A sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 31, 2016.  The lectionary readings are Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23, Psalm 49:1-11, Colossians 3:1-11, and Luke 12:13-21.

Listen to the sermon HERE.

Sometimes when I meet people and they find out I serve a church, sooner or later they ask some version of the same question: “How big is your congregation?”

I try to answer honestly and usually say something like, “We’re small but growing.  We’re especially growing in prayer, in mission, in taking care of each other, and in being the Body of Christ in our neighborhood and beyond.” They usually push the point and ask, “Yes, but how many people come?”  I then explain that we have an average Sunday attendance of 100 or so—and less in the summer.

Usually—but not always—I can sense their disappointment.

Our culture leads many people to believe that success is measured in numbers.  The more, the better.  And sometimes religions (or perversions of religion) actually preach this kind of thinking.   A while back, just before the presidential primaries’ “Super Tuesday,” Pastor Mark Burns prayed at a Donald Trump rally saying, “There is no black person, there is no white person, there is no yellow person, there is no red person, there’s only green people!” he shouted. “Green is money! Green are jobs!!” (Time Magazine, http://time.com/donald-trump-prosperity-preachers/)   Another friend of Mr. Trump is the televangelist Joel Osteen, who preaches to about 45,000 people who attend his churches every Sunday and reaches almost 7 million a week through television.  He preaches a message of positive thinking and material success.  And yet, he almost never mentions Jesus.  Someone did a survey of Joel Osteen’s posts on Twitter and found that in a year’s worth of 806 tweets, Osteen mentions God 334 times.  He mentions Jesus three times.  “Christ” gets mentioned three times, too, but two of these misquote scripture and one is within the word “Christmas,” in which Joel and Victoria Osteen wish the world a merry one.  (See Pulpit and Pen.org)

I don’t question that such preachers are religious.  But I wish they and those who support them could at least be honest and clear about one thing:  This is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This is not Christianity.  This has nothing to do with the Jesus Christ who lived, died, and rose again for us.

Many of these “prosperity Gospel” preachers point to John 10:10 in which Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  But they pluck this verse out of thin air.  You don’t have to go to seminary to be a preacher, but you DO have to read and study the Bible and not bend scriptures to say what you want them to say.  This verse comes in the middle of the chapter in which Jesus calls us to be as sheep to the Good Shepherd.  “Abundant life” has to do with our learning to live together in the sheepfold, close to the shepherd, being in relationship with the One who calls us by name, living like he does, loving like he does, and being willing to lay down a life for the sheep.

Today’s Gospel encourages us to be rich- but RICH TOWARD GOD. This may or may not involve money.  It’s much larger. When I look closely at how Jesus deals with money and wealth in the scriptures, and I notice that he wines and dines with rich and poor alike, I get the idea that God is almost indifferent as to whether we are wealthy (or not).  God wants us to have enough, to have plenty, to rejoice in bounty, to have everything we need, and God might even want those with special skills and abilities to have lots of extra– but’s that’s so that we can share the wealth, extend the blessing, and help out other people.

God wants us to be full, satiated, complete and lacking nothing. But God doesn’t care if we have one house or five. God isn’t bothered by what one drives, or what one wears, or whether one summers in the South Bronx or the south of France. But as Jesus says, we should be “rich toward God” (Luke 12:21).

In today’s Gospel from Luke, Jesus has been talking with a group of people, warning them about hypocrisy and trying to help them understand what it means to live a life completely dedicated to God. In this context, a man asks Jesus to take his side in a question over an inheritance. We don’t know the exact nature of this man’s question, but biblical scholars would point out that the reality of Jewish inheritance laws at that time held that the eldest son inherited twice the amount that might have gone to a younger sibling. Perhaps the speaker in the Gospel is one of the younger brothers.

Now, if I were one of the younger brothers (not to mention a sister who is left out completely), the part of me that wants a fair and just world wishes Jesus would just take the man’s side. But as with so many issues, Jesus looks beyond the surface issue to explore what’s deeper. Jesus evades the political, cultural, or legal question and instead, goes right to the spiritual question.

