5 Pentecost

Good Samaritan Sunday

 

July 13, 2025

 

Luke 10.25-37

 

+ I have shared with you many times that I am no natural-born preacher.

 

I have never felt like I’m a very good preacher.

 

This was only confirmed by a near-apocryphal stories we all know here at St. Stephen’s:

 

Donna Clark shares that on her first Sunday at St. Stephen’s some ten years ago, after Mass, she was down-stairs at coffee hour in the undercroft.

 

A parishioner who has since moved out East (one who I knew well and was close to their family) say down at her table and announced: That was the worst sermon I’ve ever heard in my life!

 

I don’t doubt it.

 

But, for all my homiletical lacking, let’s face it: I’m a consistent preacher.

 

For those of you who listen or read my sermons week in and week out, you know that my “themes” are pretty basic and consistent.

 

Yes, there might be variations on those “themes,” but, in their core, there is really only one main “theme” to everything I preach.

 

Love God. Love others. That’s pretty much it.

 

Which is why our Gospel reading this morning is an important reading.

 

No, I’m not being emphatic enough.

 

It’s not just an important reading.

 

It is, in my opinion, the single most important reading for us as Christians.

 

And, for those of you who have known for me for any period, you know how I feel about what is being said in today’s Gospel.

 

For me, this is absolutely  IT.

 

This is the heart of our Christian faith.

 

This is where the “rubber meets the road.”

 

When anyone has asked me, “What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?” it is this scripture I direct them to.

 

When anyone asks me, must I do this or that to be “saved,” I direct them to this reading.

 

This is what it is all about.

 

So, why do I feel this way?

 

Well, let’s take a look this all-important reading.

 

We have two things going on.

 

First, we have this young lawyer.

 

Lawyer here meaning a interpreter of Judaic Law—the Law of Moses, found in the Torah.

 

He comes, in all earnestness, to seek from Jesus THE answer.

 

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

 

What must I do to be “saved?”

 

This, after all, is the question we are ALL asking, isn’t it?

 

And, guess what?

 

He—and all of us too—gets an answer.

 

But, as always, Jesus flips it all around and gives it all a spin.

 

Jesus answers a question with a question.

 

(A very rabbinic thing to do)

 

He asks the lawyer, “what does the law say?”

 

The answer is a simple one.

 

And, in Jewish tradition, it is called the Shema.

 

The Shema is heart of Jewish faith.

 

It is so important that it is prayed twice a day, once in the morning, once at night.

 

Jesus himself would have prayed the Shema each morning upon awakening and again before he went to sleep at night.

 

I do it. I pray the Shema in the morning on waking and before I go to sleep at night.

 

It’s very good spiritual discipline.

 

It is important, because it is the heart of all faith in God.

 

So, what is the answer?

 

The answer is, “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.”

 

Our heart.

 

Our soul

 

Our strength

 

Our mind.

 

In other words—our very essence.

 

And additionally, “and [love] your neighbor as yourself.”

 

Then, Jesus says this:

 

“do this, and you will live.”

 

I repeat it.

 

Do this—Love God, love your neighbor—and you will live.

 

This is what we must do to be saved.

 

Now that sounds easy.

 

But Jesus then complicates it all with a parable.

 

And it’s a great story.

 

Everyone likes this story of the Good Samaritan.

 

We even commemorated it in our very first stained glass window. 

 

After all, what isn’t there to like in this story?

 

Well…actually…in Jesus’ day, there were people who would not have liked this story.  

 

In Jesus’s day, this story would have been RADICAL.

 

The part of this story that most of us miss is the fact that when Jesus told this parable to his audience, he did so with a particular scheme in mind.

 

The term “Good Samaritan” would have been an oxymoron for those Jews listening to Jesus that day.

 

Samaritans were, in fact,  quite hated.

 

They were viewed as heretics, as defilers, as unclean.

 

They were seen as betrayers of the Jewish faith and Jewish Law.

 

(Remember, he’s speaking to a lawyer---an interpreter of Jewish Law).  

 

So, when Jesus tells this tale of a Good Samaritan, it no doubt rankled a few nerves in the midst of that company.

 

With this in mind, we do need to ask ourselves some very hard questions.

Hard questions we did not think we would be asked on this Good Samaritan Sunday.   

You, of course, know where I am going with this.

So, here goes:

Who are the Samaritans in our understanding of this story?

For us, the story only really hits home when we replace that term “Samaritan” with the name of someone we don’t like at all.

Just think about who it is in your life, in your political understanding, in your own orbit of people who you absolutely despise.

