The Feeling of the Kingdom of God

Mark 4:26-35 

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

       In an episode of the Golden Girls, over the kitchen table probably eating cheesecake, one comforts another mourning the loss of a friend by saying, “Maybe it was just a blessing in disguise.”  The wise elder, Sophia, replies, “I always wondered why blessings wear disguises.  If I was a blessing, I’d run around naked.”  To be honest, that’s kind of how I’ve thought of Jesus speaking the Word in parables.  If the Word is what we, as Christians, believe to be a healing word, a saving word, a transforming word, why complicate the message in parables?  And rather than Christ rely on our feeble attempts at deciphering His Word in the parables, shouldn’t He have just let the Word run around naked for all to see? 

       Parables.  They are not quite nursery rhymes, where the moral of the story is made abundantly clear by the happily-ever-after end.  And they are not quite riddles, for I do not believe Jesus was attempting to confuse or trick anyone.  Instead, they are vague references, analogies, to something profound and mysterious.  They are hazy reflections that require our individual interpretation; individual interpretations that necessarily complicate corporate dogmatism, doctrines, and creeds.  For instance, those of us raised in church think we know what Christ’s parables mean because we have been taught time and time again what they are supposed to mean based on our tradition’s interpretation of them.  And those not raised in church may think they know what the parables mean because if one really looks at the stories hard enough he can tease them out logically and rationally.  There’s a kind of universal ethic or reason that can ultimately be discerned.

       But I’ve started to wonder, do we really know what they mean?  Can we ever really know what they mean?

       Over the course of my life, I have been taught so many things, so many contradictory things in fact, that I consistently find myself hesitate before giving an answer because I’m afraid the hearer will believe me to be wrong.  I over-intellectualize, over-think, over-analyze the problem and then the possible solutions, so much so I have to remind myself to stop, take a breath, BE.  I look for the pieces of the puzzle and then look to how to arrange them.  Even now as I offer this sermon, with sensing your expectation of my providing answers to these parables we have read, I cannot help but stop and hesitate and ponder.  I tax my brain while my brow creases and my head aches.  Sure, there is a part of me wants to offer an interpretation of the parables we read about Christ’s explanations of the Kingdom of God.  But another part of me is much more like the bumbling, simple-minded, dumbfounded disciples than I wish to admit, who asked more questions in not trusting their discernment.  That part, like them, ironically fears that Christ, who loves me so dearly, will actually shake his head sadly and, like he did to his disciples, say, “Do you not understand these parables?  Then how will you understand any parables?”  Unfortunately, I have not been afforded the luxury of having Jesus explain everything he meant to me in private.

       Some of this insecurity I will blame on my own Christian tradition which demanded an absolutism of faith and condemned doubt.  Either you had the right answers or you had the wrong answers, and if wrong, well, that was a very bad and hot place to be.  Some of this insecurity I will blame on the academy which advocates for critical thinking but in many cases still has its mind made up about what is right and wrong, liberally or conservatively speaking, historically speaking, contextually speaking.  But really a lot of this fear of being wrong, of not having the right answer, I blame on Christianity’s historical attempt to strip any authority from our bodily senses, from our own embodiment of the divine.  I blame our theological traditions for negating the Spirit’s voice coming from our feelings, as if our feelings are too tumultuous to be of God.  Instead, what is still lauded when doing interpretation is that we do it with our minds, with our mental faculties.   As if we are still living in modernity, where every “if” has a “then,” or every “plus” or “minus” has an “equals” sign, we read the parables and try to “figure them out,” “decode them,” “unravel the meaning” from them as if they were holding onto true meaning with cold, clinched fists.  

       Honestly, because of such bias, I would be relieved if I could look up these parables in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary and see if my definition of the Kingdom of God is right.  Even the Gospel writers themselves perpetuate this in attempts to give clear, distinct answers about their faith in Christ, a faith that was being challenged from all sides during the contexts of their writings. 

