Peter approached Jesus and asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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Today’s parable on forgiveness, unique to Saint Matthew, creates a fascinating blend between the fear of punishment and the experience of gratitude.
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Imagine Saint Peter cautiously approaching Jesus. The good news / bad news is that Peter has another question. He’s held onto it as long as he can. Afraid of how Jesus might answer – and rightly so – Peter swallows the lump in his throat and asks:
“Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Peter didn’t just pick a number; seven was considered the outward limit of generosity.
“I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times,” Jesus says. Meaning, without limit.
I’d imagine Peter looked down at the ground, shuffled his feet, slid his hands back into his pockets, and exhaled exasperated, thinking to himself, “Well, that’s simply impossible.”
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Peter has yet to learn the inner dynamics of forgiveness. So, Jesus tells him a parable about a king whose servants were subject to his authority. One of the king’s servants owed him an incredible amount of money – a debt so large the man could’ve never repaid it.
Because of his compassion, the king released the man from his debt. But when the man got home, he then choked someone else who owed him a much smaller debt – pennies on the dollar. When word got back to the king, he was enraged, and punished the man severely.
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Clearly in the parable, God is the king and we are his subjects. Because the Lord forgives us of our every trespass, he expects us to extend the same kindness towards others. But this begs the question, “Why is it so difficult for us to forgive others?”
While there may be a variety of reasons, perhaps one is this – we have not genuinely felt forgiven by God. Whether we fail to understand the weight of our sin, or feel encumbered by guilt or shame, God’s forgiveness can feel elusive. Too good to be true.
Only those who’ve experienced the inner freedom, this fruit of grace, can extend it to others. Do I often feel forgiven by God? Or does that feeling remain elusive to me?
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May we forgive from our heart, lest we forfeit God’s own forgiveness towards us.
Jesus said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth: “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
The Gospel of the Lord.
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According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus inaugurates his public ministry by returning to his hometown of Nazareth, where he enters the local synagogue, sits down and reads from the prophet Isaiah.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free.”
Rolling up the scroll, Jesus then claims, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Initially, the crowds are filled with excitement and anticipation. But then the reality of what Jesus said begins sinking in. He is the one whom God has sent. “How could a lowly carpenter – someone whom they knew for years – be the Messiah?” they wonder.
Suddenly, praise morphs into rejection as they drive Jesus to the edge of a hill, hoping to push him off. Somehow, he escapes the madness.
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What happened at the beginning of his public ministry also happens at the end. Just as Jesus was rejected by the crowds in Nazareth, so they will turn on him in Jerusalem.
On Palm Sunday, they cheer Hosanna in the highest! But five days later, they change their tune to Crucify him!
The crowds remind us of the fragility of public opinion, how quick people can be to judge, to draw false conclusions, even to nearly push God off the brow of a hill.
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During this season of Lent, perhaps we can work on toning down the rhetoric – both nationally and in our own social circles. Make the effort to listen before we speak. To seek to understand. To think before we act.
Sometimes people are unfairly rejected or condemned as criminals.
Jesus was, too.
Sadly, the cycle can repeat itself when we fail to see Christ in distressing disguise.
Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” —For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.— Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back.” The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus answered her, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one speaking with you.”
At that moment his disciples returned, and were amazed that he was talking with a woman, but still no one said, “What are you looking for?” or “Why are you talking with her?” The woman left her water jar and went into the town and said to the people, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Christ?” They went out of the town and came to him. Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” So the disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘In four months the harvest will be here’? I tell you, look up and see the fields ripe for the harvest. The reaper is already receiving payment and gathering crops for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For here the saying is verified that ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for; others have done the work, and you are sharing the fruits of their work.”
Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I have done.” When the Samaritans came to him,
they invited him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. Many more began to believe in him because of his word, and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your word; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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One of the first widely produced books in the United States was The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It’s a historical novel whose central character is a young woman named Hester Prynne, who has a child outside of marriage.
Shamed by her Puritan neighbors, Hester is forced to wear scarlet “A” on her arm as a reminder to all that she is a sinner.
She becomes an outcast, the type of person who’d avoid the scorn of others by going to the well at noon, much like the woman in today’s Gospel.
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John does not tell us exactly why this woman in the Gospel is alone or why she’s gathering water in the blistering heat; it was customary to go in the morning with one’s peers when the weather was coolest.
We can only assume that this woman has a sinful past, having been married five times – and now being associated with a sixth man.
The real question is not, “Was she a sinner?” But, “Why does John not tell us her name?”
John names several other important women in his Gospel, including Mary, the Mother of God, Martha and Mary of Bethany, who provide Jesus with a meal and anoint his feet with perfume, as well as Mary Magdalene, the first person to witness the Risen Christ.
The woman at the well is just as important to John’s story. She has the longest recorded conversation with Jesus in all of the Gospels. She’s the first person to whom Jesus reveals his divine identity, and she’s the first person to share her faith with others.
Why does she remain anonymous?
Perhaps to say, she could be any one of us.
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Her experience offers us three different Lenten meditations.
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We begin with the image of her walking to the well alone, giving the impression she’s been rejected by her peers; life has not turned out the way she wanted.
Perhaps our Lenten journey feels similar. We began with such hope for spiritual growth, but have found the weight of temptation or the pull of routines to be too heavy for us as old habits reemerge.
Maybe we’ve learned the humbling truth that we’re not as strong as we had hoped to be.
Still, the Lord meets us at the well, breaking the separation that may have grown between us. “Give me a drink,” he says. Jesus is thirsting – not for water – but for our love. We still have much of ourselves to give him.
In what ways might we renew our effort this Lent?
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Second, notice the Lord approaches the well empty-handed.
While his disciples head off into town, Jesus sits and waits. His skin is darkening in the sun, and his throat is becoming parched, as beads of sweat drip down his face. Peering into the watery abyss, he draws in the damp, earthy aroma – and thirsts.
In his humanity, the Son of God is helpless. He has no means of scooping water out of the well himself. So, he waits for this woman to appear with her water jar.
Christ remains thirsty today, crying out from the arid mouths of the unwelcome and the marginalized, “I thirst.” Lent is the appointed time for us to be particularly generous – and attentive – to the needs of the poor.
What is my “water jar”? How can I quench the thirst of Christ in others?
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After her unexpected encounter with Jesus, this woman leaves her jar at the well. Her focus shifting from the need for physical water to her desire for the deeper, eternal life-giving spring of the Spirit.
She discovers what we all must, that “Man does not live on bread (or water) alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” Only God can satisfy our deepest thirst. This woman learns it – and shares it.
Notice she is not called to live out her faith in another town; she returns to share with the same people whom she avoided earlier in the day. She reminds us that humility, reconciliation, and faith-sharing are all part of being a disciple of Jesus.
In what ways might I share my faith with others?
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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlett Letter, may have more in common with this Gospel passage than we realize at first.
At the end of the story, the father of Hester Prynne’s child is revealed: it was the minister in town, reminding us that no human is immune to sin.
As we enter into these final few weeks of Lent, may we double-down on our effort to repent and believe in the Gospel.
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Image credits: (1) The Bible App (2) Today’s Catholic (3) Resurrection Orthodox Presbyterian Church
