In our Gospel today (Matt 18:21-35) Peter is very human, just like us. He wants a simple answer on how he should behave with other people. You can see and hear me give this Homily on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8CI_jPMXGA
He knows he must forgive people when they wrong him, but how many times? He suggests that perhaps 7 times is enough. But Jesus quickly shows him that his calculations are wrong. He astonishes Peter with the number 77 (in Greek it might mean 70 x 7) and then immediately, using a story, he tries to get Peter, and thus us, to think about the whole thing in a different way. The problem with us humans, and Peter is but one example, is that we want to be able to sort ourselves out. We want simple solutions on how we should behave – a clear set of rules – and we want straightforward answers to anything that is troubling us. This is why Self-Help Books are so popular – straightforward answers on how to solve things. Advertisers, of course, are very good at tapping into this, aren’t they? Have you got arthritis? Yes I have. Here’s a wonder pill that will put it all right. Eat this or that food regularly and you will have a healthy gut etc etc.
So what Jesus does is to tell the story of a man who owes 10,000 Talents and is let off paying it; to suggest that we should stop looking at ourselves, and either bemoaning our failings, or being proud of our achievements, and look instead at the immensity of God’s love and forgiveness. In this story it is the figure of 10,000 Talents which is meant to bring this out, and this means that if we are to understand what Jesus is getting at, we need to work out what 10,000 Talents represents in today’s money. Now, the scholars tell us that it would have taken an ordinary working man in those days about 20 years to earn 1 Talent. So unless you are very clever at Maths, we need a calculator to work this out. (Reveals calculator) But never fear, I have already done this for you! Now, working on the basis that in the UK next year the Minimum wage will be approximately £11 per hour, and based on a 40 hour week, we get to £440 per week; we then multiply that by the 52 weeks in the Year to get to an annual wage of £22,880.00. Then we multiply that by 20 to get the value of 1 Talent. It comes out at £457,600.00. But remember, the man owed 10,000 Talents and my Calculator says that this means £4576 million in today’s money.
With that figure ringing in our heads, let’s consider what the man who owes this incredible sum says. He says “Give me time and I will pay the whole sum.” Can you imagine how people responded when they first heard this story? Without any kind of calculator, they knew how ludicrously large the debt was, so when they heard the man’s promise that he would pay the whole sum if he was given time, they knew what a fool he was, and my guess is that they laughed. Yes, we forget that many of the best stories that Jesus told would have either made people gasp or laugh, or in this case, do both. But as they laughed, some of them at least would have known who the man asking for time was. It was them, it is us, standing before God and thinking we can pay God back for all he has done for us.
As the Creator, God has made everything that is. The ancient world looked up at the stars and tried to count the ones they could actually see. Like Abraham they soon realised there were more than they could count. (Gen 15:5) Today, astronomers tell us that they can count them with a bit more accuracy, but even then it is an approximate figure. I looked it up. The answer is 200 billion trillion stars! And in the midst of all this we have been given a little space – our Earth – where we can survive, if we look after it! Such is the mystery and majesty of God. But we can also go inward as well as outwards to marvel at the mystery of creation. Life began, they tell us, with single cell organisms, but they didn’t remain that way, for God had created the ability for life to evolve, and over millions and millions of years, that is what we did. And here we are. And how many cells are there in each of our bodies? I looked this up too. The answer is 30 trillion. Not as many cells as there are stars it is true, but still a number beyond anything we can imagine. Yet Peter asks how many times he should forgive his brother?
Our Psalm today sums up our situation well. (Ps 102(103) 9-12) It reminds us first that God does not just have compassion and love for us silly humans, a certain amount to be doled out to us if we behave; God is compassion and love. Or as St Paul says in his Letter to the Romans “God loved us while we were still sinners.” (Romans 5:8) The Psalm then hints at the stars as an image of God’s love : “For as the heavens are high above the earth so strong is his love for those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west so far does he remove our sins.” Notice that. We don’t sort out our own sins and remove them ourselves, it is God who does that. It is God who encompasses us in his love. This too is difficult to imagine. I am lucky enough to have experienced compassion. When I did something really bad when I was a boy, I would be sent to my room; but I vividly remember that soon my mother would be with me in that room, and I would weep wildly my sadness and anger whilst she soothed me in her arms, and talked me through it. This was for me a tiny taste of the compassion of God. For those who have never experienced this, it must be much harder; but I ask you to try, to imagine God’s love as best you can, for it is a vital component of our faith. That is why we are at Mass. To say to God. “You are everything and without you I am nothing.”
But,, you might ask what about the way the Master in the Gospel ends up handing the silly servant to the torturers? Doesn’t that show God in a different light? Well I would argue not. For me the torturers lie within ourselves, for God cannot compel us to respond to his love. It is as if my mother came to comfort me in my room and I screamed at her to go away. She would have tried to persuade me to let her comfort me, but I still had the choice. I could have sent her away and thus been left to wallow in my own anger, in trying to justify what I did, and thus to live with a torture I had created for myself and in myself. Love cannot be forced on us. It is our choice. But whether we accept that love or not, it is always there for us. What is more important is that when we do accept that love, we are drawn into it, so that Paul can say as in our 2nd Reading today, “If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord, so that alive or dead….. we belong to the Lord.” (Romans 14:7-9)
Comments