Think of that person or persons or movements that simply makes you writhe with anger.

The Ice Agent

The thief.

The homophobe.

The transphobe.

The libtard

The adulterer

The drug addict.

The snowflake.

The MAGA/Trumper

The communist

The white supremacist.

 

The atheist.

The nazi.

The socialist.

The fascist.

Whoever may be the current President of the United States.

Those are your Samaritans!

Now, try to put the word “good” in front of those names.

It’s hard for many of us to find anything “good” in any of these people.  

For us, to face the fact that these people we see as morally or inherently evil could be “good.”

We—good socially-conscious Christians that we are—are also guilty sometimes of being complacent.  

We too find ourselves sometimes feeling quite smug about our “advanced” or “educated” ways of thinking about society and God and the Church.  

And we too demonize those we don’t agree with sometimes.

As you all know, I, for one, am very guilty of this

It is easy for me to imagine God living in me personally, despite all the shortcomings and negative things I know about myself.

 

I know that, sometimes, I am a despicable person and yet, I know that God is alive in me, and that God loves me.

 

So, why is it so hard for me to see that God is present even in those whom I dislike, despite those things that make them so dislikeable to me?

 

For me, this is the hard part.

 

The Gospel story today shows us that we must love and serve and see God alive in even those whom we demonize—even if those same people demonize us as well.

 

Being a follower of Jesus means loving even those we, under any other circumstance, simply can’t stand.

 

And this story is all about being jarred out of our complacent way of seeing things.

It’s also easy for some of us to immediately identify ourselves with the Good Samaritan.

 

We, of course, would help someone stranded on the road, even when it means making ourselves vulnerable to the robbers who might be lurking nearby.  

 

Right?

 

But I can tell you that as I hear and read this parable, I—quite uncomfortably—find myself sometimes identifying with the priest and the Levite or Lawyer.

 

I am the one, as much as I hate to admit it, who could very easily, out of fear or because of the social structure in which I live, find myself crossing over to the other side of the road and avoiding this person.

 

And I hate the fact that my thoughts even go there.

 

See, this parable of Jesus is challenging and difficult.

 

But…

 

Something changes this whole story.

 

Something disrupts this story completely.

Love changes this whole story.

 

When we truly live out that commandment of Jesus to us that we must love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, we know full-well that those social and political and personal boundaries fall to the ground.

 

Love always defeats our dislike—or hatred— of someone.

 

Love softens our hearts and our stubborn wills and allows us see the goodness and love that exists in others, even when doing so is uncomfortable and painful for us.

Now I say that hoping I don’t come across as naïve.

 

I know that my love of the racist will not necessarily change the racist.

 

I know that loving the homophobe will not necessarily change the homophone.

 

I know that loving the Nazi and the Fascist are definitely not going to change the Nazi and the Fascist.

 

And I was to be VERY clear: love does NOT mean acceptance.

 

It does not mean accepting their hatred and their bigotry.

 

Trust me, I know that loving certain politicians (whose names I will not mention, despite the fact that the IRS has now given me permission to do so) is not going to change those politicians!

 

But you know what?

 

It does change me.  

 

It does cause me to look—as much as I hate to do so—into the eyes of that person and see something more—despite their shortcomings, despite their hatred.

 

It does cause me to look at the person and realize that God does love this person despite their failings and their faults—just as God loves me despite my failings and my faults.

These are the boundaries Jesus came to break down in us.  

 

And these are the boundaries Jesus commands us to break down within ourselves.

 

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the lawyer asks Jesus.

 

And what’s the answer?

 

Love is the answer.  

 

We must love—fully and completely.

“Do this,” Jesus says, “and you will live.”

 

What will save us?

 

Love will save us.

 

Love of God.

 

Love of one another.

 

Loving ourselves.

 

Loving what God loves.

 

Love will save us.

 

Love will liberate us.

 

Love will free us.  

 

Jesus doesn’t get much clearer than that.

 

Because let’s face it.

 

We are the Samaritan in this story.

 

We are—each of us—probably despised by someone in our lives.

 

I know I am!

 

We, to someone, represent everything they hate.

 

The fact is, God is not expecting us to be perfect.

 

God worked through the Samaritan—the person who represented so much of what everyone who was hearing that story represents as wrong.

 

A friend of mine once shared a story about how he was in Memphis when he came across a church that met in an old movie theatre.

 

On the marquee was written:

 

IF GOD CAN SPEAK THROUGH BALAAM’S ASS, GOD CAN SPEAK THROUGH YOU.

