Sunday School, July 17, 2022, C proper 11
Monday, July 11, 2022
Sunday School, July 17, 2022, C proper 11
Sunday, July 10, 2022
Please Won't You Be, THE NEIGHBOR
Amos 7:1-17 Ps.82
Col. 10:25-37 Luke 10:25-37
What can be a very galling thing? Well, what about when someone whom we’ve gotten in habit of disliking does something good and kind? Suddenly our preconceived notions is contradicted and we can get thrown off and challenged about our sweeping stereotypes.
The Gospel of Luke presents a wisdom story, a parable, of Jesus about a hated Samaritan practicing a kindness to a stranger that the very best of Israel religious society won't do. A Levite and a priest did not stop and render assistance to the man who was brutally beaten on the road. Perhaps they did it for good "religious" reason. If the man was dead, then if they got involved and touched a dead body, they would be ritually impure, and it would take some time for them to return to a ritual status which would allow them normal community interactions.
But what kind of normal community interaction can a robbed and beaten man have who has been left on the roadside?
Enter the hated Samaritan, who is only concerned about harmed person. He is not concerned about his own personal schedule; he accepted the interruption for a kindness to a stranger, a stranger whom he regards to be is neighbor worthy of immediate care.
But, the wisdom story is not really about the injured man being treated like a neighbor. The wisdom story is about the behaviors which exemplify who a neighbor is.
The set up for the wisdom story is in an encounter between a religious man and Jesus and the lawyer wants some affirmation from Rabbi Jesus who has become a popular teacher.
What is standard probate practice regarding inheritance? The wealth of the decedent would normally go to one's family.
The lawyer asked a question which revealed a total lack of his relationship with God. If a person is a child of God, then such a person would inherit the greatest gift that God can give, namely, eternal life, or life after life.
So, the lawyer was a child of God who did not know that he was a son worthy of inheritance.
The lawyer, who was born as a son, believed that he had to do religious things to be worthy of an inheritance.
Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus: You're a lawyer, you know inheritance laws. What does the law say? Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Loving God and loving one's neighbor is the practice of people who believe they are children of God in a great big family of neighbors. So, Jesus said to him, “you got it right, love God and love your neigbhor.”
But then the lawyer did a follow up question which indicated that he didn't get it. "Jesus who is my neighbor? Who do I have to love and care for in loving my neighbor as myself? Surely, it's enough to just love my homies and the people I hang around with? Jesus can we mean by neighbor, my favorite people?”
And then Jesus told the wisdom story to provide a "gotcha" moment.
What is the gotcha moment? The wisdom story reveals that the neighbor is not about who you have to love, it is about you, yourself, being a neighbor just like the Good Samaritan was. And if you are an active neighbor, then you are loving in neighborly caring ways, everyone, because like you everyone is a child of God in God's big family who are in line for the inheritance which comes from God, namely the eternal life, or the powerful qualitative kind of life which helps us be loving children and neighbors in God's family and neighborhood.
The delightful Mr. Rogers used to sing, "Won't you please, won't you please, please won't you be my neighbor."
What Jesus was singing to the young lawyer was, "Won't you please, won't you please, please won't you be a neighbor."
And what is a neighbor? One who is actively caring and loving the people of this world who are children of God, made in God's image and thus recipients of the inheritance that can't be earn, because we're already children of God, in God's last will and testament. The death of Jesus followed by his resurrection life is how the inheritance of eternal resurrection life was taught and lived in the early church.
We can seek to inherit what we have always had. So, we need to clear up the alienation in our hearts and minds which make us think that we're not God's children in the divine will.
The wisdom story of the Good Samaritan proclaims to us: Go forth and be the neighbor because we live in God's neighborhood with everyone else, the ones who are our neighbors.
May God help us know the secret of being neighborly today. Amen.
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
Sunday School, July 10, 2022, 5 Pentecost, C proper 10
Sunday School, July 10, 2022, 5 Pentecost, C proper 10
C proper 10
Sunday, July 3, 2022
Gospel: Discovering What Always Was
4 Pentecost, C p 9, July 3, 2022
2 Kings 5:1-14 Psalm 30
Gal. 6:1-18 Luke 10:1-12,16-20
The first experience of something very wonderful is so great it has the power to inspire exaggeration. Like the first time that one eats ice cream, one can think that one actually invented the experience of eating ice cream. First time experiences can make think that we originated the experience or that the experience began to occur because of the way that it happened to us.
There is a difference between things which have always been, and things which arose or came about in history. All our modern day inventions at one time did not exist, and they have become so integrated to our lives that we find it hard to imagine them not existing. What did we do in our cars before GPS? What did we do before email? Text messages? Photo-copying?
There are things which always were and many of those things have not always been experienced by people. And when some wonderful things which always were, are experienced by people, we can easily begin to treat those things like something that has been invented.
Jesus came to the world not to invent the love of God; the love of God has always been. But it has been undiscovered. Jesus came to help us overcome the alienation within ourselves which has kept us from experiencing what has always been.
Our biblical readings provide us with insights about how to be related to "original" conditions. Is health and healing only for some people or is it a universal right?
For the prophet Elisha, healing was for everyone, including one's enemy. Just because Naaman was a commander in a foreign army did not mean that he was excluded from his right to seek to be healed in any way that might bring success. As we ponder the high cost of health and the lack of access to health care for many people, we need to consider the universal right of people to seek and have healing in their lives. Wanting good health is an "original" blessing. The Psalmist composed a poem and a song exalting in a return to health from sickness.
St. Paul wrote about how practical justice should be in a community. The justice of giving and requiring each person what is appropriately due is an ancient virtue which has to be continually realized in very practical ways.
In ministry, we can get too proud of accomplishments and perhaps begin to think that we originated love, joy, Holy Spirit power, and the rest. Jesus warned his disciple not to be on a power trip or ego trip in ministry. Just rejoice that your name is written in book. Just rejoice that you said, "here" when God called attendance and as is it were "put your name" in the attendance book.
In the ministry of Jesus Christ, we have the privilege to announce to people the things that always have been: God loves you. God cares for you. God forgives you. God dwells in you so that you can find the divine presence.
The state of human alienation from these obvious things requires patience and ministry. We cannot force people out their alienation. Some people are not ready or do not have the life situation to open their doors of perception.
What did Jesus say about people who seem to reject the obvious? Move on, don't get angry. The dust of your feet is symbolic of what you shared with them so that they might be able to come back to it when they are ready. The memory of you having shared the fact that everyone lives in the kingdom of God will be a continual protest to their inability to perceive the always, already reality of the kingdom of God.
The alienation of people from the love of God is vast, so the harvest is great. The work of the promoting love and membership is God's kingdom is never ended. We need to always be at the work of persuading people about the wonderful love of God.
On this eve of the Fourth of July, we Americans, need to know that we did not invent life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the important values of life. We did find a national constitutional way to teach the practice of these original virtues of life. And we know that the consistent and just application of these rights has not always been lived and many people have been excluded in practice from a fair chance at these rights which are God-given.
The ministry of Jesus Christ and the ideals of our country invite us to experience and practice things which we did not invent. We are invited to know how to be graceful receivers and givers of love, joy, peace, justice, liberty and faith.
Let us all have many more delicious events of awareness of the original blessings of God's love for us as we live up to the image of God on our lives. Amen.
Being Befriending Neighbors
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