The Measure You Give
Peter thought he was being generous when he asked if he should forgive a person as many as seven times. He had to have been absolutely floored by Jesus’s response.
Communion Thought: Gary Burke
Sermon: Rick Rossing
Text: Matt. 18:21-35
When I was in the seventh grade, I broke my hip in a fall at school. I required two surgeries over the next year and a half. In the middle of that time, my father lost his job, and with it, the family’s health insurance.
At the time, I had no idea just how expensive my care was, but I knew it was a great source of stress on both of my parents. It all came to a head one day when the phone rang and my mother answered. It was a representative from the hospital seeking payment for services rendered.
My mom broke down as she explained to the caller why we hadn’t been able to pay. The caller said they would speak to their supervisor about my case. Some time later, I’m pretty sure it was the same day, but I couldn’t tell you if it was twenty minutes or two hours later, my mom answered the phone again, and again, she started to weep. This time, though, instead of fear, it was relief, because the hospital was forgiving the entire debt. Thousands od dollars, and they were going to write it off.
To this day, I have never forgotten that moment, and how awed we all were that it was even possible. I’ve since learned that most hospitals and care institution have a budget for just such cases, deducting the cost against taxes. How often it happens, I have no idea, though I suspect it isn’t every day. That it happened to me has made a difference in my life, and I tend to favor medical missions over most others.
There is another part of the story that needs to be mentioned, which is what caused the fall in the first place. You see, I didn’t just trip or stumble, I was pushed.
I knew it wasn’t a malicious act, so much as it was a foolish one. I’m sure she thought it would be funny, and no one could have predicted how awkwardly I was going to fall. By the time I returned to school, on crutches, a couple of months later, word had gotten around that she had pushed me down the stairs. It wasn’t true, and I tried to set the record straight, but it’s very hard to get people to believe the truth when they’ve already bought a lie.
When we finally met face to face, I forgave her, and tried to reassure her that I didn’t hate her. As far as I know, she never sent anyone else to the hospital again. We didn’t meet often after that, since we shared no classes, and my family relocated mid-way through my freshman year of high school, so I’ve no idea what ever became of her.
Some of the other kids thought I was being too easy on her, but they didn’t know something that I had remembered from a couple of years earlier. A classmate of mine broke his arm while a large group of us had been playing a stupid game that pretty much involved tackling each other. I hadn’t seen the incident, but a couple of other classmates had, and they had planned revenge on the girl who had hurt our classmate.
I watched as they pushed her, taunted her, and called her names. So humiliated was she, that she left the playground and started walking home.
I have no idea where our adult supervision was at the time. I’m pretty sure there was only ever one teacher on duty during recess, and they usually stayed on the concrete part of the playground.
In those days, the school had a policy of corporal punishment, and I remember that the girl who left the playground was the one who got punished. We who had taunted her just got a stern talking to about playing nice, but being mean to someone wasn’t against the rules. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t even tried to defend her, and angry that she was punished for running away from us.
I forgave the girl who pushed me, because no matter what I had been through, she had never meant me harm.
I don’t want to think about what I might do to someone who actually did mean me harm.
Peter thought he was being generous when he asked if he should forgive a person as many as seven times. He had to have been absolutely floored by Jesus’s response.
No, not as many as seven, Peter. Try seventy-seven, or seventy times seven times, depending on your translation. It doesn’t really matter what your translation says, because the number was never meant to be a precise calculation. It is a principle. If you’re counting the number of times you’ve forgiven someone, you have failed to grasp exactly what forgiveness is.
Forgiveness is one of those words like mercy, and grace. It’s something that can only be bestowed upon the undeserving. It is an acknowledgment that a debt has been incurred, but the bearer of the debt has released the debtor from their obligation to pay it back.
Sin, then, is the incurring of a debt, either a penalty for breaking a law, restitution for damages, or taking out a loan. Sometimes the debt is tangible. You borrowed $20 until you could cash your paycheck. Today you cashed it, so you have the money to pay it back. It’s manageable.
Sometimes the debt isn’t manageable. You borrowed the money, but then you lost your job. There is no check to cash, and no way to pay back the $20. And besides that, where is your next meal going to come from?
Sometimes the debt isn’t tangible. There is no money involved. A trust has been violated, or a promise broken. There is no amount of money that can cover it. Such a debt, I think, is what Peter means when he asks about forgiving others. To forgive such a debt means I’m not going to seek restitution. An eye for an eye will eventually make everyone blind.
Jesus went further than Peter expected, or could ever imagine. Don’t set limits on forgiveness, because you have no ide how much you’ve been forgiven yourself. A king wanted to settle accounts with his servants, Jesus said. One of these servants owed ten thousand talents, and could not pay it back. The king was going to have him, his family, and everything he owned sold to pay the debt, so the servant begged for more time to raise the money.
I don’t know if you can grasp just how much ten thousand talents is worth. I know I could not, so I looked it up. The current price of silver is about $24.29 for on ounce. 16 ounces to a pound, so that would be $388.64 for one pound of silver. There isn’t a standard measurement for a first-century Roman talent, but estimates put the average at around 33 kg, which is just over 72 ¾ pounds. That’s over $28,000 for one talent of silver. The servant owed ten thousand talents. How do you get into that deep a hole? How many years do you suppose it takes to work off that kind of a debt?
There was no way this man was ever going to be able to pay that debt back.
It’s interesting that the man in the parable didn’t ask, or probably even expect, that his debt would be forgiven; all $280 million of it, if you followed the math.
You might think that someone who has that great a debt forgiven is going to have pity on others, but not this man. Almost immediately, he found someone who owed him a hundred denarii, about a hundred thousand times less than the debt he’d just seen forgiven. I would call that servant a horrible human being.
His fellow servants would agree with me. They made certain that the king heard about what he had done. As it turns out, the king also would agree with me. “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged for mercy. Could you not have shown mercy to your fellow servant?”
Here’s the kicker, though. Jesus said this is what happens to someone who refuses to forgive a brother or a sister. If you can’t find it in your heart to forgive, how can you expect God to forgive you?
The measure you give is the measure you get back. This is not a new teaching. If you show mercy, God will show you mercy. If you withhold mercy, God will withhold mercy from you. If you learn nothing else, ever, learn this. The measure that you give is the measure you receive.
