Dear Friends in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Happy 250^th Anniversary to America!  The traditional motto of the United States “E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many One” has been the general theme of worship this summer at Lake of the Isles.  Out of many colonies, came one nation.  And out many religious traditions came one core conviction- a separation of church and state. Over the past three months we have celebrated the music and traditions of these 13 original colonies from Virginia to Georgia, and from the Pilgrims to the Quakers, and along the way, we have heard the stories of Pocahantas, Betsy Ross, Peter Stuyvesant, Lord Baltimore, William Penn, James Oglethorpe, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

250 years ago, in 1776, the future of the new nation was unclear. The signing of the Declaration of Independence was just the beginning.  Five more years of war would follow and when the Revolutionary War ended in 1781, the newly independent states were governed by the Articles of Confederation. However, with the states retaining considerable power, the central Federal government had insufficient power to unite the states into one nation. President George Washington was among those who feared the young country was on the brink of collapse.

In May of 1787, the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. By mid-June the delegates had decided to completely redesign the government into a federal republic. James Madison from Virginia was to be the primary author. After three more hot, summer months of highly charged debate, the new Constitution was ready for adoption in September 1787, but not all the 13 colonies would accept it. Some insisted that there needed to be a clear articulation of personal rights, including the freedom of religion. Without this, they would not approve the Constitution. So Madison went back to write the first ten amendments.

Madison was uniquely qualified for the challenge. He was born to a well-established Virginia planter family. Instead of attending William and Mary College, the Church of England school in his native Virginia, he enrolled at the training college for Presbyterian clergy, the College of New Jersey later named Princeton.  There he came under the intellectual and political influence of the college’s new president, a Scottish-born pastor John Witherspoon, whose stated goal was to foster a spirit of liberty and free inquiry and who opened the curriculum to currents of religious and political dissent.

After returning to Virginia, Madison was appalled to find that his own colony had jailed Elijah Craig, a Baptist preacher, for not being licensed to preach by the Church of England.  In the spring of 1776, he served on a committee with Thomas Jefferson preparing a Declaration of Rights for Virginia’s new constitution. He amended the draft language on tolerance of religious liberty by declaring “that all men are equally entitled to enjoy the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.”  No religion was to be looked upon as lesser than another that he needed to be tolerated.

Madison served in the Continental Congress from 1780 to 1783, followed by service in the Virginia Assembly. During his time, there was a movement to return to established state churches.  The governor of Virginia Patrick Henry proposed a tax to provide Christian teachers a modest salary. The bill would not have established any one single denomination for Virginia, but it would have made Christianity the official established religion. Madison argued that if government could establish Christianity over other religions, then it would also have the power to elevate one Christian group over another. For Madison, religion was a matter of individual conscience and giving legislators control over religious belief would inevitably lead to the violation of other basic rights.  Madison succeeded in defeating the religious tax bill and then spearheaded the passage of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

Interestingly, the words separation of Church and State never occurred in Madison’s First Amendment to the Constitution. The term was coined later by Thomas Jefferson in a letter from 1802 in which he stated there existed a “wall of separation between Church and State.”   Madison’s language was more nuanced. ”Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Madison’s 16 words may be split into two core ideas: First, The Establishment Clause: this states that the government cannot establish an official religion or promote one religion over another. Second, The Free Exercise Clause: this states the government cannot stop you from practicing your faith. Madison imagined these as constitutional bookends –one keeps religion out of government. The other keeps the government out of religion.

Surprisingly, on this Rally Sunday, I can tell you that Martin Luther had role in writing James Madison’s First Amendment.  In a letter to the Lutheran Pastor Frederik C. Schaeffer, dated December 3, 1821, James Madison wrote, “The religious and political liberty which we so eminently enjoy … may be traced to” Martin Luther’s doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, where God rules both church and state.”  For Madison, the two worked together in God’s sight.

