Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 130





Wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. The vengeful will suffer the LORD's vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail. Forgive your neighbor's injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.






Jesus tells us today a shocking-but-not-surprising story. We've all met people like this. Jesus ben Sirach says, they hug tightly wrath and anger.
Ignoring everything else, wrath, anger and the desire for revenge are their most prized possessions.
But they are also possessed by their diabolical possessions and cannot act reasonably.
People sometimes ask me about diabolical possession. Perhaps they've seen again the movie The Exorcist, or the History Channel has broadcast another of its pseudo-religious theories. After watching that outlandish entertainment they don't want to hear that most of us are possessed from time to time by passions of anger, fear, greed or lust. It's a very common experience and yet profoundly disturbing.
The servant in today's story has apparently been beyond the pale of reasonable behavior for a long time. He seems to believe he can actually pay back in full his overwhelming debt. Supposing he was competent to begin with, we might ask how did he get into this predicament. I met a very competent postmaster one time who lost his job when he gambled with government money. For a mere $700 his career and marriage were destroyed.
Perhaps the mean-spirited servant was always in over his head, but was clever enough to distract others from the obvious. I knew another fellow some years ago who was cruising the gay bars of the local city. No one suspected it despite certain obvious signs of his proclivity because he was habitually aggressive. Thrown on the defensive by his manner, we didn't ask what was he hiding. (The best defense is a good offense.) Finally the crisis erupted and the scales fell from our eyes.
Sinful behavior is insane behavior; it is the behavior of the diabolically possessed. They have given their lives over to a lesser god. They are owned by a master who is unworthy of love or trust.
But we all do it once in a while.
The real failure is not so much this fellow's incompetence, indebtedness or habitual denial; it is his lack of mercy. Shown extraordinary mercy, he shows no mercy.
Perhaps, despite his new freedom -- being forgiven and all -- he is still possessed by the humiliation of being found out. Spared of punishment, he must punish another man who owes him a pittance.
The Gospel of Saint Matthew makes much of mercy. In the Lord's Prayer we ask God to "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."
Jesus only comment on his Prayer follows directly,
"If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.
If we didn't get the message from Matthew 6 (the Sermon on the Mount) this story in Chapter 18 drives it home. Any Christian who expects mercy had better show it to others. Any Christian who thinks he has not already found overwhelming mercy had best look again.