       But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I have sat with these stories Jesus told, trying to figure out what he meant was the Kingdom of God, trying to figure out what I should offer you today, I’ve started believing that’s not what Christ wanted us to do at all when he told parables.  He didn’t want us to hear the story and then walk away with the one solution.  Instead, I believe Christ offered parables to those to whom he spoke so that they, we, anyone and everyone, are able to connect to and embody the narrative with the raw sense, the emotion, the feeling he wanted to portray so as to find a treasure of answers, from God to you.  

       Jesus, himself, had personally, humanly experienced the content of his parables.  He touched the soil with the skin of his fingertips, felt it under his fingernails when he scribbled something in the dirt, breathed in the dust of the roads and the odor of livestock.  Jesus heard birds singing from their nests, saw them carrying food to their chicks there and lamented that he had no place to rest his head unlike them calling from their homes in the branches above.  He even felt alone, out of the know, misunderstood, when his extended family thought he was insane and sent him packing with the family he had to create in the disciples.  And even if these parables were stories that had been told to him as a child, it is likely that he knew farmers personally and probable that his mother or aunt grew a mustard shrub and other herbs in their gardens.  Because Jesus lived, he felt.  He lived and breathed his narratives.

       Therefore, for Jesus and his followers, I believe these parables are not about a clear picture, a mirror image of what the Kingdom looks like, but instead about the deep feeling the Kingdom evokes from the core, from our hearts.  When he says, if you have ears, hear, eyes, see, I believe he says, use the gift of your humanness, your human senses, those profoundly mysterious parts of your embodiment to become fully aware, to interpret from your experience what God is saying to you, God’s children, heirs to the Kingdom.  Move through the barriers you have between body and soul, mind and heart, and just feel.

       So my dear fellow-intellectuals, whether we like it or not, these parables about the Kingdom of God are really more touchy-feely than mathematic formulae.  They require all your senses to come alive.  When you read them, you must smell the soil of the earth, let it cake your hands when on your knees as the sower.  You must walk through the wide, open field and hear rows of stalks that seemed to appear overnight rustle against one another in the breezes.  You must see the bright color of the grain’s head to know that it is ripe for harvest in autumn and feel your stomach ache for the warm bread it will soon make.  When you read the parables, you must feel the tiny mustard seed in your fingertips.  And then in amazement years later, cool under its expansive shade on a hot, summer day.  You must hear the birds in spring making their little homes above you in that wide mustard shrub, flitting from branch to branch with beaks full of twigs while chirping their unique melodies.  After hearing the parables like those who heard them for the first time, you must sense.  You must tingle.  You must feel. 

       So in thinking about these parables read today, I ask not what does the Kingdom of God look like to you.  What is the answer to the parable offered by Christ.  But rather, I invite you into an exercise, to wonder along with me, based on your human experience along with your embodied embrace by God’s Love, how do these parables Christ offers about the Kingdom of God make you feel?  Using all of your human senses, your emotions, body, and spirit, what does the Kingdom of God feel like to you?   Look, listen, touch, taste, and smell.

      

       “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.  The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.  But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

       [T]he kingdom of God…is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

       In closing, I would be remiss if I did not very briefly offer you what these two parables feel like to me, what the Kingdom of God feels like to me, today, this moment in my life as I hopefully graduate and head off and away with some uncertainty into my own narrative, so let me just offer this:

       After feeling the parable of the sower, for me, the Kingdom of God feels like the following living parable in my life:  The time of my looking out the window to the sky to pray on a day I was especially worried, distraught, and afraid and seeing a bright red heart-shaped balloon suddenly rise up into view towards the big white puffy clouds, which immediately caused me to remember Christ’s faithful love, so I exclaimed, no matter what - it’s all going to be okay.  Like the continuing seasons of God’s Love ever there for me to harvest, that’s what the Kingdom of God feels like to me today.

       After feeling the parable of the mustard seed, for me, the Kingdom of God feels like the following living parable in my life:  The time on a chilly twilight in New York City when I was walking back to my apartment among the crowds, lonely and brokenhearted after a bad breakup, when on 8^th Avenue and 34^th Street near Madison Square Garden, amidst all the steel and concrete and glass, a single firefly dropped and passed in front of my tear-filled eyes, blinking its natural light, causing me to smile, and leading me down the street towards home.  How a tiny insect of my rural roots flew into the massive, anonymous city and made me feel safe, secure… Home. That’s what the Kingdom of God feels like to me today.

