Hebrews 9: 11-15

Jon Meacham wrote a biography of President George H.W, Bush entitled, Destiny and Power. In it he recounts an incident in President Bush’s life that haunted him until the day he died. While he was growing up, Bush was a magnet for other boys. They liked him and felt what Meacham called “protected and secure in his orbit.” But one time Bush stepped out of character and used an anti-Semitic slur to describe a Jewish friend. The sensitive Bush had a guilty conscience about this sin for the rest of his life. Interviewed by the author seventy-odd years later, “Bush volunteered the story and cried, shaken by guilt over a remark made in the 1930s. He shook his head in wonder over his own insensitivity. ‘Never forgotten it. Never forgotten it.’ (The classmate remained a Bush supporter and friend for many years.”).

Many Jewish people consider Yom Kippur to be the most sacred of all their holy days, their “Sabbath of Sabbaths.” Its tone and mood, writes John Schuurman, to whom I owe credit for many ideas in this Sermon Starter, is like Christians’ Good Friday, only more so. While Jewish people eat well right up until Yom Kipper. they don’t eat or drink, as well as wear perfume or lotion on its holiest of all holy days. They also don’t have marital relations, wash or, at least in some cases, wear leather shoes. After all, Jewish people believe that on Yom Kippur, they emulate the angels in heaven, who don’t eat, drink or wash either...

About three years ago, shortly after our household began using the internet, we had a computer crash. I don't know what happened or why, but we got it up running again, re-worked our internet supplier information and continued onward. Five weeks later we received our telephone bill - for $651.00!!! I was aghast and immediately began asking my spouse who she had been calling. However, as we looked closer at the bill, we realized that all the calls were to the same number. Soon after we realized that the number was a connection number to our internet provider. Somehow in the crash of our computer, when we re-entered our information, we chose a long distance number instead of our local number and for five weeks we had been using the net as always. We were totally bummed out. Finances were tough. How would we pay this? The next morning, my spouse called the internet company, and very politely they reminded us that connection numbers are our responsibility. The only thing you can do they told us is call the telephone company and ask them for a payment plan. I received a phone call at the church office from my wife. In a quiet, stunned voice she said to me, 'you are not going to believe this. I called the telephone company and told them my dilemma, that our computer had crashed and somehow we had entered a long distance number by accident. We can't pay it all this month, can we set up a payment plan.' The telephone operator responded, 'Oh, that happened to me once too. I see from your records that you were dialing the other number before. Here's what we'll do. We'll forgive your debt!!!! And I see on your record that there is another two weeks of calls to that number totally $150.00. We forgive that also next month when your statement comes.' I was totally in the wrong, even though it was an accident. It was my fault. I had no recourse but to pay the debt, yet for whatever reason, it was cancelled. That's grace...

("In the movie The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a magical life of luxury with a thousand eunuchs at his command. "What happens when you do wrong?" his brother asks. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished," the boy emperor replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a precious jar, and one of his servants is beaten...")

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