Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
“Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive him?
As many as seven times?”
Peter probably thought that he was being generous. And if someone committed the same sin against us seven times and we forgave them seven times we would probably feel that we were being generous as well. But we would start to wonder if the next time might be one too many.
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
Jesus told Peter that he was not to set any limits on his willingness to forgive others. In order to do this he would need to recognize that, however much others might owe to him, he had first owed and been forgiven a much greater debt, "a huge amount" which he had no way of repaying.
At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’
Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.
When the servant in the parable is forgiven his debt what happens next is not what we might expect according to the currently popular Christian conversion narrative. We tend to imagine that when one receives forgiveness from Jesus she becomes generous and ready to give and forgive, a conversion more like that of Zacchaeus than the servant from this parable.
Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly … But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” (see Luke 19:6-8).
But what we discover in the parable is that forgiveness does not always result in the bearing "fruit in keeping with repentance" (see Matthew 3:8). This is meant to be a check against the presumption of assuming that we are automatically in the camp of Zacchaeus if we have not yet been transformed as he was.
When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants
who owed him a much smaller amount.
He seized him and started to choke him, demanding,
‘Pay back what you owe.’
This servant in the parable received the gift of forgiveness, but without making a connection with the compassion that moved the heart of the master. The servant therefore only experienced an increased sense of his own limits and liabilities, rather than a confidence in the generosity of the master. He reasoned that it was his own failing that left him without enough to repay his master and that he must now take any means necessary to have enough to never be in that situation again. He thought that the forgiveness of the master threw him back only on his own resources, and this led to desperation.
Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
But he refused.
The servant was meant to realize that, for the master, mercy triumphed over justice. But he perceived only a temporary reprieve, a bit of luck before he would again be on the hook for more than he could pay. Not realizing the compassion of the master this sort of fear, desperation, meanness, and even violence was the logical conclusion. If, in the end, he had to account for himself by himself, how could he do otherwise than demand everything he was owed by others?
His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant!
I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
as I had pity on you?’
What lesson has the forgiveness of Jesus taught us? Have we become free and generous like Zacchaeus, trusting in the compassionate heart of Jesus? Or have we rather become like the servant from the parable, sensitized to our own inability to repay the many gifts we have received? Our conversions must in some sense revealed our limits, and demonstrate to us our destiny apart from the generous forgiveness of the master. But this is not meant to leave us in fear, struggling at self-preservation. It is meant to give us a confidence in our master that is so great that to have pity on our fellow servants is easy, and a matter of course.
Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers
until he should pay back the whole debt.
We don't want to insist on strict justice, because then strict justice will be demanded of us. We want instead to measure out mercy so that mercy might be measured back to us.
For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you (see Matthew 7:2).
The way that the tortures claim the repayment of our debt is not the option we should choose. We can instead trust in the generous heart of the master and believe in his forgiveness. We can then let go of both the debts we owe and those owed to us. It is in fact true that we let go of both or we let go of neither. And the degree to which we refuse to let go, that we keep debts firmly grasped in closed fists, when God finally forces us to relinquish them it will feel like torture. It will not be because he is ultimately violent or a torturer himself. It will be we ourselves who cause our pain. The time to trust the master is now. The time to embrace and imitate his merciful heart is now. May we have the grace to be like Zacchaeus, to receive Jesus with joy, and to respond with our whole hearts. If we persist as a rebellious house, unable to forgive, exile is actually a mercy, a punishment designed to strip us of our own resources so that we can realize that sufficiency is finally found in God alone.
I am a sign for you:
as I have done, so shall it be done to them;
as captives they shall go into exile.
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