      

       Possibilities,

       Security,

       Home:

       Radical Supernatural Love. 

       That’s what the Kingdom of God feels like to me today.

      

       After feeling these parables and after reflecting on your own living, embodied parables, what does the Kingdom of God feel like to you, today?

The Call of the Newness of Life

Romans 6:1-14

          Every morning, I continue the same routine.  I usually wake before my alarm sounds and swing my legs over the left side of my bed where my toes search for the flip-flops I discarded there the night before.  After a dash to the bathroom, I pull out a coffee filter, fill it with grounds, fill the coffee maker with water and then push the [brew] button.  As I turn on some music and walk around my apartment opening all the window blinds to allow the new morning light to fill the rooms, I listen for the bubbles and clicks and dripping of my coffee into the coffee pot and the relished [beeping] that indicates it is ready.  Once my coffee is poured and my granola bar is in hand, I sit at my computer, open e-mails, and quickly scan Facebook before diving into my news page of trusted news sources reporting on today’s world and U.S. news.  

And every morning, though the stories’ details may change, it happens.  I read through the news and witness mass deaths across the globe like those in Nigeria and in Kenya.  I read how our own U.S. government is again acting like spoiled little children throwing tantrums because they are not getting their way while their hungry constituents watch from the cold.  I read of violence, of wars on the horizon, of human aid diverted.  I read of atrocity after atrocity, of crisis after crisis, like it’s a sports page of winners and losers in team colors and wing-tip tennis shoes.  

And then, it hits me, it rolls over me, the “newness of life” Paul mentions in Romans.  It’s uncomfortable and annoying, like a pebble stuck in my shoe, but nevertheless, it forces me to think of all the people, all the many, many people, all those members of my human family that are suffering, crying, gasping for air.  I shake my head disgusted.  As I take another sip of my coffee, the “newness of life” convicts me again and whispers that whether I want to accept it or not, I am actually responsible for some of that mess out there.  As I sit in my cozy apartment drinking coffee from Seattle and eating granola sold to me by Food, Inc., the “newness of life” judges me rightly.  

To be honest, it is enough to make me want to go back to my bed, crawl under the covers, and go back to sleep literally and figuratively.  It is enough to make me want to go back to before the newness of life, before I had died to blissful ignorance, to reenter the tomb, cover my eyes, and hope and pray that maybe God will swoop in one day and fix this disaster of humanity, that maybe Christ will return and, like the money-changing tables in the temple, turn this immoral human system we have built upsidedown right side up again.  Ahhh, but the “newness of life” won’t let me slumber.  It echoes Paul and says, “What shall we say, then?  Shall we go on living in complacency so that God may someday save us?” 

When I first read this text in Romans, I had no idea that the phrase the “newness of life” would become of such profound interest for me.  Nor could I have imagined how this “newness of life” would evoke response and action beyond my simply answering “no, no, we shouldn’t sin” to Paul’s seeming rhetorical question.  Being raised in the Christian tradition, I have heard the phrase “newness of life” countless times when referred to becoming Christian, or embarking upon a Christian life.  And while I figured I understood its meaning all these many years, Saturday before last, I was surprised in discovering its even deeper impact.  You see, last week, my baby sister had her very first baby, a son she and her husband named Flint, and “newness of life” took on a fuller, personal, substantive meaning.  With respect to this passage in Romans, I believe that, like the experience of the birth of a newborn, our Christian “newness of life” inspires us, convicts us to be God’s grace in the world, to be God’s embrace of our world in its suffering, vulnerability, and nakedness.

As God would have it, I happened to be in town at the time Flint decided to grace the world with his presence, three weeks early, as my sister, Tara, and I in the process of touring nursing facilities to care for my Dad who is suffering from the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease.  Suddenly, in the midst of our grueling, grief-filled week, arrived Flint, that “little bundle of joy,” a cliché I finally now truly understand.  Smiling widely with joyful tears in my eyes, I sat in amazement over his teeny-tiny fingers and toes, his even teenier-and tinier fingernails and toenails, and his plump, rosy cheeks framed by his soft strawberry-colored hair.  This sleeping, still newborn caused all my experiences of nursing home smells and somber, sad elderly faces to seem distant, like an entirely different life divorced from mine.  And as I watched little Flint sleeping, I believed that perhaps our family had finally embarked upon a happy era.  Now things would be delightfully different.  Everything will change.

