Debt Collection

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Ephesians 4:29-32; Matthew 18:21-35

September 7, 2014 • Portage First UMC

My Uncle Gene would always go with Aunt Helen when she went shopping at the mall, but he never went into the stores. He hated shopping, so when they got to the mall, he would find a bench and tell her he’d be there whenever she got done. And I remember, as a kid, asking what he would do while he sat there. “People watching,” he would tell me, and I couldn’t help but think there couldn’t possibly be anything more boring than people watching. You know what I find myself doing as I get older? I do a lot of people watching. I find it fascinating to watch people, to notice their expressions, to try to figure out what might be going through their minds and in their lives as I watch. Last Monday, we went to Chicago for the day and ate at a Giordano’s, and I found I was almost as excited about where we sat in the restaurant as I was about the pizza we were about to enjoy. They sat us along the window, where I could not only talk with my family but watch people as they walked by outside. (I also had a great view of the self-proclaimed homeless man as he scammed people when they came out of the restaurant.)

But, anyway, do you know what I notice most about people these days, aside from the many, many people who rarely look up from their gadgets as they walk? If you look at people’s faces and watch the way they interact with others, it’s easy to assume that we live in a very angry world. I watch people when they walk, I watch them as they talk on their cell phones, as they interact with people who are serving them at their table or at a counter, as they shop, even as we come to church. We live in a angry world, or rather we are angry people who live in God’s world. And anger sneaks up on you rather quickly, especially if there are other people around who share your sense of wrong or injustice. On Monday, we went to Willis Tower. Rachel had never been up to the top, and she wanted to do that before summer was over, so just under the wire, we took her to the top. And while we were waiting in line, mostly patiently, to walk out on “The Ledge,” the enclosure that makes it feel like you’re walking on air, a family that was from another country pushed people out of the way to get to the front. They literally moved others so they could get on the “The Ledge” first. And there was this anger that rose up in me and in others, that wanted someone to drag them to the back of the line. I don’t know why they did what they did. I do know that, as they were leaving, the guy behind me angrily said to them, “I sure hope you enjoyed that!” I think they missed his sarcasm!

Anger sneaks up on us in so many ways, and it carries over into many places in our lives. “Road rage” is a form of anger that can be deadly when we are behind the wheel. Employment issues can result in anger that, sometimes, leads to shootings or other violence. I worry about the anger that is simmering (or maybe boiling) in the Middle East, in places like Gaza and Syria and Iraq, and the angry ways we might respond as well. Anger generally shows up any time we think we are entitled to something and we don’t get it. Or it may even be just something we want and don’t get (Stanley, Enemies of the Heart, pg. 55). We get angry. And we want to take it out on someone. Anger is an enemy of the heart, just as much as guilt (which we talked about last week) is, but whereas guilt assumes “I owe you,” anger says, “You owe me.” Now, contrary to what we often think, the Bible does not condemn anger. What the writers of Scripture are concerned about is what we do with our anger. There is such a thing as “righteous anger,” because there are times when we honestly are owed something (though not as many as we think). Jesus himself was angry when, probably on two occasions, he came to the Temple, God’s House, and found it full of people who were ripping off the poor (cf. Matthew 21:12-17; John 2:13-22). That is something to be angry about. So it’s not really anger itself that is the problem; it’s what we do with it. Paul, quoting the psalms, says it this way: “In your anger do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). He doesn’t say, “Don’t get angry.” He says we’re to make sure anger doesn’t lead us to sin. In other words, make sure we’re angry about the right things. And then he goes on and gives us, what for many of us is, an even harder expectation: “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:26-27).

At the root of anger is this idea that you owe me something. Andy Stanley puts it this way: “Show me an angry person and I’ll show you a hurt person” (Stanley 57). We get angry because we feel something has been taken from us and someone owes us something—at least an apology. They took our reputation. They took the best years of our life. They took our purity. They took our raise. They owe us a second chance. They owe us an explanation, or affection, or a fresh start. We could go on and on. Behind every angry person is a hurt person—and hurt people hurt people. Jesus makes this clear in a little parable he told to his disciples one afternoon after Peter asked a question he thought would get a positive response. Instead, he got a picture of what anger and “you owe me” looks like.

