-- a scene from the Godspell narration of the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
The first meaning of the Parable of the Wicked Servant (found in today’s Gospel Reading from Matthew 18) is easy to pick out. As is so often the case in the Lord’s Parables, the lesson of the story is given by the Lord Himself at the very end:
“So my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (Matthew 18.35).
It is a sad thing that so often, our attention turns to the “or else” part of this statement. We jump so quickly to the idea of punishment -- which seems to be the alternative to the virtue of forgiveness -- that we neglect the central truth of the Parable, which is this:
The Father wants us to forgive, because He wants us to be just like Him.
The meaning of these terms -- “Father,” “forgive,” “like,” even “want” -- is far, far more important than punishment, especially as described as “torture” in verse 34: “And in anger his lord delivered him to the torturers, till he should pay all his debt.”
But before we get to these essential meanings, it is necessary to deal with the negative terms “torture” and “debt.” If these terms attract more attention than the others, and especially if they are taken literally, then the entire meaning of the Parable will be distorted if not completely lost.
All the Parables are to be understood in their spiritual meaning. Sometimes, this understanding is called “allegory,” sometimes “anagogical.” These are technical literary terms and, for now, don’t contribute much to understanding. Suffice to say that the words “debt” and “torture” cannot be taken at face value: they have to be understood in their deeper meanings.
The reason why we cannot take these two words literally becomes abundantly clear when we consider this terrible question:
Is God a torturer? Is the God Who is Love, Who knows Himself and reveals Himself as Love, even able to torture? Does God inflict pain and agony just to satisfy His wounded honor, to “balance out the scales of justice”?
God does not, and really cannot, act against His own nature. The beautiful truth that “With God all things are possible” has nothing to do with the irrational, nihilistic proposition (which is so popular in modernity) that “if God can do anything, then He can kill, damage, and mutilate however He wants.” This sort of human (and inhumane) idea of God is called “voluntarism” -- and it is a heinous anti-theology that has done more to corrupt civilization than any other philosophy.
(I believe, with Paul Evdokimov, that European modern atheism is largely due to the calvinist belief that God predestines people, before birth, to go to Hell forever. No one can psychologically survive that kind of corrosive doctrine.)
Without having to say so, this suggestion that God could be a “torturer” is horribly anti-Orthodox and heretical.
And “debt” cannot be taken at face value either. It is commonly interpreted as “sin” in the Parable, and that is correct to a point. But some teachers, in the past, have extended the idea of “sin as indebtedness” to the point of foolishness. Some have said that every sin committed in life amounts to a sort of “debit” in a moral registry, totalling a “debt” that needs paid off somehow. In the most popular (and bad) system of this sort, the “debit” of sin until the moment of Baptism (which includes Adam’s Original Sin as well), is taken care of by the Cross, which is -- in this very western “juridical” system -- Christ taking upon Himself the divine and wrathful punishment that should have been given to all of us. For the debits of sins committed after Baptism, then “penance” is imposed to “work off” the debt. And if any debt remains after death, then the baptized Christian must endure the penance of Purgatory -- until “he shall pay all his debt.” Yes indeed, this very Parable, especially verse 34, was used as a proof text for the western doctrine of Purgatory.
“Debt” in this Parable (and also in some translations of the Lord’s Prayer) refers to our own deliberate “falling away” from loving fellowship with the Father. It is our human nature to live and breathe the air of this divine relationship. When we fall away in sin, we wither and begin to die. Corruption enters our soul and body. “Debt” is a familiar picture of deeper reality that is far, far worse -- a reality that we can never “work off” on our own effort, and, even more to the point, can never be “punished” away.
Punishment does not get rid of sin.
It only provides gratification for the punisher. “Penance” (as in “penitentiary”) and “discipline” (as in “disciple”) differ completely from “punishment.”
