Please Click Here For Sermon Video
I don’t know about you folks, but this parable, The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, really troubles me. The lesson is quite obvious. We, the disciples of Jesus, are to forgive as God has forgiven us. That seems only proper, right, and obvious. The logic follows that as God is forgiving and we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit as the Body of Christ, we too are to be forgiving. It’s that image of God in us thing. The people of God will reflect God. That doesn’t trouble me. What goads me is there at the end of the parable when the King in a fit of wrath turns the unmerciful servant over to be tortured until every last penny of the debt is paid and how do you pay off a debt from in prison where you can’t earn a wage. Then Jesus says, “So my heavenly Father will also do to each one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from the heart.”
Jesus is indeed saying God is going to get us if we choose not to forgive. That there troubles me. For one, it says there is a wrathful side of God. I like a God who is full of patience and healing mercy and love and all that, not a wrathful God. This wrathful image of God plays too easily into the hands of evil people who use it to perpetuate fear and provoke acts of hatred against those who are different from themselves. We have to be careful when we tread the precarious ground of God’s wrathful side.
Another thing, Jesus says that God the Father will be wrathful towards us, the disciples of Jesus – his beloved children in Christ whom he has laced with his very self by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. If we don’t take the path of forgiving one another from the heart, God will hand us over to be tormented. Moreover, this forgiving that Jesus speaks of isn’t just the lip service, legal transaction kind of forgiving we cop out on where the offender says “Sorry” and the offended says “Forgiven” and we either go on pretending nothing happened or never speak to each other again while claiming all is forgiven. The forgiveness Jesus is after is a deeper kind of forgiving, forgiving from the heart – you know, the place where our motives and drives come from. I’ll get to that momentarily.
We’ve also got to wonder what Jesus means by torment. If the penalty for that servant being unforgiving was prison and torment, what’s that mean for us when we’re unforgiving. What does Jesus mean by torment? Well, let me lighten the moment and go Greek for a minute. The Greek word for torment originates in the world of commerce as the word for a coin tester, the person who bites coins to test their authenticity. The coin-biter torments the coin and the coin owner if it’s fake. The concept’s scope of meaning grows to include testing the character of a person by torment. Ultimately, it can be the obvious evil of torment for the sake of torment. In this parable it is clearly the latter – torment for the sake of torment – but, I wonder if Jesus might be wanting us to think more along the lines that when we are unforgiving we can expect that God will let the unfolding of the consequences of our unforgiveness which may seem like torture be for us a test of our character to show our authenticity. Does Jesus le us suffer the consequences of being unforgiving until we have had enough and decide to mature and been working to forgive. Chew on that.
This concept of torment occurs in Matthew’s Gospel more than anywhere else in the Bible. It means afflicted with disease (4:24) and suffering to the point of psychosomatic paralysis (8:26). Jesus healed people suffering from these torments. The demons who possessed the two “Gerasene demoniacs”, when they recognized Jesus as the Son of God shouted out, “What have you to do with us, Son of God. Have you come to torment us before the time?” (8:29). Jesus delivered the men by casting them out into a huge herd of pigs who then did a mass drowning. Then immediately after that, Jesus fed the 5,000+ and sent the twelve disciples out on the Sea of Galilee in a boat by themselves where a perilous windstorm erupted. The boat was tormented (or battered) by the waves. Jesus came to them by walking on the water and after Peter’s failed attempt at walking on water, Jesus got into the boat and calmed the storm.
In all these cases Jesus ended the torment and healed its effects on people. But for the demons, he turned the torment back on them. But in this parable of the Unmerciful Servant – and take a minute to scratch your head – Jesus goes the opposite direction. According to this parable, if we take the route of unforgiveness, we choose to revert back to a “prior-to-meeting” Jesus state of torment and Jesus will let us wallow in it.