Jesus has been talking to his followers about ways to deal with conflict, especially among brothers and sisters in the faith. And Peter’s been listening and thinking. Jesus has been talking about how to get along, but this whole thing of what to do when someone upsets you or offends you or hurts you is really bothering Peter. So he speaks up. And, you know, we really need to be thankful that Peter didn’t do much thinking before he spoke. If he had, we might not have half the stories we do in the Gospels (cf. Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, pg. 193)! Peter is never afraid to speak his mind, and that’s what he does here: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” (18:21). Now, as I’ve mentioned before, Peter thinks he’s being generous here. The rabbis generally taught that you should forgive someone who hurt you up to three times, but not four. They drew that idea from the prophet Amos, who talked about God forgiving three offenses and they believed God punished the sinner on the fourth time (Barclay 193). So, you see, Peter is doubling the rabbi’s expectation and adding one. He’s being more than generous. He’s willing to forgive seven times. And Jesus shoots him down. It’s not about counting to seven, Peter. Forgive the other person—some of your translations say “seventy-seven times” and others say “seventy times seven.” But the point is not the number. The point is you don’t keep track. There’s no limit to forgiveness. In other words, there’s nothing someone else can do to us that can’t be forgiven.

And to illustrate that, Jesus tells this story. A servant owed the king “ten thousand bags of gold” (18:24), or as it is in the original text, “ten thousand talents.” That’s the equivalent of sixty million days’ wages (or over 164,000 years’ wages—before taxes!); do that calculation in your head! It’s more than the entire budget of the province of Palestine at that time. It was probably more than the entire amount of coins in circulation in Egypt, one of the most powerful empires of the time. This is an exorbitant amount of money, and how this man could have ever gotten into this much debt is beyond imagining. And yet, he is, and the king calls him in to repay it. Now, we know he can’t. There’s no way he could ever come up with that kind of money, and so the king orders him and his family to be sold into slavery, which was the normal punishment for such an offense. The king would get nowhere near what he was owed back, but at least he would get something in exchange for this man’s life (Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 166; Barclay 194; Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 95).

The servant, knowing what is to come and feeling the weight of his debt, falls to his knees and begs for more time. “I will pay back everything,” he says, even though both he and the king know that won’t happen. It can’t happen. It’s not possible. And so the king, in a rare moment of pity, forgave the debt. In an instant, what started as a time for debt collection becomes a time of debt forgiveness.

Now, I’ve tried to imagine what I would feel if I were this man. The relief that I think I would experience is hard to put into words. Just about a month ago, we paid off Cathy’s car and it felt great to be out from under that debt. Of course, the next day the college tuition bill arrived and the good feeling was gone! But nevertheless, that debt we had was small potatoes compared to this man’s debt. I would expect him to go out of the king’s presence dancing and singing and hugging people. And, I suppose, you could say he does hug someone, though not in a loving way. What this debt forgiveness does to him is make him mad. He’s embarrassed. He’s frustrated. He’s angry—especially when, as soon as he comes out of the king’s palace, he sees a fellow servant who owes him “a hundred silver coins” (18:28). The second man owed the first about a day’s wage. Now, let’s put that in a little better perspective. The second man’s debt could be carried in your pocket. The first man’s debt would require over 8,000 people each carrying a bag about sixty pounds in weight, all in a line about five miles long (Barclay 194). The second man’s debt is so very small. And yet, the first man is angry—murderously angry—about the teeny tiny debt owed to him. He’s so angry—irrationally angry—that he grabs his friend and starts choking him. “Pay back what you owe me!” he shouts. And when the second man, using the same words, asks for more time, the first man refuses and has him thrown into prison.