Jesus focuses on the heart.  Where’s your heart?  What’s your heart’s desire?  What makes your heart grow and expand and feel alive?  THAT’s what God is interested in.  It’s not about who has more money, or more stuff, or more power, or more prestige. It’s about how we use it. It’s not about how big the wedding is—it’s about whether you invite God or not.

By way of answering the man in today’s story, Jesus tells a parable.  He tells about a man who keeps building up storehouses for all of his grain. But the man builds in vain, trying to build bigger and higher—because he is disconnected from God. The real issue has to do with our relationship with what we have. Does it lead us closer to God and God’s people? Or does it drive a wedge between ourselves and all that is holy?

Being “rich toward God” has to do with “currency” but not just in the monetary sense of that word.  Jesus moves with a kind of currency of life, through which the Holy Spirit operates and animates.

In economics, we speak of a “currency” because a currency allows things to move around, to go from one person to another, to have a life and rhythm that allows for free movement. Things in currency are not meant to be kept in one’s hands, but they get their life out of being passed around and shared. Wealth is like that. It grows only through a certain amount of risk.

While it’s surely that way with the currency of money, it’s also true with the currency of our relationships and the currency of time. All of these are ways that we can be rich toward God.

Of course “being rich toward God” will involve money, at some point, and through faith, it will involve the risk of letting go. I grew up in a church in which members tried to outdo one another in giving—anonymously. Over and over, again, there would be some major gift to the parish, some program, some extra music, some new mission begun—each time, with a grant from an anonymous donor. That’s living richly toward God.

Being rich toward God also means being rich toward God’s people, how we spend ourselves through the currency of our relationships—both with the people inside the church and those outside. What would it be like if we lived more richly toward one another, giving one another the benefit of the doubt, offering first mercy instead of judgment, extending first a welcome rather than wondering if the stranger might fit in or not?

And finally, how do we spend our time? Do we give any of it to God—for God’s use, as well as simply time to be with God, to allow God to draw us closer through prayer, through reading of the Bible, through worship? All of this has to do with being rich toward God.

When I think of richness, and some of the richest people I’ve known, a lot of faces come to mind.  But among them are a handful of women from my home church who prayed for me while I was in seminary. They met regularly to pray and study the Bible, and every so often I would receive a card from them.  Sometimes, in the card would be seven one-dollar bills, sometimes nine one-dollar bills, and one time (perhaps their attendance rose for that meeting), I receive a small fortune: thirteen dollars! Each time, the ladies would scribble a message, something to the effect of, “We know this isn’t very much, but we hope you can do something special with it. Spend it on yourself, don’t do anything too responsible!” That last phrase made it challenging, because I knew they didn’t want me to spend the money on books or tuition.  And so, each time, I would do something slightly out of the ordinary— get a really expensive ice cream cone and write them about it. Or when a new coffee shop opened, I would get a rare, exotic, and expensive kind of coffee.  I thought of it like the woman who used expensive perfume as a gift to Jesus—my job was not to quibble, but to be gracious and say “thank you.”

What made the dollar bills in the occasional care such a wonderful gift was not only their random sweetness. But even more— I knew these ladies, and I knew that they didn’t have a lot of one-dollar bills to share (and even fewer 5’s, 10’s, or 20’s.)  They were not wealthy women. They were counting every penny, trying to cover medications, transportation, rent, contributions to church, support of family and friends…. and out of this, they also chose to give to me. They were not wealthy, but they were sure “rich” toward me, and taught me something about being “rich toward God.”

The Gospel of Jesus Christ has always been especially good news to those who are poor—those poor in spirit, poor in health, and those who are just, plain poor.  The Gospel is Good News not because it says that if we say our prayers, we’ll get rich, or that if we follow Jesus all our problems are solved.  Instead, the Gospel promises us a relationship with the living Lord Jesus Christ, who moves through us like a currency of love, showing us how to be rich toward God and one another.  THAT kind of richness lifts up everyone, improves everybody, and blesses all.

The scriptures today work together.  The reading from Ecclesiastes reminds us to keep a perspective on life.  St. Paul urges the Colossians not to worry so much about clothes, but instead, try to put on “compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience.”

Following Christ in abundant life, may the Holy Spirit show us what it is to be filthy rich—rich toward God.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

 

 

 

A sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, July 24, 2016.  The lectionary readings are Genesis 18:20-32, Psalm 138, Colossians 2:6-19, and Luke 11:1-13.

Listen to the sermon HERE.

Every month or so, I meet with a friend who is a retired priest.  We catch up.  We talk about friends we share in common.  And I usually end up talking about some issue, some problem, or some question I’m wrestling with.  My friend listens wisely and inevitably—at some point in the conversation, will ask, “What’s your prayer around this issue?”  “Have you asked God about this?”

Usually, I have not.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus gives a pattern for prayer, a set of words to use, to store up and recall when we need them. But Jesus even more, Jesus gives us a relationship. He shows us a door, an opening, a way for conscious contact with God.

In the Lord’s Prayer we are given the picture of a Father who cares and never forgets us. God will provide. “For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Abraham learned this from the angels who came to visit, in the reading we heard last week.  Abraham and Sarah had their doubts about whether God was listening, but by the point of today’s reading, Abraham and God are like familiar friends to the point that Abraham and God are engaged in a kind of “holy haggling.”

The back story to what Abraham is asking God is a complicated one.  It seems like Abraham has no idea what he’s asking. He has no idea just how awful the people of Sodom really are, or he probably would not have asked God to show mercy at all.  Sodom and what is called “Sodomy” has come into our language through a misreading and misunderstanding of scripture.  What happens in Genesis is that the angels who meet Abraham and Sarah in last week’s reading, move on and go into Sodom.  There they meet Abraham’s nephew, Lot, and Lot invites them in for food and to stay.  The men of Sodom are a mean, evil bunch. They demand that the strangers be turned out to them, be given over to them.  The men of Sodom want to use them and violate them.  Lot does the almost unimaginable thing of protecting his guests, but giving his daughters to the townsmen.  It’s an awful story about the lust and violence and bullying of people, and Lot shows himself no better, though his daughters do get back at him near the end.  It’s one of those old, old stories shrouded in confusion and mystery, but the point is clear that God wipes out Sodom because it did not welcome the stranger, did not show hospitality to the angels, and could not contain its own insecure lust and drive for dominance.  As scripture teaches, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2).

But all of this is an aside.  Abraham is able to talk with God as a trusted friend, and that’s what Jesus is offering.  Knock at the door.  Say hello.  Begin the conversation.

In talking with his disciples about prayer, about knocking on the door of God’s heart, Jesus uses images and sayings from his own day.  He mentions a sleepy neighbor who might not get up for just anyone, but with persistence, will answer the door.  Jesus speaks of “you who are evil,” and I think it’s important for us to hear that Jesus is simply chatting with his friends here.  This is not a formal, moral pronouncement.  It’s more like Jesus is saying, “Look, you know how you are, on your worst day.  Even on that day, you wouldn’t give your kid a deliberately bad thing when she asked for something simple.  Imagine how much more, then, God looks after you!’

St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians explains just why we have the potential for relationship with God, just why we can have the confidence and faith to walk up to the door and knock, or begin to ask God for help.  Paul reminds us that God lives in Christ fully, totally, completely; and we have the life of God in us because of Christ.  In Christ we were “buried with him in baptism,” and we are raised with him above the death of sin, and we will be raised like him from death itself.  Paul goes on to say basically, “don’t forget who you are, and whose you are.  Don’t let people drag you into silly debates about this detail or that detail, what you should pray for, or how you should pray, or whether you should pray kneeling, with hands folded, or arms spread out, or standing on your head, for that matter!  Hold fast to Christ, the Head of the Church, “from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God.”

Ask.  Knock.  Hold on.

When I think of Jesus encouraging us to knock and trust, I sometimes think of William Holman Hunt’s famous painting, “Light of the World.”  In his 1850s Pre-Raphaelite way, Hunt shows us Christ as though we have knocked on a door, and Jesus has opened it.  He stands with his lantern—light with light—ready to help, ready to love.

The most famous version of this painting is in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and I have to say, I never really liked the painting very much.  Hunt’s version of Jesus is a little too blond and white, a little too wispy and ethereal for me, and all the colors looks a little too technicolor for my tastes—but all that changed, and that painting means a lot more to me after a Friday night in summer of 2014.

I was in London for a day to two and had arrived at St. Paul’s early to try to get a seat for Choral Evensong.  Not only did I get a seat—I got a great seat up in the choir stalls.  The service was sung beautifully and the whole experience felt like the perfect blessing at the end of a long trip.  After Evensong, it wasn’t too hot outside, so I began walking to where I was staying. After walking for about thirty minutes, I reached for my phone and it wasn’t in my pocket.  My phone— with my calendar including the time of my departure the next morning, the scanned version of my tickets, my contacts, notes, and photos—had been stolen.  Or was lost.  Or, as I thought about it (I had carefully taken it out of my pocket, turned off the ringer, and placed it in the choir stall), it was back at St. Paul’s.

I prayed.  I prayed, “God help me find my phone.” I know my prayers should have been loftier and holier, but they were base and selfish. I needed my phone.  I needed to fly out the next morning.  As I thought more about it and turned the problem into an all-out catastrophe, I (of course) walked as quickly as possible back to a closed St. Paul’s Cathedral.

When I reached the Cathedral, sure enough: all doors closed and locked.  I found a security guard, told her my saga, and while she was sympathetic, she said she thought the best I could do was come back to Lost and Found Monday morning!  But, she said, maybe the guard at the other entrance might have an idea.  So went around to another entrance.  He was equally discouraging, but after listening to my story, he suggested I go across the plaza, down the construction entrance, and look for the security office underground.  Maybe they might have an idea.

I followed the directions—across the plaza, down under the street, and told my story to an unsympathetic security guard in his glass-enclosed office.  He looked at me, shook his head, and turned the lights out in the office.

But then he opened the door and said, “Follow me.”  I followed as door after door opened.  We passed an underground loading dock, crates of chandeliers that looked like they were being sent out for cleaning, all kinds of strange things, and I was given this unexpected and impromptu underground tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  After following the man through the labyrinth of doors, hallways, and tunnels, we went up some steps and another door opened.  We were in the nave of St. Paul’s.  With a minimum of lights on in that vast space, he told me to look for my phone.  I went to my spot and sure enough, it was right there!

I could have hugged the security guard.  He had answered my prayer and gone way beyond.  Though I don’t remember looking towards the “Light of the World” painting, I have thought about it a lot, and have a new appreciation for it and its placement in St. Paul’s.  The next time I’m there, I will thank that particular expression of the Light of the World in person, again, and pay homage, as though it were an icon.

My prayer was silly and selfish.  But I hope that when I have deeper worries—prayers for health and healing, prayers for direction and discernment, prayers for the highest and holiest of things—I hope I will remember to ask God honestly and boldly, but also be open to God’s help from every door I see. I would hope that when I ask God to answer a prayer that I would remember God might be trying to answer through doctors and nurses, through professionals and consultants, through family, friends, old ones and children.   When I lost my phone, I knocked on doors and risked looking dumb, looking like the worst of American tourist, and looking completely helpless.  Some doors closed but others opened.  And then, did they EVER open.

Christ offers to take us by the hand and help us knock.  He helps open the door.  We don’t need to worry about how we pray and it doesn’t matter if we get tongue-tied. The only thing that matters is that we ask and have the faith to walk through the door.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

 

A sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 17, 2016.  The lectionary readings are Genesis 18:1-10a, Psalm 15 , Colossians 1:15-28, and Luke 10:38-42.

Listen to the sermon HERE.

I was at a conference this week at St. Bonaventure University, a campus about an hour and a half from Buffalo, NY, and somewhat remote—certainly by NYC standards.  The distance between events and lectures allowed for a lot of walking.  Almost every time I walked by a particular stretch of woods, if I looked carefully, I’d spot a woodchuck.  I saw deer several late afternoons, and I even saw a hawk.

Through the week, I noticed a number of young people walking around campus, led forward by their cell phones, as they hunted not so much for wildlife, but for a kind of virtual wildlife, playing the game, “Pokemon Go.”  I don’t know if they saw what I saw. And I don’t know what I might have missed. But noticing the animals reminded me of how much is possible when I pay attention.

If I look at a painting closely, I can learn about the painter, the history, and the some of the story around what is being portrayed.   If I pay attention to what is said (and what is not said) I can learn a lot about the person in front of me. If a doctor pays attention, she can diagnose the patient. If the teacher is attentive, he can help the student.  ATTENTION makes all kinds of things possible.

