“THE GOOD KING”
Saint Matthew 18. 23-35
The Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity: 23 October Anno Domini 2005
Fr Watson
Heaven, God's eternal presence and your everlasting communion, conversation and feast with Him, is like a King who has settled accounts.
The ledger was out of balance because your ancestors were thieves and murderers. Your Dad Adam and your Mom Eve stole from the King. They disrespected Him to such an extent that they did the work of His enemy. They were ungrateful, disloyal and selfish. They desired to be independent from the King and they were granted their wish. Your fore-parents got what they thought they wanted: freedom. Instead they received only the just desserts for conspiracy, theft, and treason. For originally breaking the King's Law they deserved death. For daily failing to live by the King's Law they deserved death.
They are you. Everything that is said of Adam and the woman is said of you. You are all debtors. What you owed could not begin to be calculated. The parable has the debtor owing ten thousand talents. This was more than he could ever have come up with in a life-time. It might as well have been ten million talents for all his inability to pay it on his own.
The debt that Adam incurred by his sin, the debts that you have owed because of the way you live against God, the way you speak against the Lord, and the way you scheme against His will is also beyond your ability to pay. You justly should be sold into the eternal debtor's prison of hell; you and all your brood.
The purpose of the Lord's parable is to tell you about your own pathetic condition, yes, but more than that, it is to tell you what kind of a King you truly have. The King is merciful and forgiving. The King has pity and love. When in the parable the debtor falls down on his face begging for patience, for time, to repay the debt, the King knows what is happening. The King knows that the servant is terrified of His just judgment. The King knows that this crumpled-up man is sorry for the condition of his accounts and does truly wish to have them made right.
Righteousness can only come from the King. Even as Adam couldn't create himself out of the mud, so too, the debtor Adam couldn't pay off what he truly owed to the Blessed Trinity by his act of sin.
The King in Jesus' story knows that the debtor will never come up with the ten thousand talents but nonetheless he was "moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt." How could this be? Why didn't the King want what was owed to Him? Why did He let the pathetic beggar off the hook? Because this story of Jesus is not just a moral "fairy tale" telling you to forgive your own debtors, though to be sure, if you fail to do so it shows that you haven't truly understood the Goodness and Mercy of your own forgiving master. But this story tells you the good news of the King who made you, who freed you, and who loves you. For the real King is not an unnamed parable prince but rather the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Life, the Father, Son + and Holy Ghost. The real King is God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. The true Monarch is Love. Not love as "feel good," warm emotion, mutual fulfillment, but love as giving, sacrificial action. The Love of the Father King so moved Him that He gave His own beloved Son to be the bearer of your un-carried burdens. Very rarely will a man die for a good man, though occasionally this will happen. But Jesus came and died for His enemies, His debtors, His crucifiers, His sinful way-ward prodigals. Even as the King in the parable forgave the debtor servant even before the servant could "do" anything, so too, Jesus comes to you in His Body and Blood and dies for all your debts. His Body, His Blood, is the price of your debt. Not ten thousand talents but the bitter sufferings and death of God in the flesh; that is the price of your freedom. Jesus is the "Just One" who makes you righteous with the King in His own righteousness.
What a friend you have in Jesus, all your sins and griefs to bear; all your debts carried to the cross. At the tree He canceled them out; remitted the red ink of your bill with the redder stains of His life giving Blood.
Your debts, your sins, are forgiven because your King was crowned with thorns. You are released because your King was enthroned upon Calvary's bloody throne. Your illegitimate actions are washed clean because your King was crowned the Virgin's Son, incarnate born.
Go...serve the Lord in gladness. You are free.
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost