I’ve changed my approach to reading the Bible. I have been trying to interpret  scripture from a decolonizing lens. I ask myself: Who in this passage is the most vulnerable? Who or what is the most marginalized? How might the most vulnerable person in this text interpret this passage as good news?

Over the past year or so, an Episcopal friend and I have read the Episcopal lectionary together every few days. The lectionary is a set of readings from the Gospels, the Old Testament and the Psalms. This has been a new practice for me and an opportunity to look at scripture through a decolonizing lens. It has been revealing! I see that the typical perspective I learned in Sunday school is the perspective of the powerful. 

In Matthew 18:23-35, Jesus tells the story of a servant who owes a debt to a king, more than he can pay. The king plans to sell him, his wife and children and all of their possessions to satisfy the debt. The servant begs the king to be patient with him, and the king takes pity on him, forgiving his debt and releasing him from service. The servant then encounters another servant who owes him a tiny fraction of the debt for which he had just been forgiven. The second servant begs the first for patience as well, using the same words the first servant had used to appeal to the king for mercy. Rather than forgiving the second servant, the first servant has him thrown into prison.  

The king is told about the behavior of the servant he had forgiven. The king calls the first servant back and punishes him — “until he would pay his entire debt” — for not showing mercy to his fellow servant. But wait: Hadn’t the king forgiven his debt? Is it possible he must repay the debt of his brother servant?

In Sunday school, I was taught to view this story from the top down, where the king is God, illustrating the punishment that might be administered for not showing mercy when one has received mercy. In this interpretation, the protagonist is the king, the first servant is a selfish villain and the second servant is a victim.  

But who is the most vulnerable person in the story? It is not the king. Jesus was not talking to a crowd who might view the king as a benevolent hero. Jesus was talking to a colonized people, occupied by a mighty empire. 

The most vulnerable person in this story is the first servant. He is enslaved by a king. He is the captive of the person at the top of a hierarchy in a society that affirms slavery. He owes more money than he can repay, and his family could be harmed as a result. When looking through a decolonizing lens, I ask myself: How can this story be good news for him?  

I find I have the most in common with the first servant. Many aspects of my life and the life of my people are arbitrarily administered by an authority that serves interests different from our own. Our lands and communities are held in bondage. As an individual, I have been affirmed in some ways, making it possible for me to turn my back on my people in favor of accumulating wealth for myself and my immediate family. I could ignore the suffering of my people. That would be the pathway most affirmed in our individualist society. But what impact would this have on my children? How can I be free while my people suffer in bondage?

I wonder if this story is about solidarity. The harm that occurs is not simply that the first servant is selfish but that he does not identify with the second servant. The king is neither benevolent nor even good. He is the manifestation of an unjust society. While he shows mercy to one person, that does not account for a society that affirms slavery. The king is not an embodiment of “release for the captive,” the good news Jesus proclaims in the Gospel of Luke.  

When we look through the perspective of the vulnerable, perhaps the lesson here is that the first servant does not understand that his liberation is bound up with the liberation of his brother. He cannot be free as long as his brother is in bondage. I believe the debt he is ultimately imprisoned to repay is the debt of his brother. 

This story is not a moralistic caution: Be merciful or God will punish you. Rather, it is an explanation of a fundamental reality: We are interdependent. None of us can be free until we are all free. 

This makes sense of the story that precedes Jesus’ parable. Peter asks who will be first in the kin-dom of heaven, and Jesus points to the children. Jesus says if anyone puts a stumbling block before the little ones, “it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). If you fall, I fall. Your salvation is mine. Our salvation is bound up together.