From the Still Point

We try to teach our kids manners, and we never quite know how that is going to work out.

I knew some parents who did what most parents do. Whenever someone gave their child something, a gift, or something to eat, the Mom would say to her son, ‘Now, what do you say?” to which the boy would say, “Thank you.”

One day the Mom thought that the boy should have that down, so when someone gave him something, she waited to see what he would do. There was a silence and finally the boy turned to his mom, and said, Mommy, when someone gives me something, you are supposed to say, “What do you say?”!

We can teach our kids to say please and thank you, but teaching them real gratitude is a whole different ball of yarn. It often takes time for the attitudes to catch up with the words, and sometimes they never do.

We can teach someone to say “Thank you,” but it takes more to teach them to be gracious.

We have two stories this morning about gratitude—specifically people who have a hard time being gracious.

We start with Jonah.

You may just think of Jonah as the guy who got eaten by a big fish. But there is much more to the story than that.

He was sent on a mission—to go to Nineveh and tell them that God was very angry with them, and was about to destroy them. Of course Jonah did not want to go, so he got on a boat headed to Tarshish instead, which is the opposite direction. There was a storm, and Jonah realized it was a God-storm and not just an act of nature, so he was thrown off the boat, and swallowed by the fish.

Apparently three days inside a big fish gives a man time to think about his priorities, and Jonah decided that going to Nineveh was now one of his priorities. So he goes there, and starts preaching to the people that God is going to destroy them.

Well to his surprise and it turns out, his great consternation, the people received the message with open hearts. They repented. They changed their ways. And God decided that he did not need to destroy them anymore.

And THAT made Jonah extremely angry. You see, Nineveh was his enemy. He didn’t flee from his task because he was afraid of going to Nineveh. He fled from his task because he was afraid that if the told the Ninevites that God was going to destroy them, they might repent, and then God might NOT destroy them. He says, “That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

Which is exactly what happened. God relented. God showed divine graciousness, divine mercy, and divine love.

And Jonah’s response to God’s graciousness? “O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

Jonah would rather die than live to see God’s love turned toward the Ninevites.

If you remember last week, I mentioned anger, and how good anger can feel at times. Well, Jonah is someone who loves his anger. He loves nothing better than being angry—angry at the Ninevites and angry with God.

After God decides to spare the Ninevites, Jonah goes up on a hillside, overlooking the city, hoping that maybe God will change the Divine mind, and he will get a front row seat to a great show of Divine wrath. But it is not to be. While he is sitting there, a plant grows up to give him shade from the hot sun. But then a bug comes along and eats the plant, causing it to die, causing Jonah to have to endure the hot sun. His response?

“It is better for me to die than to live.” Oh, woe is me. Life is terrible! I’m hot and Nineveh is still standing! Better that I die than have to endure this!

I can understand his anger at the Ninevites. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, and Assyria was a perpetual threat to Israel. In the end, they did invade and essentially destroyed Israel, so the fear was well founded. But why was he angry with God?

Jonah did not like it when things did not go his way. He wanted to control God, he wanted things to go his way, and if they didn’t, he assumed the world was out of whack, and needed a good dose of his complaining. (Like that ever makes anything any better.)

Jonah cannot be gracious for what he has, because all he can see is what he does not have. He cannot appreciate the joy of living, because he is too consumed with the work of complaining.

Did the Ninevites deserve God’s compassion? Probably not. But did Jonah? No. He is a walking complaint center.

Jonah was angry because his shade plant died. That’s the way life is, full of ups and downs. One moment we are basking in the shade, the next the sun is beating down on us. One moment everything seems to be going swimmingly well, the next it seems to have all fallen apart.

How do we live in such a world?

Gratitude.

We learn to appreciate life when things are good, and that can help us get through those times when things are rotten. The good does not always outweigh the bad, but it can help us develop and attitude of gratitude, and THAT can help us.

The second story is the parable of the vineyard. A man needs day labor for his vineyard, and so he goes to out and hires some workers. Later in the morning he realizes he needs some more, so he goes out and hires more workers. He still needs more, so later he hires more, and so on throughout the day. Finally, just a few hours before quitting time, he hires the last batch.

