Matthew 18:21-35
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| Parable of the Unfaithful Servant, Unknown Master, German 1560 (PD) |
Packing has always been a complicated task for me.
I have always embraced the mentality of preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.
When I began backpacking as a teenager, I used to pack the most ridiculous things.
Hauling pots and pans, radios, cans of food.
It wasn’t unheard of that my pack would approach the 100 pound mark.
Then, I became a more proficient packer.
By the time I began college I had invested in light weight backpacking equipment;
Tents with fiberglass poles, quick dry clothing that packed into tiny squares, down sleeping bags that could be stuffed into a water bottle, and freeze dried meals that magically burst into full flavored feasts with a mere drop of water!
So, when I began talking with a recruiter about enlisting in the Marine Corps as an infantry rifleman, my recruiter was sure to mention his own love for the outdoors.
Sitting before me in the coveted dress blues, a uniform that could make Steve Buscemi look like Brad Pitt, he told me how the Marine Corps opened up a whole new world for him, in regards to his outdoor experiences.
I couldn’t help but picture myself secluded in the middle of a pristine wilderness, preparing to stealthily maneuver behind an enemy objective unnoticed, following a quiet hike through a beautiful landscape.
After bootcamp, I attended Camp Geiger’s Infantry Training Battalion where I got a real taste of this “outdoor experience”
Hiking along the paved roads of Jacksonville, North Carolina, with Marines reserved as “Road Guards” to keep the rest of us from being struck by the cars and trucks whizzing by that would have been a more logical approach to transportation than walking.
Eating heavy and unattractive meals named things like “chunked and formed beef patty,” a mystery meat that haunts me to this very day.
Laying out our sleeping bags in a platoon formation, and sleeping in a tightly packed pattern that was not only a far cry from what I had envisioned but it seemed like an incredibly unwise approach to protecting oneself from an organized attack.
But what was the most unsettling was the weight of our gear.
Old metal external frame packs which were bulky and some were even broken.
Gear which had been used for nearly 4 generations!
I never really thought about this until I was drinking coffee out of a canteen cup one morning and after tipping it back and exposing the date on the bottom of the cup a dear friend exclaimed,
“Oh, cool! Some doughboy probably used your canteen cup as a latrine in World War One!”
On average, from the time of the Greek hoplite to the Civil War Infantryman, the average weight carried was forty pounds.
In World War One, that weight increased to about sixty pounds. *Probably due to my canteen cup that offered some welcome relief.*
By World War Two, the average load topped off around 80-100 pounds.
A few years ago, we found ourselves carrying anywhere between 150 - 200 pounds of gear.
A weight that inhibited our mobility, sapped away our energy, and caused aches and injuries that are still felt today.
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| Backpacking in St Mary's Wilderness |
When packing anything, especially when packing bags, boxes, or packages that we carry and transport by hand,
we try to limit the bulk and the weight of what is being carried.
When we travel, we want to carry the luxuries of home with us, without the weight of those luxuries.
You can buy just about anything in travel sizes today, yet it’s still difficult to whittle things down so they are just right.
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The Gospel for today is a parable describing the Kingdom of Heaven, a coveted destination that Jesus’ followers would like to enter into.
Jesus is not describing things the way they are presently, or the way they have been, but he is giving a explicit packing list, sort of…
It’s actually more like a list of what we should NOT be packing.
Peter seems to invite this parable when he once again injects himself in the middle of Jesus’ teaching.
As always, Peter comes off as either a know-it-all or the guy that always puts his foot in his mouth to our 21st century ears, perhaps even to 1st century ears.
But regardless of his tone, Peter actually is quite generous in offering up the number 7 as a good number to forgive.
Rabbinic teaching in that day offered three acts of forgiveness for one’s brother as the number to shoot for, so Peter is already overshooting traditional rabbinic teaching.
And everyone gets wrapped around the numbers,
Claiming that 7 is a sacred number in Judaism, and 7x70 can be traced to stories in Genesis, or that the number Jesus is asking is actually 77, or 490, or if you carry the square root and divide it by the age of the sinner but multiply it times the years of Jesus’ life…
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
There is one thing for sure in this text, Jesus is asking us to forgive.
Jesus is asking us to forgive A LOT.
In fact, he is asking us to forgive in the same way we receive forgiveness.
And forgiveness is not a uniquely Christian practice, sisters and brothers, it is a uniquely religious practice.
It is hard to find a religion that does not claim forgiveness as a central tenet.
Yet we live in a world full of people who refuse to forgive.
And while I can only cite personal experience, I have failed to see a greater consistency in the number of Christian -or even generally religious individuals- who can forgive more often than those who consider themselves non-religious or just spiritual.
It is a central tenet of all religions, and yet the religious don’t seem to stand out in any way, when it comes to forgiveness.
Benevolence, yes.
