This is a favourite theme of Matthew, continuing and concluding Jesus’ teaching that forgiveness is the life’s-blood of any Christian community. We cannot live together without upsetting one another, unwittingly, or even deliberately. So forgiveness is the vital step. So important is this matter of forgiveness that two consecutive Sunday gospels are devoted to it. It expands and stresses our petition in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others.’ The importance of this petition was already underlined by Matthew; it is the only petition of the Lord’s Prayer to which he adds at the end a confirmatory saying of Jesus. Like so many of Matthew’s parables, this one about a king and his servants revolves round contrasting characters, the ‘goodie’ and the ‘baddie’ (wedding-guests and guest without a wedding-garment; the two who use their talents and the one who hides it; the girls with and without oil for their lamps; the sheep and the goats; and here, the generous king and the ungenerous servant). There is also a contrast between the two sums of money which is deliberately fantastic: the first slave owes the equivalent of millions of dollars, a sum no private person could ever repay, let alone a slave; it is more than a year’s tax for a whole province. The second owes the couple of months’ wages of a casual labourer. Is there anyone you cannot forgive? Do you start the forgiveness-process, or wait for the other party? What is the best way to show forgiveness?