They line up for their pay at the end of the day, and to everyone’s surprise, the people who came in at the very end of the day get a full day’s wages. Word gets out, and the folks who came in first in the morning are thinking they are really going to pull down a good day’s wages, but when it is their turn, they get the same thing as the people who just worked a few hours. And they sweated out in the hot sun all day long!

So of course they let the vineyard owner know their displeasure, and the owners shows his displeasure with them. This is wrong! This is un-American! This is unjust! This is unfair!

Now think about this for a moment, from the owner’s point of view. He could have just paid an hour’s wages for the people who worked an hour. That is what we are used to. We get what we earn. You work an hour, you get paid for an hour. You work a day, you get paid for a day.

But this owner is different. He is thinking of things differently. Tell me, does milk cost less, if you were only able to get an hour’s wage? Is grain cheaper for the people who only an hour? Does anyone ever get an “I-could-only-find-a-few-hours-of-work-today” discount?

Of course not. It costs just as much to feed your family on an hour’s wages as it does on a day’s wages. When asked why they were not working, the last people hired said they were waiting all day, but were not chosen.

The owner of the vineyard is being compassionate. He found some people who have been waiting all day for work, and could not find any, and he wants them to be able to feed their families just the like the people he hired earlier in the day. He’s not thinking of fairness—he is thinking compassion.

The people who worked early in the day, they want fairness…of course they want fairness because it works to their advantage. If he works one hour and gets ten dollars, and I work eight hours, then I should get eighty dollars. That is what is fair.

Now here is what is interesting—they are angry, not because the owner cheated them, but because the owner was compassionate. They want equality. They want fairness. But the owner wants to show compassion.

How often do we get caught up in looking at what other people get, as opposed to what we get? It’s an easy thing to do. It’s a game that is played a lot. Christmas rolls around, and you start eyeing the presents your siblings got, to see if they got more than you did. I know as a parent, I spend a lot of time trying to make sure that everyone gets an equal amount of Christmas booty. When we get a Christmas present from a friend, we want to make sure that what we give them is about as good.

Now that kind of attitude does two things. First, it limits compassion. If we have to make sure they everyone gets equal amounts, or gets only what is fair in terms of what other people get, then we are limiting how much we can show love to others. We are not giving according to need, but according to a strict standard of fairness. And sometimes fairness isn’t…well, fair.

I read somewhere, equality is where everyone has shoes. Equity is where everyone has shoes that fit.

We are not always called to be fair; we are called to be compassionate. We are called to reach out to people in need. We are called, not to make sure everyone has an equal share, or to make sure that people get what they deserve. We are called to give freely, without regard to strict standards, that limit our giving. We are called to give out of our abundance to people who stand in need.

Now here is the other thing that happens when we over emphasize fairness—we limit our gratitude. If the standard for my gratitude is that I get roughly what you get, then it is going to be hard for me to maintain my gratitude, especially if you happen to get more. When I compare my blessings to the people around me, I lose sight of our important my blessings are for me.

I might have been happy with my Christmas present until I saw that you happened to get a bigger present than I did. Maybe there is a reason. I remember one year my brother got a bike for Christmas, and I didn’t. I got nice gifts, but not a bike. Of course, my brother, who was younger, did not have a bike at that time, and I did, but still, he got a bigger present than me! I could have been happy with my G.I. Joes, or whatever it was I did that year, but I was too busy looking at what someone else got, and I lost my sense of gratitude.

If we are focused on what we don’t have, we lose sight of those things we do have. And it is hard to be grateful people when all we see is what is NOT there. In my first church, it was a small congregation, about 80 people, and there were times when a lot of people might be gone the same Sunday. One Sunday, we had about ten people there. And I was upset. I was angry. I was angry at the people who weren’t there that Sunday.

But during the service, and it was when the ushers were bringing the offering up, it was like a voice was speaking to me, saying, Murray, stop focusing on who is NOT here today, and focus on who is! Look at the faithful people who ARE here worshiping God, not at the people who are missing. And you know, after that, I stopped fretting over the people who were not there, and started serving the people who were.

Is a preoccupation with fairness, with what other people have, keeping you from being grateful for those things you do have? Are you grateful for where you live, or do you keep seeing how other people live, and wish you had that? Are you grateful for your job, or do you see what other people are doing, and feel envious?  Are you happy with the accomplishments of your children, or do you look at what other children have done, and wish yours had done more?