Following the past few hurricanes our generosity as a denomination and as a congregation has been on full display.
As I have said in the past, the Lutheran Disaster Response and Lutheran World Relief have impeccable records when it comes to benevolence and generosity.
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| Photo by July Brenda Gonzales Callapaza on Unsplash |
So, we are willing to offer up our money and time but not our forgiveness, and one must wonder why and how this is?
After all, can anyone truly dispute forgiveness as a call made to us by Christ?
This word for forgiveness comes up in Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the same way, roughly the same amount of times.
It’s hard to find a biblical or theological way to maneuver around this call, yet…
We don’t seem all that motivated to follow this teaching.
What exactly is it that we don’t want to unpack?
What is it that we don’t want to give up?
The sad reality is that when we fail to forgive, we actually aren’t giving up anything, we are taking on far more than we are giving up.
Forgiveness isn’t the act of condoning a wrong that has been committed. It doesn’t excuse the actions taken by the culprit. It doesn’t even imply that we forget the action.
Forgiveness also doesn’t grant a legal pardon from the actions taken, because someone who commits a wrong action can still be held accountable by the law in spite of the forgiveness granted.
It doesn’t even restore the possibility of a relationship or reconciliation.
It is merely the act of releasing our grasp on the offense made against us.
Letting the offense go, and unpacking the need for vengeance that we carry around in our already overloaded lives.
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Today, one of the largest industries in our nation, a growing and booming business is the industry known as debt buying.
With the cost of medical treatment, credit cards, mortgages, and student loans, the opportunity to live debt free is nearly impossible.
Given the massive amount of debt, many creditors sell off their debt to debt buying companies that purchase household debt for mere pennies on the dollar.
At times, purchasing 100 billion dollars of household debt for a mere 35 million dollars.
These companies then take that debt and attempt to collect it.
As you can imagine, some of these companies use any means necessary, threatening those whose debt they hold with legal rulings and foreclosures, oftentimes only accruing further debt among their debtors.
A debt that many will only sink farther and farther into.
And so many of these debt buying companies are only creating further debt, in an attempt to profit.
With current deregulation, the practice has become more profitable and less ethical, even purchasing the debt of the deceased and pressuring surviving families to pay it.
In reading about this practice, I couldn’t help but wish that the means of their collecting were frozen or revoked,
So that these companies found themselves holding the debt they've purchased, buried beneath the very same thing as those they hope to profit from.
After all, THEY bought it!
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When we refuse to forgive sin, we become debt buying agencies, without any means to collect on those debts.
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| Photo by Alice Pasqual on Unsplash |
And that is the crushing weight that Jesus warns us about.
Yet we seem to believe that our own debt to God is not all that weighty, nor are we ready to accept that those debts owed to us are all that minor.
And if that is our mindset, then this parable, this teaching, and the forgiveness offered to us through Jesus Christ doesn’t really end up mattering all that much.
Because the grace first offered to us is meant to evoke the response of a FRACTION of that grace in our own lives.
JUST A FRACTION!
It doesn’t mean we forgive EVERY sin committed to us, it means we remember that every sin committed is committed to God first and foremost.
It is therefore a debt owed first and foremost to God, IF we are willing to let go of it and not be crushed under its USELESS weight!
But this text is hard.
This past week as I was going through the Greek and reading a variety of scholarly views on this text, I found one consistent word of advice,
DO NOT PREACH ON THIS TEXT!
Even pastors are scared of this text, because for some reason we find this image of an enraged Lord holding us accountable in the same way this servant is held accountable a horrifying prospect.
We find that image of God terrifying, but the real question is why we are not enraged by the extortion portrayed in this text.
The extortion we witness inflicted on one another.
The extortion we witness inflicted on one another.
The extortion that we ourselves inflict when we daily hold to the debts of others' sins against us.
Because I will remind you that our most revered prayer contains the plea that God “Forgive our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us”.
This text is clear, no matter how you spin it, so I cannot apologize for what I have said or what it says.
This text is God’s Word and there is a tremendous word of grace in the law we are given.
It is a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven and it has some pretty good advice about what to carry with you.
If you want to carry the trash and filth of other’s debts, that is your choice.
But remember, those bags are filled with other people’s sins against us and at least we have the choice to let the bag go.
At least we have the choice, He had no choice.
Because
Because
The only way we could ever fully recognize God’s love for us was on a cross planted in the middle of a landfill of our own sin.
Amen
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| Photo by Celestine Ngulube on Unsplash |
"September 17, Ordinary 24A (Matthew 18:21–35)." The Christian Century. Accessed September 14, 2017. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/september-17-ordinary-24a-matthew-1821-35.
"The Overweight Infantryman." Modern War Institute. January 09, 2017. Accessed September 14, 2017. https://mwi.usma.edu/the-overweight-infantryman/.
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