By making some up-to-the-minute cultural comparisons, Fr Oliver Treanor draws out the radical implications of the parable of the unforgiving servant.
In looking at Jesus’ parables so far in this series, we notice a pattern emerging. The Kingdom of God appears first through conversion of heart, as we turn back again to the Father by listening to Christ. Then through repentance, as we learn to give up sinning and change our sinful ways. FInally, the Kingdom blossoms for us under the influence of God’s mercy, when we feel his total tenderness towards us in terms of absolute forgiveness.
Our Father’s love for us is unconditional; there are no strings attached. We are loved for what we are, not for what we would like to be. Worthiness does not come into it. His love makes us worthy. Being loved by him ennobles us, gives us dignity, makes us holy.
The need to forgive
Nevertheless, if the pattern of change and growth is to continue we have to make forgiveness part of our daily mind-set too. If we don’t, the beauty in us withers like a rose in December and the fragrance of God’s goodness to us disappears. Jesus left us one of his hardest-hitting parables to remind us of this. He put it in the strongest language possible because it is such a vital lesson. Unless you forgive others, you slam the door of forgiveness on yourself.
Enough is enough
It is called the Parable of the unforgiving servant and it was prompted by a question asked of him by Simon Peter the Apostle. ‘How often should I forgive my brother if he offends me? As many as seven times?’ – the million-dollar question!
In Jesus’ day, ‘seven’ meant ‘a lot’. But even a lot comes to an end. Does there come a time, Simon Peter is asking, when it is” permissible to stop forgiving?’ When a person repeatedly’ annoys you, injures you,’ insults
you even, and you say to yourself, ‘Enough is enough. I have run out of absolutions and free pardons’.
Let us suppose, replies Jesus to Peter, that the answer is Yes. Supposing it is all right to withhold forgiveness after a reasonable amount of patience. If it is, fair in one case, it is fair in all. That means that God should be allowed the same right. In which case, we are all snookered. For already we have used up our ‘seven’ chances. Every day we have to ask God’s pardon for a million offences, small or great committed through thoughtlessness, or in passion, or with cool deliberate intent.
As the Book of Proverbs (24:16) says, even ‘the virtuous man faIls seven times’ and is able to get up again only because he is sure of God’s love for him. If you take the hope of that love away, none of us would be able to rise even once, and then where would we be? On the other hand, why should God be expected to overlook the repeated offence if we do not expect the same of ourselves when dealing with others? To make the message really clear, Jesus turned it into a sharp little piece of role-play (Matt.18:23-35). Imagine you are the Minister of Finance in the government of an ancient near-Eastern state. You overspend the National Budget by a couple of million dollars, the markets collapse, you borrow and cannot pay back, you are in the soup up to your neck.
So there is no alternative: it is life imprisonment with hard labour (and because this is two thousand years ago, your wife and children must go to prison too).
What is to be done in such a desperate situation? You might grasp at a straw, like the servant, who ‘fell on his knees, imploring his master, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ Some hope! Who could pay back the National Debt from his Post-Office Savings Account! Never in a million years.
Twists and turns
His Taoiseach, however, was an unusually understanding man, so ‘out of pity for him he forgave him the whole debt and released him’. Just like that! What a relief! Now he could forget about the crisis; he would be back in his office again on Monday morning after a relaxing weekend at home with his wife and children.
Before he joined the joyful Friday rush-hour traffic out of the city, he ran into a chap who was a labourer and owed him a few weeks’ salary. It would have amounted to about £650, not as much as the National Debt admittedly but more than enough to buy a nice meal with a bottle of wine to celebrate his narrow escape with the Exchequer. ‘And seizing him by the throat (his manners were not all they might have been) he said, ‘Pay me what you owe’, and simply closed his ears to his fellow servant’s plea for time.
Well obviously the Sunday tabloids got hold of the story and it was front page gossip in every newsagent’s two mornings later. Pictures and all. It reached the breakfast tables in high places too. When the Taoiseach read the details he dropped his knife and fork, reached for the phone and immediately set up an inquiry.
Our friend’s quiet weekend was rudely brought to a close. He himself was rudely brought to the Magistrate’s court, and the outcome was too terrible to go into further detail on.
Jesus would have paused to let Peter take it in. The Apostle would have glanced up at him and smiled. Jesus always made his point with a bang. How he exaggerated in his stories to enlarge his meaning! How humorous he could be in his portrayal of human nature! And yet what he said was true. Blown up large, magnified, his parable uncovered a simple little truth whose spirit we conveniently overlook when it suits us.
From your heart
‘So, not seven then,’ Simon Peter would have echoed, repeating the Master’s opening words, ‘but seventy times seven’. That’s how often we are pardoned by him of a debt against God which is too high for any of us to make good. And to let us go free he would pay the full debt with his blood on Good Friday.
In the circumstances, Peter would have to agree. It is only logical that we too should ‘forgive your brother from your heart’ Without conditions. Without strings attached. As often as is required. Just like God himself.
The rose that blooms in December is even more lovely than than one that blossoms in June.
This article first appeared in The Messenger (April 1998), a publication of the Irish Jesuits.
