Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.
We have a debt to Jesus that we can never repay. We experience the unearned gift of existence before anything else. There is creation and the wonder of our own being. Then in order to reconcile us to himself God sends Jesus Christ to be born of a human woman, to live among us, to suffer, and to die. Though God, he does not cling to his equality with God. The immortal and impassible, he suffers death for all mankind. This because he sees our sorry plight and is moved with compassion. He has compassion because we are like sheep without a shepherd, because we are sick with sin, because we are hungry for the bread which will last unto eternity. It is much more that we are given than merely forgetting some monetary debt. And so we are obliged to show the same mercy to others. We should be moved with compassion for the crowds just as Jesus is.
Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison
until he paid back the debt.
This is why we can't let unforgiveness stand between us and our brothers and sisters. If they wrong us we are called to forgive them. If we wrong them we are called to seek forgiveness. Even if they only perceive a wrong we must still try to make things right. The one thing we cannot do is let the debt stand. We must not insist on this debt between ourselves and others as a fixed part of how we relate to one another. We must reconcile. We must reach a forgiveness that comes from the heart.
In our efforts to live in harmony with one another we often encounter barriers. We encounter unforgiveness as seemingly impassable as the Jordan river. But if we allow the presence of God to come with us as we enter those waters we will be able to pass through.
No sooner had these priestly bearers of the ark
waded into the waters at the edge of the Jordan,
which overflows all its banks
during the entire season of the harvest,
than the waters flowing from upstream halted,
backing up in a solid mass for a very great distance indeed,
from Adam, a city in the direction of Zarethan;
while those flowing downstream toward the Salt Sea of the Arabah
disappeared entirely.
The secret that the priests carrying the ark reveal to us is there stillness in the presence of God. They don't try to make things work. They let God work.
While all Israel crossed over on dry ground,
the priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the LORD
remained motionless on dry ground in the bed of the Jordan
until the whole nation had completed the passage.
So if we feel like we are only mucking things up in the strained relationships we face let us remain more still. Let us give God more room. He is first moved with compassion before we are. He wants this reconciliation more than we do. He will see us through to the other side.
The sea beheld and fled;
Jordan turned back.
The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like the lambs of the flock.
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