Now you may be curious, so how is Pastor Haug going to weave Martin Luther, Rally Sunday, the 250^th anniversary of the United States, and the separation of church and state into Jesus’ Parable of Forgiveness 70 times 7?  I am wondering that as well. It’s an impossible task, but my friends,  so is the task set before the king in the forgiveness of the slave’s great debt. It is the impossible task we all may feel when we are called to forgive.  When is enough, enough?

Peter came to Jesus asking. “How many times shall I forgive my brother?”  Mind you, Peter didn’t wait for an answer. He already had one. He said, “Seven times?” He knew what the Rabbis taught. You had to forgive a man three times and then you could retaliate. So Peter thought to himself, “Well, I’ll just double that and add one.”   And Jesus answered Peter, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”  In some translations that is 70 times7.  Peter couldn’t believe it.  Did Jesus truly mean that forgiveness was to be unlimited?

Jesus then told the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. The slave owed his master, the king, the equivalent of $10 million dollars.  It was a debt impossible for either the man or his family to pay.  Surprisingly, when the servant pleaded with the king to have patience, the king was moved and stunningly forgave the debt, and then allowed the servant to go free. Moments later that very same servant, who had experienced such a grand gesture of grace and mercy, came upon a fellow servant who owed him the sum of just a single day’s wages.  He grabbed him by the neck and demanded he pay his debt.  When he begged him to have mercy, the first servant threw him into prison.  Needless to say, the other servants were shocked, and they reported this act of disrespect and pettiness to the king.  Though the servant had once been freed from his debt, he suddenly discovered that the king had changed his sentence, and he was now imprisoned and tortured.

No doubt, for most people, the parable teaches them that it is important to forgive others as they themselves are forgiven by God.  But my friends, what if the lesson is more complex?  What if the parable is really meant to teach us about the sin that God chooses to forget, and that which he “cannot.”  I have said those words in counseling sessions.  God will forgive you one day, but not yet. You need to atone with those you have wronged first. It is at the heart of the Jewish teaching of forgiveness.  Only those who are wronged have the right forgive.  It is not a power given to the state, a judge or even a supreme court. Governments cannot mandate forgiveness. Forgiveness is a matter of personal conscience, and only those who have suffered, are entitled to forgive.  Sins between God and man, God will forgive, but not the sins between you and your neighbor. That is your responsibly 77 times, and at times it may seem impossible.

In our world today, we may be overwhelmed by the political, racial and social injustices which are woven into our society, and so we hold grudges against those who differ in political opinion or practice. Indeed, we may be so obsessed with the sins of others that we lose sight of our own failings. That is precisely what happened in the parable. The servant who had been forgiven much failed to offer the forgiveness he had been shown.

Now you may be wondering, since none of us is without sin, where are we to find the strength to forgive others- especially if we can’t find it within ourselves?  My friends, you must begin by walking that well-worn path to the place beneath the cross of Calvary.  Only a handful of Jesus’ followers heard his voice that long, Friday afternoon. They watched as he was crucified, and suffered on the cross. They saw Jesus’ lips begin to tremble.  Suddenly, the crowd was silent. They were trying to hear what he was mumbling.  “Is he cursing us?” shouted the High Priest.  “Is he begging for mercy?” laughed one of the Roman soldiers.  “Maybe he is calling on his heavenly Father to send down lightning bolts from heaven to strike us all dead,” sneered one of the Pharisees.  But they were all mistaken.  For Jesus was neither cursing, begging nor threatening.  What he was saying was, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

My friends, forgiveness is often an impossible task.  But we do it because God first forgave us. It is an act of personal conscience, faith if you will, which cannot be legislated or dictated. James Madison understood the power and potential of this truth. So much so, that he could dare to write, That is “The religious and political liberty which we so eminently enjoy.” As citizens of this 250 year old United States of America, that is the truth and conviction that makes for greatness.  Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and mind in Christ Jesus. Amen.