 

If God can work through the Goos Samaritan. let me tell you, God can work through you and me.

 

We do not have to be perfect.

 

Trust me, we’re not perfect!

 

And we will never be perfect.

 

But even despite this, God’s light and love can show through us.

 

So let us reflect God’s love and light.

 

Let us live out the Shema of God—this commandment of God to love—in all aspects of our lives.

 

Let us love.

 

Let us love fully and radically and completely.

 

Let us love God.  

 

Let us love each other.

 

Let us love ourselves.

 

Let us love all that God loves.

 

Let us love our neighbor.

 

Who is our neighbor?  

 

Our neighbor is not just the one who is easy to love.

 

Our neighbor is also the one who is hardest to love.

 

Love them—God, our neighbor—and yes, even ourselves.

 

And if we do that, you and I—we too will live, as Jesus says.

 

And we will live a life full of the light we have reflected in our own lives. 

 

And that light that will never be taken from us. 

 

 

 

 

4 Pentecost

July 6, 2025

Luke 10.1-11, 16-20

+ This past week, as you may have heard, Jimmy Swaggart died.

 

Swaggart, for those of you who don’t know, was one of those notorious televangelists from the 1980s who spewed some pretty terrible things, and then had a very public fall from grace.

 

If you ever doubted my “the chickens always come home to roost” analogy, look no further than Jimmy Swaggart.

 

Personally, however, my father was a huge fan of Swaggart.

 

Swaggart spoke for men (and probably some women too) of my father’s generation.

 

He was macho.

 

He was tough.

 

He could sing a kind of countrified Gospel music.

 

He could be funny.

 

And, before his scandal toppled him, he was knew how to use his winning personality to rake in a LOT of money.

 

This is nothing new in the church, after all.

 

Church history is filled with people like Swaggart—bigger than life personalities who made it all about them.

 

I have known too many church leaders who have  made it clear to me that it was because of them—because their winning personality, or their knowledge of church growth, or their years of expertise—that a particular parish or diocese flourished.

 

 

It’s an unfortunate trap leaders in the Church fall into when they believe that a congregation’s success depends on them as individuals and their own abilities of ministry—and, mind you, I am not just talking about priests here. Lay leaders in the Church have fallen into this trap as well. I have known some of those lay leaders as well, trust me.  

Maybe to some extent it’s true.

 

Maybe some people do have the personality and the winning combination in themselves to do it.  

 

But for those who may have that kind of natural personality, I still have to admit: it all  makes me wary.

 

It’s just too slippery of a slope.

 

We are dealing with similar personalities in today’s Gospel.

 

In our Gospel reading for today, those seventy that Jesus chose and sent out come back amazed by the gift of blessing God had granted to them and their personalities.

 

They exclaim, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!”

 

In and of its self, that’s certainly not a bad thing to say.

 

It’s a simple expression of amazement.   

 

But Jesus—in that way that Jesus does—puts them very quickly in their place.  

 

He tells them, “do not rejoice in these gifts, but rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven.”

 

Or to be more blunt, he is saying rejoice not in yourselves and the things you can do with God’s help, but rejoice rather in God.

 

The burden of bringing about the Kingdom of God shouldn’t be solely the individual responsibly of any one of us.  

 

Even Jesus made that clear for himself.

 

Just imagine that stress in having to bring that about.  

 

Bringing the Kingdom of God into our midst is the responsibility of all of us together.  

 

It is the responsibility of those who have the personality to bring people on board and it is the responsibility of those of us who do not have that winning personality.

For those of us who do not have that kind of personality, it is our responsibility to bring the Kingdom about in our own ways.

 

We do so simply by living out our Christian commitment.

 

As baptized followers of Jesus, we bring the Kingdom into our midst simply:

 

By Love.

 

We do it by loving God and loving each other as God loves us in whatever ways we can in our lives.

 Bringing the Kingdom of God about in our midst involves more than just preaching from a pulpit or attending church on Sunday.

 

Spreading the Kingdom of God is more than just preaching on street corners or knocking on the doors. 

 

It means living it out in our actions as well.

 

It means living out our faith in our every day life.

 

It means loving God and each other as completely and fully as we can.

 

But it does not mean loving ourselves to the exclusion of everything else.

 

It means using whatever gifts we have received from God to bring the Kingdom a bit closer.  

 

These gifts—of our personality, of our vision of the world around us, of our convictions and beliefs on certain issues—are what we can use.

 

It means not letting our personalities—no matter how magnetic and appealing they might be—to get in the way of following Jesus.

