When he began the accounting,
a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
We are debtors who owe to God a huge amount that we can not pay back. Even before our first sin we already owe him for the gift of our being and of existence itself. Most of us end up squandering these gifts, but it is not the case that before we do we stand on even footing with him. Everything we might think to offer him is already his by right.
Since he had no way of paying it back,
his master ordered him to be sold,
along with his wife, his children, and all his property,
in payment of the debt.
We are meant to offer all the we have and all that we are back to God in freedom. But sin makes us unwilling and even unable to make this self gift. We find ourselves with the ever increasing extensive debts from always trying to take more for ourselves. The master may then begin to take from us what we believe to be our own in order that we too might learn to fall back on the generosity of the giver.
'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.'
This is what we all desire at a deep level of being: to give ourselves back in full to the one to whom we owe all things. And when the master sees that this is our desire, even though it exceeds our capabilities, he is moved with compassion for us. He negates our debt, taking the loss himself rather than demanding eventual repayment. This is meant to provoke a response in us, to motivate us to finally make the gift of self which has always been the only path the true fulfillment.
He seized him and started to choke him, demanding,
'Pay back what you owe.'
Sometimes we miss the lesson mercy is meant to teach. We acquire it so easily, because the master is so generous, that we tend to take it for granted, to perhaps mistake it for something that is our due. But if we are not astonished by mercy and thankful for forgiveness we run the risk of going back to the old routine of imagined self-sufficiency. We might continue to believe that reality is a zero sum game wherein we must take all we can lest we once more find ourselves insolvent. But we have never been self-sufficient. That has always been a great illusion. We have always been and must remain dependent on the generosity of the master. This should show through in our relationship with our fellow servants, freeing us to forgive generously as we were first forgiven.
Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened,
they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master
and reported the whole affair.
The master was deeply distressed because the servant missed the entire point of his mercy, which was not to establish the servant on solid independent footing at last. The master's purpose was rather to allow the servant to rely entirely on his, the master's, generosity, rather than on the servant's limited finitude. The debts of self-seeking and imagined independence were the prime obstacles to this, and so the master forgave them. But the servant failed to learn the lesson of this mercy and after receiving it seemed to become only more desperate, more violent to ensure his standing.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
as I had pity on you?
How free do we feel to show mercy to others? Do we forgive our brothers and sisters from our heart? Or do we seek the master's forgiveness only to ensure and enshrine our old ways of operating, building ourselves up at the expense of others, afraid to give because giving always feels to us like a loss? Our master still desires that we give ourselves back to him (and in turn to our fellow servants) as a response to his initial gift of our being, and then even more so in response to his mercy. With him it is not a zero sum game. He always has more than enough to supply the needs of all.
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work (see Second Corinthians 9:8).
This is why it is not ultimately with sacrifices that we can restore the breach we have made between ourselves and God. What we need are instead are contrite hearts, not because these are anything that benefit God, but because into them he himself can at last enter, as he much desires to do.
But with contrite heart and humble spirit
let us be received;
As though it were burnt offerings of rams and bullocks,
or thousands of fat lambs,
So let our sacrifice be in your presence today
as we follow you unreservedly;
for those who trust in you cannot be put to shame.
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