Sunday’s Readings: Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

Proper 19: Genesis 50.15-21; Psalm 103.(1-7)8-13; Romans 14.1-12; Matthew 18.21-35

MATTHEW 18 collects teachings about Kingdom values, highlighting those which are the most dear for build up the common life. This week’s Gospel is tied to last week’s (18.15-20) if, as an alternative of the reading for the brand new Creation Sunday readings, those for the 14th Sunday after Trinity were used. In that Gospel, Jesus made a double promise: that God would fulfil whatever two people conform to ask, and that he himself can be present wherever two or three gather in his name. This prompts Peter to ask about forgiveness (18.17). It should have been on his mind; for he’s interpreting Jesus’s mention of binding and loosing (18.18) in that particular way.

Jesus’s teaching was then directed from the community to the person: how should the group treat someone who’s in dispute with it? Peter thinks first about a person: himself — how he personally should behave towards individuals who have wronged him. Not “How will we apply this teaching to our community?” but “What do I actually have to do to use it to my very own behaviour?”

That is a wonderfully reasonable response. It is even praiseworthy; for we should always all be asking, of each scripture that we read, “How does this speak to me?” Why, then, the hint of negativity? Of course, the message of the parable (18.23-34) is an indirect reproach to Peter’s thought processes. But he is just asking the query that I might. I won’t want to return out and ask it directly (Peter is by nature a more impulsive character than I’m). But I, too, can be wondering, not “How long, O Lord, how long?” (Psalm 13.1), but “How often, O Lord? How much?”

Before we come to the parable, remember the implication in Peter’s behaviour: his (and our) desire to know when what we do for God is enough. When can we put our feet up, open a beer (other beverages on request), and feel in a position to chill out, free from pokes of conscience that we’ve “left undone those things which we should have done; and . . . done those things which we ought to not have done”?

It may very well be said that Matthew 18 is a solution to the query posed at 18.1, “Who is the best within the Kingdom of heaven?” At the guts of that query is human hierarchy: the thirst not simply to excel, but to exceed, as well. Watching the summer television coverage of athletics is proof that the ambition to return first, be top, win gold, could be a noble endeavour. It can unite an entire nation within the glory of ultimate success — or, more often, within the pain of a shared disappointment.

Sometimes, though, not winning could be a moral victory, like England’s marvellous third-place play-off on this yr’s football World Cup: beating France, a sackful of goals, and a way more exciting match than the ultimate. In every version of our strivings for “success”, what matters is the metric. How will we measure success? And underlying that could be a query that exposes ambition as an ethical problem: do others should fail for us to succeed?

According to Jesus’s parable, we will never judge the standard of our actions solely by internal criteria. The slave who begged for mercy because he couldn’t pay his debts was still entitled to ask those that owed him money to pay what they owed. Perhaps he was in debt in the primary place only because he had been so generous to others. But I doubt it. I doubt it, due to his behaviour after having his debt cancelled. He had begged for mercy. He received mercy. But he still didn’t learn to indicate mercy. The mercy bestowed on him had been a present in its own right — as free and absolute because the divine grace that it represents.

That slave is “wicked” because he treats his master’s undeserved forgiveness as a competitive advantage, freeing him to focus his energy on forcing others to pay him. This is what scandalises his “fellow-slaves” — the individuals with whom he must have shown solidarity. Who could blame them for reporting him to the boss? When any group of individuals exists in circumstances without equality, power, or fairness, there could also be a special place in hell for individuals who, having climbed the ladder out of that oppressive state, pull up the ladder to secure their very own advantage, as an alternative of helping others to climb it, too.