The best way to make yourself happy is to learn to be grateful for what you do have, instead of focusing on what you don’t have. Sometimes our blessings are abundant—sometimes not so much. Sometimes we really should be content with what we have, other times it is ok to want more. But no matter what, if we lose sight of the blessings we do have, and lose a sense of gratitude for those blessings, we are in training to be miserable people.

There was once a man who was walking down a mountain road. On one side of the mountain road was mountain, on the other side was a sheer cliff. He saw a lion coming down the path, and the lion looked hungry. There was a vine leading off the cliff, so the man climbed on the vine, and started to shimmy down. He looked down and saw a bear at the bottom, saying grace, waiting for him to come down. He looked over to the left side of the vine, and an army of ants were on the vine, chewing through it.

He looked to the right, and saw a ripe strawberry. He plucked and ate it.

It was delicious.

That is living in the moment of gratitude. Our gratitude will probably not be that advanced, but we can practice it.

For the next thirty days, I am taking the gratitude challenge, and I invite you to join me. Each day I will post on my FaceBook page three things that I am thankful for. In doing so I hope to build up my Gratitude Attitude. I want to challenge you to improve your Gratitude Attitude by also naming three things for which you are thankful, and telling someone what they are. You can post it on Facebook, or just tell a loved one or friend.

Let us be the gracious people of God.

JONAH 3:10 – 4:11

10When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

4But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. 2He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

5Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. 6The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. 7But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. 8When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” 9But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” 10Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night.11And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

GOSPEL MATTHEW 20:1-16

¹“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. ²After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. ³When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; ⁴and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. ⁵When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. ⁶And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ ⁷They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ ⁸When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ ⁹When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. ¹⁰Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. ¹¹And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, ¹²saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ ¹³But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? ¹⁴Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. ¹⁵Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ ¹⁶So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

(The sermon is based on two texts, Matthew 18:21-35 and Romans 14:1-12. The texts can be found at the end of the sermon.)

