Robert Farrar Capon is one of my favorite authors, and I am currently using his book Kingdom, Grace and Judgment in my Tuesday morning Bible study class (see link at the end of this post to get more info on the book or to order a copy of it). If you happen to be in Pottstown on Tuesdays at 8 am, you are welcome to join us at the High Street Diner for some study and fellowship and mediocre (at best) food. Anyway . . . we just finished studying the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:21-35), and I found Capon’s closing commentary to be especially profound and moving. It also serves as a good follow-up to my reflection the other day on the forgiveness of sin. Capon writes:
In heaven, there are only forgiven sinners. There are no good guys, no upright, successful types who, by dint of their own integrity, have been accepted into the great country club in the sky. There are only failures, only those who have accepted their deaths in their sins and who have been raised up by the King who himself died that they might live.
But in hell, too, there are only forgiven sinners. Jesus on the cross does not sort out certain exceptionally recalcitrant parties and cut them off from the pardon of his death. He forgives the badness of even the worst of us, willy-nilly; and he never takes back that forgiveness, not even at the bottom of the bottomless pit.
The sole difference, therefore, between heaven and hell is that in heaven the forgiveness is accepted and passed along, while in hell it is rejected and blocked. In heaven, the death of the king is welcomed and becomes the doorway to new life in the resurrection. In hell, the old life of the bookkeeping world is insisted on and becomes, forever, the pointless torture it always was.
There is only one unpardonable sin, and that is to withhold pardon from others. The only thing that can keep us out of the joy of the resurrection is to join the unforgiving servant in his refusal to die.
Now, if I may be so bold, let me add a few of my own thoughts to what Capon has written. First, the parable in it’s entirety.
Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times (other translations say seventy times seven).
‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt.
But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” Then his fellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt.
When his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “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 in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should 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.’ (NRSV)
As you can see, the immediate context of this parable is Peter’s question to Jesus about forgiveness. Peter wants to know the limits of forgiveness, and from what I have heard and read before there seems to have a been a traditional answer to Peter’s question, and it was “three times.” You should forgive another his or her transgressions three times, but after that you could cut her/him off. If this is true, then it would seem that Peter is being generous by offering that forgiveness be extended as much as seven times.
Jesus reply to Peter’s offer, however, makes Peter’s generosity appear miserly. Not seven times, Jesus tells him, but seventy times seven. (As a side note the NRSV is just as miserly in its translation of this verse as Peter is with his forgiveness. The NRSV translates the verse as reading 77 times. Thayer, on the hand, translates “hebdomēkontakis” as either “seventy times seven times” or even “countless times,” which seems to be the real meaning behind Jesus words.). And then, as a further illustration of what he means, Jesus tells a story. And what a story it is, complete with greed, mercy, anger, grace, judgment, and even torture! And then there is also the sum of money involved.
One website states that a talent was ”used as a measure of weight and money. If in today’s money an ounce of Gold is worth $400 U.S., one talent is worth $480,000.” Another source states that “given the time period the value of a talent was about 10,000 denarai.” Since one denarius was a day’s wage for the ordinary person of the time, one talent would have been the equivalent of a person’s entire wages during his or her life.” Still another site states that a talent would have been the equivalent of about $1,000. So the amount of what the King’s slave owed could have ranged anywhere from $10,000,000 to $4.800,000,000. In any case, it is an astronomical amount.
And yet, the story tells us that the King, in his pity for the man, forgives the entire debt. He doesn’t put the man on a payment plan, he doesn’t require that the man sell all of his possessions to satisfy some small part of what he owes. No, he writes off the entire debt completely. He didn’t have to do this. He would have been well within his rights to sell his slave, his slave’s wife, their children and all that they had, but a deep sense of compassion overtakes the King, and all is forgiven.
Contrast this with slave who then goes and demands payment of a little more than 3 months’ wages from someone who owes him money. When the debt is not paid immediately, the King’s slave has his debtor promptly thrown in prison.
