Thompson's Blog

Chillin’ With Jesus
Luke 16:19-31

19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27 He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house– 28 for I have five brothers–that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'”

You may have noticed that I’m not inclined to preach in a manner that reinforces the familiar theological concept of being damned to hell for eternity if you don’t make the right confession. The truth is I’ve never even listened to much of that kind of preaching, but I grew up in Arkansas and it’s sort of in the air. I think it’s accurate to say that I heard enough about hell as a child to carry some fear of it into young adulthood, but I don’t buy in to that line of thinking any more. I know that the Christian movement has been largely fueled by people seeking to avoid hell when they die, and fear of hell is a strong motivator. I’m guessing there is some correlation between the decline in participation in church and the decline of fear of hell.

I can’t quote a study on this, but I believe there is some connection there. I’m not saying that we have eradicated the fear of eternal damnation in hell, but it’s presence in our society has been greatly diminished. I think the mega-churches of today are built more on the possibility of great success and prosperity in this life than they are on the fear of hell in the afterlife.

It occurs to me that in my preaching I don’t offer Jesus an avenue to escape the flames of hell in the afterlife nor do I suggest that Jesus provides us with the path to success in life. When I think about that I feel a lot better about the number of people who show up here on Sunday mornings. I’ve been feeling sort of bad about our inability to grow, but I’m operating without two of the most powerful tools available to a preacher. I don’t offer fear of hell or the secret to success. I’m surprised anyone sticks around to hear what I have to say.

I know there’s the music, and I’m grateful for that as well.

Given the focus that lots of well-meaning Christians have put on hell you would think that this was the primary subject Jesus addressed, but when you read the Gospels you’ll find that Jesus spent very little time talking about hell, and when he did, it wasn’t in the same manner that most revivalists have utilized the notion of hell. I think there used to be this widespread assumption among Christians that upon death, we all will enter into eternal reward or punishment, and where we end up largely depends on what we profess to believe.

This is an oversimplification of a gross generalization, but I’m certain that this is not an uncommon understanding of what happens when we die. But you sure can’t build that scenario around today’s portrayal of hell. We don’t know anything about the beliefs of Lazarus or of this rich man. All we know about these two people is how they lived. And the way I see it, this blows the traditional view of hell out of the water and it casts a pretty dark shadow on what you might call the prosperity gospel. Anyone who thinks being a good Christian provides the path to great wealth needs to contemplate this story for a moment.

Obviously Jesus wasn’t opposed to using the threat of eternal flames in the afterlife in his preaching and teaching, but I think he did it in order to get us to be more conscious of how we are living in the current life. Jesus didn’t tell this story to provide us with an exact blueprint of the afterlife. He told it as an attempt to wake us up to the realities of this life.

If this is an exact portrayal of what happens when we die the interesting thing is that our eternal fate has nothing to do with what we confess to believe. If Jesus was primarily concerned with the eternal resting places of our souls, and if he told this story as an actual portrayal of the possibilities, then the fate of our souls has nothing to do with religious practice or faith. According to this story, our entrance into eternal reward or punishment is based upon our economic standing and charitable giving. I don’t think there are many North American Christians who would like to think that this is an accurate portrayal of our options when we leave this world.

I don’t pretend to know much about the afterlife, but I trust that Jesus did, and what I glean from this story is that we often live with really distorted notions of reward and punishment – of righteousness and accomplishment – of heaven and hell. This story of Lazarus and the rich man illustrates these distortions and this story offers motivation to pursue a more meaningful form of existence than conventional wisdom would lead us to believe.

This story that Jesus told isn’t unlike other stories that have been uncovered in other places and religious traditions. This notion of reversed fortune in the afterlife isn’t unique to Jesus, and this particular story doesn’t significantly differ from a Jewish story of reversed fortune. Jesus wasn’t trying to break new theological ground when he told this story – he was reminding people of truth that had already been revealed. Jesus said as much when he told of how the rich man begged to have someone contact his brothers about the unfortunate consequences of their selfishness, and Jesus said this truth was already out there.

While this story portrays a reversal of fortune, this really isn’t a surprising story. It’s not surprising in that it portrays God as having more appreciation for a man who was wounded and ignored than a man who was self-serving and uncompassionate. It isn’t hard to believe that God would react to the individuals in the way that’s described, and one reason that it isn’t hard to believe is that this has probably been true to our own experiences.

I’m not saying any of us have ever ventured into the afterlife, but it isn’t a foreign concept to hear of a helpless man being rewarded and a self-indulgent man being tormented. You don’t have to die before you can experience such reward and punishment. It’s hard to willingly place ourselves in positions of need, and it’s hard not to dress in purple linen and gorge ourselves as often as the opportunity arises, but the reward of self indulgence is shallow and the grace that comes to us when we are in need is rich.

Someone suggested to me that I watch a TED Talk by a woman named Brene’ Brown. If you aren’t familiar with TED Talks they are relatively short videos available online from all kinds of people who present ideas worth spreading. In the talk that I watched, Ms. Brown spoke of the value of vulnerability. She actually preaches a pretty good sermon on it, and I can’t really do it justice, but she spoke of a type of conversion she had to the idea. Actually she described it as a breakdown. It was her therapist who described it as a “spiritual awakening”, but the point is that she once was a person who highly valued the ability to measure, control, and predict life, and she came to understand the value of our inability to control and predict the course of our lives. She spoke of how it’s our various inabilities that can enable us to seek connections with other people.

Now, our inabilities and inadequacies don’t automatically provide us with connections. Knowing the truth about ourselves can be very painful, and we often go to great lengths to numb ourselves to those truths and to put masks over our perceived inadequacies. Which are strategies that only lead to more disconnection.

She didn’t say this, but I would also say that it’s our vulnerability that enables us to seek connection with God. In the same way that we forge connection with other people when we acknowledge and deal with our frailties and faults, I think we seek connection with God when we see ourselves well and embrace our imperfections, faults, and needs.

The rich man in our story ended up in such a miserable place because he had access to all of these things he thought he needed, and it was all of that stuff that kept him ignorant of himself, unconscious of other people, and isolated from God.

I think we actually have a good portrayal of heaven and hell in our story today. I don’t think Jesus wanted us to think of heaven as being destitute and covered in sores, but I do think he wanted us to see the value of vulnerability. Lazarus had no illusion of himself. He understood the value of every crumb that fell his way. He was in touch with gratitude. I would never romanticize the life of a man who lived on the level of a dog, but I would say that a person who lives with such self-clarity has the easiest access to the kingdom of God.

And the rich man in our story was as far from God’s kingdom as he could get. He adorned himself so well he didn’t really know what he looked like. He fed himself so well he had no sense of gratitude, and he was so focused on himself he never even saw other people. The rich man in our story was disconnected from himself, from other people and from God. This man was living in hell before he died. I’m not saying that he didn’t eat some good food and enjoy some fine entertainment, but I don’t sense that his appetite was ever satisfied.

Friends, I do believe in heaven – I also believe in hell, and I think we have access to both. I don’t know how these concepts play out in the afterlife, but I have a clue about their presence in this life. We are moving in the direction of hell when we live without compassion for ourselves and others. We don’t have compassion for ourselves when we don’t recognize and deal honestly with our own frailties and inadequacies, and it’s hard to be kind to others when we don’t recognize failure in ourselves. It’s hard to be connected to anyone else when we are disconnected from ourselves, and when we live with such disconnection we are clueless about God. Hell is real and it’s not hard to go there.

I don’t know about you, but I want to hang out in heaven with Jesus. I don’t know what that will feel like in the afterlife, but my sense is that we would do well to find him in this life. He’s not unavailable, but he’s hard to find. Getting to him requires us to have some tremendous personal courage. We have to see ourselves well, and we have to take notice of our neighbors.

Getting to heaven isn’t easy for any of us, but it’s a possibility for all of us, and I take great comfort in that. I don’t know what happens when we die, but from what I can tell we need to pay attention to how we live today.

Amen

Workin’ With Jesus
Luke 16:1-8a

16:1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2 So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 3 Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7 Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ 8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly;

My preaching over the past few weeks has brought me about as close to a sermon series as I’ve ever been. Two weeks ago my sermon title was “Hatin’ With Jesus”, last Sunday it was “Partyin’ With Jesus”, this week it’s “Workin’ With Jesus”, and next week it’s going to be “Chillin’ With Jesus”. I really don’t know what I could have called this series if I had decided to give it a title, but it would have been something like: Hangin’ With Jesus: Old Preacher Tries to be Cool.

You might think my resistance to organizing my preaching under themed series is rooted in my inability to plan ahead – and you might be right about that, but the truth is that I consider Christianity itself to be all the theme I need. I don’t find Jesus to be easily organized and labelled. About the time you think you know what to expect from him he says or does something that breaks the pattern. I like to imitate that in my preaching. I want people to come to church not knowing what to expect – other than to hear some truth about Jesus.

