Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · July 11, 2010

Litany of Praise

From Psalm 82

Give justice to the weak and the orphan and maintain the right of the destitute.

     Rescue the weak and needy and deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

There is not a person alive who will not eventually fall.

     Rise up, O God, and bring justice to the earth – it belongs to you!

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

World without end. Amen. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Jacob Thorne

Spirit of the Living God, you stir in the depths of our hearts. You urge us to move towards you. You prompt us to follow. You encourage us not to give up. You call us to open our minds and our hearts to receive your energizing, transforming, and unending grace.

This morning, we pray that we can be more receptive. Awaken in each of us the beauty of your world, the beauty of your creation. Remind us all to slow down and treasure the small moments of everyday life. By your Spirit, O God, empower us to live in you. Fill us with a child-like wonder. Move us with a vision of your kingdom. Strengthen us with courage as your disciples. Stretch us toward your realm. Let us find our rest in you. Grant us the peace that passes understanding.

Hear us now as we say together the prayer your Son taught us…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, the power, and glory, forever. Amen.

New Testament Lesson

Luke 10:25-37

Just then, a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance, a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Message

The Good Terrorist

Tim Carson

We have parallels to Jesus’ teaching about the greatest commandment in two of the other gospels: “You shall love the Lord your God and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Both parts of this saying – love of God and love of neighbor - come from the Hebrew Scriptures and were well know to practicing Jews. The difference, in Luke, is that Jesus joins the teaching with a parable, one that is so well known that its title has made it into the vernacular of people who have never even opened a Bible: The Good Samaritan. “He was a good Samaritan.” It is common shorthand for a good-deed doer.

This Scripture is much more than a simple moral tale about doing good, though that certainly is one of the simple take-aways for children in Sunday School. The deeper message comes from a Jesus who seems to thrive on upsetting the apple cart of our world.

In Luke, the parable comes as the result of the question, “Who is my neighbor?” The asker wants to know who fits into that category. The common under-standing of “neighbor” would have been those living nearby, my people, and the Jews next door. Can you define the limits of “neighbor” for me? Give me some boundaries: Is it limited by geography? By nationality? By ethnicity? Religion? If you ask me to love the neighbor, who is the neighbor? How far does this notion have to extend?

You see, we are all born with a very tight circle of concern. As babies, it’s simple: We are the center of our concern. We want our needs gratified. As we mature, if we do, we realize that there is a world larger than ourselves and we are not at the center of it. If we don’t mature, we remain narcissistic, and like infants think that the world should revolve around us.

So our beginning point is a very small circle of concern; it begins with ourselves and our own needs, grows to include relationships that are mutually beneficial and provide safety like families, friends, tribes, and nations, and then, as a breakthrough, it can move beyond our own and those like us to a larger circle of concern. It is the extension of concern beyond “us and them” to a more universal perspective, what the mystics would call seeing the world as God sees it. That’s what is behind the wisdom saying that you shouldn’t judge another person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes, which is good on a number of levels. At the least, you’ll be a mile away from them and have their shoes, too!

So this question, about the definition of who is my neighbor, how large does my circle of concern need to be, is the genesis of Jesus’ parable.

“Once upon a time …” So every good story begins, right? A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. It is literally a descent, a drop in altitude of some 3000 feet, passing through wild terrain known for its bandits. It was not good to travel that stretch alone, which is exactly what our traveler does.

We really don’t know who he is, this anonymous traveler. The generic word for “man” or “person” is used, so the listener can provide the detail. If you’re a Jew, he can be a Jew. If you’re a Gentile, a Gentile. If you are into the arts, maybe he was a painter. If you’re a sports enthusiast, perhaps he was heading to a track meet. You get to fill in the gaps, but whatever happens to him can’t be attributed to his moral, spiritual, or particular identity. Neither can helping him be based on any particular virtue or vice on his part that would either make him worthy or not.

I like the way that Ralph Wright put it in his poem, Jericho:

The man who fell in with thieves

on his way to Jericho

may have been going there

for all we know

to murder his mother

He may have come

from robbing the Temple

or sleeping with his next-door neighbor’s wife

We are not told

The man who finds him half-dead

clearly does not know

                                                              (from Seamless, Golden Quill, 1988)

So whatever action is taken is not based on the merits of the one who needs help.

And then Jesus turns everything on its head. He tells the story with an entirely unexpected twist at the end, one we don’t get because we already know the ending, or just think we do because and have turned what was twist into something normal. As a great irony, we have affiliated the word “good” with “Samaritan.” The original listener would not have thought that at all. In fact, just the opposite was the case. There was nothing good about Samaritans at all.

But before we go there, I’m going to tell the ending of the story in a way that the original listener would have expected it:

Once upon a time there was a man who went down from Columbia to Jeff City who fell among a gang of Hells Angels who robbed him, beat him and left him for dead somewhere along the road near Hartsburg. This poor guy had been applying for a new IBM job and was going home to cut his grass. They took his IPhone with his calendar and address book and he had no way to text or call for help. This was not good.

Soon enough the senior minister of a big church was passing by on the way to some important speaking engagement and, seeing the man, called 911 but kept on driving. What’s more important, after all? Stopping to help one or feeding the souls of a multitude, hundreds who could in turn multiply that Spirit power for even greater good? It’s a question of time-management and the use of limited resources.