The first real case of pastoral counseling I had was actually with a neighbor, not a parishioner. I am going to call her Ashley, although that is not her real name.
Ashley moved in about two years after we did. She had the neighborhood dog, who spent as much time at our house as hers. She was in real estate, and doing quite well.
One night she came over to invite us to dinner, then told us that her girlfriend was going to be there, and she hoped we did not have a problem with that. We didn’t and we had a lovely dinner that night.
Two months later, just after Christmas, I was taking the trash out and saw Ashley packing up her car. She hadn’t said anything about going on vacation, and we usually looked after each other’s houses if the other was gone.
Ashley came over and told me that her father had just died. Apparently he fell asleep while smoking, on Christmas Eve, and burned down the family house, which had been in their family for generations. Ashley was driving up to Delaware to be with her family. She also had learned she had been made executor of the estate, so it was going to be a pretty long trip. To make matters worse, she had a very conflicted relationship with her father. He was abusive, and she had run away from home just to get away from him.
We said goodbye, and I just held her in my prayers until she returned home a few weeks later. I was out, taking out the garbage again as she pulled into her driveway. I walked over and said hello, and she asked if she could come over after she had unpacked.
We chatted about her trip for a while, and then told me the real reason she wanted to talk. While she was up in Delaware, her girl friend called, and demanded that Ashley invite her up there, so she could be with her. She explained that it was a very stressful time, and that a lot of her family did not know she was gay, and now was not the time to shock with a suddenly appearing girlfriend. The girlfriend gave her an ultimatum. “If you really love me,” she said, “you will invite me up. If you don’t invite me, I will not be here when you get back.”
And in fact she had taken all her stuff out of Ashley’s house, and left a note saying it was over.
“I can usually forgive people pretty easily,” Ashley said. “I can just let go of things, and act like they never happened. But this is different. I can’t forgive her. She hurt me.”
“You have never HAD to forgive anyone else before,” I said. “All the other times you could just shake it off. This the first time you have actually had someone really hurt you, and the first time you have had to forgive.”
I think a lot of us labor under the same misconception that Ashley had—that forgiveness was the ability to just shrug things off as if they had never happened.
The Gospel lesson this morning is all about forgiveness. First Peter wants a statute of limitations on forgiveness. How often do I have to forgive someone? Suppose they do something that hurts me. And I forgive them. Then they do it again. And I forgive them again. And then, they do it AGAIN, so I forgive them AGAIN…how many times do I have to do that? At what point can I say, “Enough is enough is enough and be done with it? Is seven times enough?”
Peter understands how hard forgiveness can be, and that it can be even harder when the person we need to forgive is not exactly receptive to the idea that they are doing things that need forgiving.
Have you ever been in a situation like that? Someone does something that hurts us one time, well, we can forgive that. They do it again, ok, we can forgive this one too. But you get five times, six times, seven times, and about that time you should be off the hook. No one should have to forgive someone that many times!
Jesus does not give him any wiggle room.
“Seventy TIMES seven,” he says, which is a way of saying, “There is no end to forgiveness.”
Then Jesus tells a story. Once a man owed about a bijillion dollars.
He couldn’t pay the debt and was threatened with prison. But he begged and pleaded, and the debt was forgiven. He ran into a man who owed a few bucks, and demanded his money. The man could not pay, and he had him thrown into debtor’s prison, until he could come up with the money.
In other words, forgiveness is VERY important.
What is so important about forgiveness? Oh, sure we should be able to get past the little piddly things. We can’t go holding grudges for everything! But when we get to the serious stuff, why should we have to forgive that?
It costs to forgive. It cost you something to get past the hurts that have been inflicted on you over time. It is not easy. It is much easier to stay angry, to stay bitter, to nurse the grudges, and sometimes even go looking for them.
Frederick Buechner wrote, “Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back–in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.”
Let’s be honest. If you have ever really nursed a grudge, you know how good that can feel. But Buechner goes on to say, “The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
The first reason we forgive is because it is good for us. Hanging on to anger, or to hurts may be easier than forgiving, but it is clearly more dangerous. The problem is, it is not like we have these little boxes inside of us, where we can store hurt or anger in relative isolation. It is not like, “Well, I have this thing that someone did to me, so I will put in this box here, and keep it separate from everything else in my life.” Its not like you can store your hurt or anger or bitterness in emotional Tupperware, which keeps it separate from everything else in your life.
No, hanging on to anger is like keeping fish in your refrigerator too long. After a while it starts to stink. And what’s worse, it starts to make everything else in your refrigerator stink. Anger, bitterness, past hurts fester in our lives, and they bleed over into all the other areas of our lives. Usually in small ways, but sometimes in huge ways.
When people nurture a grudge, they start treating other hurts like that grudge. Have you ever known someone who was perpetually angry? If you scratch the surface of that person, you will find past hurts that they were not able to deal with in a healthy way. They start off angry at some person who legitimately hurt them, but then end up angry because their paper is late, the President did something they disagree with, or there is a social injustice halfway across the world.
I got called down the ER one day when I was a chaplain to minister to a man whose wife had just committed suicide. What was so sad about that was that he had tried to get her committed to the psych ward three times. The first time she refused to leave her car, and come into the hospital and he did not want security to have to bring her in. Twice it was full, and the only thing we could do was to ship her down to Anchorage, which was a complicated, expensive and drawn out process. So on Sunday night we discharged her, and on Monday morning she sent her kids off to school, went to the upstairs bathroom, and shot herself in the head.
I was angry and hurt. We were supposed to help people like that, and we failed her. Two weeks after that I was sitting in a meeting where the facilitator was pretty caustic, and before I knew what I was doing, I stood up, and told the facilitator that I didn’t need his…well, particular style of leading a meeting, and stormed out.
I was not half as angry with that facilitator as I was with the Hospital and our inability to help this person.

So how do we deal with forgiveness?
1) First, we need to acknowledge that there are often things we need to forgive. We need to acknowledge that what other people do sometimes hurts us, and that we need to do the hard work of forgiveness rather than just brush it off.
In Alaska and North Carolina I did some work with troubled churches, and more than once I saw a church that was conflicted, and stuck, and as we got to the know the history of that church, often there was a pastor in the past who had somehow hurt the congregation. Maybe they had an affair or some other violation of trust and had to resign. Maybe they left quickly, and the congregation felt like they were left in a lurch. Maybe they were an abusive sort of personality, and without doing anything technically wrong, they abused their power as pastor. Anyway, what often happens in this kind of church is that the congregation takes it out on the next pastor, or the next few pastors. I worked with a church in Fairbanks that, in my time there, went through a pastor about every two years.
Or, having been hurt, and not willing to admit it, they misplaced their anger. Sometimes the session was the focus, sometimes it was a program of the church, sometimes they just all turned on each other. But they were not willing to admit that they had been hurt! So they never dealt with it directly. And they never got over the hurt.

