Of the tough gig we call forgiveness.
a reflection for Sunday 13th of September.
I hope that it might be helpful if I retold today's parable in a slightly different way.
A chap is in debt to the king to the tune of ten thousand talents. I’ll call him Andy. Andy is your typical blue collar, working class man and lived in pre COVID times. For helping to put up the scaffolding so that the roof on the synagogue can be fixed, he gets 1 denarius a day. 6000 denarius equals 1 talent. Andy owes the King 10,000 talents. So it would take Andy 200,000 years to pay back his debt. That’s a very serious overdraft!
So the point that Jesus is making is that at one level, our debt to God is insurmountable and it is incomprehensible.
But read on… there is good news. Andy throws himself on the mercy of the King and says that he is really, really sorry. His wife is ill and one of his kids has a nasty addiction. The king wipes Andy’s debt and Andy goes off to the inn that night and shouts his mates a round or 7 to celebrate.
And you would have thought that was the end of the story and that they all lived happily ever after. Not so.Andy is owed a hundred denarii which is only 4 months wages, from Bruce who is the barman at the inn. A trifling amount compared to the debt Andy has just been forgiven. Andy’s had a few too many red cordials and at the end of the night demands Bruce pay up. Bruce of course does not just happen to have 4 months wages lying around and asks for an extension. Despite Bruce’s pleas to be given more time to pay it back, this hard hearted Andy, threateningly sneers… “Nup… no extensions” and Bruce is thrown into prison.
Enter Rob, Chad, Carly and Alice. They have been there in the bar and all taken advantage of the pot and parma deal.
Again, it’s pre COVID days so they don’t have to do the take away option. But they have also noticed the goings on with Bruce and Andy. Bruce skiting ever more loudly about how he has been forgiven his enormous debt and his duplicitous, mean attitude to Andy.Now Rob, Chad, Carly and Alice have a choice. They can let it all just slide and go home thinking “Well that was kind of unfortunate” or they can do something about it. They can choose to do nothing, or they can choose to do something. They do something.They make an appointment with the Kings P.A. Melissa for first thing on Monday morning. When they get in they tell the King the whole story. The pot, the parma, Bruce and Andy. The King is really pinged off and summons Bruce in for a tongue lashing and a prison sentence.
So there is a lesson about calling out injustice when we see it.
Another lesson is that while our God sized debt can be wiped, (because it is God we are dealing with after all), we ought to willingly practice the same forgiveness with those around us.
Now this is a very difficult thing to do. Particularly when Jesus issues the punch line right at the end. “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from… your… heart.”You see, any one can speak the words “I forgive you” but to mean it and to expunge the debt, is something quite different. The master sets the bar eye-wateringly high because He knows nothing less will work.
You can either choose to forgive from your heart or not.
And not to forgive from the heart will mean that your heart can turn very quickly to stone. It will be become heavy and lifeless and unable to feel. It’s why they call it hardness of heart. So for our own sake, for the future of all our relationships, we should forgive from the heart. It’s a tough gig.Can it be done? Yes. There are two examples that come quickly to mind. One was the Master as he was dying at the brutal hands of others. “Father Forgive.. for they do not know what they are doing.”And in modern times I have seen it in a courtroom in New Zealand. The person doing the forgiving happened to grow up in a culture and faith with a different name to ours, but her words were the sort of Christian that I hope one day to be. Janna Ezat, whose son Hussein Al-Umari was murdered at Al Noor Mosque, told the gunman she forgives him."I decided to forgive you Mr Tarrant because I don't have hate. I don't have revenge," she said directly to the terrorist. "In our Muslim faith we say . . . we are able to forgive, forgive. "I forgive you. Damage was done and Hussein will never be here so I have only one choice to forgive you.”Now if that was me.. if that was you… Janna not only knew the truth, but she spoke the truth as did the Master. There is only one choice.
