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Readings for September 11, 2011
Sirach 27:30 - 28:7
Romans 14:7-9
Matthew 18:21-35
Wrath and Forgiveness
Forgiveness is not unique to Christianity but its placement in the center of our beliefs - it is the absolute core of the Lord's Prayer - requires of the faithful concerted thoughtfulness on the meaning of this act. What does it mean to forgive? In most conversations, the model for forgiving is Jesus. But isn't that model extravagant? Jesus died on the Cross so that our original sin would be forgiven. Who can comprehend this act of selflessness? After two millennia, the crucifixion still baffles us.
This week's readings provide us a means for encompassing forgiveness in human terms we might recognize in ourselves. Sirach speaks of vehement passions: "Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight." In the ancient world, it was possible to understand anger as a virtue (so-called righteous anger); Aristotle even praises anger as a quality of the good-tempered man. (He was thinking of Achilles, whose anger organized the Greek war against the Trojans.) In the Judaic world, however, there was a bad anger, a wrathfulness in behavior reflected in some incomprehensible but unwanted quality in God himself: "The vengeful will suffer the Lord's vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail." There's something primordial about anger and wrath: we turn angry in response to injustice; but just so, we become enraged when frustrated, when we don't get what we want. Furthermore, anger inspires wrath: think how easy it is to respond to an angry child by yelling at him or her.
What to do? Paul reminds us that no one lives only for himself or herself. What does this mean? And how does it resolve the problem of anger? Paul seemingly suggests a hierarchy that goes like this: God first, other people second, me last. But who has the patience and foresight to live like that?
As ever (for me, at least), the gospel reading, rather than answering questions raised in the first two readings, vexes with further questions. In the reading from Matthew's gospel, Jesus famously admonishes Peter that in order properly to forgive a person, he must forgive not merely seven times but seventy-seven times. Upon which proclamation, Jesus describes one of the more flabbergasting parables in the New Testament.
The parables, as much as they are meant to instruct, were also intended to provide to Jesus' audience - made up primarily of the poor, unlanded, frequently indentured underclass in Judea and Gallilee - comparisons of what the Kingdom of Heaven would be like. He begins his parable about the unmerciful servant, saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven will be like this." Here, it's like a king who forgives the debt of one of his debtors. In our translation, this debt is generically (and, to me, problematically) described as "a huge amount." In the King James Version, the text reads, "one was brought to him which owed him ten thousand talents." In terms of scale for the poor to whom Jesus was preaching, this would be like being owed 500 million dollars - an incomprehensible (and therefore meaningless) amount. The debtor soon finds himself in the same situation, able to forgive one of his own debtors in turn. Our translation tells us the amount owed was "much smaller." Again, the King James translation is more helpful; the debt owed is "an hundred pence." (In the Greek, it's denarii.) By today's standards, about ten bucks. Which is to say, nothing to get too worked up about. This man's response, unlike the king who forgave him, is to choke his debtor! And then to put him in prison. When the king gets wind of this, he reverses his mercy and imprisons the first debtor until he pays back the whole of his debt. The gospel reading concludes with a lesson: "So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart."
What's happening here? We're being told something about forgiveness, how it works, and its connection to anger. The key to our understanding is "debt." In Jesus' time, forgiveness was less metaphysical than practical: I forgive you your debt so you don't have to pay me back. How does this help us understand the Kingdom of God? To be honest, I'm not sure. Instead, I'm drawn to focus on the three transactions in the parable and think about them in terms of the impoverished audience to whom Jesus was preaching. The first transaction I equate to the improbable sums of Wall Street and the federal government. Why haven't any of the men responsible for the housing crisis and mortgage frauds from 2008 been put in prison? Why haven't they been required to make any payments to amend the debts of the people whom they impoverished? As in Christ's time, we live in a plutocracy. Which is to say, I find the king forgiving this man of his debt of 500 million dollars to be completely meaningless. The second transaction is wicked: the forgiven debtor basically shakes down one of his indentured workers for the ten dollars he loaned him the previous week. This, I can identify with, as could Jesus' audience most certainly. Is ten dollars really worth a beating and imprisonment? This man could easily have been anyone in the audience. Doesn't the mercilessness of this reaction make you a little angry? The third transaction rewards our sense of injustice: the king rescinds his forgiveness and, at last, imprison his wealthy debtor.
Jesus is telling us something straightforward but baffling in this gospel: God's forgiveness is exactly like sharing your money with everyone who needs it. And most of us are like the forgiven debtor when it comes to sharing our money - we don't want to do it; we rather collect what we are owed.
Given the date of this twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, it's hard not to want to ask some questions of ourselves as Americans, as American Christians: which of the people in the parable are we most like as a group? Whose debts are we forgiving? And whose debts are we punishing with our wrath and anger?
Peter O'Leary
Peter O'Leary is a lector at Ascension and member of Ascension's School Board. He teaches religion and poetry at the School of the Art Institute and at the University of Chicago.
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