2) Keep your accounts current. Last week Jesus said that if someone hurts you, deal with it. And deal with it, with that person. And if you need to, get help from others. Don’t let things fester, because some things just get bigger over time. A paper cut can turn into a festering wound if it get infected. If you are carrying a wide variety of hurts, they will bleed into one another, and start bleeding into other areas of your life.
If you have to work backwards, then do it that way. But don’t let hurts accumulate. Little things can pile up, and a whole lot of little things soon become big things.
Some of you remember S&H Green stamps. You buy something from a store, and you get a strip of green stamps, which you put in a little booklet, designed to hold the green stamps. When you book is full, you can redeem it at an S&H center, where you could trade your stamps for toasters, or blenders, or other things for your house.
Well, we do that with relationships. Someone does something to us that we don’t like. We don’t blow up, but we don’t forget it. We turn that into anger stamps, or just irritation stamps, and we post them in our little relationship book. Something else happens, and we put that in the book. Again, we feel some sleight from someone, or some small hurt, and we just post it in the book. Then, something else happens…our spouse is late picking us up, say, and we go to put our anger stamps in the book, but lo and behold—the book is full.
So we redeem it. The whole book. All over that one small event. We blow up, and let our spouse have the full brunt of all the past hurts and irritations.
Instead of saving them up, we need to deal with them as they come, so they are not hanging around. It is easy to forgive someone for one or two simple things they have done to hurt us. It is much harder when that one or two has turned into a multitude of offenses.

