7.2 BILLION Dollars

Matthew 18:21-35

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. 

“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

This Gospel starts off with Jesus telling Peter he needs to forgive “77 times.”  Jesus wasn’t being literal.  He was using a sort of numerical symbolism.  In that day and age, “7” was seen as a perfect number and “77” would have been, well, super perfect.  Jesus was telling Peter he needed to forgive the perfect amount of times… the way God forgives… in other words, as many times as it was needed.  

Then to cement the true enormity of God’s grace, Jesus tells them a parable.  A parable that requires a calculator.  So we’ll start parable math class with the second slave first.  He owed the first slave 100 denarii, but what’s a denarii?  A denarius (singular) is a day’s wages for a field worker, so at Massachusetts minimum wage, which is $15 an hour, working for 8 hours…  that’s 120 bucks.  He owed 100 of those denarii (plural), so in ‘Murican money, he owed… 12 grand.  Ouch.  But wait, there’s more math in this parable.  That first slave owed his King 10,000 Talents… but what’s a Talent?  Well, it takes 6000 Denarii to make just ONE Talent… so 6000 times 120 bucks makes…  $720,000!  But that’s just ONE Talent.  This guy owed how many Talents? 10,000!? Holy National Debt, Batman!  Okay, so 10,000 times $720,000 turns out to be… 7.2 Billion dollars!  I don’t know about you, but even imagining 7.2 billion dollars boggles my mind.  To un-boggle the mind, here are some things you can get with that amount of cashola.  First you could buy enough ships to have your own navy.  A navy larger than 59 other countries’ navies.   You could buy 233,333 cars at $30,000/each or 35,000 houses at $200,000/each.  AND if that slave had tried to pay back that debt to his king (without interest mind you) at $100,000 a year, it would take him 70,000 years to pay what he owed.  

This parable is doing what parables always do… telling us something about the way God works.  Jesus uses this “can’t wrap your mind around it” amount of money… the GDP of entire countries… to show us the mind blowing extent of God’s forgiveness.  When we pray the Lord’s prayer and it says in one version “Forgive us our debts” THIS is the level of debt it talks about God forgiving!  To do 7.2 billion dollars worth of sinning in a single lifetime, by the way, you’d have to do $800 of sin every single second of your entire life, both awake and asleep!  This was Jesus’ way of saying one more time that there is absolutely, positively, no possible way for any of us to do anything, anything, ANYTHING that God would not or could not forgive.

But now we need to go back to the second slave and his encounter with the first slave over his debt of a measly 12 grand.  Even though the first guy had just been forgiven his 7.2 billion dollar debt, he refused to pass on the same compassion, grace, and forgiveness that he had first received.  Jesus added this part to the parable because he knew very well that we’d all very much like receiving God’s unlimited, unconditional, 7.2 billion dollars worth of forgiveness, love and compassion BUT we’d also have trouble passing it on to others, even at a minuscule fraction of what we first received.  

Jesus knew that even though the King in the parable simply forgave without condition, the rest of us regular humans very often would rather get even, rub it in their face, or get them to learn their lesson.  But this part of the parable is here to remind us that passing on only PART of the love, grace, and generosity that we’ve first received is not God’s way and it’s not the way to abundant life.

It’s not the Way because IF we only pass on a piece of what we’ve received, then we will inevitably find that it is US who are not free.  It will be US who will be tortured.  Not tortured by God in some cosmic hot place, but by the simple truth that when we don’t let all the debt, hurt, pain, or resentment go, the part we hold onto just grinds away inside of us.  We churn it over and over in our minds.  We work ourselves up into a lather.  We torture ourselves.  

Jesus gets his point across here very clearly… the more we forgive… the more we let go of the wrongs that have been done to us… the more we strive to be generous, even when others have not been so generous with us… the more we will experience the freedom, fullness, and abundance of life God created us to live.  The tighter we hold those wounds, the longer we grind those grudges, the more we hold back the compassion, generosity and love we have first been given by God, the more our lives will feel tortured, as we stew in old resentments and burn with anger. 

But how do we do that?  It’s really, REALLY hard to let it all go!  Again, this parable reminds us the answer to that is found in community because we just can’t do it alone.  We all need help living toward that mind-blowing 7.2 billion dollar level of forgiveness, given without conditions.  We all need help dying to our past hurts and rising toward being ever more generous and ever more compassionate.  

May we help one another to let go of the hurts, the pains and the wounds we’ve been dealt in this life, and instead live more generously, more graciously, more compassionately, and more lovingly toward the people around us.  Because in doing that, we will live each day toward a much less tortured, and infinitely more abundant, life.  Amen.