“Who’s Keeping Score”
Matthew 18: 21-35
9/17/23
Victor Hugo once wrote a short story titled “93.” In the midst of this tale, a ship at sea is caught in a terrible storm. Buffeted by the waves, the boat rocks to and fro, when suddenly the crew hears a thunderous crashing sound below deck. They instantly know what it is. A cannon they are transporting has broken loose and is smashing into the ship’s sides with every list of the ship. Two brave sailors, at the risk of their lives, manage to go below and fasten it again, for they know that the heavy cannon on the inside of their ship is more dangerous to them than the storm on the outside. (1)
So it is with people. Problems within are often much more destructive to us than the problems we face from without. Today’s passage takes us “below deck,” in a way, to look inside ourselves concerning the whole matter of forgiveness.
As we discussed last week, Matthew 18 is one long lesson for the disciples about living in community. We left off with Jesus’ practical advice about dealing with conflict in the Christian community. His advice – straight talk, due process and grace.
At this point, Peter steps in with a question. He wants to know what exactly is required of him when someone has wronged him. So he asks, “How many times do I have to forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven times?”
And Jesus responds “Hardly! Try seventy times seven.” Or in other words – there is no limit on forgiveness. Forgiving people has no end. There is no keeping score. Forgiveness is not like a line of credit where eventually we reach our limit – no, forgiveness is a way of life.
That’s a nice thought – but that much forgiveness can be exhausting. Forgiving someone once is strenuous enough, but you have to do it over and over and over again – that sounds kind of pointless. At some point, don’t you have to say enough is enough?
For instance, say you make a lunch date with a friend. You go to a lot of trouble to keep this date, moving things around in your schedule so you can be sure to make it. Your friend chooses a spot like Chester’s or Victoria’s, so place nice downtown – someplace where parking is always an issue.
So you make sure to leave in plenty of time. Of course, there is no parking available on the street, so you pick one of the parking garages, and make your way up the ramps searching for a spot close to the Skyway – or the Subway depending on your preference. You park your car – take a quick picture of where you are, or put a pin down with your phone, so you can find your car again (I can’t be the only one that does that.) And you hurry off, trying to be on time.
You arrive at the restaurant a few minutes early – whew- get a table in a quiet section, right by the window, and settle in to wait for your friend. The waitress comes by and you order a drink. Ten minutes go by – your friend has no shown up yet. So the waitress leaves a couple of menus and you look over what you might want to order. Another ten minutes go by – you have another appointment after lunch, so you decide to order and hope your friend shows up. Your food arrives – you are still alone, and after waiting for 40 minutes it begins to dawn on you that you have been stood up. So you get a to-go box, and head off to your appointment – seething at your friend.
Later that afternoon, your friend texts and says, “I’m sorry, I completely forgot. My bad. I didn’t set up my calendar reminders and I blew. Please, let’s reschedule.”
You put on your best manners and say, “sure, it happens to everyone. How about next week – same time, same place.”
“Perfect, I’ll be there.”
But the same thing happens again. You’re not as upset this time, because this is the second time in a row. Are you willing to make another lunch date with this particular forgetful friend – or maybe your calendar is a little too booked up the next time. (2)
So how about seven X seventy times – or 490 times? Are you willing to be stood up that many times?
Not likely. Human nature just doesn’t work that way. Even the most easy-going among us probably aren’t going to forgive and reschedule even one tenth that amount of times. No, we all keep score in our heads of these small interactions and offensives. We all have calculators in our heads that keep track of how much we are putting into our relationships versus how much we are getting out of it. Not many of us want to be on the giving only side of the equation – sometimes we want to receive as well. When someone lets you down again and again, we tend to turn our attention elsewhere. In the economics of forgiveness and relationship, that seems to make sense. Peter is actually being pretty generous in his estimate of seven times being enough to forgive somebody. After that – don’t we deserve a change.
As is his way, Jesus answers Peter’s question with a story. There is this King who wishes to settle accounts with his servants, many of whom owe him money. It seems that he starts at the top of the list and summons a servant who owes him an enormous sum of money – 10,000 talents, a ridiculous amount of money. It’s difficult to know for sure what that translates to in modern money, but some estimates go up to 3.48 billion dollars.
