Luke 17:5-10
So, if you’re finding this to be a confusing reading and you’re sitting there thinking, “I have no idea what that means,” you’re not alone. This Gospel reading takes a lot of unpacking to figure out what Jesus is trying to say, and we’re going to try to do that this morning, and hopefully by the time I’m done it will make a little more sense.
The first thing to look at is Jesus’ bizarre response to the apostles’ request for faith. Actually, it’s not even “Jesus” who responds, it’s “the Lord.” The Gospel of Luke very rarely uses “the Lord” to describe Jesus, so right away we know that we’re supposed to pay attention. This is more than Jesus just talking to the people who happen to be gathered around, this is Luke’s message for Christians who already know who Jesus is, who are already determined to follow in his path, who want to live Christian lives.
And so we have this request for faith. The apostles ask Jesus to give them more faith, and he basically says to them, “What for? What good is more faith?” Jesus says to them, “Even if you had the smallest amount of faith, you would be able to command this large tree to plant itself in the sea, but what would be the point?” You see, trees can’t grow in the sea. If a tree was planted in the ocean, it would die from the saltwater. And both Jesus and the apostles know this. So Jesus is saying, “I could give you more faith, but what would you do with it? It wouldn’t be useful to you in the least.”
Which is a very weird thing for Jesus to say. Don’t we all want more faith? Wouldn’t we all benefit from having more faith? So that our days would be easier when we’re confronted with challenges? So that we could look at the future and feel peaceful and serene and sleep better at night? Why does Jesus dismiss the apostles’ request for more faith?
Well, it has to do with why the apostles want more faith. You see, right before verse 5, where our Gospel reading starts for today, we have Jesus saying to his disciples (not the Lord speaking to his apostles, as it says in verse 5), “If your brother or sister sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.” And then the apostles say to the Lord, “Increase our faith!””
Jesus is telling the disciples that they must do something incredibly difficult - they must forgive someone who repents, no matter how many times they commit the same offense - and so the disciples, feeling the challenge of this, turn to the Lord and ask to be given the faith to do it.
Which sounds very Lutheran actually. We know that Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to give us more faith - that faith is not something we get or increase or strengthen by our own will or desire or prayer life. The famous Reformation bible verse from Ephesians (2:8) says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Faith comes solely from the Holy Spirit, so if we want more, we ask Jesus to give it. So then why does Jesus ridicule their request? And what does he mean by going on to talk about masters who tell their slaves to make supper and us calling ourselves worthless slaves?
I would suggest that what Jesus is actually trying to tell us is that forgiveness is not connected to faith. Or rather, it’s not connected to faith as we and the disciples understand it, where faith is the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, and that Jesus saves us - faith as something we have, like money or clothes or food - the more the better. This understanding of faith has nothing to do with whether or not we forgive someone who has offended us and who is now repenting.
You see, forgiveness as it was understood in Jesus’ time, and as I think he himself understood it, is about erasing what’s called “moral debt.” When someone does something against you, that hurts you either financially or physically or emotionally, they put themselves in moral debt to you. They owe you financial or physical or emotional compensation. Repentance is when that person comes to you and says, “I repent. I hurt you. I owe you.” Forgiveness is when you say to that person, “Yes, you hurt me, but I am canceling what you owe me.” In the Bible, repentance and forgiveness are transactions. Forgiveness, actually, implies that a debt is owed - that an offence did occur. We don’t forgive innocent people - we only forgive those who are guilty in the first place. So when you forgive someone, you say, You stole seven hundred dollars from me, but I’m telling you that you no longer owe me seven hundred dollars. You hit me seven times, but I’m not going to hit you seven times. You emotionally hurt me seven times, but I’m not going to hurt you seven times. I forgive you; I’m cancelling your debt.