When Jesus comes into our lives, he sets us free from our inclination towards unforgiveness and by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit gives us a new heart that desires to forgive and to be at peace with God, with ourselves, with those who have hurt us and also with those whom we have hurt. If this parable does one thing, it points us to the fact that reconciliation, which means working the process of forgiveness, is our primary relationship task as Jesus’ disciples. Being faithful people means being forgiving people. In this world of sin-broken relationships, the restored image of God in us who are the disciples of Jesus looks like people working towards all-encompassing forgiveness. I think the appropriate word for that is reconciliation; reconciliation among ourselves and in all of society. When we choose to be unforgiving it is nothing short of a renunciation of Jesus and his healing work in us. We can’t expect that to go well when we do that.
In the last few decades there have been a number of studies done on the effects of unforgiveness on our health and relationships that add some depth to our discussion. An article by the Mayo Clinic entitledForgiveness: Letting Go of Grudges and Bitterness lists the relational effects of harbouring unforgiveness which is what is known as bearing a grudge. It can cause us to: 1) bring anger and bitterness into every relationship and new experience; 2) become so wrapped up in that past wrong that we can't enjoy the present; 3) become depressed or anxious; 4) feel that our life lacks meaning or purpose, even make us feel at odds with our spiritual beliefs; 5) cause us to lose or not form valuable and enriching connectedness with others.
Looking more at the realm of physical health, unforgiveness increases the levels of stress hormones in our bodies. This in turn leads to increased blood pressure, higher cholesterol levels, weaker immune systems, and anxiety and depression. All of which put us at a greater risk of stroke, heart disease, cancer, and chronic pain. Unforgiveness has a huge health cost.
My summation of all this is that being unforgiving leads us into a life of lonely, bitter isolation and sickness and the costs are deadly. As I see it, the path of unforgiveness follows the same destructive course that addictions do on our health and relationships. Harbouring unforgiveness will quench any sort of connectedness we have with others, leave us isolated and bitter, and make us sick.
In the course of my ministry, I have known a Christian who chose the path of unforgiveness and, sadly, I had the displeasure of watching that person stay that course against repeated attempts to get her to forgive. She routinely and for no reason emotionally attacked members of her church as if she were possessed by a demon. She lived alone and was lonely and bitter when she could have been so loved and supported. To their credit, the people of her church did and still do a remarkable job of maintaining her in their midst despite her attacks, even looking after her health needs and well-being when she doesn’t deserve it.
Unforgiveness is a choice, so therefore is forgiveness. It is remarkable that Jesus uses the imagery of debt to define unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is pridefully holding on to a feeling that we are owed something by someone who has or whom we believe has wronged us. Unforgiveness will cause us to become the hate-filled person that we believe the person who wronged us to be. There’s a saying: “Be careful who you hate because you will become just like them.
Forgiveness, on the other hand, is letting go of this pride-filled demand for retribution and need for the restitution of honour. An eye for an eye only works as a deterrent. It does not bring healing the way that forgiveness does. Forgiveness is striving to be in a reconciled relationship with those who have wronged us working to restore trust and even more so wanting one another to know the peace and love we have in Jesus.
Forgiveness is a process, a spiritual practice that we must work at. This will be the first and probably only time I will agree with Joyce Meyer, who is a populist Christian writer and speaker. She gives some helpful practical advice on how to forgive in an article entitled The Poison of Unforgiveness. First, decide to forgive. Decide to make amends. We won’t do it if we wait until we feel like it. Decide to forgive, desire to forgive, and start working on it and God will in time heal our emotions. Second, we are powerless over unforgiveness so we must depend on the power of the Holy Spirit to help us forgive. Third, do what the Bible tells us to do: pray for our enemies and do good to them and bless them rather than curse them.
I add to her advice that we should also follow Jesus’ direction in Matthew 18:15-18. As a matter of first course go to the person and address the situation. If that doesn’t work, take two others. If that doesn’t work, announce it to the church. If that doesn’t work, then you’re done with them. Let God deal them, but still keep praying and hoping.
To be faithful disciples of Jesus is to forgive. There’s no way around it. There's a cost when we don't forgive. Amen.