Simone Weil was a French philosopher who struggled with Christianity at a very deep level. Among her thoughts, written down in her notebooks, was an oft-quoted sentence about paying attention. “Absolute attention,” she writes, “is prayer.”

In the lesson from Genesis we see what happens when Abraham and Sarah simply pay attention. Abraham could have ignored the three strangers. He could have gone on about his business when he saw them. He could have been afraid of getting involved. He might have “passed by on the other side,” like some of those in the Good Samaritan story last Sunday. But instead, Abraham goes out of his way to show hospitality. He seems to recognize something special about these strangers, some hard-to-put-your-finger-on quality. Perhaps it was holiness. Perhaps it was simply honesty. But whatever it was he saw, Abraham decides that it’s worth the risk of being hospitable. And so, Abraham brings some water and lets the strangers wash up; he brings some bread, and dinner is served.

Abraham’s hospitality not only feeds strangers and makes for community. But it also creates a holding space. Henri Nouwen, in his classic little book, Reaching Out, explains that true hospitality does just that.  It creates a free and friendly space for the other. Nouwen talks about the difference in visiting a friend who has every moment scheduled and planned, where the rules are firm and the expectations clear. Then he points out how different that is from visiting a friend who says, “Here is a key to my house. The refrigerator is stocked and what’s mine is yours. I hope you will feel at home.”

The way in which Abraham and Sarah receive the strangers creates space, allows for mystery and opens the way for a miracle. It’s the Holy moment captured in our icon, over in the chapel.  The three strangers turn out to be angels of the Lord, with the outrageously good news that Sarah is going to bear a child.

Abraham and Sarah were able to be attentive. They were able to be absolutely attentive. They found that absolute attention is prayer, and that absolute attention can allow one to see the miraculous movement of God.

In today’s Gospel, there is both attention and activity.

Martha is active. She is busy, involved, and committed. I’ve always liked Martha. She works hard, she doesn’t suffer fools gladly and she makes things happen. I always pray for more Martha’s to be around in my church to help us get things done—to organize, to help, the extend the love of God to radiate out from this place.

Mary, on the other hand, is contemplative. She is quiet, calm, prayerful and deeply, DEEPLY attentive. She attends. She apprehends. She GETS Jesus; and all that he brings; and all that he means; and all that he promises; and all that he fulfills. It is because of this deep attention, this prayerfulness, that Mary is able to recognize Jesus as the Son of God, as God Incarnate, as God Among Us. It is because of her attentiveness that Mary has (in the words of Jesus) “chosen the better part.”  I also pray for more Mary’s in our church—people to support us with prayer, to listen for God’s voice, to pray for healing, and to hold all we do and become in a cloud of prayer.

While Jesus says that Mary has chosen the better part, notice that he in no way criticizes or scolds Martha. It’s only when Martha has become exhausted, when she is frustrated and angry and tries to get Jesus to side with her over her lazy sister that Jesus helps Martha see what she is doing. He slows her down. He asks her to breathe. “Martha,” he says, “you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful.”

This one thing that is needful might be called prayer. It might be called “the ability to see clearly, to apprehend a thing or a person for its true qualities.” It might also be called simply, “attention.”

The Church gives us moments that invite our full attention. These moments are called Sacraments. Prayer is the practice of paying attention. Holy Communion is the activity of giving attention, to God and to one another.

Especially in these days when news comes at light speed, incidents of violence and heartbreak seem too fast to keep track of, and our own lives are often run at speeds that challenge our best intentions and highest hopes for the relationships we cherish, may the Holy Spirit slow us down. May the Spirit focus our energies and help us be attentive.

May the Spirit help us, like Abraham and Sarah, to see miracles in our midst, and like Martha and Mary, to eat and drink and rest with Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

A sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 10, 2016.  The lectionary readings are  Deuteronomy 30:9-14, Psalm 25:1-9, Colossians 1:1-14, and Luke 10:25-37.

Listen to the sermon HERE.