 

Our eyes need to be on God.

 

We can’t be doing that when we’re busy preening in the mirror, praising ourselves for all God does to us and through us.   

 

The Church does not exist for own our personal use.  

 

I, for example, am not your free therapist.

 

And the Church is not you group therapy.

 

If we think the Church is there so we can get some nice little pat on the back for all  the good we’re doing, or as an easy way to get us into heaven when we diem I hate to tell you but we’re in the wrong place.

 

And we’re doing good for the wrong intention.

 

The Church is ideally the conduit through which the Kingdom of God comes into our midst.

 

And it will come into our midst, with or without me as individual.

 

But it will come into our midst through us.

 

All of us.

 

Together.  

 

The Church is our way of coming alongside Jesus in his ministry to the world.

 

In a very real sense, the Church is our way to be the hands, the feet, the voice, the compassion, the love of God to this world and to each other.

 

But it’s all of us.

 

Not just me.

 

Not just you as an individual.

 

It’s all of us.

 

Together.

 

Working together.

 

Loving together.

 

Serving together.

 

And giving God the ultimate credit again and again.

 

Hopefully, in doing that, we do receive some consolation ourselves.  

 

Hopefully in doing that, we in turn receive the compassion and love of God in our own lives as well.

 

But if we are here purely for our own well-being and not for the well-being of others, than it is does become only about us and not about God.  

 

And in those moments, we are sounding very much like those 70 who come back to Jesus exclaiming, “look at what we have done!”

The message of today’s Gospel is that it must always be about God.

 

It must always be about helping that Kingdom of God break through into this selfish world of huge egos. It means realizing that when we are not doing it for God, we have lost track of what we’re doing. We have lost sight of who we are following.

 

So, let us—together—be the hands, the feet, the voice, the compassion and the love of God in the world around us. Like those 70, let us be amazed at what we can do in Jesus’ name.

 

But more importantly let us rejoice!

 

Rejoice!

 

Rejoice this morning!

 

Rejoice in the fact that your name, that my name—that our names are written at this moment in heaven.

 

Amen. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 Pentecost

 June 29, 2025

 

1 Kings 19.15-16,19-21; Galatians 5.1,13-25; .Luke 9:51-62

 

+ This past week I started the process of doing something I am not excited to do:

 

I started to revise my Will.

 

I had not realized that my Will was out of date until I actually started going through it.

 

My last revision of my Will was in 2012.

 

That was a long time ago.

 

And my life has changed considerably since then.

 

It was a wake-up call when I realize that four people mentioned in my will are no longer alive, and that two bequests I made in that Will are to places that are no longer operational.

 

That is probably a sign that you should revise your Will

 

And it’s a good reminder for everyone to so on a regular basis.

 

And, when doing so, to consider our brand-new Endowment Fund in your estate planning.

 

It’s not fun to think about things like Wills and funeral arrangements and the final disposition of one’s material goods.

 

And if you’re anything like me—and I hope you’re not—you can easily find yourself obsessing over these things a bit.

 

It’s a control freak thing.

 

I’m aware of it.

 

But being that kind of person means I really have issues with what Jesus is telling the young man in our Gospel reading for today.

 

We hear Jesus say, Let the dead bury their own dead.

 

What?

It’s an unusual statement.  

 

It almost boggles the mind when you think about it.

 

And yet….there is beautiful poetry in that phrase.

 

We hear this saying of Jesus referenced occasionally in our secular society.

 

It conveys a sense of resignation and putting behind oneself insignificant aspects of our lives.

 

Still, it is a strange image to wrap our minds around.

Let the dead bury their own dead.

What could Jesus possibly mean by this reference?

Does it means we shouldn’t bury our loved ones?

 

No. This statement from him, as always, has a deeper meaning—and really only starts to make sense when we put it in the context of his time and who his followers were.

 

When we find this man talking about having to go and bury his father, and Jesus’ response of “let the dead bury their own dead,” we might instantly think that Jesus is being callous.  

 

It would seem, at least from our modern perspective, that this man is mourning, having just lost his father.

 

The fact is, his father actually probably died a year or more before.  

 

What happened in the Jewish culture at that time is that when a person died, they were anointed, wrapped in a cloth shroud and placed in a tomb.

 

There would have been an actually formal burial rite at that times.

 

And of course, Jesus himself would later be buried exactly like this.

 

This initial tomb burial was actually a temporary interment.

 

They were probably placed on a stone shelf near the entrance of the tomb.

 

About a year or so after their death, the family gathered again at which time the tomb was re-opened.