However, with newborns, especially those that you don’t have to live with, it’s a bit too easy to get caught up in the idea of the “newness of life” as the bundle of joy.  The reality is that true newness of life also comes with screams and wailing, with the discomfort of leaving the old, that which provided so much contentment before.  Stripped of his comfort, his warmth, his endless supply of nourishment, and his lullaby of tossing water and muted sounds, the new baby was jarringly pulled into the poking, prodding, loud, static-filled world.  Its newness is uncomfortable and scary.

And yes, it’s true that everything changes, but the transition is not always so smooth.  Similar to the Gentile and Jewish believers learning how to live with one another to whom Paul is writing, even the parents of the newborn have to adjust.  “This is so much harder than they say it will be,” my sister has confided.  Her marriage has changed.  Her sleep has changed.  Her ability to go meet friends for lunch or go for long contemplative walks has changed.  The newness of life is not just the rainbows and butterflies of nurseries.  The newness of life is also storms thundering overhead and caterpillars writhing in the dust. The life my sister had is gone.  

As for the newborn, Flint, well, now Flint means everything – EVERYTHING!  Our devotion to his livelihood, his well-being, is unsurpassed.  There is nothing in the world anyone of us wouldn’t do for that new little life.  The amount of love we feel for him simply cannot be adequately be expressed.

I think this experience I have described of welcoming a newborn into the world resonates as something familiar when thinking of our own Christian lives, doesn’t it?  Is not the death to the old self and resurrection into the newness of life that Paul describes much like this experience of a newborn baby being thrust into the world?  Yes, newness of life is beautiful and joyful, but the reality of it is also startling, scary, and ever life-changing.  And doesn’t this incite more than a simple “no” answer to Paul’s question about sin, but rather a resounding “yes” response to actively engaging a life lived toward God? 

Imagine it for a moment.  It is as if before our “newness of life” we simply wandered a womb that was like a tomb where we lived in blissful ignorance.  We were never skeptical of the structures and systems of existence, never questioning of the information we were provided, never challenging of the identities to which we were bound, the allegiances we were innately given.  In fact, we found odd comfort in being told who we were, whose we were, and what we were to become.  Easy answers made for easy living, and we bounced along in our insular lives believing that everything was exactly as it should be, as it had to be, that any change was not just impossible but unwarranted. 

But then Christ came along and invited us to see ourselves as He sees us.  When we accepted His hand, that’s when we were birthed; we were awakened.  Like Neo in the movie, The Matrix, we gulped down the red pill, and were bolted, startled and screaming excitedly, into the newness of life, acutely aware of the true reality in which we live.  Our eyes were opened, and we could see.  Together, we experienced and uncovered our interconnectedness, and we discovered that we are all a part of the same newborn body.  We became aware that when one breathes, we all breathe.  In this newness of life, we died to the self-sufficient self or the victimized self that separated us from one another.  We became disbelieving of the lies we’d been told to keep us content, lies that told us we were powerless, insignificant, ugly.

And yet, in the newness of life, as joyous and liberating as it is, we also uncomfortably see our own complicity in our participation in turning the wheels of an immoral human system, a machine that simply uses humanity.  Thus we change significantly when we watch our own hands churn the machine’s gears that chomp at our sisters’ fingers and slice at our brothers’ feet.  Outside of the tomb, we see how the wheel of economy fits in the grooves of government that springs into action both drones to kill and aid to revive.  Yes, being in the newness of life lifts us out and up to see us as God sees us, newborn, suffering, vulnerable, and naked.  And thus, our glorious but cumbersome Christian “newness of life” inspires us, convicts us to do the hard work of being God’s grace in the world, of being God’s change of the system, of being God’s embrace of our united tiny fragile body.

