Be extravagant
from Helen
There is a story about a young boy in Korea who was a houseboy for some American soldiers. Sometimes they thought it was funny to play harmless jokes on him. They would tease him. They would tie his shoe laces together. They would lock him out of the house.
Eventually they realized that their practical jokes were not viewed as funny by the boy so they apologized. He said, “That’s okay, I will stop spitting in your soup now.”
This morning in our readings we have heard about the word forgiveness. From Joseph in the Old Testament reading (Genesis 50:15-21) to the parable that we heard of Jesus telling in our gospel reading (Matthew 18:21-35) we heave heard of forgiveness, the need to forgive and to accept that we have been forgiven.
Someone once asked an elderly Christian lady, “Does the devil ever trouble you about your past sins?” She answered, “Yes.” When the inquirer asked what she did then, she replied, “Oh, I just tell him to go east.”
“What do you do if he comes back?”
“I tell him to go west.”
“And when he comes back from the west, what do you do then?”
She said, “I just keep him going from the east to the west.”
This is part of our Psalm this morning, that, “As far as the east is from the west, so far as he removed our sins from us.”
Our readings today have spoken of the need for forgiveness and the need to forgive. In our Old Testament reading we heard of Joseph, who had been abandoned and sold off by his brothers, now being in a position of great power. He as the one in charge of the food in Egypt was able to help his brothers who were starving, due to a famine. Joseph had the opportunity to forgive or not to forgive. Joseph reacted by both forgiving them and helping them. By doing this he was acting to the forgiveness that God had given him.
I often wonder what it would be like if, instead of getting angry and holding a grudge we all forgave. It is an interesting thought. Just imagine though how great life would be if people stopped saying, ‘I will never forgive them for what they’ve done’, and instead moved on and forgave fully by forgetting what had been done to them.
We then moved on to our gospel (Matthew 18:21-35). When Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive he would have known about the tradition from the rabbis that you could forgive someone for doing the same offence to you 3 times but then it was done. Peter probably thought that he was being extravagant by going beyond the three times to seven. Jesus’ response suggests forgiveness that is even more.
He then told a parable that is laughable in some ways. This is because the servant went to the King and asked for his debt to be excused and to be given time to repay. The amount he owed was an impossible amount to pay. A writer called Josephus writing around the time of Jesus calculated the taxes in Judea, Idumea and Samaria as coming to 600 talents, which he said would take 150,000 years to pay off. There was no way that the man in the parable Jesus told would be able to pay off his 10, 000 talents.
The King had been forgiving and basically excused this man whose response wasn’t good at all as he attacked someone who owed him a lot less and made them go to prison. This reminds us that forgiveness, which is so much more than we could imagine, must be accepted and make us want to act differently. We have been given the best gift ever, forgiveness and the promise of life everlasting. God has blessed us extravagantly but this means that we are to be extravagant back. Extravagant in our love for God, putting Him first, extravagant in our love for others putting them first and extravagant in the ways that we forgive others even when it seems to make no sense to do so.
If you think about it, beyond technicolour dreamcoats, Joseph could have treated his brothers incredibly badly and it would have seemed justified, except for the fact that God is extravagant in His love and forgiveness and we are to be the same.
We need to not just accept that we have been forgiven, we need to forgive. It seems so annoying at times but we are called to forgive as we have been forgiven. It isn’t easy. Corrie ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn't sleep. Finally Corrie cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest. “This help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor," Corrie wrote, "to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks." "Up in the church tower," he said, nodding out the window, "is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there's a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we've been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn't be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They're just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down." "And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force -- which was my willingness in the matter -- had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether: we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts."
This is how we accept the forgiveness that God offers by forgiving others extravagantly as we give thanks to the one who loves and forgives us extravagantly. May we be extravagant in our love and forgiveness. AMEN
There is a story about a young boy in Korea who was a houseboy for some American soldiers. Sometimes they thought it was funny to play harmless jokes on him. They would tease him. They would tie his shoe laces together. They would lock him out of the house.
Eventually they realized that their practical jokes were not viewed as funny by the boy so they apologized. He said, “That’s okay, I will stop spitting in your soup now.”
This morning in our readings we have heard about the word forgiveness. From Joseph in the Old Testament reading (Genesis 50:15-21) to the parable that we heard of Jesus telling in our gospel reading (Matthew 18:21-35) we heave heard of forgiveness, the need to forgive and to accept that we have been forgiven.
Someone once asked an elderly Christian lady, “Does the devil ever trouble you about your past sins?” She answered, “Yes.” When the inquirer asked what she did then, she replied, “Oh, I just tell him to go east.”
“What do you do if he comes back?”
“I tell him to go west.”
“And when he comes back from the west, what do you do then?”
She said, “I just keep him going from the east to the west.”
This is part of our Psalm this morning, that, “As far as the east is from the west, so far as he removed our sins from us.”
Our readings today have spoken of the need for forgiveness and the need to forgive. In our Old Testament reading we heard of Joseph, who had been abandoned and sold off by his brothers, now being in a position of great power. He as the one in charge of the food in Egypt was able to help his brothers who were starving, due to a famine. Joseph had the opportunity to forgive or not to forgive. Joseph reacted by both forgiving them and helping them. By doing this he was acting to the forgiveness that God had given him.
I often wonder what it would be like if, instead of getting angry and holding a grudge we all forgave. It is an interesting thought. Just imagine though how great life would be if people stopped saying, ‘I will never forgive them for what they’ve done’, and instead moved on and forgave fully by forgetting what had been done to them.
We then moved on to our gospel (Matthew 18:21-35). When Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive he would have known about the tradition from the rabbis that you could forgive someone for doing the same offence to you 3 times but then it was done. Peter probably thought that he was being extravagant by going beyond the three times to seven. Jesus’ response suggests forgiveness that is even more.
He then told a parable that is laughable in some ways. This is because the servant went to the King and asked for his debt to be excused and to be given time to repay. The amount he owed was an impossible amount to pay. A writer called Josephus writing around the time of Jesus calculated the taxes in Judea, Idumea and Samaria as coming to 600 talents, which he said would take 150,000 years to pay off. There was no way that the man in the parable Jesus told would be able to pay off his 10, 000 talents.
The King had been forgiving and basically excused this man whose response wasn’t good at all as he attacked someone who owed him a lot less and made them go to prison. This reminds us that forgiveness, which is so much more than we could imagine, must be accepted and make us want to act differently. We have been given the best gift ever, forgiveness and the promise of life everlasting. God has blessed us extravagantly but this means that we are to be extravagant back. Extravagant in our love for God, putting Him first, extravagant in our love for others putting them first and extravagant in the ways that we forgive others even when it seems to make no sense to do so.
If you think about it, beyond technicolour dreamcoats, Joseph could have treated his brothers incredibly badly and it would have seemed justified, except for the fact that God is extravagant in His love and forgiveness and we are to be the same.
We need to not just accept that we have been forgiven, we need to forgive. It seems so annoying at times but we are called to forgive as we have been forgiven. It isn’t easy. Corrie ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn't sleep. Finally Corrie cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest. “This help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor," Corrie wrote, "to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks." "Up in the church tower," he said, nodding out the window, "is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there's a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we've been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn't be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They're just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down." "And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force -- which was my willingness in the matter -- had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether: we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts."
This is how we accept the forgiveness that God offers by forgiving others extravagantly as we give thanks to the one who loves and forgives us extravagantly. May we be extravagant in our love and forgiveness. AMEN
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