Based on Matthew 18:21-35. Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla.
One blessing of living in a university town is that distinguished speakers and entertainers sometimes come in. The Remmers Lecture Series has brought in diverse individuals over the years. In 2008, soon after we moved here, I had the privilege of hearing F. W. de Klerk speak. He was the transition leader when South Africa abolished apartheid. Among other things, he negotiated with incoming president Nelson Mandela to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or TRC.
The goal of the TRC was to establish the facts of the human rights violations that had happened between 1960 and the end of the era in 1994. They allowed victims to tell their stories, granted amnesty, and drafted a reparations policy. Now, their work was far from complete and had many detractors, in part because not everyone participated. But the motivation was correct. The former apartheid leaders and the new democratically-elected government had to figure out a way to live together. Both sides had committed atrocities, especially the apartheid government and its security forces but also the opposition party led by Nelson Mandela. If the two sides were ever to live together, there had to be a full accounting of the ways that people had hurt each other, restitution of anything that could be restored, and ultimately reconciliation so that they could put the evil of apartheid in their past.
In today’s lesson, we hear about a man who had his own debts forgiven, but still enforces his rights against a debtor. I want to help you understand just how outrageous the story is. A denarius was the typical daily wage in that time and place. To make the math easy, let’s say that a typical hourly wage is $12.50, just over minimum wage, so for eight hours, the daily wage would be $100. The second slave owed the first one 100 denarii, or about $10,000. That’s a lot, right? Three months’ wages. Maybe he was a farmer and borrowed to be able to plant. Maybe he was a fisherman and bought a boat or some equipment. Or maybe he was sick or injured and couldn’t work for some time. It’s easy to imagine three months’ wages worth of debt.
But the first slave owed the lord an ENORMOUS amount. A talent was worth 6000 denarii, or about $600,000. One talent was a lot of money. He owed TEN THOUSAND talents, or six BILLION dollars. How is that even possible? That’s the amount that Galilee paid to Rome as tribute over a period of fifteen years. That’s 50% more than the combined budget of all four University of Missouri campuses, plus its healthcare system. How is it possible that a slave racked up so much debt?
I don’t personally owe anyone six BILLION dollars. If I did, it wouldn’t even seem real. Somewhere around a million dollars, it would start to seem like fake money. Like, it’s so much that I could never, ever re-pay it, so whether it’s one million or ten million or six billion, it just doesn’t matter.
The lord would have been completely within his rights to seize the slave’s possessions and sell off his whole family. Even then, I can’t imagine he would come anywhere near recovering his debt. How could he ever be made whole?
Jesus likens this enormous debt to the debts we owe God on account of our sins. The good news is that our sins have all been forgiven. Each Sunday, we are called to confess our sins together, knowing that they will be followed by a declaration of pardon. We can be confident that whatever we have done, or failed to do, God will forgive us.
Each of us has personally sinned in some way. Maybe we shaded the truth, or coveted our neighbor’s possessions, or were angry with someone. Whatever. We can easily rack up debts like the second slave. But Jesus implies that we have racked up debts like the first slave—government-scale debts.
We are participants in a society, in institutions, and in systems that are inherently sinful. There is nobody here who would say that everything our government does is righteous, and yet we are obligated to support it with our tax dollars. We are living on land that was once inhabited by Osage, Kickapoo, and Kaskaskia tribes of Native Americans. I personally hold a lot of unearned privilege and am the beneficiary of a society that is basically set up to favor people just like me. That’s not to say that I had everything handed to me, but that my life has been easier because I’m a straight white man who grew up in a good school district.
Some people have asked me why I am so committed to the work of LGBTQ+ Rolla. Well, the truth is that the Christian Church has been the perpetrator of many, many crimes against humanity. I am called to do my small part towards righting those wrongs. I know that it’s a hole that I can never fill, but I feel that I need to do something. We have collectively harmed millions of people for many reasons throughout the past 15 centuries of our alliance with empire, through our actions and our failures to act. Coming back to South Africa, we recently added the Belhar Confession to our Book of Confessions as a rebuke against those churches who found justification for the evil apartheid regime.
The South African TRC was created to deal with some of the harm that was done by the apartheid government. One way it fell short, though, was that it focused on the actions of individuals. Say, a soldier who committed some atrocity against a rebel. What the TRC did not investigate, catalog, or provide reparations for was the systematic harms done to the non-white population of South Africa. Individuals were called to account for the collective shame of the government.
And so, in our weekly confessions, we often include confessions of the way our society acts or fails to act. We ask forgiveness for the ways in which we exploit and destroy the Earth. We ask forgiveness for the justice system that keeps us safe but dehumanizes those caught up in it, guilty or innocent. We ask forgiveness for our community’s lack of action to clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and feed the hungry, and our participation in systems that perpetuate poverty and homelessness.
As we ask forgiveness, we are assured that God will grant us peace. But prayers are not only meant to communicate our needs to God. They are also meant to change our own hearts and align them more with God’s will.
God’s forgiveness is unconditional. But as we pray in the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” As Jesus implies in today’s parable, the only condition for God to forgive us is that we should then forgive others.
Why is forgiveness so important? As long as a debt remains, it creates a barrier between two people. The debt gives one party power over the other. The debt colors all of their interactions. Only when the debt is forgiven can two people build a healthy relationship. Only when we confess our sins, truthfully and with a contrite heart, can we accept being forgiven. We can confess to God openly through prayer. In some ways, that’s easier than confessing to those we have hurt. But stating our shortcomings truthfully, attempting to restore what has been lost, and asking for forgiveness is essential to repairing a damaged relationship.
You might be thinking, OK, I can do that. I know I hurt such-and-such, so I will go and confess and ask forgiveness. Maybe. But what about all of those ways in which you have hurt people unintentionally or even unknowingly? What about all of those ways in which you have participated in a sinful system and been sullied by other people’s actions?
That’s where God’s love comes in. I know that I have hurt people unintentionally, but I don’t know who. Or sometimes, I do know who, but I’ve lost touch with them and can no longer apologize. Or sometimes, I have been hurt in turn, and both sides need to apologize in order for forgiveness to take place. Or as I’ve said, I’m the beneficiary of a system that will keep doing what it does, whether I like it or not.
I cannot untangle all of this myself. I cannot change other people’s hearts. I cannot heal all of the hurt that I have caused, through action or inaction. I certainly cannot heal all of the hurt caused by the society and institutions of which I’m a part. But God can. All things are possible in God’s kingdom. One day, God will make all things right. The kingdom of heaven is that place where all relationships are made whole again, where all hurts are healed, where all are welcome.
One day, we will get to experience God’s eternal glory, God’s love binding us all together, flowing through us all. Wouldn’t it be great if we could experience just a little bit of that now? We can. We can’t heal all of the hurts. We can’t remedy all of the wrongs. But we can work together towards a world where there is no war, no anger, no hatred.
The month of September has been designated as a new liturgical season, first in 1989 by the Eastern Orthodox Churches, then by the World Council of Churches, and then in 2015 by the Roman Catholic Church. It is the Season of Creation. It starts September 1 and ends on October 4, the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi, who is the patron saint of the environment and animals. It is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all of creation. It is also the time when we collect the Peace & Global Witness special offering. This month is a time to reflect on all that we have done, as a church, a community, and a society, to damage the Earth and also God’s most special Creation: humanity. For thousands of years, we have been taking advantage of what God has given us, exploiting the Earth’s resources, and exploiting one another. Someday, God will make all things new. But in the meantime, if we work together, forgive one another, and seek both truth and reconciliation, we can experience God’s kingdom now through healthy relationships with one another and the world. Amen.
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