So I guess the answer to Paul’s question of shall we go on the same as before really is, “No, by no means.”  No, we cannot go back to sleep and simply pray the human system will change.  No, we cannot sit idly by and watch our human family suffer at our own hands, at the whim of our government, or for the profits of the companies we financially support.  Instead, we must act, we must work, we must advocate for change!  If we really live in the newness of life, if we care, we must rise up from behind our coffee and computers, and become incensed.  We must, to quote the movie the Network, “get mad as hell and say we aren’t going to take it any more.” We must scream that we are ALL human beings in this together and every one of us has value.  In the newness of life, we must share, love, embrace!  And we must, MUST, treat each and every person as if they were our very own newborn for whom we are responsible. 

For God did not resurrect us into the newness of life just so that we may live.  God resurrected us into the newness of life so that all may live.  Therefore, let us go and BE God’s abounding grace!

"Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.



{Read by Prof. Trudy Hawkins-Stringer the first day of Senior Seminar, Vanderbilt Divinity School.}

Why go and do likewise?

[My first sermon: Preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Fayetteville, AR, Podcast @ Why go and do likewise? Podcast]

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.  “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?”  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.”  And Jesus said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”   But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  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.   Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.   But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.   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.  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.’  Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  The lawyer said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” ~Luke 10:25-37

         “Go and do likewise.” 

When Pastor Clint asked me to preach on July 14^th, I practically sprinted from his office to the Book of Worship to read the lectionary for the day.  I would love to report that I did so like a child skipping toward his presents on Christmas morning, full of glee and anticipation; however, to be honest, since this is my first sermon, it felt a little more like going to the dentist; you need to and you know you’ll be glad you did but still...  

I read the scripture lessons and saw that the gospel reading was the story of the “Good Samaritan.”  Well, that’s easy enough, I said to myself smiling.  I mean, growing up in church, I must have heard the Good Samaritan parable hundreds of times.  And it does seem pretty obvious what Jesus is trying to say to the lawyer who wonders about who his neighbor is, right?  Everyone is your neighbor, the entire human family is your neighbor.  Sure, it may be a rough pill to swallow sometimes, for we don’t generally like all people all the time, especially those who are not like us and those who don’t live in our neighborhood.  But Jesus sternly says to the lawyer and to us, “Go and do likewise.”  I’ve always heard that as, “Go and be like the Good Samaritan.”  If you see someone hurting or in need, help them, assist them, care for them, love them.  Anything less is simply sinful.  Be like the Good Samaritan.  Be a good Samaritan.  Be a “good” Christian.  Amen. 

Sermon ended.  Word has been given.  May I sit down now?

         But as I thought about this, something troubled me.

You too have probably heard this parable many times.  You may have even seen some dramatic interpretations via television or YouTube or in the theatre.  As a new teen, I remember one Christian youth drama group coming to our church to perform, and one skit they performed retold the story of the Good Samaritan in modern-day junior high melodrama.  Just like a teen movie, up on the stage, a group of bad guys with black t-shirts walked down what was an imagined school hall of lockers and then shoved to the floor the stereotypical smaller, thin boy, wearing glasses, knocking all the books out of his hands and yelling, “You nerd; get out the way you wimp.” Then they walked away laughing.  Surrounded by his scattered books, the boy sat on the floor and hung his head frozen in sorrow, humiliation, and shame.  Before too long, a group of three “mean” girls in cheerleader uniforms were talking and giggling as they approached the boy.  When one of them saw him, she stopped the others and pointed, and they began whispering with one another.  Then they walked past him in silence, making a large arch around the boy and his books littered across the floor.  As they walked past, one of the girls looked back over her shoulder with disgust and they disappeared off-stage.    Just after them, a group of guys walked onto the stage acting “too cool for school” in their sunglasses and popped-collars.  When they noticed the boy crumpled there before them, they looked around to see if anyone was watching, then snickered together and bolted past the boy without a second glance.  Then a very pretty girl walked onto stage.  The cross around her neck indicated her Christian faith, and she immediately noticed the boy on the floor.  Touching her cross, she then walked over to the boy and lifted his head.  She looked into his eyes, and pulled him to his feet.  Then she gathered his books and gave them to him, patted him on the back and put her arm around his shoulder.  The boy smiled widely.  This girl was beautiful inside and out.  The Good Samaritan of Hard-Knocks Junior High.  A lesson had dramatically been given:  When you are a Christian, you help people who are down and out, even while the rest of the world thinks they are above such kindness.

