In thinking more about our Gospel for this Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A of the Sunday Lectionary, I felt the need to address its threatening ending. If you remember, the master turned the wicked servant over to the torturers until his debt had been paid. The master did this because the wicked servant, after being forgiven a large debt, went and squeezed a fellow servant, literally choked him, for a much smaller debt. Jesus then tells his disciples: "So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart" (Matt 18:35).
This has a similar ring to "Beatings will continue until morale improves," does it not? I am not just to forgive the brother or sister who has sinned against me but to do so from my heart. I take "from your heart" to mean to really and truly forgive. This is very different from when one of my boys hauls off and hits his brother for some real or perceived slight or injustice. When I insist he apologizes, he says in an unconvincing voice, not making eye contact: "I'm sorry." I then insist the other boy accept the apology out loud, which is often given with the same lack of sincerity.
The point I am trying to make is that dire threats can't change my heart. Yet Jesus insists I must have a change of heart toward the person who has sinned against me.
Exegetically, this pericope makes a dialogue between Peter and Jesus from a teaching in Q (the source that Matthew and Luke have in common that is not the Gospel According to Saint Mark). It is probably what is termed "a homiletic midrash" on a section of the Lord's Prayer and a teaching that immediately follows it (see Matthew 6:12 and Matthew 6:14-15). This midrash (a Hebrew word that refers to the interpretation of a text) was likely written by the author of Matthew as a hellfire and brimstone statement to bring home the importance of forgiving others, which is what it means to be holy as God is holy.
Hence, there is no little irony if not an outright contradiction in warning his disciples that if they do not forgive not only will God not forgive them or they certainly can't expect God to forgive- Sirach's rather holistic take on the issue, echoed in the Lord's Prayer- but God will harshly punish them. It's like yelling at your children for yelling at each other or spanking a child for hitting another child, etc. On the other hand, there is some resonance with the fact that in the Gospels Jesus is only harsh with those who are harsh with others.
Let's not forget what our Psalm today tells us: God is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.
Something else is worth noting: the punishment is not everlasting. It seems at some point the debt will be paid. What is payment but a changed heart? As it is stated in Psalm 51: "a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn." (Psalm 51:19).
Do you really think God seeks to change your heart after the manner of the state in Orwell's 1984 à la Winston and the rats? Is learning to love God by loving your neighbor by making yourself a neighbor by forgiving your neighbor like learning to love Big Brother? I can't believe for one second that's how it works. God is not, contra a certain theologica take, a moral monster.
In her beautiful Treatise on Purgatory, Saint Catherine of Genoa observed that in Purgatory one can no longer ignore his/her issues, that is, those habits and affections that landed her/him there. Bearing witness to God’s great mercy and love, she went on to observe, "I believe no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise."
What matters in this parable, as Luke Timothy Johnson points out, is "forgiveness becomes the characteristic attitude of those in the Church" (The Writing of the New Testament, "The Gospel of Matthew," 207). The late New Testament scholar, Father Raymond Brown, observed that "this has a very real application in church life, for the number of people who turn away from the church where they have not found forgiveness is legion" (An Introduction to the New Testament, "The Gospel According to Matthew," 193).
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