"How many times shall I forgive my brother, if he keeps on sinning against me?" Peter's question is one that we all have struggled with. How much do we tolerate? Where is the limit? When do we say enough! Stop this nonsense!

Behind Peter's question there was a genuine generosity of spirit. You see, in the Babylonian Talmud, which was a widely accepted authority for the Jewish people, there is a discussion of this very issue. The opinion offered there is that to forgive someone unconditionally three times is an acceptable maximum. This is how Peter had learned the law. In his question he was being extremely generous in suggesting that maybe he should forgive someone as many as seven times - more than twice as many times as the law required.

But, once again Jesus pushes people to both think and live differently as he makes an astounding reply to Peter's generous suggestion - "Not seven times, but seventy times seven." Now we can multiply that out and know that seventy times seven comes to 490. However, Jesus intention was not to suggest another precise number. He was not saying that we all ought to keep checklists and that when we get to 489 times we are almost done forgiving someone, that we go on to forgive them the 490th time, but then we are done. Rather, His intention seems to have been to come up with a number that was so high that it makes the point to us that we always have a responsibility to work at forgiving. In other words, our job is never totally done.

In fact, the words "Forgive us our debts" are followed by another phrase that many times is so easy to skip over. The words "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" are a reminder of God's call to us, a call for us to become people of faith. We need to be forgiven for the many times that we have fallen short, and here we ask God for forgiveness, but only to the extent that we have forgiven others.

In our text from the gospel of Luke we hear about the faith of the friends of the paralyzed man. They didn't have an easy time in trying to bring their friend to be healed. There was no way through the crowd. People were just packed in too tightly, but these friends were not to be deterred. They found a way. They carried their friend up to the rooftop, which must have been no easy task, and then moved some tiles aside to make a hole in the roof through which they lowered their friend down.

These were friends who had great determination. Just to get their friend to the rooftop was an exceedingly difficult task. Once there, you don't lightly make a hole in the roof of someone else's house. It's generally not appreciated, no matter how easy it might be to repair. But they were willing to take this drastic step and to accept responsibility for their actions, for they were not to be stopped in their efforts to bring their friend to Christ. Imagine for a moment if everyone in this church was as undiscouraged and determined to bring their needs to God as were the friends of this paralyzed man.

Jesus' response is noteworthy. To Him, body and soul were bound up together in a living unity. There could be no wholeness in life unless the soul was at peace with God. Therefore, He spoke directly to this man's first and most urgent need when He said, "Your sins are forgiven." Jesus knew that once this man's spiritual burden was taken care of, then strength and healing of the body could follow more easily. How often do we neglect that first and often more urgent need? How often do we ignore our spiritual burdens and concern ourselves only with the physical?

More and more we are rediscovering what many people in the time of Jesus just took for granted - that there is a connection between our spiritual health and our physical health. No one would contend that all diseases are caused by spiritual problems, for that is clearly not the case. Many diseases are caused by environmental hazards, bacteria and virus's which abound, and of course a whole host of other physical reasons. Yet it is also true that many times, healing can take place faster and more fully when there is spiritual health. We are beginning to learn what Jesus knew, namely that our physical and spiritual well-being are intertwined, and in our society the spiritual need is almost always the more neglected of the two. How often it is that a serious illness to a loved one causes people to rethink their priorities and to deepen their relationship with God, because suddenly they realize that they have not given that relationship all of the attention that it deserves. "Forgive us our debts..." we often say these familiar words without thinking about or understanding how vitally important is that forgiveness that we are asking for.

Think about it for a moment. We are all in debt to God. How can we repay the gift of life? And that's only the beginning of all that we owe - love, forgiveness, understanding, a world that abounds with beauty and abundance, hope even in the midst of dark times... The list goes on, and it is a listing of our debt to God. It is a debt that we can never fully pay. There's nothing that we can do that would be enough. It's like one person taking on our national debt. No one could even come close to paying the interest on it, much less repaying the principal as well.

Only God has the ability to deal with our debt to God, and God does so graciously and generously forgiving our debt through the self-giving of Jesus. In that example of Christ, God has said to us very clearly that that is how we too must live. If we would be followers of Jesus, then we need to be ready to go and forgive others, just as God has first forgiven us.

Peter's offer to forgive his brother as many as seven times, and Jesus' response that we must forgive seventy times seven, is followed by a wonderful parable - the parable of the Unforgiving Servant. I call it a wonderful parable, because I think it gets right to the heart of our relationship with God.

As you remember, a servant owes his king millions of dollars and does not have enough money to pay the debt. As was the custom of the day, the king is about to sell the servant and his family into slavery to recoup at least part of what is owed, when the servant asks him for patience, that in time he might repay this great debt that he owes. The king feels sorry for him and forgave him the debt.

This same servant goes out and encounters one of his fellow servants who owes him a few dollars. He demands immediate payment, even when his fellow servant begs for patience and time to repay him. Instead of forgiving the debt, he has his fellow servant thrown into jail, until he can repay the debt.

One of the other servants reports what has happened to the king, who is very angry, calls the servant in, and in no uncertain terms tells him that he should have had mercy on his fellow servant, just as the king was merciful towards him. The king then has this servant thrown into jail.

The parable concludes with Jesus' statement, "That is how my Father in heaven will treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

This parable reminds us that we are the servant with the large debt. We have an immense debt to God which we are unable to pay. That debt includes both our individual burden of sin (and that's plenty heavy just by itself), and also our debt of sin as part of a world community that allows injustice to take place unchallenged. How often have the people of this world plundered the world's natural resources without thinking of the future? Every night at least a billion people go to bed hungry, even though enough food is produced to feed everyone. The list could go on and on.

The point is that God has given us so much. God has given us priceless gifts, and now we discover that we are the servant in the parable. We are the ones who stand before God with an immense unpayable debt, and yet refuse to forgive others their debts to us - debts which are insignificant in comparison to the debt of sin that we regularly ask God to forgive us.

In the Lord's Prayer, the words "Forgive us our debts" are followed by the words, "as we forgive our debtors". In other words, we are asking God to treat us the same way we treat others. We are praying: Lord, forgive me the way that I forgive:
My neighbor who never has a kind word for me
My friend who gossips about me behind my back
My co-worker who purposely says things to get me mad
My parent or child who never appreciates all that I do .

Pray with me now as Jesus has taught us, that together we might ask God to forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

Amen.