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We begin this morning with a bit of trivia regarding the importing of silk fabrics from India to Europe. Silk fabric for the textile industry was shipped to European merchants who would purchase the material for resale to seamstresses and tailors. After inspecting and pricing the pieces of fabric, merchants would mark a flaw in the weave of the material by tying a small string at the bottom of it. This would alert the purchaser that this particular piece of material was defective. To this day, when a London tailor wants to purchase a few yards of flawless cloth, he will ask for cloth "with no strings attached."
This idiom, 'no strings attached,' is commonly used today. So common, that if you do much texting on your cell phone, you know that 'nsa' is shorthand for 'no strings attached.' What we mean by this however has nothing to do with the quality of a piece of fabric. 'No strings attached' means, no obligations, no expectations, no commitments. We wonder if the gift we've been given comes with strings attached. We want to know if the super-duper deal of a lifetime comes with any strings attached. Men and women want to know if they can have a sexual relationship with each other with no strings attached.
Even among Christians there is a question about whether or not the grace of God in Jesus Christ for you is with no strings attached. No obligations, no expectations, no commitments. In fact, the gospels seem to clearly indicate just the opposite. Jesus said, "Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required." (Luke 12:48) The much that you and I have been given, whether it be money or possessions or opportunities or even, much faith, comes with strings attached. Much will be required.
The real point of the parable of the unforgiving servant is that God's forgiveness comes with strings attached. It comes with the expectations that we will forgive others. And as we'll see, in this parable there is a special emphasis on the fact that what has been given is indeed 'very much.'
The parable that Jesus tells has three scenes to it. The curtain opens on a King who is settling accounts with His servants. It may at first seem a little strange to us that the servants would owe the king. We'd expect it to be the reverse, that the King owed His servants their pay.
Unless this is more like a performance review than credit counseling. Maybe the King is taking account of how well His servants have conducted themselves according to His expectations. Let's see. "You shall have no other gods besides me. You shall not take the name of the Lord you God in vain. You shall honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy. You shall honor your father and mother. You shall not murder, shall not commit adultery, shall not steal, shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor."
Let's suppose that each Commandment is worth 1000 Talents. Standing before the King is one of His of his servants who, after a thorough review comes up 10,000 Talents short. In other words, he didn't keep one of the 10 Commandments adequately.
I looked this up in my Bible Dictionary to see how much a Talent amounts to. It said that one talent was the equivalent of twenty years of wages for the average laborer in 1st Century Palestine. It would take 200,000 years of perfect performance for the man to square the account of his life with the King. That Jesus picks a ridiculous figure like 10,000 Talents was His way of saying that there was never a chance that this servant could ever settle his account with his King.
The King was sure to let the servant know punishment that justice demanded. The sale of all of all that he had, including his family with all of the proceeds going to pay down his debt.
Fortunate for this servant however, this King had a heart, and a big one at that. Rather than demanding repayment, the King took pity on the servant and "released him and forgave him the debt." And with that, scene one comes to a close.
Yet surely there must be more to the story than Jesus is telling us. Surely, there had to have been a reaction from this servant who had been forgiven this incomprehensible debt. Surely, he broke out in a hymn of praise. "Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father, we worship You, we give You thanks, we praise you for Your glory." And surely, the forgiven servant wanted to know, "what shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits to me?" And in grateful devotion swore, "I will offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord."
And suddenly we realize that this servant who owed a debt to His King which he could never repay and who was forgiven all His debt, is none other than you and me. In fact, this is every man and every woman, for we all stand before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords with a debt that we can never settle, but which He has forgiven, simply because He had pity on us.
Scene II is the turning point in the parable. What could have been a wonderful story instead takes a turn for the worse. No sooner is this servant out the door of the sanctuary, in his car and headed down Cool St., than he sees a fellow servant who happens to owe him 100 denarii. I looked up a denarius in my Bible Dictionary. A denarius was about a day's wages for the average laborer. So, whatever 100 days wages amounts to, this was the debt that this fellow servant owed.
