Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 17, 2023
Scripture Reading: Matthew 18:21-35
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away – let’s call it Canada – there lived
a single mother who worked at the local Tim Hortons. She was paid minimum wage but she worked hard
and she usually got full-time hours, so most months she was able pay her rent
and her bills; and even though she had to sometimes go to the food bank or the
local little free food pantry, she and her daughter had never gone hungry.
But then one day, this woman got a letter from the bank telling her that she owed the bank 6 billion, 6 hundred million dollars. The woman didn’t know what to do with this letter. She knew that money had been tight, but she had absolutely no idea how she could have ever accumulated such an enormous debt. She was terrified that she and her daughter were going to lose their apartment; and without a home, she was worried that her daughter was going to be taken away from her. She decided that she had to go in to the bank to try to negotiate the terms of her debt.
She went into her local bank branch and asked to see the manager. When she got into his office, she fell on to her knees and started crying. She begged the bank manager to look at the terms of her debt. There was no way that she could even begin to pay just the interest on a debt that big, no matter how small the interest rate. She begged the bank manager to give her a 0% interest rate, and to let her pay off just a little bit of the principal each month.
The bank manager looked at the woman in his office. He knew her – their children were in the same class at school – and he knew how hard she worked to make ends meet each month. And so he made a couple of phone calls, and within a couple of minutes he was able to tell the woman that the entire debt had been cancelled. She didn’t have to worry about it any more.
The woman left the bank feeling as though a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Her steps were light and she was almost dancing down the sidewalk as she went to the school to pick up her daughter. Even though she was going to still have to work hard just to make ends meet each month, the weight of the 6 billion, 600 million dollar debt had been lifted from her.
But on her way to the school, the woman met an acquaintance that she had known years ago when they were in high school together. This woman remembered that years ago, she had loaned this acquaintance $11,000 to keep her from being evicted. She thought that maybe if she could get that money back, it could help her to get ahead instead of living paycheque – to – paycheque. Maybe this was the step up that could lift her and her daughter out of the constant fear that she lived in.
And so she walked up to this acquaintance, gave her a shove, and said to her, “You still owe me that money. Pay it back now, or I’ll see you in court!” The acquaintance said, “I don’t have it with me now – give me a couple of weeks and I promise I’ll get it to you!” But the woman didn’t accept that offer and said, “Not good enough. See you in court.”
Some people had witnessed this encounter, and knowing that the woman had just come from the bank, went there and told the bank manager what they had seen. The bank manager called the woman back and told her, “We are going to have to take another look at that 6 billion, 600 million dollars that you owe to us…”
So… you’ve probably guessed that what I’ve just done is to translate the parable that Jesus told his disciples into a contemporary context. It really is a shocking story that Jesus tells, but the shock value is easily lost without understanding the context. The slaves in Jesus’ story would have very little or no control over her own life, just as the woman in the story that I told had little control over her life circumstances – the cost of living, the low salary that she earned on minimum wage, trying to support her daughter as a single mother.
And the amount of the two debts I calculated based on a minimum wage job. A denarius was the amount that a day labourer – a minimum-wage earner, if you will – could earn in a day’s work. With the current New Brunswick minimum wage, on full-time employment you can make about $110 per day. The amount of the second debt – 100 denarii – then would be $11,000. It’s still a big debt – almost half a year’s salary – but it’s nothing in comparison to the first debt. That first debt in the story is a bit more complicated to calculate – one talent was equal to 6000 denarii, or $660,000 using my math, or about 24 years’ worth of labour. It’s unlikely that a slave would have ever possessed a single talent, let alone had access to 10,000 talents! By my calculations, the 10,000-talent debt would be equivalent to 6 billion, 600 million dollars in our time and place.
One other thing that adds a layer of complexity to this story is that in the language and culture that Jesus was speaking to, 10,000 was the largest possible number, and a talent was the largest amount of money that could be imagined. So that first debt of 10,000 talents represents the biggest possible debt that could exist – a debt beyond imagining.
I have so many questions about this story that Jesus tells. How on earth did a slave… or anyone, for that matter… manage to accumulate such a large debt? And then why on earth would the king… or bank manager… cancel out such a large debt? And finally, after having had such a large debt forgiven, why on earth did that first slave withhold debt forgiveness on a much smaller scale from someone else?
It's that last question that intrigues me the most. That first slave… or our single parent in the contemporary version I told… they have been living under the weight of debt for so long, they have been living with the intense fear of scarcity for so long, that when the weight is lifted from them, when they no longer need to be afraid of scarcity, they can’t quite let it go right away. They are still so afraid of scarcity, that when an opportunity presents to acquire a sum of money, they leap at it, even though it means hurting another person.
I don’t think that Jesus told this story as an example of good behaviour. We aren’t all supposed to go out and treat others in the same way that the slave did. We are supposed to be shocked at how the slave behaved. Remember that Jesus teaches us to pray: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. If we were Presbyterian, we would pray slightly different and even more explicit words: forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
One key to reading the parables of Jesus is that whoever has the most power in the story is usually supposed to represent God, and in this story, that person is a king. (Or a bank manager in the modern telling of it!) But the king in this story isn’t an unjust, tyrannical ruler like you might expect in an ordinary fairy tale with a similar beginning. Instead the king in this story is generous, with an abundance that is almost impossible to imagine.
Which makes this a parable that teaches us both about human nature – it is hard to receive undeserved forgiveness or grace; it is hard to let go of our fear of scarcity; it is hard to forgive others. But it is also a parable that teaches us about God. God is not only all-powerful like the king in this story, but God is also good and generous beyond our ability to imagine or comprehend.
Jesus begins this parable by saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle his accounts.” Can you imagine a world that is governed the way that this king governs his kingdom? A world of abundance and generosity. A world where debts are forgiven, no questions asked, no catch, no strings attached. A world where the right to existence doesn’t have to be earned, but is a given.
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle his accounts.
And I think that we, as the church, we are called to model this sort of world to the world around us. We are called to be a microcosm of this kingdom of God that is coming. We are called, not to be like the slave who refused to forgive his neighbour’s debt, but instead to be like the king who offers grace and generosity and forgiveness.
It's not easy. If it were easy, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to teach us about it! Following the way of Jesus is really, really hard at times. But it is also beautiful and joyful. And we don’t have to do it alone. We travel this path together; and it is the Holy Spirit working in us that allows us to do the hard things.
God loves you, and God forgives you, just as the king loves and forgives the slave in the story. You are always surrounded by this abundance of love. And my prayer for all of us – myself included – is that we might be able to trust in this abundant love, that we might be able to let go of the hurts that have been done to us, and that we might be people who offer abundance to the world.
May it be so. Amen.
“open” by Molly Sabourin on flickr
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