Matthew 18:21–35
(Editor’s note: Apologies that last week’s post was skipped!)
This passage from Matthew marks the end of an entire chapter on accountability, restorative justice, and forgiveness (as Ched Myers and Elaine Ends note in their book Ambassadors of Reconciliation, vol. 1). The parable here provides a stark contrast between a culture of debt-holding and retribution and a culture of forgiveness and restoration.
As Luise Schottroff reminds us in her book on parables, it is important to resist the tendency to read parables like this one and place God in the role of the king, supporting a view of divine retribution — even when, as in this case, the final verse seems to imply it. Surely, in what Schottroff calls an “eschatological” reading of the parable, which is to say reading it from the perspective of a community waiting for divine vindication, the point is not that God will punish you if you are not forgiving enough! Instead, the stark language of the parable is expressing the utter gulf between a community dedicated to restoration and mercy and a community contributed to retribution.
I am always hesitant to insist upon forgiveness as an ethical Christian imperative because of the ways that forgiveness language is weaponized against survivors of harm. But there are a number of actions and ways of being that fall under the term “forgiveness”: reconciliation, or restoration of relationship with someone; forgiveness in your own mind, that is, letting go of your own anger for your own sake regardless of how that affects how you relate to the other party; transactional forgiveness, that is, the willingness to accept restitution made to you without any further desire for relationship; and more. Each of these is different; none are required. But I wonder if underlying all of these is a commitment to what I might call mercy: a commitment to a kind of non-punitiveness or compassion, to what is often referred to in transformative justice/community accountability work as the recognition of the humanity of everyone involved (e.g. in this toolkit from CARA). It’s this way of being that I think this parable is calling the Christian community to — communally.
The point of this parable is that a community structured around non-punitiveness and a community structured around debt payment and retribution are entirely unalike, and God calls Christians to experience and practice a commitment to mercy. The way that works out in any particular situation of harm depends on the harm, the needs of the survivors, and the willingness of those responsible to take accountability and make amends. (For a fantastic and complementary Jewish perspective on this topic, see Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s book On Repentance and Repair.) A commitment to mercy, though, opens new possibilities for creative and life-giving forms of non-punitive accountability in line with compassion and dignity for all people.
Hannah Bowman is the founder and director of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons.