Oh, Lord, how can I help people see your face? Who do you want me to pray for? Show me today. Lead me to the ones you can reach through me. Please show us how our church can serve you, how we can better organize ourselves to help you. Let us be a part of what you want to do next. Amen.

Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”

 

Jesus answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”

 

The man said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence – and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”

 

“Good answer!” said Jesus. Do it and you’ll live.”

 

Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define neighbor?”

 

Jesus answered by telling a story. “There once was a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.

 

“A Samaritan [considered an enemy] traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him on to his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill – I’ll pay you on my way back.’

 

“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”

 

“The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded.

 

Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”

 

Back in May, Rick, Jacob, and I were all invited to go to lunch with Kiwanian Don Rowland to his club. They have an annual clergy recognition luncheon time. Jacob couldn’t go. He was having lunch with students. So Rick and I went. 

 

As we ate and visited, a Broadway Christian Church friend directed the conversation a bit. She said, “Kim, we know Rick’s hobby is fishing, but what is your hobby?”

 

I found myself without an answer. I think part of it is I’m usually the one asking the probing questions in small-group settings. Right? But there it was: “What’s your hobbies?”

 

Now the first thing out of my mouth was, “Well, I like to walk.” Then I quickly added, “I love to read.”

 

Well, that was all pretty boring. You could just sort of see it in everybody’s face around the table. I thought, “OK, let’s spice this up a little bit.”

 

“I use to tap dance.”

 

They were all pretty much underwhelmed. Then it came to me – my favorite hobby. “I love to plan adventures.”

 

At the beginning of May, I was just on the edge of an adventure that I had been planning for two years. It was a two-week vacation trip in France. For me, the planning – the two years of planning – was just a part of the fun. That is my hobby.

 

The trip was fabulous. You know there are such incredible things that can happen when you travel. Here’s what I learned. You can get by in France with five phrases: “Bon jour,” “pardon,” “merci,” “th’e,” and “Coca Cola.” Even with a Texan accent, you can get by in France, and if your co-leader speaks fluent French. That helped a whole lot.

 

You know, there’s the adventure you plan – the trip to the museum, the art you are going to see, the hotels where you are going to stay, the itinerary you leave with family and friends. Then there is the adventure you get. Do you know what I mean? The surprises. The things you didn’t expect.

 

Do you know what the number one question has been for me when I got back from people who knew I went to France? “So, how were the French?” The first question.

 

The surprise and the delight was that the French were wonderful. The French were gracious.

 

There was the surprise on the morning we went out of our hotel to catch what we thought was going to be a van to take us around the countryside of France. It was a 49-passenger bus for eight. So eight of us road around France in a 49-passenger bus. It was embarrassing. 

 

There was a wonderful morning – Pentecost Sunday – and we went to mass in a Catholic Church in a suburb of Paris. A sweet nun, who had to have been 85 or 90 years old if she was a day, somehow picked us out in the crowd as visitors. She spent an hour with us, welcoming us, talking with us. 

 

And then there was my favorite – Mother’s Day – which is June 3 in France. We attended a vesper service, and there was a little girl about 6 or 7 who stood in front of a beautiful black Madonna and led the congregation in prayer in saying the “Hail Mary…” It was beautiful. It was a wonderful moment.

 

There is the adventure you plan, and then there is the adventure you get. It is kind of like life. Isn’t it? There is the life you plan. Then there is the life you get.

 

One of the outstanding moments for me was standing beneath the windows of Chartres Cathedral – Notre Dame in Chartres. Just being showered in the teaching and the understanding of Christians from the 13^th century who put their faith and devotion into glass, and design, and story, and symbol, and beauty that still speaks today.

 

The window that intrigued me the most held two stories in its exquisite majesty. One was the story of the Good Samaritan that we just heard from Luke. The other, the second story, was the second story of creation. We have two stories of creation in Genesis, the first book in our Bible. This one depicted the second story, the story that tells of Adam and Eve. It is the story that holds for Jews and Christians, alike, one of the long-held descriptions of our beginnings.

 

That seemed to me an odd combination – the Adam and Eve story and the Good Samaritan story. I didn’t quite get the connection. Fortunately, we had a wonderful guide who helped to open that up for us, because it was not an accident that these two stories were put in the same window.

