God's mercy is amazing

24^th Sunday of OT year A 2017:

I learned long ago that I can’t say it better than Jesus.  So will my heavenly Father do to you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.  Jesus’ message is so clear: if we want to be forgiven, we need to forgive.  I can’t really improve on the message.

But, I do want to talk a little bit about this passage.  This is one of my favorite passages, but this passage is also a big pet peeve of mine.  I once had to work on this in my Greek class and it was really eye opening for me.  Our translation says that the first servant owed a huge amount and the second servant owes a much smaller amount.  When you hear that, what kind of dollar amount would you put on it?  Huge amount: 100?  1000? 1,000,000?  The smaller amount?  5 bucks?  But, the text actually says that the first servant owed 10,000 talents and the second one 100 denarii.  I think our bible translator decided to interpret these numbers because we aren’t generally aware of these amounts.  But, if we study these amounts a little bit it really changes the gravity of this passage.

The first servant owes the master 10,000 talents.  How much is a talent?  There are a lot of debates out there about a talent.  But, a pretty good estimate would be the amount of money a laborer would make in a whole year.  So, this man owes 10,000 talents.  Say 20k per talent, that’s 200 million dollars.  Saturday’s powerball is worth 132 million.  So you could hit that and still be 68 million dollars short. 

This homily is not about money.  But, just let the sheer enormity of the amount sink in a little bit.  How much does this guy owe?  More than anyone can possible imagine.  The same is true for us.  We owe God more than we can possibly imagine.  It’s impossible to pay back God for his amazing generosity.  He has given us life, breath, forgiveness, faith, sacraments, our families, our friends, our jobs, and on and on.  Nothing we can do can repay the debt.  That’s why we ask God for forgiveness.  We know we can’t pay him back.  We ask him for his love.

I think the much smaller amount is interesting too.  The fellow servant owes the other 100 denarii.  A denarius was about how much a person made working for one full day.  So to put it into modern terms we are talking about $50.  So 100 denarii is like $5000.  Now, this is clearly much less than the 200 million.  But, it’s still substantial. 

I found this to be just as important to me.  Jesus encourages us to forgive not just small matters, but big matters as well.  5000 is not a small amount of money to me.  And the offenses that other inflict upon us might not seem small.  But, Jesus is still encouraging us to be forgiving.

I found that studying the actual amounts listed in this parable makes the story so much more dramatic.  The stakes are large.  Forgiveness is no small thing.  It’s huge.

But, forgiveness is not easy.  I mean there is a reason why Jesus has to talk about forgiveness so much.  That’s because forgiveness is really hard.  If you find yourself struggling with forgiveness, spend some time with this parable.  Recognize your own debt to God.  Go to confession and have your own sins forgiven.  Ask those whom you have offended for forgiveness.  The more you know and experience forgiveness in your own life, the more you will be able to share forgiveness with others.