When we think about the stories Jesus told about the Kingdom of God (The Reign of Heaven, the Commonwealth of Hope, etc.,), some of the metaphors and parables are easy for us to hold close; the parable of the mustard seed, where the smallest about of faith can grow into a beautiful tree, full of goodness which cares for its neighbors, the birds.
Others are harder for us to bear; some of the hardest are the ones concerning debt. Just as now (look at the housing crisis of 2008, the controversy about student loan forgiveness, and the vast amounts of credit card debt we have), debt was an ever present part of social and economic life in the ancient world. Christians of every denomination and persuasion pray every week to have our debts forgiven, as we forgive our debtors. For Jesus and his audience, farmers understood debt as a necessary evil; borrowing against the future hope of a good crop yield to pay for current expenses. To get trapped in a debt spiral, and eventually debt slavery, when someone could not repay their debts and would have to borrow more to pay back previous creditors, was a grave economic concern in both the Old and New Testament. In Leviticus, the debt jubilee is introduced as a canceling of all debts every 49 (7x7) years.
Jesus, for his part, talks about debt a number of times, including the parable of the unforgiving servant, and many of them are tough for us. Forgiveness of debts is a strange thing to us morally, after all, a gentleman always pays his debts, someone who is released from prison has repaid their debt to society. The parable and story that forms the heart of this reading is about our very human response to this question of debt forgiveness.
The frame story around this parable is that of a dinner party at the home of a respected local leader. As Jesus dines, a local women "of low reputation", whom I suspect knew Jesus from a previous healing or other encounter, anoints him with oil, and washes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. These acts are surprisingly (shockingly?) intimate now, and would have been downright scandalous in Jesus' day, in which a woman appearing in public without her hair covered was considered risqué.
As this happens, the religious leader whose house the party is at makes his feeling plain on his face. Jesus addresses him by his name, Simon, bypassing the label that he is previously identified with, and tells this simple parable: Two people who owe money to a creditor. One owes two years worth of wages, while the other owes about two months worth of wages. Jesus then asks which one, do you suppose is more grateful? Simon responds, "The one who owed more."
This where the trouble starts, I think it's easy for us to get trapped into thinking that the more grace is bestowed upon someone, the more faith that they have, and therefore they are a better person. This makes sense in our modern, financialized capitalist way of life. We are always told that having more (money, faith, grace, etc.,) is always better than having less. I think this also mixes with some of our preconceptions about prayer and faith, that God is more likely to give us what we want if we have more faith. This is not true; we all know of very faithful people who have died of cancer. "Rain falls on the just and unjust alike." (Matthew 5:45, paraphrased)
I think Jesus calls us to be more faithful and full of gratitude, but not so we get more out of God, but because they are good ends in and of themselves. How dare we harbor jealous of the grace someone else has received, especially when we have sufficient? It turns us into the angry laborers at the vineyard, mad that another worker has received a full days wages when they showed up late, even when we have received more than enough ourselves! Bitterness and contempt kill us from the inside out, as surely as any other hatred.
Two last things: this story follows up on our one last week with the question: what is a prophet? For Simon, the answer seems to be that they have some kind of supernatural sense that can detect bad behavior. Jesus' answer is almost the reverse: A prophet sees clearly the child of God inside each of one. Jesus forgives sins, and in doing so, reconnects us with God, releases our burdens (Liberates us!),and in doing so, moves people from the margins of society into the center.
Finally, God is always there to give us the grace we need to survive, and even thrive. Sometimes this is an individual process, but sometimes its communal. Each of us can't "keep the faith" all the time; it's one of the blessings of community and of love and compassion that we can share with one another; We can lift each other up when times and situations are hard. Faith and love can help us hold each other up until we're willing to move forward. Thanks be to God for that. Amen.