 

It was a time before people could read that the windows were put together and created. Furthermore, they did not have access to the Bible. Very few people had access to the Bible. So the windows were actually the Bible, plus the interpretation of what those stories might mean. Those these two stories together offer important answers to some of life’s most significant questions.

Questions like: “What does life mean?” “What does our faith in Christ mean?” “How do we live?” In brighter than living color, these two stories say together so much.

 

The creation story of Adam and Eve asks the eternal life questions, “What went wrong?” “What happened?” “Why is life so hard?”

 

The answer offered in that story is that we have a tendency, as people, to turn away from God and to turn away from life, and truth, and rightness that God can offer us. When we do that, we try to lie, and hide, and blame our way out of our preoccupation. Does that sound familiar?

 

And then the next eternal question: “So, what can we do?” “If that’s what went wrong, what can we do?” “What can be done about our turning away, our temptation, and our sin?” “What must I do to get and experience eternal life?”

 

In bright golds, and reds, and blues, and greens of glass, artists and teachers from 800 years ago gave to the people of their village an answer. They give to the people of our village an answer. They give to the world an answer. The answer is Jesus’ answer in the story of the Good Samaritan.    “Here’s what you do.”

 

It’s a story of the unexpected, the surprising one, the one that many would call “the enemy giving the unlikely assistance.” He offers what matters most: care, and compassion, and hospitality, and kindness.”

 

Now, I will tell you, I have never in 26 years preached the Good Samaritan story. I just thought it was over done. Every Sunday School curriculum, for every year for children tells the Good Samaritan story. Every Vacation Bible School tells the Good Samaritan story. 

 

A few years ago, I put my foot down. “We are not going to do the Good Samaritan story in VBS again. It’s the only story our kids are going to know. There are so many others for them to learn.”

 

Well, here’s the confession. Standing in that vast cathedral, gazing at the beauty and the power of that story lifted off the pages of Scripture, with light shining through it in a way I have never seen before, I realized. If our children only remember one story from the Bible, and it is this story, they are going to be OK. If any of us only remember and take to heart one story that Jesus told, we’re going to be OK if it is the Good Samaritan story. What’s more, the world might be OK.

 

If we have encountered this story before, somewhere in our past, or if we are just hearing it for the first time today, we may identify with some are all of the characters in the story. We may know ourselves, at one time or another, to have been the wounded, beaten person, left for dead. We may have been the person passing by too busy, too preoccupied, too important to help. We may have been the one who couldn’t look away – the one who gave his heart to the wounded person. The one who chose not to be uninvolved but who gave a helpful hand.

 

Since returning home, I have learned that in the 13^th century, there was a role, a character, that the Church was identified with in this story. In the 13^th century, they identified the Church with the inn, offering a place of respite, healing for the wounded and the beaten down, brought by a fellow traveler, even an unlikely one. Isn’t that a great image?

 

We were checking out of our hotel in Chartres, and we were talking with the innkeeper in French and English. We were saying “thank you” to her, because she had really gone above and beyond in her hospitality for us. She tried to tell us in English, “What we want here is simplicity and kindness. And how do you say…?”

 

And we said, “Hospitality?”

 

“Hospitality. Yes! We want to be family,” she told us.

 

Isn’t that a great description for the Church? “Simplicity, and kindness, and hospitality, and family.”

 

I have the privilege of getting to know new people as they come to Broadway, and especially if they come to Broadway 101, our session for new and visiting folks. I ask them, “How did you get here?” 

 

They tell me. “A friend invited me.” “A coworker said I could find support here. I’m going through a bad time.” “My realtor said we should come, since we are new in town, and it’s her church.” (Guess who that was.) More and more they are saying, “We found you on the Internet. I was looking.” One recently, and I love this one: “I kept driving by your church for almost a year, and finally God said, ‘Pull in. Pull in.’” That’s great.

 

Then they will say, “Once I came, I felt so welcomed. I felt like I was at home.” As if they are surprised that they would be so welcomed in a church. Sometimes they even tell of visits to churches in other places in which no one said “hello” to them the day they were there. No one introduced themselves to them the day they were there. No one seemed to care whether he or she was there or not.