The “torture” or punishment in this Parable was, tragically, very familiar to the first hearers of Jesus’ Parable. Everyone knew about torture. It was practiced by the authorities very frequently and out in the open. It was done as a “deterrent,” as a method of “teaching them a lesson.” It was an infliction of pain and death -- not meant at all for the healing and restoration of the criminal, the satisfaction of anger. The Cross of Jesus is the most extreme example of punishment.
In fact, “debt” was also familiar to this audience. If you were in debt, your house could be immediately foreclosed upon. You could be forced out without any recourse, repeal, or hope of negotiation. Your spouse and children could be sold into slavery. You yourself could be sold into slavery. Creditors, loan sharks, and financiers were lumped in with the tax collectors. They didn’t all work for the Roman Empire. Some, unfortunately, worked for the Temple administration. Most worked for the local moneylender, who was much like the wretched same day payday loan outposts in our own low-income communities.
In the modern world, we continue to be intimately familiar with torture and debt. We might be better at hiding it away from view. But in many ways, these corruptions of human nature and civilization are more efficient.
And they both prove a horrible fact: our familiarity, our lack of surprise, at torture and debt is nothing other than our very present familiarity with Hell.
Hell is the expectation, never a surprise.
It was the easiest thing in the world, after the Fall of Man, to think of God as “Eternal Torturer,” and “Cosmic Moneylender and Collector of All Debts.” This horrible theology was just a Freudian “projection” from the hellishness of the human falling away from divine fellowship.
Humanity became like Argus Filch, the über-cranky custodian at Harry Potter’s Hogwarts boarding school. His memorable line was “There must be punishment.”
I am amazed, and saddened, by just how many Christians there are who think this way, who demand that God work this way, who believe that virtue is not possible without the threat of punishment.
As we humans have become so familiar with the fear of death, Hell, thus, is never a surprise. It is a confirmation of the despair we already know.
Love, however, is. The Everlasting Surprise.
In the Parables (and in the Gospels and Scripture in general), we should always pay most attention to the Surprise -- not the confirmation of our expectations.
The Gospel -- that is, the “evangel” -- is not only “Good News”: it is New. It is a joyful interruption of our melancholy routine. It is, as J R R Tolkien loved to say, a “eu-catastrophe” -- a revolution of goodness, beauty, and peace. It is the surprise of all time. It is the unveiling of the mystery from all the ages -- a mystery, St Paul says, that the prophets and lawgivers and even the angels longed to know.
God is Father, not just the Absolute, not some impersonal force. The “kingdom of heaven” is the overflowing relationship of the Father with His Son Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. That relationship is only healing, restorative Love.
Forgiveness is the free and willing participation in the action of Christ. Forgiveness makes no worldly sense. There is no bottom line with forgiveness. For people who can only think in terms of accounting books and profit/loss statements, the idea of “forgiveness” is utterly scandalous and offensive. “Someone has got to pay. If you don’t, who will?” is just the sort of thing that non-forgivers always complain, who cannot understand (or refuse to accept) “Blessed are the poor, the meek, the peacemakers.”
When you forgive your fellow servant (who may be your spouse, your sibling, your child or parent, your friend, your neighbor, your political enemy), you bring him or her with you to the very moment when True Forgiveness was established and let loose in this dark world of unforgiving Hell.
That timeless moment, to which you two have mystically journeyed, is that infinite point of dereliction, that Severe Mercy, when the Son of God hung His sacred brow and said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
God the Father wants us to be just like Him. If we belong to His family, then there oughtn't there be some family resemblance? We are most like God when we participate in forgiveness.
So we’ve covered all the positive terms: “Father,” “forgive,” and “like,” except one: that God the Father “wants.”
This means that He desires us to be with Him in His family, His home, His kingdom. He calls us to His covenant of grace, His unbroken relationship that is now restored by the Cross of His Son and healed by the proceeding of His Spirit. He desires His children to worship Him as Father “in Spirit and in Truth.”
He is willing to desire and wait for the ages.
And I believe that what God wants, God eventually gets.