And the truth is we’ve got some challenging words from Jesus this morning. I mean, what do you make of today’s passage? Is this something you ever would have expected Jesus to say? Apparently he did – I don’t think this is something Luke would have made up. This is a curious text. And the verses that follow this parable are portrayed as an explanation of what the parable is about, but the explanation is more confounding to me than the parable, so I’m not going touching the explanatory verses. It’s the parable itself that I find to be the most compelling. I don’t know if my reaction to this parable is what Jesus hoped to provoke, but I do find some good news in this text, and I hope you come away feeling the same way.

I think it’s helpful to remember that Jesus didn’t tell this story as an anecdote for a business ethics workshop. Jesus isn’t functioning here as a traditional instructor in a management seminar. He was functioning as an instructor, and you might say he was engaged in some management of a troubled institution, but there’s nothing normal about his instruction or his management style. I think it’s good to remember that Jesus wasn’t dealing with a community that needed some minor adjustments. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem to address the monumental problem that had developed among the people of Israel and beyond. It’s that pesky problem of us not understanding the cost and the value of loving one another.

Jesus would eventually reveal what such love looks like in a powerfully graphic way, but along the the way to Jerusalem he did all sorts of things to reveal the true nature of God. One of the things he did was to tell these parables, and while people were often clueless as to what he was saying, I think it’s accurate to say he was offering clues. Today’s parable is a real head-scratcher, and there are a lot of different opinions about what he was talking about.

I take the simple approach, which is to try to identify where God fits in this story. In this case it’s not so easy, because there aren’t any clearly identified heroes in this story. But parables were never designed to tell the whole story about God – Jesus told parables to illustrate very specific characteristics of God, or to help us understand particular things about ourselves. Our challenge is to identify the truth that Jesus was wanting to highlight.

I may be wrong, but I think we are to think of God as the rich man in this story. I know that doesn’t inspire confidence in your preacher to hear me say, I may be wrong,but as I mentioned a moment ago, there are a lot of different opinions about what this parable is all about. I’m not alone in my thinking that God is the rich man here, but there isn’t consensus on that. I should probably preface all of my sermons with that line, I may be wrong, but there’s no reason to state the obvious. We all know I may be wrong, but I also know the Holy Spirit works miracles and I take great comfort in that. I trust that the Holy Spirit can enable you to hear more than I am able to say, and that’s what enables me to get up and speak.

And here’s what I’m thinking: we’ve got this rich man who hears that his manager has been mishandling his property, and the rich man shows up to tell him he’s fired. Yes, this rich man has some of the same characteristics of Donald Trump. I know you have been trying to eliminate the image of God as being an old white man with long white hair and a white beard, and here I’m conjuring up an image of God as another white man in a suit with sort of yellow hair that mysteriously hovers over his head. I know you are thanking me for that.

But it’s not his hair that I want you to focus on. This rich man does tell his manager that he’s fired, but he doesn’t just say,Your fired! This rich man asks the manager to give an accounting of his management, and in so doing he gives him an opportunity to resolve the situation.

This manager is no fool. He knows himself well. For years he has been the one who’s been telling people where to dig, and he knows he is in no shape to start digging. Maybe this is where you should insert the image of Donald Trump. You wouldn’t even want to hire him as a digger, and you know someone like that doesn’t want to start begging, so he decides to cut some deals. I’m seeing Donald Trump really clearly now. He cuts deals and he resolves the accounts in a way that will not only provide him with some new contacts – the rich man isn’t left without anything. And by taking this action all of the relationships were preserved.

This rich man is an interesting character. He wants his enterprise to operate well. He has no tolerance for the abuse of his resources, but he isn’t overly harsh, and he valued the man’s creative resolution to the difficult situation he had gotten himself in to.

I like this rich man. This rich man isn’t unaware of the way in which his manager mismanaged his enterprise, but his impulse was not to destroy his misguided manager. He allowed him to resolve the problem he had created in a way that was very pleasing to the people who were in debt to the rich man.

I don’t know if the Pharisees and the other mismanagers of the house of Israel identified with the dishonest manager in this story, but I think Jesus wanted them to. It’s not hard for me to think of those perpetual antagonists of Jesus as the ones who squandered the rich man’s property. They had not served God well, and Jesus exposed their abuse all too clearly, but Jesus wasn’t out to destroy anyone. This God of ours values reconciliation.

Jesus wanted the Pharisees to see themselves, but he didn’t just reveal their ugliness. He showed that God still had some appreciation for them. Perhaps the most redeeming characteristic of the manager in our story is that he didn’t question the authority of the rich man. He didn’t even try to weasel out of the situation – he knew the gig was up. He understood the authority of the rich man, and he knew his only hope was to forge ahead in a new way. I think this was the hope Jesus had for all who live in opposition to the will of God.

Last week Forbes magazine published the list of the richest people in the United States, and once again it is confirmed that Bill Gates has more money than God. God didn’t make the list. Of course God doesn’t deal in that kind of currency, but Jesus did, and he never would have made it on that list. Jesus did portray God as a rich man in this parable, he didn’t want us to confuse being rich with being godly. Jesus just wanted us all to understand who truly reigns over this world, and how rich it is to serve our God.

I think Jesus told this parable as a reminder of that truth, and in so doing he was inviting the very people who had opposed him to repent, and to become reintegrated into God’s community. It’s easy to become alienated from God and to pursue misguided agendas. I think it’s particularly easy for those of us who declare our intentions to serve God in this world to get crossed up in that work.

I think we would all do well to see the ways in which we have mismanaged the abundance that has been placed at our disposal – and to figure out how to proceed in a manner that will be redeeming and restoring to everyone involved. We are all capable of interacting with a degree of shrewdness in this world, and I think Jesus is challenging us to utilize our shrewdness in a holy manner.

Jesus wasn’t celebrating dishonesty in this parable – he was offering a stark reminder of who’s world this truly is. He was also encouraging us to use our wits in creative and clever ways. God wants us to be engaged in this world in ways that will be compelling and redeeming to other people.

We Christians have been called to engage in some really unusual work. Working with Jesus is not easily defined, but it is easily recognized. It’s the work of redemption. It’s not about judgment – it’s about restoration.

I’m grateful that Jesus told this odd parable of how God appreciated this misguided man who was able to find an avenue to a new life. There was some good news here for the Pharisees – there’s some good news here for us all.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Partyin’ With Jesus
Luke 15:1-10

15:1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3 So he told them this parable: 4 “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. 8 “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

I don’t remember saying this, but Anne told me the other day she remembered something I said several years ago – prior to my arrival here as the pastor. She and David had had some kind of gathering at their house that Sharla and I had been invited to attend, and apparently I had contributed some beer to the occasion. As we were leaving Anne told me that she thought there was some beer in the refrigerator that belonged to me. And she says I responded by saying that I consider any beer in any refrigerator to belong to me.

I can’t believe that I would have said something like that. I’m not saying that this isn’t an accurate reflection of how I feel, but I can’t believe I would have come up with such a clever line in such a timely manner. I usually think of good lines well after the optimum moment of delivery. But you might say I didn’t even have to think about this line – this is actually how I feel about beer. Now if it’s light beer in the refrigerator it belongs to somebody else, but if it’s a full-bodied hoppy beer I will assume it’s there for me. This may be bad, but it’s true. I’m a bit of a beer snob actually. I’m not so choosy when it comes to wine or other spirits, but as you can see, I’m definitely an advocate of temperance as opposed to abstinence.

And I think Jesus would put up with me for being that way. From what I can tell, he was not one to stay away from a party. I think he probably earned this reputation that the Pharisees gave him for eating with sinners, and I don’t think such people would have gathered around him the way they did if he just showed up and started preaching to them about what they were doing wrong. They heard enough of that from the Pharisees. I believe Jesus had actual fellowship with these people who weren’t properly righteous – and it caught the attention of the religious police. He wasn’t living in what they considered to be a righteous manner.

And I love that about Jesus. I love the fact that official sinners were drawn to Jesus. In fact, that may very well explain my own attraction to Jesus. He was a friend to the sinners of his day, and he didn’t avoid stepping in to the places out where sinners generally gathered. That’s why I make it a point to stop by Vino’s on a regular basis. I’m thinking I’m as likely to run in to Jesus there as anywhere else.

Because of my attitude and my behavior there are religious bodies that would not only find me unfit for preaching – they wouldn’t grant me membership. I am an officially unrighteous person on a significant level. I have great respect for people who stay away from alcohol, but I have never in my adult life been one of those people. I think I keep it under control, but of course that’s a subjective matter. And I don’t lift myself up as a great role model in this way, but I don’t feel that it causes me to violate my core beliefs.

And one of my core beliefs is that Jesus was more interested in us getting along with each other than in trying to be better than one another. I’m totally convinced that self-righteousness is more poisonous to a religious community than is any form of liquor. Certainly alcohol and other substances do their share of poisoning relationships. I am not unaware of that, and my heart goes out to people and families who struggle with addiction issues. I have great admiration for people who have battled and defeated that demon. Drugs and alcohol can and do wreck people’s lives, and I understand the logic of people who think we would all be better off if none of us ever touched it, but that’s such a hard thing to regulate.

I could adjust to such an alcohol-free world, and I might learn to love living in that world, but I can tell you I would harbor some ill will in my heart toward those who would impose such a world on me. I don’t think it ever works for one group of people to narrowly define righteous living for all other people.

This was the nature of the problem that Jesus ran in to with the Pharisees. From what I understand, Pharisees weren’t generally bad people. They were highly disciplined people and many of them were well motivated. They had great passion to reform the way Judaism was practiced, but many of them were blinded by their own pursuit. In the process of trying to reform the faith they had come to worship a narrow agenda and it became a very ugly thing. And one of the ugliest aspects of the Pharisaic tradition was to cut people off from the community who didn’t measure up to their standards. If you violated their strict code of religious piety you were ritually unclean and unwelcome in the synagogue.

The people who were probably the most in need of the care of the religious community were cut-off and kept away. And it was in response to this practice that Jesus told these parables. These parables don’t make so much sense unless you think about the way in which the Pharisees would more or less cast people away who didn’t live up to their standards.

The truth is that it doesn’t make sense for a shepherd to leave the 99 sheep unattended in order to go in search of the one that has gone missing. He asked the question of who would go and do this, and the answer is that no reasonable shepherd would do such a thing, but God is not like a reasonable shepherd. God doesn’t reason the way we do. It appears that God pays more attention to the missing than to the ones who are ok.

You might say he is putting the other sheep at risk by leaving them to go in search of the one who is missing, but that simply isn’t the point of this parable. The point of this parable is to show how valuable everyone is to God – not just the people who meet certain standards.

Now in the other parable there’s no threat to the 9 coins that are accounted for while the woman goes in search of the one lost coin, so the situation Jesus presents makes more sense on some level. It wouldn’t be unusual for a person to go to great lengths to recover a tenth of their wealth, but it’s interesting to think of the way this story would have struck the Pharisees. This story portrays God as a woman who was cleaning her house. The Pharisees were functioning with an entirely different image of God. Their God was a very harsh judge, and Jesus shows God to be a searching woman – and as someone who probably spent more than the coin was worth on a party to celebrate the discovery of her precious coin.

There is a lot of good news in this morning’s passage. There’s a lot of good news for those of us who know ourselves to fall short of perfection, and there’s good news for those of us who sometimes think too highly of ourselves. God doesn’t give up on any of us – ever. And God celebrates those moments when we get better.

I’m not inclined to think that there are easily distinguishable lines between those who are spiritually lost and those who aren’t, and this morning’s scripture reminds me that regardless of what we think of ourselves, God isn’t confused about who we are and what we need, and God is in the business of seeking us out wherever we are. Some people are caught up in the clear darkness of addiction, greed, infidelity, theft and other forms of behavior that destroy relationships and create hardships for others. Other people are tangled in the web of self-deception about how well they are are doing and how pleasing they must be to God and their neighbors.

Wherever we are on this scale of lostness – our calling is to get better. To use the language of John Wesley, we are to be engaged in the process of moving on to perfection. And while the work of moving on to perfection sounds like a daunting and tedious task, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for celebration along the way. I believe this enterprise of Christian discipleship is much more interesting and joyful than distorted religious authorities have forever led us to believe, and I’m grateful for the spirit of joyful celebration that exists within this religious community.

I’m grateful for this crazy level of love that God has for us that serves to empower us to get better. Because God hasn’t quit reaching out to us we don’t need to give up on anyone else, and when people take steps to move out of darkness and in to the light of love we need to join our hearts with the angels in heaven and celebrate. If the church isn’t a joyful community we aren’t doing something right.

I give thanks to God that Jesus wasn’t afraid to defy the logic of the Pharisees and to hang out with people like us. We don’t have to be perfect – we just need to give God our thanks and our praise.
Amen.

Hatin’ With Jesus
Luke 14:25-33
25 Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26 “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Prior to being elected as a bishop in the Southeast Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church, Rev. Will Willimon was the preacher at Duke Chapel in Durham, NC for several years. In addition to being a gifted preacher he is a prolific and engaging writer, and in an article he wrote about discipleship he shared the story of a conversation he had with an angry father who’s daughter was an undergraduate student at Duke. It went like this:

I hold you personally responsible for this! the man said.
Me? Rev. Willimon asked.
The father was hot, upset because his graduate-school bound daughter had just informed him that she was going to chuck it all (throw it all away, was the way the father described it) and go do mission work with the Presbyterians in Haiti.
Isn’t that absurd! shouted the father. A BS degree in mechanical engineering from Duke and she’s going to dig ditches in Haiti.

Well, I doubt that she’s received much training in the Engineering Department here for that kind of work, but she’s probably a fast learner and will probably get the hang of ditch-digging in a few months, Willimon said.

Look, said the father, this is no laughing matter. You are completely irresponsible to have encouraged her to do this. I hold you personally responsible, the man said.

Me? What have I done? said Willimon

You, you ingratiated yourself with her, filled her head with all that religion stuff. She likes you, that’s why she’s doing this foolishness, he said.

Now look, buster, Willimon said, struggling to keep his ministerial composure. Weren’t you the one who had her baptized?

Why yes, said the father.

And then, didn’t you read her Bible stories, take her to Sunday School, let her go with the Presbyterian Youth Fellowship to ski in Vail?

Well, yes, but…

Don’t but me, Willimon said. It’s not my fault that she believed all that stuff, and that she’s gone and thrown it all away on Jesus. Your the one that introduced her to Jesus, not me.

But all we ever wanted her to be was a Presbyterian, the man said.

Sorry. You’ve messed up and made a disciple.

I don’t know if all of Will Willimon’s conversations unfold like screenplay dialogs. In some ways that exchange struck me as a conversation that was made for preaching, but it does shine some light on the problematic nature of discipleship. It can put us at odds with the very people we care the most about and separate us from the things we cherish the most. Who would have thought that Jesus would turn fine upstanding people in to haters?

I like that word, hater. Something I enjoyed about being in campus ministry was getting to hear fresh slang. Of course by the time I usually heard it it wasn’t necessarily fresh anymore, but there was one student in particular who liked to say things that he knew I wouldn’t quite understand. I remember hearing him refer to a girl he knew as a hater, and what I knew about that situation was that he was a lot more interested in her than she was in him, so I figured that one out.

You’re a hater when you aren’t doing whatever it is that I want you to do. So for instance, I’d be wondering why you’re hatin’ on me if I sent you an email and you didn’t respond. And you might be wondering why I’m hatin’ on you by sending you an email asking you to do something. It’s easy to be a hater. We’ve got our annual Charge Conference coming up and that means I’ve got to find people to fill all kinds of positions within the church. There’s going to be a whole lot of hatin’ goin’ on when I start making those phone calls and sending those emails. And that reminds me of all those haters out there who don’t support the church like they aught to.

I am a hater. And you need to be a hater too if you want to follow Jesus. He said we’ve got to do some hatin’ if we want to be a disciple. But it’s not easy to hate the way he hated. I don’t think I’m hating like Jesus when I call you a hater for not answering my phone call. Jesus wasn’t undermining the power of that word when he said we need to hate the relationships we are inclined to cherish, he used that word in order to highlight the difficulty of being his follower.

Jesus used this extreme language in order to describe the high cost of following him. Jesus wanted us to know on the front end that following him is not a matter of tagging along on a sentimental journey.

We call Jesus the Prince of Peace, but the truth is that he tore things up. He undermined cherished traditions and encouraged counter-cultural behavior. Church-going people aren’t normally thought-of as rabble-rousers, and that is an indictment of the church. Most parents are more comfortable with their children being good Presbyterians or good Methodists instead of being actual disciples. There’s no telling what kind of trouble our children would get in to if they took discipleship seriously. There’s no telling what would happen to any of us if we allowed the love and the logic of Christ to take over our lives.

Our world is a mess. If you don’t believe it you need to change the channel on your television or delete whatever game app. has taken over your mind. I went to see this film the other night at Philander Smith College that was called “The House I Live In”, there was a bit of a contingency from our church and I was happy about that. But this film highlighted the terrible way our nation’s war on drugs has destroyed people’s lives. Certainly drug use takes it’s toll on people, but the laws that have been created in response to that problem have done more damage to people than the drugs. This film brought attention to the terrible problem of mass incarceration, and how it has been particularly devastating to people who are poor and have dark skin. I firmly believe Jesus would hate this system that we have in place and the people who promote it.

What I actually believe is that he would love the promoters of injustice so much that he would do what he could to stop them from doing their bad work. I think there’s a fine line between loving and hating. Hating isn’t the opposite of loving – the opposite of loving is not caring.

And Jesus wants those of us who aspire to be his followers to care so much that we hate for bad patterns of existence to continue. Jesus wants us to care about our world so much that we don’t do what our parents or siblings or children expect us to do, but that we allow God to be the guide of our hearts. You probably need to pay pretty good attention to what your spouse thinks, but the truth is that we are ultimately only accountable to God, and we need to do some accurate accounting of our lives.

Whether we know it or not we are all doing a whole lot of loving and a whole lot of hating, and we need to be conscious of where our affections lie. Those of us who call ourselves Christian are claiming to love Jesus, but that may not be who we are serving. Jesus knew this to be the case with the crowd that had grown up around him, so he decided to say something that would eliminate the people who weren’t hating the right things and who loved the wrong things. Jesus has always wanted people who will engage in some hatin’ with him and not be hatin’ on him.

I know it sounds kind of funny to be talking about hating with Jesus, and the truth is that what I mean when I say we need to be hating with him is that we need to allow ourselves to be overtaken by the transforming love of Jesus. It’s that depth of love that gives people the courage to care about the suffering of our neighbors. It’s a love that moves people to hate those powers and principalities that dehumanize and destroy. It’s the love of Jesus that can help us say no to the people who are behind those death dealing systems and policies and to work for actual justice.

Regardless of what Jesus said, he was no hater. Jesus was the one who loved so well he was unable to be destroyed by those who were guided by the worst form of hate. His love for us all cost him his life, but his love prevailed over death, and we continue to be touched and transformed by his love.

Thanks be to God for his powerful love, and for the way in which it empowers us to hate the thought of being anything less than his faithful disciples.

Amen.

Spiritual Immigration
Luke 14:1, 7-14

1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. 7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 12 He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
I think a California congressman was trying to be clever when he told a group of young advocates for the DREAM Act that he understood their situation because he was born in Arkansas. The DREAM Act applies to children of undocumented immigrants who have been raised in the U.S. but who live in legal limbo and who constantly face the specter of deportation to an unfamiliar country. Rep. Gary Miller’s comments weren’t as endearing as he had hoped they would be. While Arkansas may be as foreign to him as Mexico is to many of the young people he was addressing, no one can force Rep. Miller to relocate to the wilds of Arkansas. I think there are people in Arkansas who take comfort in that as well.

Moving in to a foreign land is often a difficult undertaking. And because of the stressful nature of entering new territory I’m guessing that most immigration is fueled by the emergence of harsh circumstances. It’s not easy to immigrate, so most people don’t unless they have to. Sometimes immigration is forced – sometimes it’s chosen, but I doubt if people ever choose to radically relocate without some kind of pressure.

When things are really bad, I’m sure there’s some relief that comes with immigration, but I’m thinking it’s always pretty difficult to move in to a new culture. It’s not easy to learn new ways of navigating the world. I had trouble understanding what people were saying when I moved from Arkansas to North Carolina. I can’t imagine what it would be like to move to another country where they utter unfamiliar syllables at twice the pace that we do here in Arkansas.

While I consider myself to have decent survival skills, I have come to discover that there are some impediments to my capacity to adapt. I haven’t moved in to a new country, but a new environment has moved in on me, and I’m not particularly happy about it. I learned a new phrase the other day that describes people like me – I’m a digital immigrant. This phrase came up the other day when we were having a meeting of our digital marketing team, and in the course of our conversation the young son of one of our team members overheard what we were talking about and he made some kind of suggestion of how we could improve our social media presence, and someone referred to him as a digital native.

Today’s children are growing up in a digitally saturated environment and they know how to navigate this world better than I do. Just like immigrants of all new worlds, some people adjust better than others, and most of the people who are on our social media marketing team are digital immigrants, but they have learned the new language better than I have. Now I have become as dependent upon a computer and a smart phone as much as anyone, but these are not the kind of tools that I am most adapted to using.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that one of the attractions I had to professional ministry was that I didn’t think I would have to use a computer. I just didn’t see this new world coming, and I’ve had a hard time adjusting. I don’t get digits. I don’t really get waves either, but I can better imagine waves moving through the air than I can digits.

I’m trying to adjust. And I have come to believe that there is some great opportunity for our church to become more digitally savvy. I’m even starting to think I should learn what it means to start a phrase with a hashtag, but you’re hearing this from a guy that went through seminary with a manual typewriter. I might well have been the last person to have done such a thing. It wasn’t easy to retype a page when you discovered you left a sentence out of the middle, but I understood how it worked.

Adjusting to a new environment is a difficult thing. It’s a confusing thing, and you might say that the essence of the challenge boils down to understanding how to send the right signals and how to interpret the signals that are coming to you.

I’m thinking this is the nature of the work that Jesus embarked upon. Jesus lived and died in the effort to help other people navigate the challenge of spiritual immigration. Jesus might have been raised as a native Israelite, but he immigrated to the Kingdom of God. He came to live like a native of God’s kingdom, and he wanted the rest of us to make that transformation as well.

In this morning’s scripture Jesus has some advice that’s counter to the signals that we get from our native environments. Regardless of what country or culture you grow up within, you become conditioned to pay attention to who has the most power and influence and those are the people you want to be near and to impress. Now what it takes to be powerful and influential will change from playground to playground and culture to culture, but we all learn early on that it’s best to be connected to the people who can help you become influential in this world.

I’m thinking that there is this uniform pattern of behavior within any given society – that wherever you come from, the objective is to generate good relationships with the people who have the most resources. We don’t all learn how to do that so well, but I think this is a lesson we all learn early on. We are all natives of that territory, and what Jesus talked about was how to move in to a very foreign land. The way they do things in the Kingdom of God is far different from the way they behave back home.

The advice Jesus gave makes no sense if you want to be close to the center of power in this world, but we need to hear what he’s saying if we want to get close to the Kingdom of God. We’ve all got to undergo some reprogramming if we want to send the right signals to the One who presides over this truly exotic location we call the Kingdom of God.

And it’s not easy to undergo this transformation of the way we operate. Even within the church it’s hard to follow Jesus’ advice. We’ve got this problem in our church right now of needing money. I had a pretty frank conversation last week with our District Superintendent about how things are going in this church. One unfortunate thing that is notable about our church is how little we’ve paid toward our Annual Conference Apportionments. And while the amount the Arkansas Conference expects from us seems to be pretty extreme the truth is that every other United Methodist Church in Arkansas feels the same way – but most of them pay their apportionments.

They’ve been cutting us some slack for the past few years, and I think they’ve been doing that because we are such a good looking church. We’ve got some of the best demographics in the state. We’ve got great age diversity, we’ve got better than average racial diversity, we’ve got good socio-economic diversity, we’ve got unbeatable sexual orientation diversity, and believe it or not the people at headquarters value these kinds of things. We are also the home of some incredible feeding ministries. I dare say more people get fed here than any other United Methodist Church in the state of Arkansas. In some significant ways we are looking good – and we all know that to some extent you can get by on your looks, but you might say we’ve got an ugly credit report, and that has landed us on the list of churches that aren’t quite cutting it.

We haven’t met our financial obligations, and that makes us look bad. While we could all take issue with some details of our conference budget, but the truth is that it’s put together by people who are doing their best to provide support for essential ministries. Money doesn’t equal ministry, but it’s hard to serve people without it.

It seems to me that we are in a very awkward position. Jesus is telling us to go in search of people who don’t have worldly riches, and I’m hearing from headquarters that they need us to make some significant payments. This has provided me with plenty to think and pray about lately, and I would like for you to join me in contemplating this significant challenge.

I believe this is a truly exceptional church. I’ve spent a lot of time around church people, and this is a remarkable assembly. We’ve got a good number of actual Christians in this church. But we need some more. I hate to sound greedy, but we need more – more people, more money, more love, more imagination, more effort, and more people praying to God to help us understand who we are and how we can be a more vital witness for the One who has called us together.

Perhaps the best thing for us to remember is that we have all been invited to the table of the Lord, and none of us are here because of what we bring to the table. We aren’t here because of who we are but because of who Jesus is. God doesn’t need us, we need God, and the good news is that God welcomes us all in to this really different community where people aren’t judged according to the standards of every other organization on earth.

The really good news is that our true judge does not abide in an office at the conference headquarters. I hope we will continue to be valued at that table as well, but if we will be diligent in our effort to serve the Lord of life we will be rewarded in the best possible way. Our challenge isn’t easy, but it is pretty simple. We are to be faithful to the instruction of Jesus who wants us to see each other as we are seen by God. And if by the grace of God we will learn to do this we will find our way in to that new community that isn’t defined by boundaries or abilities or positions but by the everlasting love of God.

Thanks be to God for this remarkable invitation! Amen

Another Teachable Moment
Luke 13:10-17

10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Educators speak of teachable moments as those moments in which a unique, high interest situation arises that lends itself to discussion of a particular topic. I think good teachers are always trying to find those special moments when their students might be the most open to understanding a new concept.

Just this week I heard a story about a high-school teacher in Queensbury, New York, who created a very teachable moment for his students and for a huge food corporation. Dan Anderson said his students were often struggling with math and he was looking for a way to make it interesting, so he had some of his students calculate the amount of white cream filling that exists in Oreo Double Stuf Cookies as compared to regular Oreo Cookies, and it turns out that they unearthed a scandal. The truth is that an Oreo Double Stuf Cookie only has 1.86 as much white cream filling as a regular Oreo Cookie.

Now this may be good news for people who can’t quit eating Double Stuf cookies. They aren’t quite getting twice as many calories /cookie, but this was not a headline the Nabisco Company wanted to see last week. Mr. Anderson not only succeeded in creating what must surely have been an opportunity for some students to gain some real understanding of how to calculate percentages and the value of such knowledge – he provided a very teachable moment for corporate America. If you are going to claim that something is twice as big you better do your math – because somebody will be doing it, and you don’t want to read about it in the Wall Street Journal or hear about it on NPR.

Teachable moments are great – and horrible. They are great if you are the teacher, and you see an opportunity to help your students grasp a new concept. They are horrible when you are the one who has come to discover that you only thought you knew what you were doing.

I remember very well one such teaching moment, and the lesson I extracted. I was in the process of moving and the last thing I needed to relocate was a mattress. I only had some lightweight twine on hand (ok it was kite string), but I remembered the image of the small Liliputians keeping Gulliver tied to the ground with many tiny ropes, and I decided to utilize that same concept. I had a small Chevrolet LUV pickup with a camper cover on the back, so I put that mattress on the top of the camper and I ran that kite string back and forth over the top of it many times.

It was about dusk and I was racing to get that mattress to somebody’s house before the predicted rain came. It actually started sprinkling as I got on to this freeway between Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, so I was moving at a pretty good pace when I heard the commotion on the roof and saw the mattress fly off in to the median.

It’s hard for me to own up to the fact that I was old enough to have known better than to attempt such a feat. I’m guessing that most 5th graders know not to tie a mattress to a roof with kite string, and I did too, but I thought I would overcome the weakness of the string with volume of string. And I still think it would have worked, but I realized the flaw of my design as soon as this small disaster unfolded. The wisdom of the Liliputians was to tie Gulliver down with many individual ropes. I had run my string back and forth many times, but it was one continuous line, and when it broke in one spot the entire tying system came unraveled.

That was a teachable moment for me, and I’m happy to say I haven’t left any mattresses in the median for the last 30 years. I wish I could say that was the dumbest thing I’ve done for the last few decades, but it probably isn’t. Unfortunately I continue to step in to situations where I come to understand something I probably should have already known, but I guess it’s a good thing to continue to learn powerful lessons.

I think what we have in this morning’s scripture is a snapshot of a teachable moment. The very first verse in this morning’s scripture says that Jesus was teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath, and it occurs to me that when God prescribed for the people of Israel to have a Sabbath day, God wished to establish a regular teachable moment in the life the Jewish community. We generally think of the Sabbath day as a day of rest, but it also involved this tradition of coming together for learning. And I think we all do our best learning when we step back from what we are doing and take a good look at ourselves.

If you never stop you never contemplate how you might do things differently or dream of how things can be better. Asking large questions is an exercise that requires some leisure – some stepping out of the work mode. Of course good things almost always turn in to far different creatures than what they were established to be, and this seems to have been the case with the keeping of the Sabbath Day. It had become more of an institutional requirement than a day set apart for spiritual development. It had become so fiercely regulated it probably generated far more distress in people’s lives than it created the opportunity for reflection and rest.

Jesus was trying to teach, but he clearly needed something to happen to reorient the thinking of the people who were in charge of the synagogue and he found his opportunity in this poor woman who had been terribly crippled for eighteen years. Somehow Jesus was able to heal this woman – which was a great thing for her. She was clearly someone who’s life was difficult on a daily basis. This healing wasn’t prompted by her or anyone else which leads me to think he did it for the benefit of everyone who was on hand.

He didn’t just want to heal her ailing back – he wanted to heal the sickness of the community. And this was a sick community. They didn’t understand what God’s intentions really were. They thought God intended for them to keep traditional rules at the expense of human life and dignity. Jesus created a teachable moment, and I dare say the man who got upset about Jesus healing this woman came to feel as ridiculous as I did when that mattress flew off my truck. I’m guessing as soon as Jesus asked him whether he would untie a donkey and lead it to water on a Sabbath he knew he was on the wrong side of the truth.

We’re told that the crowd rejoiced at what Jesus had done and said. It was a teachable moment, and most people got it. And it is exciting when someone brings light to the truth.

I’m reminded that we are approaching the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington that was initiated by Dr. Martin Luther King and his companions. It took place on August 28, 1963. I was 5 at the time, so I don’t feel bad about not going, but I’m so happy Karl Hansen loaned me a recent issue of Time Magazine that provided an extensive review of the event. One of the writers remarked that that event provided a teachable moment for our nation. It was the largest gathering of demonstrators that has ever assembled in Washington. The organizers would have considered it a success if 35,000 had shown up for the event – 250,000 people actually did show up.

It was a powerful moment for our nation. It was an event that brought attention to the need for our nation to live up to the truths that our God expects and our constitution espouses. I wish I could have been there. I wish I could have felt the spirit of that body of people who were drawn together by the belief that we can be better than we are. The people who were on hand that day were blessed by the sharing of a dream that we will one day be better than we are.

That dream has not yet been fully realized, but justice has taken root in in our nation in some powerful new ways. I heard Congressman John Lewis say in an interview last week, that things are better than they were. Racism has been outlawed to a large extent. But it hasn’t been eradicated. Dr. King’s dream has not been fully realized.

We are still surrounded by injustice. Our marriage laws are unjust. Our healthcare system is unjust. Our immigration laws are unjust. Our voting laws are unjust. Our national economic system is unjust. Our justice system is unjust. Our United Methodist appointment system is unjust.

I think we could all make our lists of how far from justice we know various systems to be, and I think we all need to do what we can to provide teaching moments for those we believe to be the proponents of injustice. But I also think we need to be sensitive to those teaching moments that come to ourselves.

It’s important that we all continue to maintain the spirit of Sabbath in our lives and to provide ourselves with teachable moments. Our calling is not just to do the work we feel compelled to do, but to step back from our various agendas on a regular basis and to let God work on us. I think we are probably all bent over in some way, and it’s good to try to put ourselves in the presence of God’s healing touch on a regular basis. I like to think that’s what we are doing when we gather here for worship, but as we see in this morning’s text, a house of worship can harbor unholy traditions. I don’t believe that is the case here, but I can tell you it doesn’t escape my attention that it was the leader of the synagogue who needed a teaching moment.

I thank God for those powerful teaching moments that break in to our lives and provide us with deeper understanding of how well we are all loved by God and how we might share that love in ever-expanding ways.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Pure Unbridled Jesus
Luke 12:49-56

49 “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” 54 He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

This world is such a strange place. The range of human experience on this planet is just more than I can get my mind around. I am dumbstruck by the extent to which some people suffer and other people prosper. It seems that there is no limit to the pleasure or the pain that this world can provide. As people were being bulldozed and shot in Egypt we have been enjoying the most pleasant August weather I’ve ever experienced in Arkansas. Not that nice weather is all we need in order to be happy.

There’s an organization called Arkansas Voices that used our Fellowship Hall each morning last week to have an art camp for children who’s parents are incarcerated. I mean what a tough start that would be for a child when the people you are most dependent upon are in jail. Life gets hard for some people really quickly. And at the same time it’s such a beautiful thing that there are people who are moved to reach out to those who are in tough places.

I’m just sort of amazed at both the horror and the joy that people encounter in this world, and unfortunately religious belief is as likely to be the source of the horror as it is of the joy. I’ve mentioned that I’m in this weekly study group, and we are currently reading a book called, The Case For God by Karen Armstrong. She is a highly educated person who can summarize entire philosophical or theological schools of thought in single paragraphs – paragraphs which often leave me wondering what she’s talking about, but I understand a bit of what she’s saying, and it’s been interesting to read how God has been understood throughout the centuries.

Sharla and I drove to Heber Springs last Sunday afternoon where we spent the night in the lakehouse my grandfather provided for his descendants. My son and a couple of his friends were there as well, and I had every intention of getting back to Little Rock by noon on Monday to go about my work. I woke up Monday morning and read a chapter in the Armstrong book that addressed the developments of the late 1400s where Ferdinand and Isabella were out to dominate the world in the name of Jesus. In addition to deporting tens of thousands of Jews and Muslims from Spain they are also the ones who developed the inquisition to make sure that those who chose conversion over deportation actually held the right beliefs about Jesus. And soon after that you had the Reformation which led to numerous violent conflicts between the various Protestant sects that broke away from the mother church.