Clearly, this servant will never be able to repay this debt, so the King orders that he and his family be sold. The price they will fetch is only a drop in the bucket of what he owes, but the King wants to cut his losses, and selling the servant is less expensive than keeping him around. Realizing the spot he is in, the servant gets down on his knees and promises to pay everything he owes if the King will just be patient.
The King realizes that there is no way this is going to happen, but he takes pity on the servant and releases him, forgiving him his debt.
The servant breathes a sigh of relief, and as he is leaving the King’s presence, he spots a man who owes him 300 denarii. In Jesus’ day, a day’s worth of labor was worth 1 denarii. According to the Bureau of Labor Statics, the current value of a day’s labor is 137.00 dollars. So 100 denarii translates to about 13,700 dollars – still a hefty sum, but doable over time. He has a golden opportunity to pass along a bit of the forgiveness that he has just received – but apparently that never occurs to him. Instead, he grabs the man by the throat and demands his money like a mob boss. But when the man uses the exact same phrase to him that he just used on the King – “Have patience with me and I will pay you” – he has the man thrown into jail.
The King hears about all this of course, and does the same thing to the servant he forgave, revoking the mercy he had shown before and sentencing his former servant to life in prison until he paid off his debt. “You wicked servant. I forgave you that huge sum of money just because you asked me. And you can’t find it in your heart to have mercy on your fellow servant.”
Here’s where the story takes a dark turn. Jesus turns and looks the disciples in the eyes and slowly says – “That is how my Father in heaven will treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
Wow – that sounds ominous. So, we should forgive our neighbors in order to save ourselves. Forgive – or else? Does that sound like Jesus? That doesn’t sound very much like the Jesus were used to hearing. So, there’s got to be something more here than that ominous, threatening takeaway. What went wrong? What made the servant so wicked, so evil, so vengeful and unforgiving?
What we see in this passage is a contrast between a theology of grace and a theology of keeping score. Jesus is firmly preaching a theology of grace. Remember last week – in handling conflict, we use straight talk, due process, and most of all grace. But Peter is still pushing for a theology of keeping score. That’s much closer to what we all do, in some way. We may say, “Oh it’s fine, things happen,” because we want to avoid a scene or anything that might smell like confrontation. But deep down, we all keep score. We keep track of how many times someone has done us wrong.
For instance, I’m sure many of you have experience with youth T-Ball games. Maybe it was your own kids, maybe it was your grandkids – but you know what I’m talking about. In T-Ball, everyone stays at bat till they hit the ball. Everyone gets on base and everybody crosses home plate. And at the end of the season, everyone gets a trophy. The score is never recorded. Strikes don’t exist. Outs don’t exist. It’s all very sweet.
But I am willing to bet that most parents know exactly what the score is. Oh, it’s not on the scoreboard – no one is winning or losing, officially. But every parent is keeping score. Every parent knows exactly how may outs there have been, how many swings each kid took to hit the ball and how many runs would have been scored. They are keeping track of all the errors in their heads. They’re all keeping score. It’s not that they are bad people. It’s just human nature. We like to keep score. Whether it’s children’s T-Ball, or our relationships with friends and family – we tend to follow the theology of keeping score. We can’t help it. We’re human.
But what Jesus calls to us to do is shift our focus from keeping score to a theology of grace. Simply put – live in the realization that you have already been forgiven. Your debt has already been cancelled. You can live without the weight of guilt, or sorrow or shame. You have been forgiven.
So it costs you nothing to offer that grace to someone else. Once we realize that God is not keeping score on us, we can stop keeping score on those around us. We are called to pass the grace along to those we come into contact with. The Golden Rule of – “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you,” – shifts slightly to “Do unto others as God has already done unto you.”
So don’t worry about keeping score. God isn’t. And focus on passing on the grace of God to everyone you meet.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Stephen M. Crotts, “A Severe Mercy”, Sermons on the Gospel Readings, CSS Publishing Company Inc. 2004, p 325.
2. Inspired by a story by Barbara Brown Taylor, “Once More From the Heart”, The Seeds of Heaven, Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, p 92-93.
