I’m grateful that my mother raised me with a deep sense of right and wrong. I don’t mean to brag, but as a preacher, I’ve never been afraid to speak up for justice, for right, for goodness. There may be more accommodated, nervous little preachers who are fearful to call out some politician for his lies, his adultery or his greed. Oh, but not I. Because wrong is wrong. Debts must be paid. I want people to get what they deserve—especially when they’ve hurt me or others. Forgiveness? Sure. But not if it lets someone get off too easily. Not if forgiveness means allowing someone to get away with doing something for which they should be punished. Because well debts must be paid. Unpaid debts must be punished. Justice!

So when Peter asks Jesus, “How many times should I forgive? Uh, as many as seven?” At first I resist. Seven times? But then, upon further reflection, I say, “You know, why not? We’re Christians! Forgive ‘em once. If they do it again. Give ‘em a second chance. And if they wrong you a third time? Well, some people are slow to get the point. Forgive ‘em a fourth time. Goodness takes time. And for some, goodness doesn’t come naturally. They haven’t had the advantages that I’ve had. So, forgiven again. Forgiving seven times, well that’s more than generous.

But Jesus answers, “Not seven. Forgive seventy times seven.” How do you like them numbers?

We don’t. Do the numbers. Jesus is advocating forgiveness that’s over the top. Forgiveness, not as a procedure, a policy but a way of life. Forgive seventy times seven well a person could go around all day and doing nothing but forgiving!

While we’re still recovering from the shock of that seventy times seven, Jesus wallops us with a story about a servant who owes ten thousand talents. How much is that? I’ll tell you. Let me do the numbers: 150,000 years of wages! Bigger than the national debt. An absurd, cosmic, comic, over the top, laughable amount, this guy owes. It’s an impossible debt to pay back, an impossible debt to forgive!

Act one in the story the servant pleads for mercy. It’s kind of an absurd thing to ask considering the size of the debt. And the king… forgives it all. What? No questions. No installment plan. Just wild, reckless, over the top, forgiveness.

Then we come to act two. That same servant, fresh from being extravagantly forgiven, grabs a fellow servant by the throat over a debt of just a few bucks. “Pay me what you owe!” he threatens.

The king, who had forgiven the servant a huge debt, was, Jesus says,… displeased. Forgive others, Jesus says, in the same ridiculously, extravagant, reckless way that God has forgiven you. The story implies that Jesus says, “Hey look, when you are wronged, remember: I’ve forgiven you of a huge debt, your wrongs against me. Now, why don’t you try forgiving those who run up comparatively small debts to you?”

Seventy times seven. Is Jesus serious? I tell you, you go around forgiving debts, injustice, wrong doing. These crooks are going to think that the wrong-doing is okay for them to do it. And they’ll just do wrong again. Debts must be paid. Wrongs must be admitted and set right. There are limits! Boundaries on how much someone should be expected to forgive!

There are some wrongs that are so horribly wrong that forgiveness of the wrong is wrong. Mercy has its limits. No matter what Jesus says.

Jesus, give us a list of the wrongs that are so wrong that they don’t qualify for mercy. What would you say are the crimes and misdemeanors that are really out of bounds for forgiveness? Jesus, let's see your list.

Mercy is fine, I say as long as the perpetrator is sorry for what he’s done. Forgiveness? Yes, if the bad guy does time and is appropriately penitent. Jesus, give us a reasonable limit on how much we ought to forgive. Let’s be merciful, seven times? How you like those numbers?

And Jesus responds, seventy-times-seven times, extravagant, limitless, over the top forgiveness.

How you like those numbers?

I heard a scholar of world religions, Huston Smith, was asked at a gathering at Duke, “You know, after studying all the great religions of the world, you have noted things that those religions have in common. What’s one thing that Christianity has that’s unknown in other faiths?” Smith thought a moment and then he responded, “Forgiveness. No other faith teaches forgiveness of enemies, forgiveness seventy-times seven times.”

St. Augustine noted, in his church in 4th Century North Africa, when the congregation said the Lord’s Prayer and they came to the phrase in the Lord’s prayer “And forgive us our debts as we forgive the debts of others,” the congregation would go silent and then resume, “and lead us not into temptation….”

“At least they knew,” said Augustine, “that they had no intention of forgiving others as they had been forgiven so they knew they had no right to pray as Jesus taught.”

Of all the uplifting spiritual thoughts of Jesus, all the noble things he could say to us, why wallop us with this over the top story with these ridiculous numbers? I’m just an ordinary, limited person. I’m having trouble forgiving the family who left my congregation in a huff over a sermon I preached that they didn’t like! Jesus expects me to forgive seventy-times-seven families who don’t like my preaching? Well I mean I’d do nothing all day but just forgive all day long.

Twenty-two years ago a mechanic in my hometown of Greenville, South Carolina jilted me out of four hundred dollars. That was a week’s salary. He never paid me back. My response? When going up or down I-85 I drive thirty miles out of the way, just so I don’t have to come anywhere close to that guy’s garage.

Why would Jesus tell me this story? Seventy-times seven.

To which I hear Jesus reply, “Try it. Forgive in the same manner as I have forgiven you. I’ve forgiven you of the crimes against me far greater than anybody has committed against you. Come on, I’ll help you be the merciful forgiver I’ve created you to be.”

I preached on this very text, this week, years ago. And after the service a woman comes out of church, and she stands by the church door and she says, “Do you mean to tell me, that my abusive husband who made my life hell for fifteen years, whom I finally got the guts to walk out on, Jesus expects me to forgive him?”

Well I went into the usual defensive mode that we preachers have: “Well, ur, uh, spouse abuse is a horrible evil, and I certainly couldn’t tell you to forgive, and ur, uh, you know we only have about fifteen minutes for these sermons so I couldn’t qualify everything, but Jesus did say to forgive our enemies and I can’t think of a bigger enemy than your ex and though I wouldn’t necessarily say, he did say seventy-times-seven and that’s a whole lot of forgiveness so it kinda does sound like Jesus on a bad day and….”

Well she stood up to her full five foot two and said, “Thanks, just checking.”

Afterwards, as I divested in my study, Jesus spoke to me. “Now who told you that you were to protect her from me? When you look at her, all you see is a victim. ‘Oh, you’re a victim. Contort your voice into a whine, keep your head down, all moral responsibility is off your shoulders, you poor thing.’

But Jesus said, “When I look at her, I see one of my disciples. I’m fixin’ to turn the world upside down through her. She and I are going to put things right side up, if you’ll just get out of the way and let me talk to her as I please. When I said seventy-times-seven, who told you that I was kidding?”