Numbers, Numbers Everywhere!

Pentecost 13, September 11, 2011
Exodus 14:19-31
Psalm 114 from BCP
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-25
NUMBERS, NUMBERS EVERYWHERE! What has that to do with our scripture lessons this week? We will get to that later. Our opening hymn, Crown Him with Many Crowns does speak of crowning the Lord of heaven with many crowns. I suppose that has to do with numbers. This hymn is a compilation by Matthew Bridges and Godfrey Thring and originally consisted of twelve verses. Numbers of verses.
Numbers mark our houses and postal zones, run our telephones and computers, identify our charge accounts and tax withholdings and mark the passing of time on clocks and calendars. Accurate counting is essential in making music, as well. Numbers help us to find pages and measures, and counting helps us to read rhythms and stay together. As singers in the Lofty Pews and singing in the congregation we depend heavily on our numbers.
Numbers and counting are indeed essential tools we use every day and in nearly every area of life. But Jesus tells us in this Sunday’s gospel of one very important area where numbers and counting are not to be used. Once again, it is Peter who has asked a question. “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus’ first response is short. “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,” Jesus seems initially to be just as caught up with numbers as was Peter. But a parable quickly follows which tells about a servant who was forgiven many debts and then hypocritically went out and dealt forcefully with one who owed him a mere pittance.
It all seems so obvious when Jesus teaches us, but applying it to our own situations is often another matter. We can relate to numbers in the sequence hymn, Forgive Our Sins as We Forgive, in this stanza by Rosamond E. Herklots that asks:
How can your pardon reach and bless
The unforgiving heart
That broods on wrongs and will not let
Old bitterness depart?
This profound text, written in 1966, on the theme of forgiveness opens with a paraphrase of words from the Lord’s Prayer. It is deeply rooted in the life experience of the author, Rosaund Herklots. The inspiration for the hymn came as Miss Herklots, an English Hymn writer, dug weeds in her nephew’s garden. As she worked at the deep, tenacious roots, she saw a vivid parallel between the intrusive, smothering qualities of these weeds and the destructive ways in which deeply buried feelings of bitterness and resentment prevent us from growing as loving, concerned people. Framing her text with a line paraphrased from the Lord’s Prayer, the poet reminds us of the smallness of others’ debts to us when compared to our debt to our Lord who suffered and died on the cross for our sins. Miss Herklots closes her prayer with the petition that, through repentance and reconciliation with God and others, our lives will bear witness of God’s peace.
Our recessional hymn, Praise the Lord, Rise Up Rejoicing is a jubilant paean of praise to God who in the Eucharist declares victory over cross and passion. Howard Gaunt’s text first appeared in 100 Hymns for Today (London, 1969). In it we express our oneness with the Creator and respond to the command to go out into the world as faithful followers of the risen Christ. Cyril Taylor wrote, “A splendid hymn in which to sum up at its end what the Eucharist has meant to us, and to thank God for it. Words and music fit like a glove.” The hymn was written with the 1662 Prayer Book communion service in mind. The first stanza includes an allusion to the Gloria in excelsis Deo which, in the 1662 rite, is sung near the end of the liturgy. In the service we celebrate at Grace Anglican Church, the greater Gloria is sung at the beginning of the liturgy. So, this hymn, when sung at the end of the Eucharist, makes the marvelous assertion that we end where we began: “GLORY BE TO GOD ON HIGH!”
We are not to withhold forgiveness, Jesus tells us, no matter how deeply we feel we are owed, because we have been forgiven a debt of cosmic proportions. Just as we are to love because God first loved us, we are to forgive because God has first forgiven us.
How often need we forgive? As often as necessary! And may God grant us the wisdom to know when we should remember to count and when we should remember to forget! Maybe it’s not about the numbers!
Sources:
Hymnal ’82 Companion
Companion to the SDA Hymnal
Deacon Ron Jutzy
Then Sings My Soul
A Treasury of Hymns
Tune My Heart to Sing