 

Here at Broadway, we may have a little bit of hesitation about introducing ourselves and saying, “Oh, are you new?” because chances are we might be introducing ourselves to a charter member who goes to a different service. It’s happened. But we are getting over that. We are over that.

 

Those of us who have been here a while may have forgotten or maybe we just realize how rare, how precious, how appreciated kindness and hospitality truly are. You see, a church’s kindness and hospitality create the possibility for a relationship with Jesus to begin or to grow deeper. A church’s kindness and hospitality create the possibility for a relationship with the Spirit to be enhanced in partnership and in friendship with others. A church’s kindness and hospitality give room to explore those eternal questions of life and to discover Jesus’ answers, and to discover our own answers, and to discover our story within Jesus’ story.

 

I believe that Broadway Christian Church is a church that has a gift of hospitality and kindness. It is our gift. Now, as an entire church, we are asking and we are praying, “What’s next, God? What do you want to do? What can you do with our gifts?”

 

Members and friends of Broadway received a letter this week inviting us into this adventure of a church listening for God’s guidance. We have been asked to pray for three months for God’s guidance and clarity. If you are a visitor here, we don’t want you to feel left out. There are copies of that letter at every welcome center you find in the church. Get a copy of that letter. Join us. Pray with us as we are praying. If you are a visitor, we also don’t want you to think we haven’t been praying before. I know it sure sounds like that. Of course we have prayed. This is a congregation conceived in prayer. Every brick you see… Every wall you see is the result of prayer. 

 

So, what’s unique? So, what’s different about this? Here it is. We are going to pray and wait. We are going to pray and wait for three months. We are going to listen before any planning takes place, before we take action on what we should do next, what God wants us to do next. And that is going to be really hard for us, because we are used to praying, and planning, and working hard. So we are going to pray hard, and we are going to wait hard. And it is hard, because we tend to be a “get-r-done” group.

 

There are two phases to this three months of prayer. Let me give you a brief explanation, because there has been a little bit of confusion about, “Well, how do we do this?”

 

A few weeks ago, Rick Frost, our senior minister, asked us all to pray for 20 minutes every day. How’s it going? 

 

Oh, my gosh! I thought I was doing well, three or four days a week, 20 minutes. I was feeling good about that. But every day? 

 

Rick suggested you could pray with the words of Jesus you find in the gospel of Luke. That’s a great suggestion.

 

In the letter that Guy Adams and Ed Stansberry sent us, they gave us a few more ways to engage in prayer for 20 minutes for however many days we do that. Hopefully, every day. They suggested we pray the prayer they included that says: “Lord, how can I help people see your face? Who do you want me to pray for? Show me today. Lead me to the ones you can reach through me. Please show us how our church can serve you, how we can better organize ourselves to help you. Let us be a part of what you want to do next.” 

 

That takes about 30 seconds. So, you can listen for 19½ minutes.

 

They also asked for us to be in prayer for the transition team, and their names are in the letter. They asked for you to be praying for the staff of this church. I just want to say “thank you” to both of you for that. Yes, please pray for us.

 

We are going to pray, and we are going to wait, and we are going to listen. Then there will be the second phase of this three-month period of prayer beginning on September 9. It is a specific plan, a specific guide to prayer that will be given to us for 40 days of prayer that will be available to intentionally assist us to further unite and unify us in prayer altogether for 40 days. Why 40 days? Because Jesus prayed for 40 days before he began his ministry. We are going to pray in one spirit together as much as we can for 40 days before we move into the next ministry to which God is calling us.

 

This is big. This is really big.

 

Our prayer team – our prayer ministry team – is working on other ideas to encourage and help us in our praying and waiting.

 

I don’t know. We don’t know what the Spirit may whisper, or nudge, or shout among us. I don’t know. We don’t know where God may need us yet. We don’t know how God may want to use our gifts next.

 

This is the adventure we are planning. And then there will be the adventure we will get. But I do know that this church has taught me that God is faithful. God is faithful. I am going to trust and invite you to trust that we are going to be given and guided into our story within the story of Jesus Christ.

 

So, show us God. Lead us. Let us be a part of what you want to do next. Amen.

 

 

May this church be a welcome Inn. Make us the keepers of each other’s hearts. May we be a comfort to those in need of a resting place. May we be a helping to those with troubled hearts. You paid the price; we can leave the light on. Amen.