Jesus uses the staggering sum of ten thousand talents (some £29 billion in today's money) to make us understand how great God's mercy is with us: the unpayable debt of Original Sin is paid in the blood of Christ and we who have been Baptised are forgiven that debt in full. Yet, this abundant debt-forgiveness comes with a condition: God will be merciful and forgiving with us only so far as we are willing to forgive. The words of the Lord's prayer "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us" are a dangerous binding contract we make with the Lord - forgive me, just as much as I forgive others. Today we pray for the gift of a forgiving and merciful heart.
Forbes magazine currently lists 2,640 billionaires around the world, from richest to poorest; all the way from Bernard Arnault and his family who have a net worth estimated at $211 billion, down the bottom of the list where you will find Inigo Zobel with just $1 billion. The obscene wealth of the ultra-rich, the 0.00003% of the world’s population worth a billion dollars or more, is much commented on – although people often misunderstand that net worth doesn’t equate to cash in hand or even to usable assets, just being on that list of the 2,640 wealthiest people in the world, even if you’re Inigo Zobel with the little sum of $1 billion, puts you so far above the ordinary person that our minds can’t even comprehend it.
One person on the internet explained this to his young daughter; if you counted non-stop from one to a million it would take you around 11 days. If you tried to do the same from one to a billion, it would take you almost 32 years. The difference is staggering when you stop to think about it.
In the parable today Jesus makes a similarly staggering comparison. The servant who owes his master a debt is in a lot of trouble. He owes ten thousand talents. A Talent isn’t a coin, but a measure of weight, usually of Gold or Silver. A Gold Talent weighed just shy of 59 kilograms. The servant, owing 10,000 talents, thus owed his master some 590,000 kilograms of gold. That much gold today would be worth £29 billion or some $36 ¼ Billion (US Dollars) – an amount which if you had in your possession would put you at number thirty-four on the Forbes Rich List.
The Second Servant is in trouble as well, he owes the first servant one-hundred denarii. A denarius is a day’s wages for a labourer, so he owes his fellow servant somewhere around three months’ pay. It’s not a small amount, if someone owed you three months pay, you’d be quite keen for them to pay it back. But when you compare the two amounts you’ll quickly see the vast difference in what the two servants owed.
One talent was equal to 14,750 denarii, or 40 years’ pay for a labourer. Ten thousand talents, the sum owed by the second servant, is worth 404,109 years and six months, give or take a few months, of the average labourer’s work.
This is the staggering difference between the debts of the two servants. Three months pay, money you could pay back with some difficulty but relatively quickly, versus an amount of money it would take 5000 lifetimes to pay back.
Why does Jesus use such a staggering difference in this parable? What point is he trying to make?
Peter has asked Him a question: how often must I forgive my brother? He asks if he must forgive seven times – seven being the number of perfection. Jesus answers him with an exaggeration: not Seven times, but seventy-seven times. He gives a number too big to possibly keep count, we can’t go around tallying up the wrongs every other person commits against us until someone gets to the magic seventy-seven and we can tell them “you’ve used up your last offence, seventy-seven times and I don’t have to forgive you any more.” He is telling us to be liberal with our forgiveness, to forgive easily and freely. Then he tells us why.
The Kingdom of Heaven, he says will be like that king summoning his servants to him and settling their accounts with him. The servant in debt throws himself at the king’s mercy, and as a result the king is generous with him – he doesn’t just give him more time to pay, he forgives the debt entirely. This is what happens when we are Baptised; the great, unpayable debt of original sin is wiped completely clean because we have asked for mercy. The King, God the Father, reconciles us to himself in Christ and we are freed from the debt.
But look what happens next. The man who was forgiven cannot himself forgive. He has received mercy but he is lacking in mercy. The other servants tell the king, and the cancellation of the man’s debt is reversed: it is laid on his shoulders once more and he is handed over to the torturers.
The Church Fathers had a keen awareness that we would be called to our eventual destination, heaven or hell, by the many voices of those we have encountered. The people to whom we have shown true charity, kindness, and generosity will stand around the throne of God pleading our case with him, like character witnesses telling the judge how good we were to them. Likewise those to whom we have shown cruelty, or indifference, or with whom we have been stingy will call out their accusations like witnesses for the prosecution. These are the servants going to the king to tell him of his servant’s unmerciful cruelty.
Forgiveness, is one of those qualities, perhaps the greatest quality, which will call us to heaven. Jesus himself taught us to pray; forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Some of you will have heard me say before, this is a dangerous prayer. This parable hammers that point home for us; God is paying attention when we say that prayer – and he will hold us to it. He offers us forgiveness according to our own willingness to forgive.
St Augustine warns us especially about saying this prayer lightly. In one sermon he reminds his listeners about the Lord’s prayer, which we pray before we receive the Eucharist, he tells them not to make themselves liars before God. He reminds them to make amends before coming to receive the Eucharist if they are still holding on to some dispute between them and a brother. He warns them of the grave punishment that awaits one who receives the sacrament of unity, Christ’s body and blood, if they are themselves guilty of disunity.
When I was eighteen, one of my friends from college humiliated me in front of my whole class by telling them all something I didn’t want people to know. It was something trivial, but at the time I was so embarrassed I literally hid under the table. From that moment on I refused to speak to him or even acknowledge when he was in the room. One of our mutual friends attempted to reconcile us, but she couldn’t. He wouldn’t apologise, and I was still angry. One Sunday morning a year or two after we left college, as I prepared to go to Church, he sent me a Facebook message – apologising for the way he’d acted. I forgave him then and there. We never spoke again, we were living in different places, but there was something liberating about forgiving him – like I was carrying around the burden of that grudge and was finally able to let go! More importantly, as I prayed the Lord’s prayer, as I received Communion, I knew that little knot of uncharity had been untied. What had separated me from the mercy of God for so long was now gone.
We have been saved from an unpayable debt by Christ, forgiven it completely, but that forgiveness is conditional – it requires us to be forgiving in turn. We forgive our brothers and sisters in Christ because we have been forgiven more abundantly than we could ever hope to pay back. We are called to recognise God’s superabundant mercy towards us and repay him in mercy to other people.
Forgive one another from the heart. Pray for those who have wronged you. Pray for the gift of a forgiving and merciful heart.
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