Anger blinded the first man to the inequity of the debts. Anger does that. It can blind us to reality, which is at least one reason Paul is so clear about not going to bed angry, not letting the sun go down on your anger. You see, for the Jewish people, the day begins at sundown. So, in effect, Paul is saying, don’t carry today’s anger over into tomorrow because anger is a heart disease. It’s an enemy of your heart and it must be defeated each and every day. But we have to choose if we want to defeat it or not. When you’re angry, you can stay the way you are, you can stay angry, but what will that do to your heart, to your soul? Just like eating a steady diet of high cholesterol foods will damage your physical heart, continuing to harbor anger and resentment without dealing with it will kill your soul. Remember, it’s not the anger that is sinful, but it’s often what we do with our anger that causes us to sin. So, for the rest of our time this morning, we want to focus on how we move from debt collection to debt cancellation, and the simple answer is found in a very distinctly Christian practice: forgiveness. If we continue using “debt” terminology, we can define forgiveness as “giving up the right to be paid back.” That’s what the king in Jesus’ parable did at first. Even though he was owed an incredible debt, he gave up the right to demand repayment. He forgave the debt. That’s a choice that is also within our power to make every time we feel as if someone owes us something, every time we confront anger. We can choose to give up being repaid.

Paul talks about those kinds of choices in his letter to the Ephesians. First of all, he says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up…that it may benefit those who listen” (4:29). What’s the first thing we want to do when we’re angry with someone? We want to talk to others about them, or we want to trash them, or we at least want someone else to understand why we are so angry. We might yell, we might talk quietly, we might take to Facebook or Twitter to try to get others on our side, and Paul says all such “talk” (whether it comes from our lips or our fingertips) grieves the Spirit of God (4:30). When we do that, and I know that’s my first temptation, first inclination, but when we do that, we’re trashing someone who is made in God’s image. We’re speaking ill of someone who is a dearly loved child of God. Now, maybe I’m just preaching to myself here, but if your first impulse is like mine, to speak to someone other than than the person you are angry with, and to speak ill of them, Paul’s word is this: don’t. All that does is make you into a victim, someone who simply wants to make the other person pay and it does not help soothe the anger or move us toward forgiveness. In fact, Paul goes to list what we might call “relational wedges” (Stanley 117): “bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, malice.” And what does he say to do with such things, such behaviors? “Get rid of them” (4:31). They are not helpful and they grieve the Spirit of God. Have you grieved God? Have you hurt God by the way you treat your fellow human being, that person you’re so angry with, that person who owes you something?

We do that when we take God’s forgiveness for granted, when we forget that forgiveness is a gift, not something we can earn or even something we deserve. Between human beings, forgiveness is a gift from one undeserving soul to another (Stanley 129). None of us are deserving of forgiveness, least of all God’s forgiveness. The story of the Bible is the story of we humans pushing God away, refusing to live in the way he calls us to live, blatantly thumbing our noses at God. And yet, to borrow words from Paul, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Not after we had cleaned ourselves up. Not after we had gotten it all together. Not after we made ourselves perfect. While we were still sinners, while we were still broken, while we were still running away from God—that’s when Jesus came and died for us to forgive our sins. While we were undeserving. We don’t deserve it, and yet God gives forgiveness, so here’s the twenty-five thousand dollar question that I have to ask myself: is what that other person has done to me really worse than the way I have rebelled against God? Is what they did worth grieving the Spirit of God? If God can forgive us, why can’t we forgive each other? Why do we stay angry with each other? Why do we insist on trying to collect the debt rather than seeking to cancel it? Jesus said, “If you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).

Now, I’m not trying to say it’s easy. It’s not a “snap decision” or a momentary change. And forgiveness doesn’t depend on our feelings. Our feelings may follow, but not right away. Forgiveness is a choice, and it’s a process we have to work through. The first step in that process is to identify who you’re angry with. Name them. That may sound silly or unnecessary, but the truth is often we’re not sure who we’re angry with. Sometimes the anger has been around so long that it’s become almost a living thing, bigger than the original situation that brought it on. So who would you like to pay back if you thought you could get away with it? Who do you secretly desire to see fail? Who do you find yourself talking about behind their backs? This is a chance to name the situation, name the anger, recall the situations that are hindering your relationships. Make a list, if necessary.

