Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost. Leave-taking of the Feast of the Holy Transfiguration; Our Venerable Father Maximus the Confessor (662).
Dormition Fast.
1 Corinthians 9:2-12; Matthew 18:23-35.
Read Matthew 18:23-35
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
How does a thing as extreme as what is depicted in this parable happen? We get the point that we should forgive others as God forgives us but do we really think of anyone as being as blind as this servant?
Language like this is called hyperbole – extravagant exaggeration to make a point. The king forgave the servant a debt worth more than fifteen years’ wages of a laborer; the servant failed to forgive a debt that was a day’s wage for a laborer. The form of the parable may be hyperbole but the point it is making is not. The clue to that is in the interpretation Jesus gives at the end: the king is his heavenly Father and the servant is “every one of (us).”
The point our Lord has brought us to is this: we greatly underestimate how much we have been forgiven. Our sin is a resowing of death and its legacy into the lives of ourselves and others. This parable is a glimpse into that chasm from God’s point of view.
Our sin is greater than we know. That knowledge is not to weigh us down but to free us, in our forgiveness by God, to lift the heads of others in forgiveness of them. As Jesus taught in Luke 7, one who has been forgiven little, loves little; one who has been forgiven much, loves much. Do you want to love others more? Open yourself up to a greater appreciation of how much you have been forgiven.