Of course, when the king hears what has happened, he does to his slave exactly what the slave has done to the man who owed him a pittance, comparatively speaking. In fact, he does even more by ordering that his slave be tortured, not because of the money he owed, but because the slave refused to take the mercy and forgiveness the King has shown him to heart. That is why Capon says, “[When] the old life of the bookkeeping world is insisted on, [it] . . . becomes, forever, the pointless torture it always was.” And it is why he also adds, “There is only one unpardonable sin, and that is to withhold pardon from others.”
Maybe its no coincidence, therefore, that Matthew is the gospel which uses the language of debt in the “Lord’s Prayer.” “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Neither do I think it a coincidence that this parable reminds me of the film Unforgiven. Written and directed by Clint Eastwood, who also plays the main character William Munny, Unforgiven is poignant meditation on living life without forgiveness being either extended or received. Below is a portion of a sermon I preached using the film as it’s starting point.
He was a thief and a murderer,
a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.
That’s how William Munny is described at the begging of the film Unforgiven.
And as the film progresses you discover just what that means.
I’ve killed women and children, Munny says at one point,
I killed just about everything that walks or crawls.
And he has – whether its robbing trains or shooting US Marshalls,
Munny has done it all.
He is, in the words of another,
as cold as the snow,
with no weak nerve or fear.
But at the start of the movie,
Munny is just a broken down pig farmer.
Looking more like the prodigal son than some notorious gun slinger,
the opening shots of Munny show him falling on his face in the mud as he tries to separate the sick hogs from the healthy ones.
It’s been almost twelve years since he gave up his old ways.
Twelve years since he met his wife and settled down.
To quote Munny,
My wife cured me of all that.
She cured me of drinking and wickedness.
And she also gave him a wife and a son.
But three years ago she had died of smallpox,
and ever since Munny has been struggling to make it work as a farmer,
and it hasn’t been easy.
He’s certainly not as good a farmer as he was a bandit and killer,
and the lure of the old life has come back in the form of a young man looking for a partner in crime.
It seems a man has cut up a prostitute in a brothel,
and the prostitutes have banded together to offer a $1000 reward to anyone who will find and kill this man and his friend.
And so despite his protests that he ain’t like that no more,
Munny rides off to take care of this piece of business,
hoping that the money will help him raise his kids even if his farming skills won’t.
And I think it’s easy for Munny to do this,
because he has never ever experienced any forgiveness for his former life.
Others haven’t forgotten his deeds,
and they certainly haven’t forgiven him,\nor let him forget.
And if others can’t forgive and forget,
Munny can’t bring himself to forgive himself either.
Throughout the film he relives his sordid past.
He sees ghosts of those he shot.
He is always recounting with sorrow and regret his past misdeeds,
At one point he even imagines he sees the angel of death coming for him,
and he is terrified of dying,
afraid of what will follow,
even afraid that his children will find out all about his past.
But as this film points out,
William Munny isn’t the only one who is unforgiven.
The film portrays a time and world incapable of forgiveness.
No one can forgive.
No one even expects it.
Its an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life,
and what a bleak world it is,
a world of unforgiveness,
a world that never lets you forget what you’ve done,
and just how rotten your heart is.
It matters not that you’ve changed,
it doesn’t matter that you “ain’t like that no more.”
Because no one believes you can change,
no one forgives, no one forgets,
people don’t even forgive themselves.
At one point in the film William Munny has a short conversation with the Schofield Kid. Munny has just killed a man who had brutally beaten and maimed a prostitute.
William Munny: “It’s a hell of a thing to kill a man. You take away all that he has and all he ever will have.”
The Schofield Kid: “Yeah, but I guess he had it coming.”
William Munny: “Well kid, we all got it coming.”
Without the grace and mercy extended through forgiveness, we all have it coming. All of us. But when we receive the forgiveness God offers us in Christ, and when we extend that same forgiveness to others, then, and only then, is there hope and life and even joy.
 Amazon.com: Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus: Books: Robert Farrar Capon
ISBN: 0802839495 |
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