Remembering the Future: Matthew 18 and
Deuteronomy 15
Willie Young
Endicott College
In his discussion of Leviticus,
Robert Gibbs raised the possibility that keeping
open a future may be one of the most fundamentally
important functions of law. The law against taking
interest, and against selling into slavery, keeps the
future of one's brother (or sister) open. As Gibbs
highlights, because the brother, as God's servant, is
one of those whom God liberated from slavery in
Egypt, one cannot exact an absolute claim over his
rights. The one in debt, while serving others, will
be God's servant as well. In what follows, I would
like to reflect upon how Matthew 18 keeps open the
future of our brothers, and consider if the modality
of the future in this text differs from that of
Leviticus.
In Matthew 18, as
Dan Hardy has laid out for us, the character and
integrity of the king take on a central place.
Character, as growing from one's history and
relations with others, develops over time, and is
displayed in narrative. In this parable, however, the
king's character not only grows from the past, but
extends into the future. It does so—or is supposed to
do so—through the impression that it makes on the
character of others; in receiving mercy from the
king, the servant should realize that he is to be
merciful to others: "I forgave you all that debt
because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had
mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?"
(18:32-3) So, too, Jesus' followers are to be
forgiving of others, as God has forgiven them (35).
It is through their receiving of mercy, that this
mercy extends from past action into the future.
With its story of being freed from debt-bondage
and slavery, Jesus' parable of the wicked servant
implicitly recalls the story of Exodus. Perhaps more
indirectly, it closely follows the logic of
Deuteronomy 15, in which the narrative of Exodus
frames the injunction for keeping the Jubilee year.
The institution of the jubilee exemplifies what
Ricoeur calls the "logic of abundance"—God generously
blesses the recipient of the command, who is then to
give generously to others. This contrasts with the
demand for exact remuneration, the "logic of
equivalence" that so often determines the economic
sphere. In particular, in Deuteronomy 15 one should
"willingly lend enough to meet the need, whatever it
may be"—one's own holdings are, in a sense, in the
hands of one's neighbor. One should not be
"hard-hearted or tight-fisted," evoking Pharaoh, but
give or provide liberally, and when a slave is freed
they should partake of the bounty "with which the
LORD your God has blessed you"(14). One can, I think,
see the king's taking pity on the slave, and
forgiveness of this debt, as parallel to the Lord's
blessing, and the injunction this entails.
While the command to give is given, the question
remains: why follow this command? Here, the Exodus
story comes to the forefront:
Remember that you were a slave in the land of
Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; for this
reason I lay this command upon you today (15:15).
There is a different emphasis in this text than in
Leviticus. It is not God's claim on the debtor that
must be recognized, but rather God's claim on the
lender, which legitimates the command. As the
lender has been freed and blessed, so too the lender
is to free and bless others, through the jubilee
cycle. The emphasis, here, is that you were a
slave—you were in the shoes (or, in the need for
shoes) of your neighbor, and God showed compassion to
you, so you should do likewise.[1]
If the language of Jesus' parable evokes Exodus,
the end of the parable brings out this vocative
dimension of the command. The servant's failure is
precisely to see that king's character as placing an
injunction upon him. By saying God will do to them as
the king has done to the servant, unless they forgive
their brothers and sisters, Jesus effectively places
the disciples and readers in the servant's shoes, as
one who has received mercy, and now is to live that
out in compassion. Matthew 18 thus functions as a
commentary on Deuteronomy 15, and a call for
forgiveness as demanded by the law. Both texts
emphasize the hearing of Exodus as a story in which
one lives, addressed to "you"—as having been a
servant, as now a lender, and thus potentially in the
position of the Egyptian, unless you emulate God's
character. Obedience, here, is best understood as
emulation of the generous redemption that God
practices in Exodus, and in providing for the people,
so as to remove the enslaving need for debt.
Perhaps a stereotypical Christian reading would,
at this point, contrast "forgiving from one's heart"
with following the law of Deuteronomy, as an
internalization or spiritualization of the law. In my
view, this would be deeply mistaken. From a
scriptural reasoning view, though, Deuteronomy
likewise calls for forgiveness of debts from one's
heart; one must "be careful that you do not entertain
a mean thought," which would lead one to lend less
generously, and become hostile to neighbors in
need.[2] Likewise, one should
not resent sending out one's servants as free
persons—"because for six years they have given you
services worth the wages of hired laborers" (15:18).
One must recognize God's generosity, but this also
means seeing the neighbor's service as, itself,
given to you. I would suggest, as a
hypothesis, that we understand this in the following
way: the neighbor's service and labor (and, perhaps
we could say, all economic resources) are lent
to us, by God, but this ought to shape how we lend to
others (and, how we release them from debts). The
logic of abundance reshapes how we envision economic
practices themselves—somewhat as
Basit Koshul suggests in his essay, all property
and labor is on loan.
In reading these texts intertextually, I would
suggest that they elucidate an important condition
for law to open the future: that the law, as command,
should be heard as concretizing and imitating the
mercy and grace of God's activity in the biblical
narrative. By calling us to see ourselves in the
story, the law thereby shifting our perspective on
one another and the practices that bind us, the law
lets us imagine ourselves in different social
positions, and creates a space for new relations. It
is in these new relations, through the loosening of
social bonds in mercy and forgiveness, that the
jubilee might enact the renewal of creation, and
bring us to participation in the character of the
king. Does this mean, then, that the law is in a
certain way parabolic?
The displacement of identity in these texts raises
an important possibility as to how scriptural
reasoning may contribute to discussions of poverty
and debt. It is possible that scriptural reasoning
may discover new ways of thinking about these issues
that go beyond economic and political theory. That
remains to be seen. However, the reading of these
texts, in tandem with other traditions, enables
social re-positioning, which may cultivate
alternative bonds of solidarity, and thereby
indirectly create new approaches to these issues. The
contribution of scriptural reasoning, then, may be in
cultivating a practice in which through these texts,
the social roles (which are constituted by political
and economic power) that we take for granted are
troubled, so that we can imagine alternative
distributions of power. In recognizing that lenders
were debtors, does this help us to envisage a day
when those in debt will be free?[3]
ENDNOTES
[1]In the Leviticus text,
Gibbs notes that both the debtor and lender are God's
servants, but the emphasis seems to be far stronger
on the debtor's service to God, whereas here it is
otherwise.
[2]It is true that in
Deuteronomy, this command only applies to one's
fellow people. Foreigners may still be enslaved.
However, one could say that a similar limitation to
forgiveness applies in Matthew, where forgiveness may
only be for brothers and sisters in the
ecclesia. This limitation is obviously
significant, but goes beyond what I can address
here.
[3]As I finish this response,
the G8 has been meeting in Scotland. How might the
discourse of environmental responsibility and
debt-release be different, if the G8 saw itself not
simply as those who use the most resources, and hold
the debts of African nations? What if, as in these
texts, we learned to see ourselves as (always
already) having been debtors?
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