Honestly, I had every intention of getting back to Little Rock by noon on Monday so I could get to work trying to plug all the holes I know to be present in the Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church community and facility. But after reading that chapter it occurred to me that we aren’t doing so bad when you take a really long view of things. We aren’t killing anybody in the name of Jesus, nor is anybody getting killed or incarcerated because of their association with this church, so I decided to go swimming instead of packing up to leave. It felt like it would be a sin not to take advantage of the good company and beautiful weather that we had that day.

There have been times in history when you would be bound up and thrown to hungry lions for professing your allegiance to Jesus Christ. But I can call myself Christian and spend a Monday on a boat on a beautiful lake. My previous Saturday had not been so serene when the air conditioner wouldn’t come on in the Fellowship Hall prior to the wedding reception that was going to be happening there in the middle of the afternoon, but the things that can really stress me out are not so big when you get some perspective on the situation.

It wasn’t until Tuesday that I read what Jesus had to say in this morning’s text. And he was not speaking like a person who had spent the previous day on Greer’s Ferry Lake. Jesus was standing in a far different spot than I was occupying when he spoke the words we are looking at this morning. He wasn’t worried about a leaky roof or a malfunctioning air-conditioner. He wasn’t even worked up about insufficient contributions. Jesus was stressed out over the fact that he was on his way to Jerusalem to be killed by people who were supposed to be advocates of the truth of God.

Jesus was facing some real stress, and he didn’t keep his thoughts to himself. He was about to undergo great suffering and death and that moved him to turn up the heat on his followers. He said he didn’t come to bring peace but to cause division. He said he came with fire and some people were going to get burned, and he wasn’t talking about something in the afterlife – he was talking about generating some severe interpersonal conflicts in this life. He didn’t take pleasure in the conflict, but he knew that the truth would be very painful for some people to hear.

Jesus didn’t come to play nice – he came to reveal deception and to expose the truth, and that doesn’t go over so well with people who are in love with distorted images of God and unjust patterns of existence. When Jesus spoke these words he didn’t have much time left, and it generated a new level of clarity to his message. He knew he was about to become the target of some misguided religious zeal, and he didn’t want his followers to be surprised when they found themselves in similar situations.

I’m actually strangely comforted by these harsh words from Jesus. I’m not comforted in the sense of being reassured that I have any righteous suffering going on. I don’t sense that I’m engaged in any large conflicts that are fueled by my advocacy of the truth, but passages like this remind me of why it’s hard to round up a crowd of people to get excited about Jesus.

It’s not just me – it’s him. How are we supposed to build a successful organization around someone who says things like this. Who wants to follow someone who says he’s going to generate conflict between you and your loved ones? What are we supposed to say to the children? Jesus is great! If you do what he says you’ll never get very far in business and powerful people will hate you!

Actually I can’t blame the meagerness of our congregation on Jesus – I’m generally not that clear about how difficult it is to follow him. Most of us are guilty of not wanting to know too much about what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus in our day. It’s easy to be more conscious of the weather than it is to be more socially conscious. And when we do engage in social activism it’s often so much easier to point out the sins of our neighbors than it is the selfishness of ourselves.

I firmly believe that following Jesus requires more bravery and boldness than any other undertaking I am aware of. Not only did Jesus consciously move in a direction that would cost him his life, he moved in that direction unarmed and largely unsupported. To follow Jesus is not an easy choice to make when you have other choices. He’s got some hard words for comfortable people to hear.

I know Jesus is hard to follow. I know most of us don’t follow him very well, but I join you in believing that following his is our best option. There just isn’t a way to find more satisfaction in life than to try to do what he said and to live like he lived. I don’t think Jesus wills for any of us to suffer, and I believe his love for us is unconditional, but I also think he wants us to grow in our consciousness of what love calls for us to do.

Jesus doesn’t want us to be more aware of the weather than we are of our neighbors. Jesus doesn’t want us to be content with the comforts of this world and to ignore the joy of abiding in God’s kingdom.

He spoke so frankly because sometimes we need some fire under our feet in order to get us off the couch and in to the world. There’s a world of pain out there, and we’ve got some good work to do. It’s not easy to follow Jesus, but there isn’t anything better than to be involved in the holy work of bringing comfort and seeking justice. Such work isn’t applauded by everyone, and it’s easy to be misguided in our efforts, but I also believe that when we try to do the right things we become better at reading the signs of the times.

Jesus got worked up because he wants our attention, and I believe the more attention we give to Jesus the more spiritually refined our lives will become, and I believe that’s what real growth looks like. I don’t know what it will do to our church if we as individuals truly grow in our knowledge and love of Jesus. Such growth may or may not translate in to larger numbers of people in worship and a bursting bank account, but if we will seek to grow in our faith and trust in Jesus our worldly concerns will become less important. As Jesus showed us so well, when you love the truth and trust in God nothing else really matters that much – not even your life.

I’m guessing we all have some room to grow in that regard, and it’s good to know that our friend Jesus loves us enough to light a fire under our feet and in our hearts. I can testify that a day on the lake is nice, but I know we experience something far better than that when we give ourselves to Jesus.

Hear what he is saying, pay attention to more than the weather, and find your way in to the best experience that you can have on this earth. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Unconventional Wisdom
Luke 12:13-21

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

I was on vacation last weekend. I got my body back to work Tuesday afternoon, but I’m not sure that my mind has made the transition yet. And when I started thinking about today’s sermon text I went to a strange place. This story Jesus told about the man who had such a big idea reminded me of one of George Carlin’s monologues. It’s the one where he defines himself as a modern man. It’s not his funniest sketch, but it was an amazing exercise in memorization, and as always, he had his finger on some truth. So bear with me as I share with you a slightly edited version of the way George Carlin portrayed a modern man – which very well may describe the attitude of our man in today’s parable:

He’s a modern man, a man for the millennium, digital and smoke free — a diversified multicultural postmodern deconstructionist, politically anatomically and ecologically incorrect.

He’s been uplinked and downloaded — inputted and outsourced.
He knows the upside of downsizing and the downside of upgrading.
He’s a high tech lowlife — a cutting edge state-of-the-art bicoastal multi-tasker.

He can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.
He’s new wave but old school, and his inner child is outward bound.
He’s a hot wired heat seeking warm hearted cool customer — voice activated and biodegradable.

He can interface from a database which is out there in cyberspace.
So he’s interactive. He’s hyperactive, and from time-to-time, he’s radioactive.

He’s behind the eight ball — ahead of the curve — riding the wave — dodging a bullet — pushing the envelope.
He’s on point, on task, on message, and off drugs.
He’s got no need for coke and speed. He’s got no urge to binge and purge.

He’s in the moment, on the edge, over the top, but under the radar.
He’s a high concept, low profile, medium range ballistic missionary — a street-wise smart bomb — a top gun bottom feeder.
He wears power ties. He tells power lies. He takes power naps. He runs victory laps.

He’s a totally ongoing bigfoot slam dunk rainmaker with a proactive outreach — a raging workaholic — a working ragaholic.
Out of rehab and in denial.

He’s got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant, and a personal agenda.
You can’t shut him up — you can’t dumb him down.
‘Cause he’s tireless, and he’s wireless.

He’s an alpha male on beta blockers – a non-believer and an over-achiever — laid back but fashion forward.
Up front, down home, low rent, high maintenance, super size, long lasting, high definition, fast acting, oven ready, and built to last.

He’s a hands on, foot loose, knee jerk, head case.
Prematurely post traumatic, with a love child who sends him hate mail.

But he’s feeling, he’s caring, he’s healing, he’s sharing — a supportive bonding nurturing primary care giver.
His output is down, but his income is up.
He takes a short position on the long bond, and his revenue stream has its own cash flow.

He reads junk mail, he eats junk food, he buys junk bonds, he watches trash sports.
He’s gender specific, capital intensive, user friendly, and lactose intolerant.
He bought a microwave at a mini mall.
He bought a mini van in a mega store.
He eats fast food in the slow lane.

He’s toll free, bite sized, ready to wear, and he comes in all sizes.
A fully equipped, factory authorized, hospital tested, clinically proven, scientifically formulated medical miracle.
He’s been pre-washed, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, and vacuum-packed.

He has an unlimited broadband capacity.
He’s a rude dude, but he’s the real deal.
Lean and mean.
Cocked, locked and ready to rock.
Rough tough and hard to bluff.

He takes it slow.
He goes with the flow.
He rides with the tide.
He’s got glide in his stride.
Drivin’ and movin’, sailin’ and spinnin’, jivin’ and groovin’, wailin’ and winnin’.

He don’t snooze, so he don’t lose.
He keeps the pedal to the metal, and the rubber on the road.
He likes to party hearty, and lunch time is crunch time.

He’s hanging in — there ain’t no doubt.
And he’s hanging tough — over and out.

That’s a modern man right there. That’s the man in our scripture this morning. He knew what to do when he had a bumper crop – build bigger barns so he could have commodities on hand when everyone else was hungry. He was so happy to think about how much money he was going to make when the price of olive oil reached 100 sheckles/ephah! This man was ahead of his time. He didn’t belong to Hebrew culture – he was made for America!