3) If you can, let go of it. The Buddha said holding on to anger is like holding on to a hot rock. It only burns you. Yes, maybe someone hurt you, but is holding onto that hurt helping anything? What would your life be like if you could let go of it? You don’t have to hold onto these things.
Too often we carry baggage that we just don’t need to carry. We don’t need to carry other people’s baggage. Other people get hurt, and while we can commiserate with them, we don’t have to take their hurts as our hurts. We can help other people without getting sucked into their hurts as if they were our hurts. We can support other people without taking on their anger as our anger.
And we don’t need all the baggage that we carry with us.
In the summer of 1986 my first wife and I moved to Bonn, Germany for a year of theological study at the University there. We were going to be there for a year, and so we packed enough stuff for the year. I literally had to sit on my suitcases, and wrap a belt around them to keep them closed. In spite of the fact that it was August, I wore a heavy winter coat, and a sweater, and had my pockets stuffed with socks and underwear. I had a backpack and a carry one, both also stuffed full. She was as weighted down as I was.
When I checked in at Newark airport, the agent said, “You are seventy pounds overweight!”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I am supposed to charge you five dollars a pound,” she said.
We barely had enough money to get us to Bonn, and could not afford the charges for the extra weight. But I remembered I was in Newark.
“How much is it if I pay you?” I asked.
“Twenty dollars,” said the agent, and after a furtive payment was made, we were on our way.
We had hitchhiked on a plane to Europe. I bought tickets from a company called Airhitch, which bought and sold empty seats on a variety of planes to Europe. The ticket (really a voucher) was not specific in terms of destination or date. We just knew that sometime in August we would be on a plane to Europe. We had no idea which country.
As it turned out, we got a flight to London. We would have enjoyed it, except that we had to drag all our baggage around with us, first from the airport to the city, then to our B&B. I still had to arrange transportation from London to Bonn.
After two days in London, we bought train tickets to Bonn. We dragged our luggage to the station. By this time the metal luggage carriers we brought with us had all been destroyed by the weight and volume of our baggage, so we were each carrying my two suitcases, two carry-ons, and a variety of loose, extraneous things that did not fit in our luggage.
The train left around 10 at night, and would arrive in Bonn around 1 the next afternoon. Most compartments were full, but we found one that was almost empty. We threw our mountain of stuff in, and sat down. When the conductor came to check our tickets, he frowned, made to say something, then obviously thought better of it, and moved on.
Later I found out we were in a First Class compartment—and we didn’t have a First Class ticket. I guess the conductor figured out it would be more trouble to move us than to let us stay where we were!
So we are on the train, and able to rest for a while. Except that I am no dummy. I know that England is on an island, and that trains do not travel well on water. So I also knew that we would probably have to get all our stuff off the train, and then onto a ferry, off the ferry and back onto another train. Which is exactly what we had to do. We hit the docks at around 1 am, lugged our stuff off the train, which was not hard, but then had to stand in line, move our mountain of luggage with us, and then move the mountain up two flights of stairs onto the ferry.
After a fitful rest on the ferry (afraid that someone might steal our luggage) we docked around 4:30 am, dragged our stuff down three flights of stairs, and then scrambled to find a place on the next train. It was packed but we did manage to find a place for us and our luggage. As we got closer to Bonn, I started getting our stuff ready, only to learn that the train did not actually to Bonn—it went to Bonn Beul, which was across the river from Bonn. In order to get to Bonn we had to change trains in Cologne.
That was a minor disaster. While I was handing luggage to my wife, who had boarded the train to Bonn, it left the station. I had half the luggage, both tickets, no sleep, and was about ready to just leave the bags where they were. But another train came by soon, I met up with my wife at the station in Bonn, and we were there—almost. We had to get our stuff from the station to the dorm where we were staying, which took three trips in the small car of the Hausfrau who managed the dorm.
Later I was relating this to one of my German friends and he said, “Why didn’t you just check your bags in London?”
We could do that? You mean, we could have checked our bags, let someone else worry about them? You mean we could have given our bags to someone at the station London, and had a much more leisurely, enjoyable trip, than the hellish journey we had to endure? You mean we carried all those bags all that way—FOR NOTHING?
How often do we do with other things in life? How often do we carry things around with us that only weigh us down, that are not needed, that are heavy burdens we don’t need to carry?
How often do we carry past hurts, grudges, slights and anger when all they do is weigh us down? How much emotional baggage do we carry that we have no business dragging around?
Drop it, if you can. Let go of those things you do not need. Let go of the things that just weigh you down. Let go of your burdens, especially those that keep you from forgiving and moving on. It’s not worth the effort.
But sometimes we cannot just let it go. Sometimes it is like glue, sticking to us. We can’t just let go.
4) Let someone carry the load with you. Sometimes the hurts are too big for us to deal with on our own. That is when we need help. We need other people to help us carry the baggage. We are not alone. Sometimes whatever we are dealing with is large enough that we need to walk with other people. We need them to help us go through our baggage, and help us decide what to keep.

Sometimes we just need to hear someone say, “Do you really need to carry this?” I have a hard time getting rid of clothes…or at least I did until I met Angelee. More than once she has helped me go through my clothes, by holding a pair of pants, or a shirt I haven’t worn in years and asking, do you really need this? Sometimes we just need another person to ask us, do you really need to hold on this?

Sometimes we need people to take our stuff from us. Sometimes we need people to carry things we have no business carrying. Sometimes we just need a friend who can help us carry the things that are too heavy for us.

And finally, we need to remember that we are forgiven…always by God, hopefully by the people in our church community. No matter what we have done, God will forgive us. God does not cling to our past sins, even if we do. God does not pin those sins to us, even if we won’t let go of them. God does not hold our past against us, even if we still do.
The reason for forgiveness is so we can be healthy people. Remember my friend Ashley? She and I had a long talk about how she had been wronged. I explained that her girlfriend had emotionally blackmailed her, and how that was not a characteristic of a healthy relationship. Ashley learned to forgive, so she would not be carrying around the pain all her life. She learned to forgive, so that the rest of her relationships would not be defined by that harmful one.
By learning what was wrong with that relationship, she could focus on what a healthy relationship looked like.
And a few months after our conversations, she showed up at my door one day. “Guess what!” she said. “I’m in love.” I smiled at her. “And,” she was quick to add, “it’s a healthy relationship!”

ROMANS 14:1-12
1Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. 2Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. 3Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. 4Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.
5Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. 6Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.
7We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. 8If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.
10Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11For it is written,
“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall give praise to God.”
12So then, each of us will be accountable to God.
GOSPEL MATTHEW 18:21-35
21Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.
23“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. 25and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”