9th Sunday after Pentecost
July 17, 2016
Luke 10:25:37
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOrI6LkPi6E )
I don’t know about you, but I am not a great off-the-cuff
speaker. I speak much better after I’ve had time to think for a while and I’m
not one of those people who can come up with a witty remark in a matter of
seconds. When I’m struck speechless in a conversation, it’s often long after
that conversation is over that I think of what I could have said. Anyone else
like that? The events of two weeks ago left me pretty speechless, and so I kept
quiet. I was glad we had already planned for me not to preach last Sunday! Not
so that I didn’t have to say anything, but because I didn’t know what to say. Last Sunday in worship, some
ideas slowly started forming, finally.
The
other thing I learned about myself the past couple weeks is that I’m not a very
good pastor when I’m angry. I’ve known that I’m not a good parent when I’m
angry, and it’s best not to parent in the heat of the moment, but to wait a
minute, or longer, until I’ve calmed down. Otherwise, if I speak from anger, I
am likely to be mean and say something I will regret. And the same is true for
pastoring. I cannot be a good pastor when I act from anger. I don’t know about
you, but I was pretty angry two weeks ago. Two more African-American men shot
unnecessarily by police. Five police officers shot unnecessarily. And when I
finally could name that I was angry, because it’s not an emotion I experience a
lot, then I could finally start addressing it and exploring it. Anger comes
from fear. A parent may speak extra harshly, angrily, to a child about to touch
a hot stove. Why? Because the parent is afraid the child will hurt herself.
What
am I afraid of, with the deaths of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, five
members of Dallas’ finest, the 84 persons who died in Nice, and the hostile
takeover of the airport in Turkey? Am I afraid that the violence will come near
me? We already had some last year, after Freddy Gray’s death. Am I afraid that
justice will not be served? That is not in my hands. Am I afraid that darkness
will blot out the sun? That evil will win? That there is something so big and
so bad in this world that God cannot overcome it? In the Gospel of John, Jesus
says, “take heart, because I have overcome the world.”[1]
As long as there is at least one person keeping the candle burning, the
darkness cannot overtake us. Just like in that poem about footsteps in the
sand, when our courage fails, or our strength fails, then Jesus will carry us
and be the light for us. That’s the promise. He has already defeated death; we
don’t need to be afraid of it. He has already defeated evil; we don’t need to
fear that, either.
What
is evil, anyway? I had to write on that for my papers for the District
Committee on Ordained Ministry. I wrote
that evil is “everything that stands against God and [God’s] intentions for the
well-being and transformation of human beings and God’s creation.”[2] Evil
is anything that draws people away from God. Suffering is not necessarily evil.
If it leads to a crisis of faith, and causes someone to turn away from God,
then it is evil. If, instead, that person turns toward God, then God has used
that pain for good. It is more helpful to look at evil not as a problem to be
solved, but instead as a situation that offers us the opportunity to respond
faithfully. The best response isn’t to explain why there is evil, which we
can’t ultimately answer, anyway, but to figure out ways we can resist and
transform evil and suffering. This is why it’s important to be part of a Christian
community that can help “absorb evil and enable faithful living even in the
midst of evil.”[3] We
can respond faithfully in the presence of evil and we can help others to do so
as well solely by God’s grace.
Because
we are sinful, we allow evil to exist and sometimes even flourish in the
world. Sin and evil are not a part of
how God initially made creation. A
fallen world was not God’s intention, yet God knew it was a possibility and
allowed then for our redemption. We cannot fix it by ourselves; we need God’s
help. Thankfully, God can use all things, even things intended for evil, for
good.[4]
God is continually at work redeeming and restoring God’s creation. In addition,
God enables us to respond faithfully to evil whenever we come across it. We may
be overwhelmed by it at first, we may be struck speechless at first. Once that
temporary paralysis is over, however, then it’s time to respond, and to respond
faithfully, as God’s people. We might name the evil and point it out, because
sometimes we don’t always see what’s right in front of us. We might describe the environment that
allowed the evil to flourish, so that we know what to do differently as we move
forward, and ask God for the strength to actually do differently. Then there is
always the hard work of forgiveness and moving toward God’s vision of what creation
is meant to become. Evil and death do not have the last say over this world. We
already know the end, which is that love wins. God will triumph over evil. Our job
is to live faithfully, and help others to live faithfully, until that time.