But I guess we should all take comfort in knowing that we aren’t the ones who created the concept of greed. Greed is an old problem. It’s been around for a long time.

But what exactly is greed? If it’s simply the desire to have more money there isn’t anyone in the room who isn’t guilty. And if we are all guilty what’s the point of this story? Honestly, I don’t think the problem Jesus was pointing to is just our affection for money. I’m not sure how to live in this world without access to resources and it’s a problem for all of us when some of us don’t have as much as we all need.

I don’t have the time or enough understanding to engage in a lecture on how we need to fix our economy, but I wish somebody could figure out how to help more people make more money. I heard someone on television yesterday point out how expensive it is to be poor in this country, and there’s a lot of truth to that. If you are poor you have to pay to have a checking account. If you have a lot of money the bank pays you to keep your money. And just this morning I saw another case of the expensive nature of being poor. I saw a guy buy two cigarettes from another man for a $1. Now I don’t know how much a pack of cigarettes cost, but I’m guessing they are less than $.50/cigarette when you have enough money to buy a whole package. I’m no advocate of anyone smoking cigarettes, but it’s very clear to me that it’s particularly expensive to smoke when you are poor.

There are certainly a lot of systems in place in our country that victimize poor people and are propelled by greed, and many of us are connected to those systems in ways we may or may not understand. I think those of us who have assets should try to pay attention to what it is we support, but I don’t think today’s parable is a blanket indictment of being financially shrewd.

We’ve all heard the old saying, You can’t take it with you! And that’s true, but you can leave it behind, and I can testify that it’s a nice thing when your parents leave you a little something. My parents left me some assets and I hope to do the same for my children. I also hope to be able to help some other people as did my parents. As did our late friend, Louise Barber. If she had not been wise with her money our church would be in a far poorer condition right now.

But clearly we are dealing with a slippery slope. How to be wise with money without becoming obsessed with money is a delicate balance. I think it’s an easy thing for any of us to go from being financially wise to becoming the kind of fool that Jesus described in today’s passage. It’s not easy to be rich and to be rich toward God. Of course it’s not easy to be poor and to be rich toward God either.

The pressure most of us feel is not to exhibit richness toward God, but to generate the kind of richness we see can take to the bank or leave for our children. People don’t go to seminars on how to be rich toward God. People go to seminars on how to become financially independent. I think there are seminars on how to get rich by becoming more religious, and it’s easy to get those agendas mixed up. We preachers have done a good job of blurring the lines between being rich toward God and giving to the church. And frankly it’s not unreasonable for you to think of giving money to the church as being a good way to give money to God. In fact I’m going to say right now that giving money to the church is an excellent way to show richness toward God.

But there is some confusion here. And the problem has to do with how we church leaders choose to use the money that has been given to God. That’s where the problem lies in regard to the blurring of the lines between being rich toward God and giving to the church, but I don’t think any of us should simply reduce the message of this parable to the need for us to give money to the church. God knows this church needs your money, and I hope you will be generous to our church, but God wants more than our money.

God doesn’t want us to be foolish people who think that money is the most important thing in this world. This is the message I get from this morning’s scripture. Jesus was prompted to tell this story of the foolish rich man by a man who thought money was the most important thing in life. This unnamed man in the crowd saw Jesus as a powerful person, and he assumed Jesus would be willing to use his power to address his financial problem. We tend to think our most significant problems are financial, and that just isn’t the case.

Jesus didn’t want money to be the primary orientation point of our lives. Jesus wanted us to keep God at the center of our lives because he wanted us to understand the nature of true richness. He didn’t want us to give our lives to foolish pursuits. He didn’t want us to just be good modern people – he wanted us to be richly faithful people.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making a lot of money. There are some bad ways to make money, but we shouldn’t confuse having a lot of money with being truly rich. God alone will be the judge of that.

None of us are prevented from being rich toward God, and it’s only by the grace of God that any of us find our way in to that most abundant form of life – the life of faith in God.

Thanks be to God – Amen.

What One Thing?
Luke 10:38-42
38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42 there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

I don’t remember where I first heard this line, but I’ve heard it on more than one occasion, and I’m guessing you’ve heard it as well. Maybe you’ve even delivered this line. It’s the one that goes like this: The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. It’s a good line, and in the right context it could be a great line. It’s not hard for me to imagine that this line could bring a sense of calm to people who were feeling overwhelmed by detailed instructions.

I’m imagining a scene where the pilot of a small plane has had a heart attack, and the control tower is trying to coach an untrained passenger on how to get the plane safely down. It’s an incredibly tense situation and there are all of these dials and pedals and levers and lights and the person who’s trying to figure out what to do is feeling totally overwhelmed and is about to totally freak-out when the voice over the headset says: Ok-listen. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. In a crisis saturated environment I think these would be good words to hear. Calming words – reassuring words – inspiring words.

But I’m sure I heard this line delivered by someone who was connected to the church, and I’m sure we were all supposed to understand what that main thing was. And I never react well to religious people who seem overly sure of what that main thing is. It’s not that there isn’t a main thing for us to be focused upon. Jesus himself points out that there is only one needful thing, but that one thing isn’t always immediately obvious.

I’m not opposed to keeping the main thing the main thing. In fact I aspire to keep the main thing the main thing, but I don’t think it’s so easy. And I can generate a bad attitude toward people who think it is.

Now I hope you know that I’m not lumping Jesus in with the other religious people who give me a bad attitude. In fact I like the way that Jesus responded to Martha. He didn’t give Martha what she was looking for, but he didn’t rip in to her. She had made a bad assumption about how Jesus viewed the situation, and many of us react really badly when someone makes bad assumptions about us, but that isn’t what Jesus did.

He didn’t belittle her for assuming that he would feel the same way about the situation that he did, but he did make it clear that he didn’t share her view of the situation. In fact he had an opposite view of the situation. He didn’t shame her for feeling the way she did, but he did point out the problem with her perspective, and he pointed out the value of Mary’s choice. Martha was distracted by many things – while Mary was focused on the one needful thing.

It’s probably worth noting that this turn of events happens right after Jesus had told the story of the good Samaritan who went out of his way to help his neighbor. That’s the story of a person who DID the right thing. He didn’t sit and ponder the situation – he sprung in to action, and that was shown to be the right response. The Levite and the priest who passed by the injured man were probably very focused on high minded concepts of how to maintain their spiritual purity, but they were shown to be in contempt of God by refusing to act.

So in this next scene – today’s scene, Jesus becomes the traveler who is in need of hospitality, and Martha sprang in to action to provide it, but in this case she became the lesson on what not to do if you want to find eternal life. She got real busy trying to make sure everything would be good for her revered guest, and in her busyness she ended up in a bad place. Whereas her sister, who didn’t lift a finger to provide for the physical needs of Jesus, was shown to be the one who had done the right thing – the one thing needful.

This one thing is an illusive thing. Are we called to engage in action or are we called to engage in contemplation? Obviously the answer is that this one needful thing can require us to spring in to action or it can require us to step back from what we are doing and to listen. I think we all know this to be true, but we don’t all know when we need to do the one and not the other. What we know from the previous episode is that the one needful thing is not to act or to listen but: To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

This one thing manifests itself in many different forms, and it’s easy to get it wrong. We take action when we need to listen, we are quiet when we need to speak out, and we sit down when we need to stand up.

I went over to my daughter’s house the other day to let Knute out. Knute is an English Bulldog. My daughter, Liza, and her husband, Joe, had left for a few days, and we had offered to help take care of Knute while they were gone. I got to the house and I had the key to the kitchen deadbolt, but the door knob was locked as well, and the key didn’t fit the knob. I tried the front door but the key didn’t work there and neither Knute nor I were happy about this. We could see each other through the kitchen door, but I couldn’t get in.

I called Sharla to bring over an old credit card, which I felt sure I could use to slip in with, and she did. I won’t say any more about why I would know how to get in a locked door with a credit card, but in this case it wouldn’t work. I felt really disappointed in my inability to get that door open, and I was honestly contemplating the best way to break in. Should I force the old door knob to turn with a pipe wrench, or break one of the panes of glass? I thought these were my only two options, but I must say that my thinking was clouded by the incredibly odd and anxious sounds that Knute was making.

Sharla suggested I figure out how to open the back gate and check the back door, and while I didn’t think that would be of any use because they always keep their back deadbolt fastened I did follow her advice. I figured out how to open the back gate, which wasn’t obvious, but I got in to the back yard and discovered that the back door was in fact unlocked.

This brought great relief to us all, but I was primarily relieved that I didn’t do what I was moments away from doing. I was convinced that I only had two options – when in fact there were three. I’m so happy I listened before I acted. I don’t always do that, but I hope I will – unless love requires me to act immediately.

Life comes at us fast and it’s not easy to know how to react to many situations. I dare say we are often more inclined to over-think our options than to take action. The church is certainly more known for being overly cautious about taking action than for stepping out in front of questionable situations. Or maybe the pattern of the church is to be like Martha and to be so occupied with trivial matters that we are unable to listen for the voice of truth.