Not too long after, Deacon Jones from the Holy Road Raise Your Blood Pressure Church passed by, but he saw that the bumper sticker on his car indicated the wrong political affiliation and he passed on by. If you dare sport a bumper sticker like that on your car, you should just expect a less than enthusiastic response by everyone on the other side of the aisle. Someone from your own party will be along soon enough.

And then a Mizzou student came by. A hometown boy who decided to live at home and care for his ailing mother while attending school, he was a member of the Honor Society, president of his fraternity, captain of the football team, head of the anti-racism, anti-poverty, anti-mess-up the environment coalition on campus. Shocked by the stranger’s condition, he stripped off his new polo shirt to bandage the wounds and then popped him into the back of his new SUV and whisked him to medical care. On the way, he called his church where he was a counselor with the youth group to start the prayer chain. After the beaten man emerged from Emergency, he put him up in the Tiger Hotel, leaving his parents’ credit card to cover all expenses. He told the innkeeper that he would check in with him after returning from the Collegiate United Nations in which he was playing the part of the general secretary.

And Jesus said to them, “Which one of these was the neighbor?” And they responded, of course, the good Mizzou student, not those selfish old religious hypocrites.

Ok, that’s the way they would have expected the story to end, and that’s how we would, too, with our hero of choice, confirming whom it is we know to be good and who it is we know to be bad. The hero is the best that those who are like us could become. But that’s not the way Jesus told the story. Here’s the real Jesus version:

Once upon a time there was a man who went down from Columbia to Jeff City who fell among a gang of Hells Angels who robbed him, beat him and left him for dead somewhere along the road near Hartsburg.

Soon enough, the senior minister of a big church was passing by on the way to an important speaking engagement and, seeing the man, called 911 but kept on driving.

Not too long after, Deacon Jones from the Holy Road Raise Your Blood Pressure Church passed by, but he saw that the bumper sticker on his car indicated the wrong political affiliation and he drove on by.

And then Mohammed came by. He was from Pakistan and living in the United States with a student visa. He had been very active with his mosque. Right after 9/11, he joined with an interreligious group to make statements denying that all Muslims are terrorists. He also made statements reminding Americans that our engagements around the world enrage the Muslim world and this is a reflection of their pushback. This did not endear Mohammed to his classmates and it earned him a place on the high-risk list of Homeland Security. Shocked by the stranger’s condition on the road, Mohammed stopped, bandaged his wounds, and called an ambulance that whisked him to medical care. After his release he made sure he had a place to stay and promised the Inn Keeper that he would cover all the expenses. 

And Jesus said to them, “Which one of these was the neighbor?” Stunned, they replied, “The one we thought was a terrorist.”

That’s exactly what Samaritans represented to Jews. They were loathed, feared, mistrusted, and marginalized. They avoided stepping on Samaritan ground like you and I carefully step around dog poop in the yard.

Suddenly Jesus explodes their tidy little world and turns everything upside down. God’s kingdom and its players are not limited by our limits. And the question of Jesus reverses the original question. The original question was, “Who is my neighbor?” It is the question of the boundaries, of who should earn a place in my circle of concern. But now the question has become something altogether different. Now the question is, “Who is being the neighbor?” And suddenly I am shocked and forced to provide an answer, not to who deserves mercy but rather how deep is my loving.

We finally get to a point in our lives, if we live at all, when we realize the limits of our love and how poorly we really do it. We come face to face with our limits. We don’t love God with our whole hearts and we love ourselves much more than we do our neighbors. And just about that time, we realize Jesus rattles our cages and calls us out as only he can. Especially when we gaze into his suffering love we know what being the neighbor is all about, as he did it for our sakes and the whole world not because of any merit of our own but because he was being the quintessential neighbor, the Good Samaritan, to a world who rejected him, misunderstood him and disappeared him because of it. It’s a strange way of things that someone is punished for loving, but in this world, it happens all the time.

Life is a laboratory for refining love, and every day, every relationship, every situation provides another opportunity to decide to what degree we will be the neighbor, to what degree we will love God with the whole heart and our neighbor unconditionally. By God’s grace, our circle of concern grows larger as our self-preoccupation grows smaller.

In another time and place, two brothers shared a field. Each day they worked in the field and during each harvest season, they stored away the grain in each of their two storage barns.

One brother was a bachelor, and lived alone. The other brother had a wife and large family. And one day the single brother thought to himself, “It is not right that we divide the grain equally, because I have only myself to care for, while my brother has a whole family.” So each night he would secretly take some of his grain over and pour it into his brother’s granary so that he and his family would never be without.

In time, the married brother said to himself, “It is not right that we divide the grain equally, because I have a whole family to take care of me in my old age, many children, and my brother has no one. He needs to be putting something aside for the future.” So secretly, he took some of his grain every night over to his brother’s granary so that he would always be provided for.

Both of them always found their supply of grain miraculously replenished in the morning. But then, one night, two brothers collided with one another in a field between their two houses, each with a bag of grain on their shoulders, and suddenly they realized what had been happening. At this, they reached and embraced.

A legend says that God was so pleased that he said, “This is holy ground, where love meets. This is where I want my first temple built.” And so it was that the temple of Solomon was said to have been constructed on that very spot.

If you’re wondering about some of the ways that encountering Jesus actually changes your life, here is one: He changes the kind of questions we ask. And when you change the questions, you start getting different answers.

Who is my neighbor? Come now, that’s so yesterday. How can I be the neighbor? Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.

Benediction

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.