Forgive Us Our Debts

 Forgiveness of something important is always difficult and oftentimes morally complex. Certainly this is true for the forgiveness of monetary debt.

Who has the right to decide who can have their debts forgiven and how much are economic, moral, and also political questions. It is understandable that there is unease in today's announcement of large-scale forgiveness of student loans.

One Scripture I've seen going around is the story of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20). This is a story about unmerited financial gain. Yet it is also a story about unemployment. We might ask ourselves if its a story about grace or about justice? Or is it both?

One difference between this story and today's announcement is the fact that the vineyard owner had sole claim to his own land and money. What was forgiven today, on the other hand, was public money. And so in order for the story to track closer to what happened today, we'd have to have it that the laborers had some financial stake in not only the money that they received, but also in the money that was given away. This difference makes this parable not an altogether neat parallel for today's pronouncment.

Yet still, there is the inherently unjust, dehumanizing, and economically paralyzing conditions shared by both the workers in the parable and the debtors of today. And in both cases, there is a monetary remedy which in one way can be seen as grace (somebody getting something for nothing) or, alternatively, as justice (a community getting reset from exploitation). And there are the still-relevant-today words spoken by the land owner in the parable, "Is your eye evil because I am good?" And there is also the question, can anybody or system be good that holds so much power over others?

These are difficult questions without easy answers. Let us be generous with one another as we wrestle with them.

And a final point: I know where I believe Jesus would be tonight -- celebrating somewhere with his still-generationally poor friends the end to their $300 monthly payment which helped by rich kids in the classes behind them a lazy river and new indoor practice field in the arms race now ruling higher education.

With them he would celebrate, splurging maybe for a bottle of wine, some tapas, and praying over it all these words:

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."

This, and the even more morally complex idea he came preaching at the beginning of his ministry -- the year of absolute Jubilee.