Then, second, determine what it is they owe you. What is the debt? So often we forgive generally but we’re not really able to get beyond the anger because we haven’t forgiven the specific debt. Like the king in the parable, determine what it is they owe you. What are the “ten thousand talents” they owe you? You know what they did to you, but what is it they took? What did they “steal,” in your estimation? Your reputation? The best years of your life? Your job? What is it? And what would they need to return to you in order to pay off the debt? An apology? Money? Time? A job? “You cannot cancel a debt you haven’t clearly identified” (Stanley 133).

Third, and perhaps hardest, is canceling the debt. That means we decide that the other person doesn’t owe us anything anymore. This is what Jesus did for you and me when he gave his life on the cross at Calvary. He cancelled our debt. That’s exactly the wording and the image Paul uses in his letter to the Colossians: “When you were dead in your sins…God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross” (2:13-14). Jesus, by giving his life in our place, took away our sin and took the punishment for our sin so that we no longer have to pay the debt. He paid it for us and we don’t have to pay him back—as if we could! And just as he has done for us, he calls us to do to each other. In fact, he calls us not just to grudgingly forgive, but to extend kindness and compassion even to the person who hurt us. Again, hear the words of Paul: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (4:32). So we pray, “God, this person hurt me, and I have held onto this debt a long time. Today, I choose to cancel it and forgive them just as you have forgiven me.” This is between you and God; there’s often not a need to go to the other person to tell them you’ve forgiven them. But they will be able to tell by the change in attitude, the change in heart, that is evident by the way Jesus will work in and through you when you forgive. Be kind and compassionate and forgiving.

And so, finally, we dismiss the case. This is a daily decision we have to make to not hold onto the grudge, to not re-open the case we’ve had against that person whose actions caused us to be so angry. It’s true that nothing can make up for the past. No apology or restitution will change what happened. And that’s why forgiveness is a choice we have to make. It is our choice, just as it was God’s choice to forgive us.

Jesus, of course, demonstrated that in the parable we read today. The king chose to forgive, but did you notice at the end of the parable what happened to the unforgiving servant? After he tried to choke his fellow servant and threw the man into prison, the king called his servant back in. He calls him “wicked” and tells him he should have had mercy on the other man just as the king had on him. And without another word, the king throws the man in jail and submits him to torture “until he should pay back all he owed,” which, of course, we know will never happen. He will die in prison. And then Jesus says these haunting words: “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (18:35). If we choose not to forgive, if we choose anger over mercy, we will block the flow of God’s mercy and forgiveness to our own lives. That’s what Jesus was saying earlier about our refusal to forgive resulting in God not forgiving us. It’s not that God doesn’t want to forgive us; it’s that we block him in forgiving us when we refuse to even try to forgive the other. And it’s not that God tortures us or imprisons us but that we choose that life for ourselves when we get so wrapped up in being angry that we cannot even see that other person as a fellow child of God. You’ve known people, I’m sure, who are so bitter and angry and eaten up by spite that they are in a constant prison of their own making, constant torture of their own creation. That, Jesus says, is what God allows to happen to us unless we deal head on with our anger and practice forgiveness.

We come to the table this morning in order to receive God’s forgiveness, to lay our anger at the foot of the cross, to begin to see all persons as children of the heavenly Father. On his last night with his closest friends, Jesus sat down at dinner, a very traditional dinner, and breathed new life and new meaning into an ages-old ritual. “This is my body…and this is my blood,” he said, “given for the forgiveness of your sin.” When we gather at his table, we are not just re-enacting some story from long ago. We are remembering and receiving all that Jesus did for us, all that this simple meal signifies.

Pastor Deb reminded us last week of one other teaching Jesus gave us on the subject of forgiveness. He tells his followers that if one of them is angry with a brother or sister, they are in danger of judgment. That’s pretty strong language, but it’s in that context that he also teaches them, “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24). You know, the more I read Jesus, the harder it gets to be a Christian! But that’s what he says. The communion table is no place for anger, because the communion table points us to the cross, the place where the most powerful forgiveness ever known was visited upon humankind. This table is a table of mercy, of grace, of love, of forgiveness, and all who love Christ and love their brothers and sisters are welcome here. That’s what Jesus says. And so, with that kind of heart, let us come and receive the bread and the cup, for these symbols remind us of the extent God went to in order to win our hearts and cancel our debts.