Jesus has a flare for the dramatic with this parable. As He tells it, the servant seized his fellow servant by the throat and demanded he pay up. The words that the indebted servant manages to choke out are exactly the same words that the other servant had just spoken himself. "Have patience with me and I will pay you."
How will he respond? This fine Christian man who had been forgiven more than he could count, had no pity on his fellow servant and had him locked up in jail until he could pay. Why? How could he have? Its not like he had to call in his chips to pay off his own debt. His debt had been cleared. He simply made no connection between what he had just received and what he was expected to give.
Now before we move on to scene three, let's be sure that we understand that, in and of itself, the unforgiving servant was not wrong to demand that his fellow servant repay him what he owed. In and of itself, there is nothing unjust in jailing his fellow servant for failure to pay. In fact, it is only because there is a scene one that we are aghast at this man's behavior in scene two. We are not even the King in this parable, and yet we fully expect him to show a little mercy to his fellow servant because he has been shown so much mercy. We understand that the grace of God comes with strings attached. And all of his fellow servants understood this too.
As the curtain goes up on scene three, the servant is before the King once again. The King has heard the report of what has happened and He is furious. "You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" Clearly the King understood that His mercy and forgiveness was given with strings attached.
The German, Lutheran pastor named Dietrich Bonheoffer called what we see in the unforgiving servant – 'cheap grace.' Cheap grace, says Bonheoffer, is the failure to take seriously, in faith and in the Christian life of discipleship, the depth of human sinfulness and what it cost God to redeem us. Cheap grace is absolution with no confession of sins. It's the preaching of forgiveness with repentance. It's baptism without the expectation of a Christ-like life to follow. It's the receiving of the Lord's Supper with no intention of amending our sinful life.
Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without taking up our cross and following Christ, grace without the love of Jesus Christ beating in our heart, living and incarnate.
But the grace of God in Jesus Christ is costly. In Bonheoffer's words, "costly grace is the hidden treasure in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has….
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow,
and it is grace because if calls us to follow Jesus Christ.
It is costly because it costs a man his life,
and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life there is.
It is costly because it condemns sin,
and grace because it justifies the sinner.
Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son: 'ye were bought with a price', and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.
Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us,
Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."
Because Jesus Christ has paid the cost of our debt of sin to God in full, every time we hear those costly words of absolution and eat that costly piece of bread which is His body and drink that costly sip of wine which is His blood, we are forgiven the 10,000 Talents that we owe.
Whoever receives these costly gifts of God must understand that though they are given freely, by grace alone, there are stings attached. Paul said it like this, "For none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself." Because of what He has done for us, we live for the Lord and we die for the Lord.
The mercy and forgiveness which He has shown to us ought to be shown to others through us. If I may put this in some very practical terms, the Christian should be the most forgiving, generous and easy to get a long with person there is. A merciful and forgiving spirit has no interest in quarreling over opinions, or being critical and judgmental of others and their weaknesses. Because we have been so welcomed by God, even while we were still sinners, we should welcome one another. Sure, we could make a strong argument for why it really doesn't matter whether you're a vegetarian or a beef-eater or whether you worship on Saturday night or Sunday morning. But we would rather be forgiving and gracious than major in the minors and win a battle that was never worth fighting to begin with.
St. Paul bids us to not only look to the cross where the costly grace of God has been showered down upon us, but also to look to the day of judgment, when like the unforgiving servant in the parable, "Each of us will give an account of himself to God." If I catch Paul's drift correctly in the 14th chapter to the Romans, we will all one day stand before our King with our stupid little quarrels etched upon our face. And every knee will bow and tongue confess, that we were far more interested in defending our cause, and furthering our movement and proving our point than we were in showing pity and being forgiving servants.
I would strongly recommend that when you stand in judgment and are asked to give an account of yourself to your King, you not make the same mistake that the servant in parable made. He pleaded for patience and little more time saying, "and I will pay you everything." It would have been better had he simply declared bankruptcy.
Standing with you in the judgment will be your Redeemer, the crucified One, looking like a Lamb who was slain. He has paid the debt of your sin as only He could. He has settled your account before God and you are paid up in full. "For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living."