Perhaps the choice for us is not so much the difference between engaging in action or in listening, but who it is we choose to hear. The truth is that Mary didn’t make the choice to not do anything – Mary actually engaged in a very bold act which was to step out of her assumed role as the provider of hospitality and to embrace the role of a disciple. She chose to ignore the voice of society and of her sister and to listen to Jesus.

We make a lot of choices about who we listen to. A lot of media attention has been focused lately on the George Zimmerman trial, and I think it’s good that it’s gotten a lot of attention. It’s a terribly tragic story, but it’s not an uncommon story, and you can find someone giving voice to whatever perspective you choose to have. But what I this is is the story of what happens when people act with preconceived notions of what other people are like.

Jesus made no such assumptions. Jesus didn’t listen to the voice of his culture to tell him how people were to behave and what they were to do. Jesus listened to voice of God to define the world in which he lived, and he shared that voice with us. Jesus didn’t sort people out according to their skin tone, their heritage, their gender, or their occupation. Jesus recognized the oneness of us all, and he cherished the people who understood and who acted to create that sense of oneness among us all.

If Jesus were to be questioned by a religious expert today and if he was pressed to define a neighbor for us I don’t think he would tell us the story of a Samaritan who did the right thing. He would probably tell us the story of a young dark-skinned man wearing a hoodie who stopped to help a stranger after the preachers had passed by. And then when Jesus got to the next town he would correct the attitude of the restaurant manager who got upset when their undocumented worker who left the dishes in the sink and came out of the kitchen to listen to him.

I believe this is that main thing that we are called to maintain as the main thing. Jesus wanted us to see one another as brothers and sisters and as equal children of the one God. It’s actually not so complicated, but it isn’t easy. There are a lot of voices in this world that seek to highlight the divisions between us, but there is one voice calling us to hear this one thing: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

This is that one needful thing.
And by the grace of God we will continue to discover how to do it.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Touched By A Neighbor
Luke 10:25-37

25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 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.” 28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” 29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 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. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34 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. 35 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.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

A Jewish Rabbi went to get his hair cut one day and when he stood up to pay for the haircut the barber said, No, you are a man of God and this is my contribution to your good work. When the barber got to work the next morning there was a bag of fresh bagels at the door and a note from the rabbi expressing his gratitude for the nice haircut the man had given him. Later that day a Catholic priest droped by for a haircut and once again, when the priest went to pay the barber said, No, you are a man of God and this is my contribution to your ministry. When the barber arrived for work the next morning there were a dozen warm donuts at his door and a note from the priest thanking him for the fine haircut. Later that day a United Methodist minister dropped in for a haircut, and once again, when he went to pay the barber said, No, you are doing God’s work and this is my contribution to your ministry. So, when the barber showed up for work the next morning there were a dozen United Methodist ministers waiting for him to arrive.

I don’t know – there’s just something about this morning’s scripture that cries out for some acknowledgment of this possibility of being surprisingly inhospitable. There’s no doubt that Jesus was trying to expand the concept of neighbor for this legalistic scribe, and I’m guessing the man got more than he anticipated when he asked Jesus to share his understanding of who he understood a neighbor to be.

I read a few short commentaries on this passage and more than one of them indicated that this story is far more than a simple morality play that was told by Jesus to encourage us to be nice to strangers. And they generated quite of few sentences to back up their arguments that we shouldn’t just reduce this story to the message that we should come to the aid of those who are in trouble, but I wasn’t persuaded by any of those arguments to see this story in any other way.

I guess they were primarily arguing that we are doing far more important work than we may understand it to be when we engage in the work of compassion for desperate people, and that it’s particularly holy work when we cross social boundaries to do that work, but honestly, I don’t see any kind of hidden message in this story. I think Jesus surprised the original listeners to this story, and it is still a compelling story, but the surprise factor has been overshadowed by the familiarity factor. The Billy Graham Foundation can call their disaster relief organization The Samaritan’s Purse, and everyone knows what that’s about.

The contrast between the inaction of the religious men who should have reached out to the man who was in need and the action of the man who was the least likely to behave with compassion is unforgettable. The message in this story is clear. If you want to be in touch with God’s eternal life you need to reach out and touch wounded strangers.

But I’m speaking as a religious man who makes judgements every day about who to help and who to ignore. If I were to speak for very long on this story what you would hear is how I try to justify walking past some people who are injured by the side of the road because that is what I choose to do sometimes. I don’t feel good about that, but I’m not delusional about the extent of my goodness. Honestly, when I hear this story I can identify with any of the characters in this story. I have known myself to play every role and harbor every attitude that is portrayed in this story. I’m guessing we all can. But this story reminds me of who I want to be, and what a beautiful thing it is when people do the heroic work of expanding the concept of neighbor.

I always thought of my grandfather, Tom, as a good man. I knew him to be an honest person and a friendly person unless he was annoyed, but I never really thought of him as a compassionate person. I generally experienced him more as someone who generated expectations for other people than as a person who tried to meet the expectations of others. I was around him a lot as I grew up and he and I got along very well because I always did whatever he told me to do.

My sister and I recently sold my father’s retirement clubhouse (it was sort of an office and a shop), and as we were cleaning it out my sister found some letters in one of the drawers of his desk that were addressed to my grandfather. There were five letters from four different German men who had been prisoners of war at a camp that had been set up in Wynne. I guess there were a number of POW camps set up within the United States during the war. We actually haven’t been able to read one of them because it’s written in German, but the other letters reveal an appreciation for the kindness and generosity of my grandfather as well as an appeal for him to help them. The letters were written after the war had ended and the men were back in Germany and living under very harsh conditions.

I’m going to read one of the letters to you because I think it represents the spirit of neighborliness that Jesus sought to generate. I should add that my grandfather didn’t miss church very often. Now he expected it to end at 12 o’clock and he was known to duck out if he found it to be going on too long. I never sensed that he let his religion get in the way of his business, but these letters indicate to me that he pretty much got it. Here’s our best understanding of what one of the men wrote: (But first a short disclaimer – this letter was written during a time when the sharing of cigarettes was considered to be a symbol of hospitality and not the nasty avenue to all kinds of cancer and death that we now understand them to be – so children, please keep in mind that I am in no way advocating the use of tobacco!)

March 12, 1948
Dear Mr. Murray!
When you get this letter you will be much surprise and don’t know of whom it is. Though I introduce again at first. Once I was a prisoner of war and lived at the camp in Wynne for about a years time. The last two months of my staying in Wynne I worked for you, sometimes in your big garden for picking strawberries or cleaning the field of your farm and sometimes working by your pond where the ox frogs quacked with their dry voices. Yes I remember very well too this things when you brought us Coca Cola and other refreshments and food for dinner. And still today I hear your words saying we have done a good days work. I am the blonde fellow who worked together with Hans Keindle, the only fellow who spoke English, if you remember. The last work we have done for you was to build the weekend house on the hill near the spring. But in the meantime a lot of years have gone. And I think you cannot remember to me.

When we left America we thought we would sail to Germany. No, in the contrary, we were unloaded in Liverpool. There I stayed for another 19 months and in January of this year I was discharged after a long time as a prisoner. Now I am in Germany and at home. I haven’t had a good life as a prisoner, but when I saw the conditions in Germany where I live, I would like to go back to America at once. Because it is no life here it is a starvation. Maybe you don’t believe the story I tell you, but it is true and if it doesn’t change nobody knows what and when the end is and how it looks. There is nothing to buy and less than nothing to eat. When I came from England I had no suit and no shoes to find just the battle dress I wore on my body. The things I had before the war were taken. The time I lived in Wynne we didn’t get a lot to eat at the camp. But everyday I worked for you you brought us a good meal sometimes made by your wife and cigarettes. You always had a nice word or a joke for us and we could be laughing once again and you helped us over some bad hours of our prisoner life.

But now I am no prisoner and all the same and I ask you for a favor. I told you the present conditions and I think you will help me now too. I will be very glad and thankful to you if you could send us something. I use everything because I have nothing. Mainly food, cigarettes, tobacco, clothes or other things you would like to send. If you can disperse with anything I would never forget it.
Please excuse my bad English, but I am just a beginner. I hope you can read my writing. With the kindest regards and with best wishes for you and your wife.

Yours,
Werner Lohr

I’m really proud to read you this letter. It makes me feel like my grandfather was able to see beyond the false boundaries created by nations and see neighbors, but primarily what this letter does is remind me how God endlessly provides us with opportunities to step out of ordinary life and to touch eternal life.

Every time we come face to face with a person who is struggling in life we are presented with an opportunity to find eternal life. This is what the lawyer wanted to know from Jesus – how do we find eternal life? And to answer that question Jesus told him this unforgettable story.

We are all currently playing roles in someone’s unforgettable story. I think we all know what role we wish to be playing – and by the grace of God we will.

Thanks be to God. Amen.