The Mexican parliament, apparently, has been holding hearings into UFOs.

At one of those hearings…

a Mexican journalist and UFO enthusiast…

showed the gathered politicians what seemed to be two small bodies in display cases.

The bodies appeared to have elongated heads and only three fingers on each hand.

Claiming that they were found in Peru in two-thousand-and-seventeen…

the journalist alleged that they had been carbon-dated by experts at Mexico’s National University… 

and were found to be more than a thousand years old.

However, the images telecast—

and the claims made—

have been met with considerable international scepticism.

The journalist involved has previously made claims about extra-terrestrial life…

which have been resolutely debunked.

Peru’s Culture Minister pointed out that no scientific institution in her country had identified the remains as non-human…

and also demanded to know how they had left Peru.

Others have pointed out that… 

in the past…

similar finds have turned out to be simply the remains of mummified children.

Aliens among us…

the Loch Ness monster…

Bigfoot…

and Bunyips—

there is no end, it would seem, to amusingly absurd…

and simply unbelievable stories…

that have been told down the centuries.

 

This morning’s parable from Matthew’s Gospel is no less unbelievable:

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king, who wished to settle accounts with his slaves…

One who owed him ten thousand talents was brought.

As he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children…

So the slave fell on his knees, begging,

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’. Out of pity, the master released him and forgave him the debt”.

A slave owes his master ten thousand talents.

To appreciate the ludicrousness of such a scenario…

let’s put that into context.

That would have been about twelve times the annual taxation for the whole of first-century Palestine.

It was equivalent to a year’s wages for more than a quarter of a million workers.

So, in today’s terms, ten thousand talents represent something like thirteen billion dollars.

Thirteen… billion… dollars!

It’s an inconceivable amount.

It’s utterly absurd in its enormity.

There’s no way that any person—

let alone any slave— 

could owe his master that much…

even if his master were a king;

even if he happened to be the senior bureaucrat who managed his master’s affairs;

and even if he had been involved in some pretty serious embezzling.

A slave owes his master the equivalent of thirteen billion dollars.

It’s an overwhelmingly…

astonishingly…

incredibly…

preposterously…

outrageously…

unbelievable amount.

And then, just as absurdly, the king writes off this ridiculously enormous debt.

He lets the buffoon of a slave off, scott-free.

It’s a truly strange, bizarre, and unbelievable story.

And that’s precisely the point.

No one would do that.

No one in their right mind would act like that.

And yet, the author wants us to believe that God is like that;

that God loves, and accepts, and forgives us like that—

no matter what we have done… 

no matter what we continue to do;

that God’s love and forgiveness is greater than we can imagine or conceive;

that God’s love and forgiveness knows absolutely no limit… 

no boundary…

and no measure.

 

But, even more than that…

in the parable, the King completely wipes the servant’s debt.

He doesn’t arrange for the servant to pay it off in instalments.

Nor does anyone else pay it on his behalf.

The king simply cancels the debt—

no ifs, no buts.

And the author wants us to believe that God forgives us like that:

that God doesn’t need—

let alone demand—

any form of payment in order to do so.

All of which undermines the commonly held idea that Jesus’ death was about God forgiving us…

and that, without Jesus’ death, God couldn’t forgive us.

Not so, according to this parable.

God loves. 

God is gracious and generous.

And, because God chooses to do so, God simply forgives.

Period.

God’s love—

God’s forgiveness—

is totally unearned and unconditional.

 

But, you know, most of us have a hard time accepting that.

We have a hard time believing it—

deep down…

in the very depths and core of our beings.

If we’re honest, most of us…

most of the time… 

think, “yeah, God loves me”…

and we might find that comforting and reassuring…

especially when life is a struggle…

when things go wrong…

and when we need some hope or comfort to cling to.

But, apart from that, we go about our lives just the same.

It doesn’t really make a difference.

We struggle to love… 

without placing conditions or expectations—

on ourselves or on each other.

We struggle to forgive…

even when the hurts that we experience are—

in the scheme of things—

often fairly minor and insignificant.

We even end up turning God’s freely-offered…

limitless…

unconditional love and grace…

into a series of shoulds and oughts…

that we impose on others and use to beat ourselves up with.

And it seems completely ingrained.

I mean, even our author couldn’t help himself.

After all, the further he goes with this parable…

the more it ends up deconstructing itself.

 

First of all, we have Jesus suggesting—

in response to Peter’s question—

that genuine forgiveness has no limits.

And yet, as the parable transpires, the king’s grace and forgiveness become rather limited.

The king doesn’t forgive repeatedly.

In fact, he takes back his forgiveness when the servant fails to forgive once.

So, in the end, the parable completely contradicts the setting that gives rise to it.

 

And, secondly, he ends up turning a parable about God’s awesome love and forgiveness into a warning—

or even a threat—

suggesting that God only forgives us if we forgive others…

so that we ought to forgive others… 

or else!

No! 

That’s just our flawed and screwed-up human way of thinking;

that’s just us struggling to grasp the generosity of God’s grace;

that’s just us struggling to comprehend the radicalness of God’s forgiveness.

In the end, God is not like the king of Matthew’s parable.

God is not bound by our presumptions and preconditions.

God is not constrained by our expectations and projections.

And neither is God’s grace limited by our response to it.

 

And perhaps we do need to hear that over and over again…

because it is so hard for us to believe…

it’s so hard for us to accept.

Because if we really did believe it…

if we knew that we were totally…

utterly…

undeservedly…

unconditionally loved;

if we knew ourselves to be so completely forgiven—

utterly and unreservedly—

then, surely, it would change the way that we see ourselves…

the way that we see others…

and the way that we live;

and, surely, it would change the way that we think and breathe…

and the way that we relate—

not least the way that we relate to God.

If we truly knew ourselves to be totally, utterly, unreservedly loved and forgiven…

then, perhaps, we might become the people we would like to be;

we might become the people God intends us to be.

And no amount of shoulds, oughts, or threats will do that!