“Doing Math with Jesus”

It’s dangerous doing math with Jesus. Peter tried it and discovered the risk. He’d heard that you have to be so concerned to forgive your brother that you’d go through this elaborate procedure of talks and witnesses and pleading with him to restore him to your good graces. It could take a lot of time, if you follow Jesus’ way on this forgiveness thing. So Peter asks quite sensibly, “Well, how many times do I have to do that? Up to seven?”

And Jesus goes, “I do not say up to seven times. No, no…” Here, Peter’s visage brightens. Finally he’s guessed right about Jesus! Jesus actually agrees with him for change. Seven is clearly too many times to forgive the clod who keeps sinning against you! Then Jesus smiles and continues, “No. Not seven times. More like seventy times seven…”

Peter’s countenance falls. I see him a bit puzzled. An eyebrow lifts. He goes “It was my understanding there would be no math in this apostle gig.” More furling of the eyebrows. A little calculation. And the realization that’s a big number. A lot of forgiveness. Way too much forgiveness, if you ask Peter. Surely by forgiveness procedure 491 we’ll be so worn out we won’t care anymore, right? Forgiveness is good. Great even. But isn’t this too much of a good thing?

It’s dangerous doing math with Jesus. Counting heads. Calculating budgets. Figuring who’s great and who’s not. Guessing how long it is till He comes back, how long eternity is, exactly. Wondering how often we have to forgive. Doing sizes on Him as one of my teachers used to put it. Yep, it’s risky business running numbers with Jesus. He’ll blow all your calculations out of the water and leave your jaw hanging open, wondering if He could possibly be serious about these absurd numbers?

But Peter brought it up. The numbers thing. “How many times do I have to forgive my brother?” And you can hear just a little “whine” in Peter’s voice as he says it, can’t you? Peter wants to do math? How about a story problem? Everyone loves those. So Jesus serves up a corker.

He says the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to reconcile his books. Taking a look at them with his accountant, he finds a discrepancy. It seems he’s about uh, 75 million dollars short in one account (that’s the approximate modern value of 10,000 talents—a low estimate actually. Could be well over 100 million). Anywho, it seems the king just hadn’t noticed the missing 75 mil before, because he’s not a king who likes math much or who does quarterly reports. Been a while since he checked. But checking, it becomes clear the 75 million has all been squandered by one particular servant.

How could one servant run up a 75 million dollar tab and no one notice? We think a few hundred thousand in “business expenses” will get noticed in Wake County. Eventually. But 75-100 million? Is this king paying attention? Obviously, his servants assumed he was not, based on his past track record. They figured he was loaded and they could do what they wanted with the royal treasury.

But the king has a surprise that day. He hauls the offending servant in and says: “You owe 75 million dollars to me! Pay up now!” And the servant hems and haws and admits he doesn’t have a single penny of it. So the master says: “Hmm. What should we do? I know! Let’s sell him into slavery along with his wife and kids (and all his stuff) and make payment that way…”

Alarmed, the servant tries abject begging (admits he and his family and stuff won’t even fetch a few hundred thousand). Throws himself on his face and begs the master to be patient with him, give him a chance to get the money back (how’s he going to that? He has no idea, but he’s begging, okay?) Everyone does this sort of thing in TV dramas, promises to pay back debts they could never pay, and it never works, right? Well, this is not your usual TV king. It works with him! He says, “Well, okay, since you ask so nicely, why don’t we just forgive and forget the whole debt thing? I am moved with compassion. I forgive you. Get along; have a nice day.”

But instead of having a nice day, the servant finds a guy who owes him about 12,000 bucks, chokes and imprisons him for it. (At this juncture, I would like to point out that many commentaries say 100 denarii is “a few dollars, a trifling amount”. But the same commentaries agree one denarius is a day’s wage for a common laborer. So 100 is about 10-15K. I don’t know what these commentators are making, but that’s more than a few bucks in my reckoning! Still, way less than 75 million. Which is the point).

The king hears about this and it ticked. He hauls the servant back in and says “I had compassion and forgave you. Ought you not to have done likewise? Yes, you should have…” And being in a mood over this, the king delivers the wicked servant to his torturers until he should pay back the whole 75 million.

What do we make of this then when Jesus says this is how the heavenly Father will treat us if we do not—“from our heart”—forgive our brother his trespasses?

Aside from wondering how it is that the Father has torturers, I think the point is clear. Receiving forgiveness means being forgiving from the heart ourselves. I get more questions about this than any other topic. “Pastor I don’t have to forgive my sister until she asks right?” “Uh, well… did you ask Jesus to forgive you, or did He just do it before you were born by dying on the cross? Right. There’s your answer.”

Here’s the danger of doing math with Jesus: what we think are big numbers are nothing to Him (100 million dollars is nothing to Him, for example). And what we think are numbers too small to care about (one lost lamb, for instance) mean the world to Him. Peter was right about one thing—math has no place in this Jesus gig he’s gotten in on.

But what about this forgiveness deal? How can we forgive everyone from the heart? It just isn’t in us, is it? Might as well bring on the torturers right now, huh?

Well it’s like this: the forgiveness we have in Christ Jesus covers all sins, including our many failures to forgive those who sin against us. The blood of Jesus takes away the sin of the world. All of it. Forgiveness is not something you do. It’s something you receive from Jesus in His Gospel Word and Sacrament by faith alone. But receiving forgiveness, believing by the Holy Spirit’s power that all your sins are forgiven, means believing the sins of the whole world are forgiven as well.

God wiped out all the world’s debts when Jesus died on the cross. So I’m afraid you can’t collect on any of them anymore, even the ones owed to you, without canceling out your own forgiveness for yourself. Because demanding payment on the debt owed to you means you no longer believe in that universal forgiveness of sins Jesus won on the cross for all. And you still believe that, right? Of course you do…

So when you find yourself forgetting sometimes, and wanting to get payback from your brother for his sin, remember Jesus on the cross and His last word—it is finished. Because all sin, all debts are finished there. And we all live in and by this forgiveness. Every day. Starting today and continuing on forever. And living that way, the Jesus way, keeps the torturer away and, instead, the Peace that surpasses understanding guards your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

 

 Rev. Kevin Martin