Which sounds all well and good but, when it comes to physical or particularly emotional hurt, is extraordinarily difficult to do. It is very, very hard when someone hurts us emotionally to erase the debt and to let go of our need for compensation. There is nothing that stings quite as painfully as when someone hurts us that way - we never forget it, and in some cases, we never get over it. And yet Jesus tells us that if that person repents, we must forgive them. We must zero their debt to us. We must tell them that they no longer owe us. (Incidentally, I feel like I need a footnote here. I need to be clear that Jesus is talking particularly about forgiving those who repent. Jesus says nothing about forgiving those who don’t repent. If someone doesn’t repent, Jesus doesn’t tell us either way what we should do. I know that a lot of damage has been done by Christian demanding that we forgive those who haven’t even repented, and if that gives you peace, that’s great, but if doing that feels like denying the hurt you’ve gone through, then you can feel free not to forgive someone who hasn’t repented.)
But if they do repent, Jesus tells us that, as his followers, we must forgive. No wonder the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith. There are some pains in life that are so severe that it would take a lot of faith for us to dismiss what is owed us.
Except that what it seems Jesus is saying is that having more faith would be about as useful to us in forgiving others as seawater would be in helping a mulberry tree grow. Which is to say, not at all. More faith doesn’t replace the money owed to us, it doesn’t heal the bones that have been broken, it doesn’t take away the life-long crippling of emotional harm.
So, then, how do we forgive? If more faith isn’t the answer, if faith is not compensation for what is owed to us, how do we let go of what is owed? How do we say to the one who repents, “Your debts to me are forgiven?”
We do it by remembering that we ourselves are in debt to Christ. This is what Jesus is getting at when he starts talking about masters and slaves, which makes sense when we think of forgiveness as having to do with debt. Most of the slaves in Israel during Jesus’ time were slaves because of financial debt. They owed something to their masters that they couldn’t pay back, which is why they were now slaves. They had to work off what they owed. Jesus starts by putting the apostles (and by extension us) in the position of the master - someone who is owed something. And Jesus points out that masters typically don’t forgive the debts of their slaves. They don’t invite them to “take their place at the table.” They hold them to their debt and insure that their slaves carry out the labour that is owed to them. This is what it’s like when we don’t forgive someone who has repented. They come to us and acknowledge that they owe us, and then we say, “Fine, get to work paying it off.” Not forgiving is, in fact, perfectly reasonable.
But then Jesus flips everything. He points out that we are not the masters, as we like to think. We are, in fact, the slaves. With our own master. This is why Luke calls Jesus “Lord” in this passage. Because we are slaves to our Lord Jesus. We are in debt to this Lord, and in order to work off that debt, we must work for Christ. And the work that our Lord demands of us is to cancel the debts that others owe us. Forgiving those who come to us in repentance is how our master, our Lord, wants us to work off our debt to him. It has nothing to do with what we believe about Christ. More or less faith is not the issue here. Forgiveness, as an act of Christian servitude, is.
Being slaves of our Lord Jesus means two things. First, and most important, it means that when our master goes into the kingdom of heaven, we go, too. That’s how it worked back then - what happened to the master happened to his whole household, slaves included. So being a slave of Christ means that our entrance into God’s kingdom is guaranteed. How we perform as slaves has nothing do with our salvation. Whether we work or not, whether we forgive or not, has no impact on our status with God.
The second thing it means is that we have to do what Jesus tells us to do. Because we are voluntary slaves. We accept the price our Lord has paid to free us from sin and we have chosen to give up being our own masters and to make Jesus our Lord. Every day that we get up and say, “I am a Christian,” we make that choice. Which means we have chosen to do everything Christ tells us to do. When he tells us to love our neighbours as ourselves, we do it. It’s hard, but we do it. When he tells us to give to the poor, we do it. When he tells us to cancel the debts, to forgive those who owe us and come to us in repentance, we do it.
Mulberry trees planted in the sea are pointless. They don’t do any good for anybody. But forgiveness makes lives better. There is a point to forgiveness. When we forgive others, we free them from the cycle of debt, and make their lives better. That this is what our Lord commands us to do is actually a blessing to us and to the world, and so we say, Thanks be to God. Amen.
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