 

By that time, the body would, of course,  have been reduced to bones.

 

The bones would then be collected, placed in a small stone box and buried with the other relatives, probably further back in the tomb.

 

A remnant of this tradition still exists in Judaism, when, on the first anniversary of the death of a loved one, the family often gathers to unveil the gravestone in the cemetery.

 

There’s a wonderful liturgy in the New Zealand Prayer Book that I’ve used many times for the blessing and unveiling of a gravestone.

 

Which I think a very cool tradition personally. 

So, when we encounter this man in today’s Gospel, we are not necessarily finding a man mourning his recently deceased father.

 

What we are actually finding is a man who is waiting to go to the tomb where his father’s bones now lie so he can bury the bones.

 

When we see it from this perspective, we can understand why Jesus makes such a seemingly strange comment—and we realize it isn’t quite the callous comment we thought it was.  

 

As far as Jesus is concerned, the father has been buried.

 

Whatever this man does is merely an excuse to not go out and proclaim the kingdom of God, as Jesus commands him to do.

Now to be fair to the man, he could just be making an excuse, which really under any other circumstances, would have been a perfectly valid excuse.

 

Or he could really have felt that his duty as his father’s son took precedence over this calling from Jesus.

 

Certainly, in Jewish culture, this would be an acceptable way of living out the commandment of respecting one’s parents.

 

It doesn’t seem as though he doesn’t want to follow Jesus or proclaim the Kingdom.

 

He doesn’t flat-out say no.

 

He simply says, not now.

 

In a sense, he is given the choice between the dead and dried bones of his father or the living Jesus who stands before him.

Jesus’ response, which may sound strange to our modern, Western ears, is actually a very clear statement to this man.

 

He is saying, in a sense: “You are attached to these bones.

 

Don’t worry about bones.

 

Break your attachment, follow me, proclaim the goodness and love of God and you will have life.

 

Follow me

 

TODAY.

 

NOW.

 

How many times have we been in the same place in our lives?

 

How many times have we looked for excuses to get out of following Jesus, at least right now?

 

We all have our own “bones” that we feel we must bury before we can go and proclaim the Kingdom of God in our midst by following Jesus.

 

We all have our own attachments that we simply cannot break so we can go forward unhindered to follow and to serve.

 

And they’re easy to find.

 

It’s easy to be led astray by attachments—to let these attachments fill our lives and give us a false sense of fulfillment.

 

It is easy for us to despair when the bad things of life happen to us.

 

Despite bad things in the world or in our own lives, we as Christians just need to remember: the kingdom of God still needs to be proclaimed.

 

Now.

 

And not later. Not after everything has been restored. Not when everything is good and right in the world.

 

Not after we have calmed down.

 

The Kingdom needs to be proclaimed NOW.

 

Now.

 

Even in the midst of chaos.  

 

Even when those crappy things happen, we still need to follow Jesus.

 

We proclaim the Kingdom of God by standing up and speaking out against those forces that seek to undermine basic human dignity.

 

We proclaim the Kingdom of God by living out our Baptismal Covenant in this world.

 

We proclaim the Kingdom of God by loving God and loving others—loving people enough to stand up for their rights, their health, their worth. Their dignity.

 

Let us remember that this is not some sweet, nice, gentle suggestion from Jesus.  

 

It is a command from him.

“Let the dead bury their own dead. But as for you, go, and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

We proclaim the kingdom, as we all know, by loving God and loving each other.

 

You can’t proclaim the kingdom—you can’t love—when you are busy obsessing about the dead, loveless things of your life.

 

You’re not proclaiming the Kingdom when you complain about things, but then don’t DO anything about them.

 

We who are following Jesus have all put our hands to the plow.

 

We put our hands to that plow when were baptized, when we set out on that path of following Jesus.

 

Now, with our hands on that plow, let us not look back.

 

Let us not be led astray by the attachments we have in this life that lead us wandering about aimlessly.

 

Let us not be led astray by our anger.

 

But, let us focus.

 

Let us look forward.  

 

Let us push on.

 

Let us proclaim by word and example the love we have for God and one another.  

 

And when we do, we are doing exactly what Jesus commands us to do.

 

Now is the time.  

 

Stand up.

 

Speak out.

 

Proclaim that Kingdom.

 

And make it a reality in our midst.

 

Now.

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God, you are a God of justice; send your Spirit as a fire into our hearts and into our mouths that we may speak out against injustice in this world. And in doing so, let us know that we are proclaiming your Kingdom. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.