As an impressionable young Christian, I remember watching the skit and thinking, I want to be just like her – like the Good Samaritan – the attractive one with the really good skin and the good, shiny hair who helped that poor little boy with glasses bullied by those mean guys.  My own personal movie came into my mind: “The Good Samaritan of Blytheville Junior High” starring Chad Gurley.  Like the Man of Steel, I would help the helpless, aid the distressed.  I would be a SUPER Christian.

         But as I thought about this, something troubled me.

         My sister, Dad, and I were at a gas-station getting gas not too long ago when a man walked up and knocked on my sister’s window saying, “My wife and child and me are on our way to my mother’s and are out of gas.”  He pointed towards his car and passengers and asked,  “Could you happen to spare some extra cash?”  My dutiful sister reached down into her purse to discover that she actually had no cash, only her debit card, and told the man that she was really sorry that she couldn’t help.  After he walked away, she looked back at me and said, “Gosh, I feel like such a bad Christian.  Should I go to the ATM and get some money for him?”  I said no, no.  A voice that sounded like my mother’s came into my mind adding, “You don’t know what that money is really going to go for.  He could be buying alcohol or drugs.  By not giving him money, you might really be helping him.”  Then I told my sister that someone else would likely help him and that she shouldn’t worry about it.  Well, later, overthinking the way I often do, I started worrying about that moment with my sister and my flippant response to her.  Did we miss an opportunity to be a Good Samaritan and help those people?  Were they angels in disguise, as we have sometimes heard people claim, testing us to see if we were good Christians?  Then, two weeks ago, at a gas station near where I am living this summer, the same situation happened again.  A man walked up and knocked on my window and asked for money for gas while pointing to his car where there was a child sitting in a car seat and a woman in the front.  I felt so guilty about the situation with my sister that I pulled out a 5-dollar bill and handed it to him.  “God bless you,” he said as he walked away towards another person pumping gas to ask for money again.  Self-satisfied, I drove away patting myself on my back and thinking what a Good Samaritan I had been.  I believed I “went and did likewise.” Wasn’t that so Christ-like of me? 

Ahhh, but guess what?  As I thought about it, something troubled me.

         So what was it about Jesus Christ’s Good Samaritan story that troubled me? - a parable we’ve all heard countless times, watched demonstrated in plays and movies, and have even attempted to emulate ourselves.  Why, when the parable’s meaning seems so cut and dry, so matter of fact, was God troubling me about it?  What was I missing?  Is it perhaps that I am, perhaps WE are, in need of some “spiritual wisdom and understanding?”

         Because you are here attending worship today, because you have come to church without being made to come here, well, most of you anyway, I’m willing to bet that many of you really do try to be a Good Samaritan.  I’ll bet that some of you even stress your comfort zone by helping those less fortunate than you, by aiding those who are extremely different from you, and by assisting those who live outside your own neighborhoods.  Some of you try really hard to be a Good Samaritan, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.  But I think the question with which God keeps troubling me is WHY?  WHY?  WHY are you, why am I, trying to be that Good Samaritan? 

Is it because Jesus commanded us?  Is it because we believe God will prosper us if only we follow God’s commandments?  Is it because we desire to be “good?” Is it because our culture teaches us that the star is the selfless hero of the movie, and we long to be stars?  Is it because we think that if others see how kind we are they will want to be kind too, that we’ll be a witness for Christ?  Is it because deep down we want to affirm ourselves, give ourselves a pat on the back?  Or is it because we believe we are better than others, better off than others, and so we are able, perhaps entitled, to give?  If I’m to have integrity, I have to ask myself these hard questions.  We have to ask ourselves these uncomfortable questions, troubling questions. 

So you’re a Good Samaritan; that’s great, but why?  Why do you do what you do?

         Although sometimes unsettling, I’ve learned that it’s actually productive to have these questions, to “live the questions” as the poet Rilke wrote to a young aspiring poet.  The questions scratch at the surface of our lives and grow meaning.  The questions sheer away superficiality and create depth and intensity.  Struggling with the questions strengthens our faith, and can even grow our relationship with God, when we ponder the answers in conversation with God prayerfully.  They demand us to live fully, ironically by never outgrowing the question so often uttered from mouths of children, “Why?” 

         Well, in this instance, an answer begins to be found in the Samaritan, a much more complex character than our title of “Good Samaritan” allows. 

         To illustrate, let’s briefly look back at the play I saw as a teenager.  Now, if the youth drama group had really wanted to portray the Good Samaritan parable authentically as Jesus told it to His listeners, especially the lawyer, yet still via a teen film genre, then the stereotypes would be quite changed.  Instead of cheerleaders, it should have been the Bible Club teens donning crosses that would have passed by the boy on the floor.   Instead of the cool dudes, it should have been the boy’s own friends out fear of association that would have left him crumpled there –the one’s you do not expect to leave the boy languishing.  And the Good Samaritan, well, if they really wanted to startle us like Jesus had shocked and appalled his audience by using a Samaritan as the hero, a Samaritan who was “outside the pale of orthodox Judaism,” they should have made the Good Samaritan the token African-American character who was the brunt of jokes yet watched with suspicion and apprehension; or perhaps the Good Samaritan should have been an effeminate, skinny boy with highlighted hair and a limp wrist who schoolmates attacked with homophobic slurs.  If truly echoing Christ’s drama, the Good Samaritan would have been the one already on the margins of junior high society according to teen films, who helped the little boy because of seeing himself in the boy, and so he joins him on the ground, rescues him from his shame, and helps him to his feet, all the while doing so with sincerity and without a single thought, with absolutely nothing to gain, without a fantasy of an expectation of approval or reward, without ever being told to “go and do likewise.”

So then why does this parable have any relevance for our lives as Christians if a teen movie can make the point?  I believe it is because it profoundly demonstrates our faith in Jesus Christ.  Further, our faith matures in Christ when He is the focus.  Because for us, Christ is the true Good Samaritan, our Good Samaritan.  Our ostracized, marginalized, crucified Savior daily, hourly, finds us upon this road of life stripped of our dignity, beaten by the world’s circumstances, situations, and injustices, robbed of our joys, our passions, our hopes, and left for half-dead, soulless beings.  And every moment of our lives, Christ finds us and embraces us, passionately loves us, and shows us immeasurable kindness.  Mercifully, he bandages our hurts, our wounds both self-inflicted and otherwise, and anoints our imperfect loving with unwarranted forgiveness.  Then upon the wings of His Grace, he carries us to God’s Heavenly Banquet.  Christ had everything to lose and nothing to gain, but He loves us anyway. 

Thus what I’m saying here today, what I believe Christ really asks of us, is to truly engage our human family as we engage Him, deeply, authentically, to be in real relationship with others genuinely, and not out of a sense of duty, not superficially, not because Jesus happened to say, “Go and do likewise.”  In echoing Luther, understand that we not do good works to establish our own righteousness, to prove to others or ourselves our own good Christianship, but instead because we live our faith in God’s love and mercy for us out-loud.  Thus the transformative message of Christ, the Love He offers us, the Grace He freely gives us, ignites love in our hearts for others so that - we do - simply because we do – not because we’re told to.  To truly love your neighbor as yourself, to truly love your enemies, a love Jesus Christ perfectly embodied unto his crucifixion and beyond, is a way of being, a way of living your faith.  Faith.

         So yes, even after all the questioning, I still invite you as Christ invites you, do go and do likewise. 

Go and show unfathomable mercy to your human family. 
Go and love each and every person you meet unconditionally. 
Go and be Christ’s physical embrace of a broken and wounded world. 

But don’t do it to be good. 
Don’t do it to be a hero.
And don’t do it because you were told to. 

Go and do it because you live your faith,
the faith that Christ loves you so very much that He does it for you!