Brian Morris won the lottery. Not only did he win “free money”, but he won a lot of it – 125 million dollars to be exact. So what did he do with it? Well, Brian called up a local manure producer and put in an order. Pretending as if it was his own house, Brian arranged for a whopping 20,000 pounds of manure to be dropped off at George Fitzgerald’s house. 
So why do this? George Fitzgerald happened to be Brian Morris’s ex employer, and Brian felt that he had been treated unfairly while he had been employed there.
The trucks only got to dump half of their load, 10,000 pounds of manure, on Mr. Fitzgerald’s house. But it was enough for Brian, who had positioned himself across the street to watch the drama unveil. When the police showed up, Brian turned himself in as the culprit and was taken into custody with what may have been the world’s most joyful mugshot.
It does bring up the question, what would you do with 125 million dollars? Is there someone’s lawn out there that you would be tempted to…..fertilize? Would you do something else with the money? If you had enough money to be extravagant, what would you do?
Our Baptisms don’t give us money, but they are a little like winning the lottery because they do allow us to live extravagantly. They allow us to perhaps live even more extravagantly, because we know that we are heirs of eternity. There’s a great Luther quote where he is talking about when the devil convicts us of our sins and tries to make us question our salvation because of our sins, Luther says, “Yes, I am a sinner, what of it? For Jesus Christ came to save sinners, and if I am a sinner, then I know that He came to save me.” Even being “taken into custody” by the devil isn’t enough to dampen Luther’s spirits, because he knows that He is an heir of God because of Christ.
So this week, when the devil puts your sins in your face, remember that because of your Baptism, you are God’s heir – called to live with an extravagance that rivals Brian Morris.