We pick up the story today, with Peter, bold impetuous Peter having the audacity to ask Jesus just exactly how many times is he supposed to make up, how many times is he’s supposed to forgive. We hear some of Jesus’ most audacious exaggerated examples.
My father was an engineer, and a wealth of interesting – and useless information. Early in my childhood, He taught me the definition of Googol. Googol was a number equal to 10 to the 100th power, or 10, with 99 more zeros. He said that it was a made up word, made up by a mathematician who wanted to name the biggest number imaginable. This word, this concept, was created to define the undefinable, the farthest reaches of big numbers. It is rarely used in calculations because it’s so big. So googol is a real number that represents the end reaches of an infinite number system. The actual number, 10 to the 100th power, is less important than the concept it represents. I mention all of this because there are examples in today’s Gospel that are equally symbolic of the end reaches of something, and they mean more than the numbers in the story.
Peter asks Jesus, How often should I forgive? Seven times right? Seven was a number that symbolized more than just the number between 6 and 8. Seven was a number that signified the completion or perfection of something. God made the world, and on the seventh day, it was perfectly completed and God rested. Peter was probably asking a question he thought he knew the answer to. I should forgive someone 7 times – until it’s complete. But Jesus answers in a way that is one of these exaggerated, iconic answers. You see, if seven represents completion, 77 represents the perfectly completed, and then some. 77 is a number that signifies more times than you can count, more times that you can imagine. Don’t bother even trying to count. Jesus is telling Peter that Peter should forgive more times than he could ever imagine, more than he could count so he shouldn’t even try. Forgive, endlessly. Forgive infinitely.
And in case that exaggerated point was not sufficient, Jesus adds a second.
Jesus tells the story of the 10,000 talents. A slave owes his master 10,000 talents. The master is ready to sell the slave to repay the debt, and the slave says, “Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything”. And the Master forgave the debt.
After this slave is forgiven his debt, he encounters a fellow slave who owes him 100 denarii, which is significantly less than 10,000 talents, and says to him, “pay what you owe”. Again we hear the plea, “Have patience with me and I will repay you everything”. But this time, the recently forgiven slave does not forgive the debt. When the master hears of this, he hands the first slave over to be tortured until his entire debt is repaid.
On the surface, we understand the idea that the first slave should have forgiven the debt, as he had been forgiven. And that’s without even understanding the second crazy exaggeration in this story. A talent was a weight measure for gold, equaling about 75 pounds of gold. In today’s worth, one talent would be somewhere in excess of $700,000 dollars. 10,000 talents would be a really really big number, somewhere around 160,000 years of wages - more money than a slave would ever be able to repay or even initially borrow. Like the number googol, the number isn’t really the point. It’s a really really big number that the slave owes. Bigger than the slave could imagine. What Jesus is saying is that the slave owed an impossibly large debt. Unimaginable. And the master forgave the debt.
After this forgiveness of the unimaginably large debt, the first slave runs into a second slave who owes him a sizable debt, but not unimaginable. But unlike the master’s forgiveness, he does not forgive the debt of the second slave.
And today we’ll use a big definition of debt, bigger than just a financial obligation. In various translations, the Lord’s prayer reads, “Forgive us our debts”, “Forgive us our trespasses”, or “Forgive us our sins”. While each of those words means something specific, and narrow, each is used in the Lord’s Prayer. The point is that we owe something, we regret something, or we’ve done something. That’s a debt. That’s what I'm talking about today.
In this story of exaggerations for the purpose of illustration, Christ is telling us two important things about debts.
First, God will forgive you your debts or trespasses. It doesn’t matter what you owe. You are forgiven. If you owe 10,000 talents, you are forgiven. Forgiven for trespasses bigger than you can handle. Bigger than you can imagine. Don’t bother counting it up. The number or the size or the gravity. You are forgiven. Period.
Second, you should forgive the debts, or trespasses of others. Period. Not seven times. Not a number you can count. More times than you can imagine. Period. And it doesn’t matter how big their debt. Forgive others for everything and anything. Period.
We get so caught up in the great sin ledger of ourselves and others, we lose sight of the immeasurable grace and forgiveness given freely. I’ve been horrible, and can’t be forgiven. I don’t deserve God’s love. God couldn’t possibly love me for what I’ve done, so I’ll hide it. But the problem with holding on to our own sin, with thinking we can’t be forgiven is as CS Lewis points out, “If God forgives us, we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.”
And we carry that higher tribunal further, and decide that we get to determine who is to be forgiven, for what, and how often. I can’t forgive him for what he did. I can’t forgive her. Again.
We have been forgiven 100,000 talents worth of debt. Again and again. From this place of unbelievable, unimaginable grace and forgiveness, we are asked and expected to extend the same forgiveness, unbelievably and unimaginably. In exaggerated iconic ways. 77 times, forgive 10,000 talents.
Following Jesus’ lead, here are some exaggerated and yet very real modern day examples.
Unimaginable forgiveness looks like the peace vigils held by Sikhs in Eugene and throughout the nation after an mentally ill veteran entered a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and killed 7.
It looks like the grandfather of an Amish girl killed in Pennsylvania urging the nation to have compassion for the killer, and it looks like the Amish family that consoled the family of the killer.
It looks like the only surviving shooting victim in a post 9/11 hate crime fighting for the killer’s stay of execution and saying “His execution will not eradicate hate crimes in this world, and we will simply lose another human life”.
If such radical forgiveness is possible in these circumstances, it’s possible in my life. In my world, I can and must forgive myself for past wrongs. To do any different would be to set myself on a higher tribunal than God, who has already forgiven me more than I can ask or imagine.
In my world, I can and must forgive those close to me who’ve hurt me in little and big ways. That’s not to say I must forget, but forgive. Infinitely and unceasingly.
And for our society’s sake, we can and must forgive those segments of community that routinely do things that aggrieve us. People who behave in ways that genuinely seem evil or wrong. People with opinions too right, or too left. The panhandlers downtown, and the corporate businesses. City, state and federal elected officials, those responsible for 9/11.
Whoever you think you cannot forgive, they cannot possibly owe you more than you’ve already been forgiven. Because we are forgiven, we are asked to forgive. Immeasurably.
Not forgiving someone, by holding that little ember of anger or resentment or disappointment affects us today, and tomorrow. It affects us moving forward. And yet, what we stubbornly hold on to always focuses on something that happened in the past. We cannot change the past and it does no good to will it to be different. Forgiveness isn't forgetting the past but it's letting go of the idea that it should have been different, according to Lily Tomlin.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean we’ll immediately love the other person, nor even like them. But it is a release of the expectations we so stubbornly hold, expectations about a past we cannot change. And it is through God’s immeasurable and continual forgiveness and grace that we have a chance to forgive so impossibly.
Shortly, we’ll confess our sins against God and our neighbor. We’ll name our own 10,000 talents and ask the master to forgive them. Again. Then, we will pray that God will forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
And because it's such a daunting task, we will have the opportunity to be fed with the spiritual food that gives us a glimmer of hope to actually carry that forgiveness forward. We do that week by week, because it’s central to our health and communion as the body of Christ.
Identify what needs forgiveness in your life, ask forgiveness and acknowledge you need to forgive others, and seek the grace through the Eucharist to actually do it. Week by week. 10,000 talents worth. A googol times.
Amen.
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