This session explores types 8, 9, and 1

Irish playwright Oscar Wilde wrote, “Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them quite so much.”

While that might take some of the sting out of forgiving, according to a parable Jesus told it misses the point.

There’s a whole other why.

2nd Century theologian Origen, commenting on this week's Epistle reading wrote, "This debt remains with us permanently and never leaves us; it is a debt which we both discharge every day and for ever owe."

Do you know what it is?

You should, because it completely fulfills everything else.

There're these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "Water? What the heck is water?"

That's exactly how culture works. It's water to a fish.

So, in a day when worship is marketing, stewardship is fund-raising, growth is excitement, and ministry is programs and services, we must ask ourselves, "Is this the kind of community Paul describes in this week's Epistle, or is it more like the water we as Americans swim in obliviously every day?"

In the stories we tell, the captive leaves the cell or prison camp and rides off into the sunset. Do we really think we know what freedom is? What if we needed to be shown what freedom means.