails passing this free gift on to others. We are all thrown into the same world together. The question is whether we will be tied up in vengeance or bound by forgiveness.