You may not have gotten out of bed today asking yourself the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  But I think that in some ways, it’s a question all of us ask—if not out loud, then we ask it by being where we are today—in church. We might ask it especially after weeks like this one, filled with more violence, with more outrage and frustration, and with not much hope.  We might not use the same words as the young lawyer, “eternal life,” though we each probably come to this morning with our own search, hope, or desire that yearns with the Eternal. We are looking for something—some kind of resolution, ending, answer, just like the young lawyer in the Gospel.  “What must I do?” he asks.

But rather than answer the question directly, Jesus responds with another question. “What does the law [of Moses] say?  How do you read it?”  The man piously quotes back to Jesus all that he’s been taught: “Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Eḥad.”  “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.”   A good Shabbat-school answer.  Jesus says, “You’re right, you’ve given the right answer.”

But then, just as he’s moving away, the young lawyer, “wanting to justify himself,” asks Jesus another question: “And who is my neighbor?”

Here, St. Luke gives us some insight into the young lawyer by explaining that he asks this question, “wanting to justify himself.”  Or, as the translation by Eugene Peterson (The Message) puts it, “Looking for a loophole, [the lawyer] asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”

Jesus sees what he’s dealing with now.  This man asks about his neighbor not out of any real compassion or concern for the neighbor—but in order to justify himself, to make himself look good, to keep making the high grade, to make sure that he’s doing what he needs to do somehow to please God or make God love him. The young lawyer wants clean hands.

And because of this, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan.

In the story, a man going to Jerusalem is robbed and beaten.  A priest walks by but is probably late for an appointment.  Maybe he has good reasons for passing on, but whatever those reasons were, they don’t help the poor man on the side of the road.

Next a Levite passes by.  Now, the Levites had particular responsibilities, especially related to the synagogue.  They were busy people. The Levite might have had very good reasons for passing by, but again, the man by the road is still hungry and hurt.

The Samaritan, however, “moved with pity,” stops. He cleans and bandages the man’s wounds. He puts him on his own animal and takes him to an inn, where he gives the innkeeper some money to take care of the poor guy for a few days.

After telling the story, Jesus quizzes the bright, young lawyer a final time.  “What do you think?” Jesus asks, “Who was a neighbor to the one who needed help?”  The lawyer replies, “The one who showed mercy,” to which Jesus then says, “Go and do likewise.”

“Go and show mercy,” Jesus says, which is to say, “Go and help others who have fallen into ditches.” “Go and do your work and live your life, but do it all with some understanding, some notion, some perception of what it’s like to be in the ditch.”

We don’t know how the lawyer’s life turned out or what he did next, whether he was able to show mercy, or ever gain the wisdom of the ditch.  But I bet it was hard for him.  Religious, educated, civically minded, it may well be that the young lawyer had never been stuck in a ditch and never would be.  Perhaps he had been protected by family, education, connections, race, and by all kinds of privilege to the extent that there was virtually no chance he would ever fall into a ditch nor much likelihood he might meet anyone who had.

But the Samaritan knew all about ditches.  It was easier for him to offer help because the Samaritan had been in plenty of ditches.   The Samaritan was viewed as an outsider, a foreigner, a suspect to the majority, someone with odd religious beliefs.  To this day, Samaritans are a minority in Israel and thought of as sort of second-class Jews.  Though they’re drafted like everyone else into the Israel Defense Forces, in order to be considered “halakhic” Jews, they have to undergo a formal conversion to Judaism.  In the Gospel, the Samaritan remembers when he’s been in a ditch.  And he remembers being helped out, when someone acted like a neighbor.

Especially on this Sunday, after this week of two high profile killings of black men by police, and an ambush of police by a black man, we can ask ourselves about the concept of “neighbor?”  What are we called to do and be, as people of faith?

Last week I quoted from John Winthrop’s sermon of 1630 in which he famously spoke of his strong sense that he and others were being brought by God to the colonies in order to form “a City upon a Hill…”  It has been a beautiful and enduring image, but if we are honest, we have to admit that while some have lived on hills, others have been given ditches to live in.

