A Forkful of Haggis (and the Parable of the Wicked Servant) - Matthew 18:21-35

This past week, I kept getting notified that new photos had been added to a shared album called "West Highland Way." Four members of the extended Alexander family have been in Scotland, hiking the 100-mile trail by that name. At first, the photos were exhilarating. Picture moody skies (and enviable cool weather), adorable highland cows (or coos, as the locals say), and pints in local pubs before camping for the night. After a while though, to be honest, the photos got a little repetitive. Another cow! Another lake (or loch)! Another cloudy sky! More trail pics, more tent pics, you get the idea. Once you've seen a few Scottish Highlands photos, you've pretty much got the gist.

But as I sat down to write this sermon, an unexpected photo came through with the familiar ding. It's a picture of Luke trying a forkful of haggis for the first time. I've never had it, and maybe you really like haggis, but the text simply said, "not good." As a mom seeing that, I felt proud of him for being brave. And it reminded me that, for all the moody sky and trail shots, each one represented not repetition but a new adventure: a new place, a new taste. Nothing about that trip was actually repetitive at all. I was just the one who'd stopped looking closely.

Which got me thinking about the shared album we have here at the church. In Scripture, we have picture after picture of Jesus healing, preaching, and teaching. If you are new to the church, or to Christianity in general, each snapshot can be exhilarating, offering a glimpse of a kingdom our souls have been longing for. And then, after a while, the images can start to feel a little repetitive, and maybe we stop looking as closely. Blessed are the poor, and the peacemakers. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek. Be not afraid. All beautiful pictures of the kingdom of God, which we can casually pass by like another loch or coo.

Forgiveness is a great example of a teaching we think we already know. And to be fair, Jesus does get a little repetitive on the topic. Forgive one another, as we have been forgiven. Check. But perhaps Jesus knows there's a difference between hearing a teaching and really understanding it. So, for those of us who think we've got forgiveness more or less figured out, Jesus offers one more story. Like an unexpected forkful of haggis, he gives us the parable of the unforgiving servant.

To set the stage, Jesus has just told the disciples about a shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep and goes after the one who has wandered away. The point is that God does not give up on the one who is lost. And then Jesus goes on about what happens when someone sins against you: go to them, talk it out, keep trying to restore the relationship. You can almost hear Peter thinking, Okay, but surely there is a limit to this. And so he asks his honest question: "Lord, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" I'm sure he thinks this constitutes a very generous, even extravagant amount. To which Jesus replies, "Not seven times, but seventy-seven times." Some translations say "seventy times seven." Either way, just keep going, because you’re not even close.

On the surface, the lesson seems to be that we are supposed to forgive people more times than we can count. Which is fine, I suppose. But like the disciples, we are still in danger of missing the point. If we think forgiveness is simply about taking the high road, or meeting some higher standard for Christians, then forgiveness becomes just another task we check off our spiritual list, or a way to congratulate ourselves for good behavior. I have forgiven so and so, therefore I am a good Christian. There must be more to it.

Enter the unforgiving servant. A servant owes the king an unbelievably large amount of money, say a billion dollars. There is no way he will ever be able to repay it. He pleads for mercy, and the king does something extraordinary: he cancels the entire debt. The servant walks away free. And then he goes straight to a fellow servant who owes him about a hundred bucks and seizes him by the throat, demanding payment. When the king hears about it, he is furious: "You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?" And then Jesus adds these troubling words: "And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

That's an ominous ending, and it doesn't look much like our usual pictures of Jesus. The story started out as a parable of grace, much like the good shepherd going after the lost sheep. The king cancels a debt that could never possibly be repaid. But then the story turns, because it is realistic. This is also a story about how hard it can be to accept the forgiveness of others, and the terms of grace.

The unforgiving servant has been forgiven, but he refuses to live in a world where forgiveness is the rule. He goes right back to the old economy of debts and obligations and keeping score. In that way, he is a lot like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son. The father offered a world of grace, where the lost can come home and the dead can come back to life, but the older brother refuses to enter the party. He cannot accept a grace that's given to someone he thinks doesn't deserve it. I think that is what Jesus is getting at with this disturbing ending. Judgment comes to those who refuse to accept a world of grace, and in some sense, that judgment is of our own making. When we insist on keeping score, our ledger of the wrongs done by and to us becomes, in Robert Capon's wonderful phrase, "the pointless torture it always has been.”

Forgiveness is one of the foundational pictures in our shared album. It is woven into the very heart of God, and therefore into the lives of the faithful. What a blessing it is to be reminded of that on a kick-off Sunday for a new year of formation. We are invited to look at forgiveness again, not because we haven’t heard this teaching before, but because there is always more to see. In forgiveness, we glimpse a pattern of mercy that runs through everything, a world where we are finally free to put down the ledger. What difference will it make for us to live more fully in the mercy of God? That’s a great question for a new year together.