How
do we live faithfully? How do we inherit the eternal life that means that death
in this life is not the end? Did you hear what Jesus told the legal expert? “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 [love] your neighbor as yourself.”[5]
Elsewhere, Jesus has referred to these as the greatest commandments.[6]
Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. It seems pretty simple, and yet we
all know that faithful living can get tricky, it can get hard. How do we
respond faithfully when we’re angry? How do we love God when there is evil in
the world? How do we love ourselves when we’re angry with ourselves for not
doing the good we want to do, but instead doing the evil we don’t want to do?[7]
And, for crying out loud, how do we love our neighbor when our neighbor seems
hell-bent on destroying us?!
Well,
sometimes, we try to play dumb and say that they’re not actually our neighbor. We don’t have to actually love everyone, right? Well… there’s that pesky Sermon on
the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel when Jesus says “Love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you.”[8]
And in this case, in Luke’s Gospel, the legal expert asks Jesus, “who is my
neighbor?” You know, in case there’s some middle ground between neighbors and
enemies, and there actually are some people we don’t have to love. Wouldn’t
that be nice?
So
the legal expert knows those first two commandments to love God and love your
neighbor as yourself. But this guy, sometimes translated as a lawyer or as a
teacher of law, comes across as legalistic, too. You know, dot every I, cross
every T, follow the letter of the law exactly. This guy wants to justify
himself, he wants to prove that he’s right, that he is upholding the law
exactly as written. This is our human tendency. It’s like the child asking just
how many green beans she has to eat to get dessert. Or the teenager asking how
many good grades he has to get, and what counts as a good grade, before he can
borrow the car. And in these scenarios, it becomes what do you have to do to
get a reward. What do we have to do to receive eternal life? What laws do we
have to keep to live faithfully? And what’s the answer? How many laws? Which
ones? [Make buzzer sound.] That was a trick question, because the answer is
none of them. We do not have to do anything to receive eternal life, except
believe in Jesus. “God so loved the world that he sent his only beloved son,
that…[pause] whosoever believes in Jesus will receive eternal life.”[9]
Whoever believes in Jesus gets eternal life. Period. Now, if we really do believe
in Jesus, then we will act on that belief and love God, love ourselves, and
love our neighbor. But there’s no two-inch thick book of rules that we have to
keep to do those three things.
The
legal expert wants to know, “who’s my neighbor?” and sometimes that’s our
question, too. Tell us just who we have to love and who we don’t have to. Make
life easier for us, Jesus. Who are our neighbors and who are not? But, if
you’ll notice, that’s not Jesus’ question.
Jesus answers the question with a story that is well-known to many of us. A man
goes traveling down a dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Along the way,
he’s mugged and left for dead. A pastor comes by and ignores him. Another
church leader goes by and ignores him. (This is not a story that makes us
church leaders look good.) Then, along comes someone you really don’t like. I
don’t know whether for you that would be a drunk or an addict or someone who’s
homeless or someone who’s political views are polar opposite of yours or maybe
someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus. Anyway, that’s who comes along and helps the man. The person we least want
to accept help from. And Jesus’ question is who was a neighbor to the one who
was attacked and suffering?
Brothers
and sisters, there are a lot of suffering people out there. Some of them look
like us, some of them don’t. Some of them speak other languages. Some of them
have other customs, other beliefs, other religions. Jesus did not specify any
of that. Instead of asking “who is my
neighbor?” he asks “who is a
neighbor?” and you’ll notice that the definition of neighbor is the one who
shows mercy, the one who treats kindly those who are suffering. Yes, some of us
are suffering, we’ve had quite a few people in and out of the hospital the last
couple weeks. And there are others who are suffering, too, in St. Paul, in
Baton Rouge, in Dallas, in Nice, in Turkey, in Baltimore. Jesus says that we
are to go and show mercy, too. Mercy to the suffering, mercy to the oppressed,
mercy to the victims, mercy to those without a voice or a vote, mercy to the
unemployed, mercy to the undocumented, mercy to the homeless, mercy to the
hopeless, mercy to those who were not born with the advantages that we were
born with.
In
our baptismal covenant there are three questions that we ask all persons who
are about to be baptized. I invite you to pull out hymnal, turn to page 34, and
join me in pledging ourselves again to renounce sin, resist evil, and confess
Jesus Christ as Savior.
Do
you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this
world, and repent of your sin? I do.
Do
you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and
oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? I do.
Do
you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and
promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has
opened to people of all ages, nations, and races? I do.
(p. 39) The God of all grace, who has called us to eternal
glory in Christ, establish you and strengthen you by the power of the Holy
Spirit, that you may live in grace and peace. Amen.
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