Early on, Native Americans were pushed off their hills, and those who did not die from disease, were driven onto “reservations.” For African slaves brought to this country, slavery was only the first ditch.  Laws of segregation, lending policies for home loans, and barriers in education, employment, and social mobility have all been additional ditches.  A social construct of race (passed on through families and laws and selective education) has built deeper ditches.  Other people came to this country with the same strong feeling of God’s protection as John Winthrop– people from Japan, Ireland, Italy, Africa, Latin America, on and on…and yet, often they have had ditches put in front of them and ditches dug around them.

As people of faith, we cannot settle for life in the ditch. We cannot pass by and pretend not to notice. Christ calls us to see ourselves as the one in the ditch.

The Gospel invites us to see the ditch from several different perspectives.  Some of us might be a little like the young lawyer in the Gospel.  I imagine him as being protected by his privilege and a long way from most ditches.  Others of us might be a little like the Good Samaritan: we have some memories and experiences of ditches that are fresh and perhaps a little raw.  And some of us might feel like we’re the one stuck in the ditch.  Regardless of where we locate ourselves, the point of the Good Samaritan story, I think, is for us to see ourselves in the ditch.  Only after that, can be begin to recognize who is our neighbor and to act like neighbors to one another.

When I identify with the lawyer, in the light of Christ I know to see myself in the ditch involves a kind of poverty—a willingness to notice, name, and recognize the many privileges I enjoy and to understand that they are not of my making.  And so, to begin to move toward understanding what it’s like for someone stuck in a ditch, or pushed into one, I can read. I can listen.  I can stop trying to justify.  And I can pray for God to make me a channel of help, of mercy, and of Christ’s healing.

This fall, our church will read the book by Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  I’ve begun the book, and I’ll tell you, it’s not an easy read.  But books like that one can help us to see with new eyes.  We can read the work of Cornell West or Ta-Nehisi Coates.  We can learn and pray and grow.  We can stop talking and trying to justify ourselves, and do the really radical work of keeping quiet and listening.

To those like the Good Samaritan, this Gospel says, “keep on being faithful.”  Yes, it hurts.  Yes, we’re tired.  Yes, it seems like the ditches get deeper and go on for ever.  But don’t forget your own past.  Be strengthened by it, be empowered by it, and use it to show mercy to another. God told Moses, “What you need is close at hand.” “The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”

The Good Samaritan types know that not everyone wants to remember being in the ditch. We can look to political leaders, religious leaders, supreme court justices, friends, and even some family and we see people who we REMEMBER were in a ditch, but they’ve forgotten.  They act as though getting out of a ditch happens by sheer willpower and they have developed a defensive amnesia about their time and place of need.  Well, the Gospel says: never forget.  This was what Elie Wiesel spent his life saying, “Zachor! Remember” Remember the ditches and where possible, don’t let them happen again.

And finally, some of you may feel like the character in the story who’s been beaten and robbed and thrown into the ditch.  You’re tired of worrying about your children or grandchildren. You’re tired of wondering when you’re going to get the job you deserve or even be noticed in the ditch, much less helped out.  Our Gospel today offers the presence of Christ—with you, in you, and also in others.  Don’t give up.  Yell a little louder. Be open to God’s spirit of healing in some new way and keep your faith.

In Friday’s New York Times, Charles Blow wrote an opinion piece that I’ve read several times. Other commentators have written angrier, harder truths, but Blow’s piece is offered from the standpoint of a father whose daughter tells him simply that “she’s scared.” He agrees that he’s scared too—but especially scared for our country.  He writes about the issues and the difficulties, but then he says this:

I know well that when people speak of love and empathy and honor in the face of violence, it can feel like meeting hard power with soft, like there is inherent weakness in an approach that leans so heavily on things so ephemeral and even clichéd. But that is simply an illusion fostered by those of little faith. Anger and vengeance and violence are exceedingly easy to access and almost effortlessly unleashed. The higher calling — the harder trial — is the belief in the ultimate moral justice and the inevitable victory of righteousness over wrong.…  (Charles M. Blow, NY Times, July 8, 2016)

Charles Blow writes as one who has one foot on higher ground while keeping another foot firm in the ditch, so as to extend a hand to help others up and out.  It’s a secular voice echoing a Christly calling—for us to be neighbors to one another, remembering when others have been neighbors to us.

Remember that Jesus was taken from the heights of Calvary down to the depths of a tomb, but death could not keep him.  Death will not keep us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.