In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

There was a servant who owed ten thousand talents to the king. Now ten thousand talents is no small debt. Just one talent was worth roughly 15 years of work at servants wages. So it would take 150,000 years for this man to earn enough to cover his debt-an eternity for all practical purposes. This man had an incredibly huge amount of money to pay back. The king decided it was time to settle accounts, to call in the loan. When the servant could not pay, not even close, the king decided to have the servant sold, with his wife and children and everything he had, to pay as much of the debt as possible; sort of simplified bankruptcy proceedings. This was a perfectly normal and acceptable thing for the king to do in this situation.

The servant however, begged for mercy from the king. The servant was so distraught that he even made a promise that he couldn't possibly keep. "Be patient with me," he said, "and I will pay back everything." Despite the absolute impossibility of that plea, the king listened, took pity on him, and actually canceled his debt, forgave what he owed! That would be like you having your house loan and car loan and credit card debt and whatever other debt you have accumulated canceled thousands of times over! The king did more than the servant even asked or could have dreamed of.

Now this servant, whose life was literally saved by the king and restored and renewed, then went out to one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, in other words, 100 days wages, and demanded that he pay it back. The other servant was unable to do so, and he begged for mercy, using almost the same words as the first servant did with the King, "Be patient with me, and I will pay you back." Certainly that promise could be kept. One would think that someone who had just been forgiven 150,000 years wages of debt wouldn't care too much about a hundred days wages. But instead, surprisingly, the first servant had the other servant thrown into prison until he paid what he owed, even though it was by comparison such a small amount. The first servant was acting as if he still owed his massive debt, as if it hadn't truly been forgiven.

When the king found out about this, he was enraged and said to the first servant, "Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?" Then the king handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he paid back all he owed. And so his torture was eternal, for he could never pay it all back. The once canceled debt was reinstated because of the servant's actions. This servant treated others as if he still owed the several million dollar debt, acting as if nothing had changed, and so the king also treated him as if nothing had changed.

Now the parallel to our own lives is rather pointed. We are like the first servant, owing a debt to God the King that we simply cannot pay. Our debt is our sin. From our very conception we have rebelled against God and His will. Though we may be thought of as pretty good people, God has said, and we know deep down that we are truly sinners. How embarrassed we would be to have others see the tab we've run up against God in our breaking of His commands and in our failure to love. What would it be like for you or for me to have stand and have every sinful thought and word and action of ours exposed before the world? How much more, then, should we be ashamed that it is all exposed before God! We prayed in the Introit today, "If you, Lord, should mark iniquities and keep a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?" The answer, of course, is no one. We have an eternity of debt that all of our good works cannot even begin to pay off. When it comes to settling accounts with God, the very best we can do is offer a promise that we cannot keep: "Be patient with me; I'll pay it all back; I'll change; I'll make up for my sin." We stand before God bankrupt, relying completely on His mercy. He would be perfectly justified to cast us from His presence and have us thrown into the jail of hell forever.

However, God has taken pity on us. He knew that if He simply gave us more time to change or make up for our debt, that we'd never get a step closer to making things truly right with Him. And so in His mercy, God has canceled our debt! It is completely erased! We've gone from owing an infinite debt to God to being debt-free!. He did more for us than we could have ever possibly imagined or dreamed of.

Now how could God do all this? Well, be sure that He didn't simply say, "Oh, just forget about what you owe." Someone had to pay the price. Someone had to absorb the debt. And that person was the God-man Jesus Christ. The Son of God became a human being in order to pay what we humans owed. But since He was also God, the payment He earned was infinite, even as God Himself is infinite. Jesus took on Himself our debt, our sins, and they were crucified with Him on the cross. By dying in your place, Jesus settled your account with God forever. And by rising again to life, He earned eternal life for you and restored your relationship with the heavenly Father. And all this He has done without any merit or worthiness in you but only because of His fatherly, divine, goodness and mercy. You are free from the power of sin, free from hell, free from being afraid of God. God's forgiveness has overflown to you. It is written, "Comfort, Comfort my people. Proclaim to them that they have received from the Lord's hand double for all their sins." You see, the Lord didn't just cancel our debt, He earned for us more than we even owed. That's like the bank not only forgiving your mortgage but giving you some spending money, too. Truly, "our cup runs over."

And so we depart from the King's presence in peace to go on with our lives as His chosen and beloved and forgiven people. Well, now what? Do we live any differently? Has anything else changed? Tragically, some, like the unforgiving servant in the parable, fail to see any connection between what God has done for them and what they are to do for others. God is made into some sort of forgiveness dispenser who has little or no effect on the way they live towards their neighbor. They act as if they still owe, as if the debt hasn't really been forgiven, as if nothing has changed. You and I need to beware that we do not become like the unmerciful servant and lose God's grace altogether.

We act like the unmerciful servant when we do anything to stop God's love and forgiveness from flowing through us to others, when we stop the flow at ourselves. That back pressure eventually is deadly. We do so when we set limits on how many times we're willing to forgive others, as Peter did when he asked if seven times was enough. We can't afford limits on God's forgiveness toward us, and so we shouldn't place limits on ours toward others. To limit your forgiveness is to limit God's forgiveness, and that brings judgment on you. God forgives us without measure; therefore, we are to forgive others without measure-not seven, but seventy times seven, in other words, without limit.

When we refuse to forgive, we put ourselves in opposition to God and destroy our own desire to be forgiven. People who harbor grudges rarely, if ever, are found on their knees confessing their own sins before God. People who try to settle the score for every wrong done to them rarely acknowledge the score God settled when He hung Jesus on a cross to pay the price for their sinfulness (Cwirla). Those who refuse to be reconciled with others also refuse to be reconciled to God.

And there's another thing I've noticed: when we refuse to forgive, we're acting self-righteously. We're up on a pedestal with the finger pointed down at the other person as if we're not in need of forgiveness ourselves. We think to ourselves, "Well sure, I'm not perfect. But my sins are only little. That person's sins are big and terrible." We forget that the biggest sin of all is pride, self-justification, self-righteousness. We deny the very Gospel itself when we act as if someone is beyond being forgiven, either by God or by us.

Now I know that many of you have in various ways been deeply and seriously hurt by something that a family member or friend or some other person has done to you. Forgiving them doesn't come easy, to be sure, especially if they're not really sorry for what they've done. But just as God has forgiven the whole world through Christ, even those who won't repent and believe and be saved, so also in Christ we forgive even those who won't say they're sorry or be reconciled to us. Remember that forgiveness is based on the giver not the receiver. Forgiveness can truly be given even if it is not accepted. Christ has more than paid off your debt to God. That means that you have some extra "spending forgiveness," you might say, more than enough to forgive those who have wronged you. No sin is greater than God's forgiveness; and it's by His forgiveness that we forgive others. We are forgiven, so we are forgiving.

Isn't that just what we pray in the Lord's Prayer? "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Or another translation, "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." Today's Epistle said, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you." God doesn't say that you have to forget what's been done or like what's been done. He doesn't promise it's going to make everything instantly OK. But He does say, "Forgive your brother (or your sister or friend or spouse or ex-spouse) from your heart." We do that because, as Romans 5 says, "God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit."

And when you still find it difficult to forgive, or when you find yourself feeling unforgiving again towards a person you've once forgiven, the way to deal with that is to deal again with your relationship with God. That's your source. You can't forgive someone from your heart when your heart is empty. Fill it with the merciful, life-giving words of Christ in Scripture. Fill it with the reality of what He has done for you in Baptism to cleanse you and make you His own. And be filled once again with Christ's body and blood. For He is the spring and fountain of all true forgiveness.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit