First Fruits (Lammas Sunday)

First Fruits
Homily delivered the Eleventh Sunday of Pentecost (Lammastide Sunday)

(Proper 13; Year C RCL)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony A. Hutchinson
31 July2016; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

The readings in today’s lectionary all talk about where we put our trust.  Qohelet or Ecclessiastes says that no matter what we try to do to make meaning of our life, it is useless.  Make money, seek learning, go after pleasure—even get cynical—it is all useless.  The Psalm says this is because we all end up dying like the beasts anyway.  St. Paul says that the only hope we have is setting our hearts on the things that are above and not on earthly things.  By taking on the life of the risen Lord and putting to death things in our life that detract, we can share Christ’s life. 

And then there’s the Gospel reading.  Jesus tells a parable about living, saving up wealth, and dying.  A rich farmer, apparently a prudent, smart person who thinks strategically and plans for the future, is suddenly taken by death.   Jesus calls him a “fool.” 

Today is Lammastide Sunday, a celebration in the Church of England. In the ancient calendar, August 1 celebrated the first fruits of the season’s harvest, just beginning.  “Lammas” comes from “Loaf Mass,” because bread made from the spring wheat harvest was offered in thanks for the harvest to come.  The tradition reflected the Offering of the First Fruits, as well as the Thank and Heave Offerings, in the Hebrew Scriptures. 

It is right that these readings, all in one way or another about how we use the harvest of the fruit of our labor, fall on this day.   

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up treasures in heaven.  … For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Note: the heart here follows where we put the fruit of our labor, not vice versa.  He also says, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food? And the body more than clothing?” He points to birds and wildflowers as an example of how well God feeds and clothes his creatures, says that there is thus no need for striving for food and clothing, and then adds, “Your Heavenly Father knows all that you need” and he is good.  Thus, “work first for God’s Reign and the justice it demands, and God will make sure you get what you need” (Matt. 6:19-33). 

Here is the key to understanding today’s passages.  They do not mean give up on work and enjoying the fruits of your labor.  They do not mean that we only have to concern ourselves with the life to come and can ignore the demands of this life.   Rather, it is a question of priorities, of what we put first.  The Proverbs, talking about what it means to trust God, say, “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your produce” (Prov. 3:9).   Jesus puts it this way, “Seek first the Reign of God and its justice, and everything else will take care of itself.”  Where you put your treasure, where you put your labor, that’s where your heart will be. 

This touches on the heart of how we approach giving our time, talent, and wealth, to help make the Reign of God present here.  If our giving is an afterthought, it is not our priority.  It is not first fruits.   If our giving is done in a calculated fashion—how much do I give so as not to feel shame or embarrassment from others, or how much can I give without having to curtail other things in my life that I enjoy—then the spiritual blessing coming from “having our minds set on things that are above” is not operative.  Elsewhere, Jesus compares rich men giving large sums to the temple treasury and a poor widow who gives a pittance: they give very little of their abundance, while she has given her all, what she needs to barely get by.   While probably a critique of the Temple Treasury’s role in oppressing the poor, this story expresses a deep spiritual truth. 

It echoes the parable of the Pharisee and the Sinner who go to pray:  the one talks all about how great he is, and the other just beats his breast and says he’s sorry.  “The sinner went down from the Temple that day closer to God, the Pharisee not so much.”  

Our giving, both in time or wealth, must be given priority over other concerns if it is to have the spiritual effect of making us closer to God.  It is like prayer:  done for the wrong reasons, it just does not make the power of God alive in your life.  Pray for show, give for show, and you already have your reward—others have noticed.   Give to ease your conscience, you have your reward—you feel OK about yourself for a while. 

Making our gifts thank offerings, making them sacrifices of first fruits—this is what Jesus means when he says “where you put your treasure, your heart will follow.”  This is what Paul means when he says stop thinking about things earthly, here below, and start living in the Resurrected Christ above.   

Jesus suggests in many, many places that the true way is not the path of a spiritual superman. God’s banquet is set for all people, not just for a few chosen ones.   “Being rich for God” or “storing up treasures in heaven” for Jesus is not another struggle, not a way of forcing ourselves to conform to God’s rules or a pledge drive’s drum roll, not a way showing how good we are as compared to other people. 

Jesus says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Other religious people of the day criticized him regularly for being too lax in his expectations of his followers.  And he regularly told his followers to rejoice, and had lots of parties with them.

Jesus also says that the door into the kingdom is narrow and the way to life is a tight fit.  “Go in at the narrow door; for the door is wide and the path is easy to leads to losing your soul.  Many people go in there and do not come out.  The door is narrow and the path is tight that leads to life.  At any given time, there are only few who can manage it.” (Matt. 713-14, paraphrased).  Jesus’ point is that there is no room there to take extra baggage.  If our hearts are set on other things, we simply will not be able to squeeze through.   

In two months, in October, we will be holding our annual pledge drive.  In order to balance budgets and pay the bills we incur to make our ministries at Trinity work, we need to plan ahead and make commitments of giving for the coming year.  But we must not confuse this with simply balancing books, or view it as a funding drive to show us how we can contribute to good causes.  The main reason the Episcopal Church has established the biblical tithe, giving ten percent of our income to the Church, as the standard of giving for all, is not to balance books.  It is to encourage us all to practice a rule of life that will give us deep spiritual blessing.  Malachi says, “Bring the whole tithe into the Temple treasury, … and I will pour down upon you blessing without measure!”   Though some passages seem to think that this will be blessings of material wealth, I don’t believe in the prosperity gospel preached by some.  There is no magic formula for prosperity here.   In light of today’s readings, we see that what is at issue is our spiritual state, and how we perceive need and abundance. 

The spirituality of giving, the spirituality of stewardship, is year round, and far deeper than mere fund raising.   Are we putting the Kingdom first?  Are we letting first things be first, take priority?  Are we offering sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, and giving our very best?

If not, the spiritual blessings Jesus promises here evaporate.  Our heart must be set on things that are above, upon God.  The way to life, being rich with God, the narrow and tight path—all these describe a right relationship with God, and with it, a right relationship with ourselves and others, a right relationship with what we call “our” things.  In this, there is no room for illusion, fantasy, or calculation.  There is no room for letting our fears and anxieties run rampant and blot out the table of plenty set before us.   There is room only for acceptance, thanksgiving, humble service and compassion, and grateful openness to the life from on high God is offering us here and now.  This is the spiritual basis of all proper stewardship, of all properly conceived rules of life. 

Let us offer to God the first fruits of our labors.  Let us offer to God a thank offering, a heave offering thrown up for God to dispose not as we, but as God chooses.  And may our hearts follow, to be with Christ and God above, where all is abundance and every tear is wiped dry. 

In the name of God,  Amen. 

Lammastide (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

Lammastide

July 27, 2016

In the traditional calendar of the Church of England, August 1 is known as Lammas Day.   Originally a pre-Christian Celtic early harvest feast “Lugnasad” that honored Lugh, the sun God, it was “baptized” by missionary saints like Patrick and Aidan and turned into a Christian festival.  The Saxons renamed it “hlaf-maesse” or “Loaf Mass” because by that time its major ceremony was to offer in churches small loaves made from the new wheat harvest in thanksgiving for the harvest to come.   It thus became a Christian celebration of first fruits and thanksgiving, an expression of joy and hope for the full harvest to come.

Of interest to Ashlanders with our love of Shakespeare, is the fact that in Act 1 Scene 3 of Romeo and Juliet, the nurse tells us that “On Lammas-Eve at night shall [Juliet] be fourteen.”  Her name echoes the month of her birth.   July 31 is her birthday. This not only sets up the scene for the dog days of August brawls that cause the tragedy, but also hints at the melancholy fate of the girl, who will not live to see the full harvest of her early hopeful youth. 

Here at Trinity, we will have a special offering of Lammas loaves this Sunday during Eucharist.  We also encourage you gardeners to bring a small representative collection of whatever vegetables, herbs, or fruits you have already harvested.  They will be blessed along with the loaves, and during coffee hour we encourage you to share them with other parishioners to take home and enjoy part of your bounty.  Lammas bread will be used in Eucharist, and other loaves will grace the coffee hour table. 

The point of the celebration is to give thanks and express hope for a bountiful year at the time the harvest is just starting.  

Grace and Peace. 
Fr. Tony+

Strangers, Aliens, Foreigners, and the Poor (Mid-week Message)

Strangers, Aliens, Foreigners, & the Poor

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

July 20, 2016

The current political cycle is looking more and more contentious, and, quite frankly, a little crazy.  Emotion-laden issues include border security and immigration, dealing with foreign powers, poverty, race, and economic opportunity.    Both sides are citing scripture (or something like scripture) and claiming Jesus and God.   Without commenting directly on specific candidates or parties, I thought it would be useful to review what scripture has to say about some of these hot button issues.   

In the Hebrew Scriptures, God’s people are defined by their experience of social and economic exclusion or oppression.  Deuteronomy preserves an early fragment of Hebrew liturgy that sums up the national experience in these terms: 

“My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor. Then we cried out to Yahweh, the God of our ancestors, and Yahweh heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So Yahweh brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders.  He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Deut. 26:5-9).

Again and again, the prophets call the people to turn back from their own oppression of others, reminding them, “You too were slaves in Egypt.”  Again and again, they say we must take particular care of the wretched of the earth, the poor, orphans, widows.   Providing a fair playing field and then ignoring those who do not succeed is not enough.  We must see the poor, note their needs, and take care of them.   

An underlying idea is that fair is fair, and we must treat others as we would want to be treated.   Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, is God of rich and poor alike, and is particularly concerned with the poor because the poor need him most.  There are right and wrong ways of behaving, standards of common decency.  We must not exploit or take advantage of the weak, ignore them or turn a hard heart to their pleas, nor degrade or violate their human dignity by forcing them to do things against their consciences.  The holiness of Yahweh requires his demands on his people in this regard:  

“Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.  Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless ...  If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbor has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate” (Exodus 22:21-27).


“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt”  (Exodus 23:9).

“Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and Yahweh your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.  When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this” (Deut. 24:17-22).

One of the great differences between Yahweh and the gods of the nations surrounding Israel is summed up in his care for the poor and the alien.  In contrast to the gods that personify wealth, power, and fertility, Yahweh is the God over all the earth, of rich and poor alike, who takes the part of the weak and defenseless, and can turn things upside down:

“I know that Yahweh will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and justice for the poor” (Ps. 140:12).

“[God] defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing” (Deut. 10:18; see also Isa. 25:4; Psalm 10:14; Isa. 41:17).

Because God is compassionate he demands that we be compassionate too:

“If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which Yahweh your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks” (Deut. 15:7).

“Do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor. Also do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow…” (Jer. 22:3).

The fact is, Jesus and John the Baptist in the Gospels teach this, as do St. Paul and St. James.  The doctrine is found on nearly every page of the Bible, in all the areas of the Church’s reading of Scripture:  Torah, Prophets, Psalms, Epistles, and Gospel.   The message is simple, but insistent: help those in need.   Give them material support and take their cause.  It's not at all hard to understand; it's just hard to do.  We must do it as individuals.  And the government does have a role as well:

 “[You kings,] open your mouth for those unable to speak, for the rights of all the unfortunate. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and defend the rights of the afflicted and needy” (Prov. 31:8-10).  

The importance of this doctrine to care for the needy and especially the alien and stranger is underscored by Ezekiel’s understanding of just what was wrong in Sodom and Gomorrah: 

“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy” (Ezek. 16:49-51).

As we hear various people pray and preach it for their candidates in this election, let’s keep in mind what scripture actually says. 

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+

Image of the Invisible (Proper 11C epistle)

Cosmic Christ, by Fr. John Giuliani

Image of the Invisible
Homily delivered Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11C)
17 July 2016; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings: Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15
Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In A.D. 112, a young governor in a province of what is now northern Turkey wrote the Roman Emperor for advice on how to manage Christians.  In it, Pliny the Younger tells the Emperor Trajan what he has learned about Christianity by interrogating Christians:  “On a fixed day of the week they assemble before dawn to sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath not for any criminal purpose, but to commit no fraud, no robbery or adultery, to bear no false witness, and not to deny any debt when asked to pay up. After this they customarily separate and reassemble to eat a communion meal, all together and quite harmless.” 

Singing “a hymn to Christ as to a god,” marked Christians from the beginning.  There are several possible examples in the New Testament, whether actual quoted hymns or rhythmic poetic texts soon to be used as such.    

John’s prologue, from about the time of Pliny’s letter, is one: 

“In the beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.  

All things came into being through him,

and without him not one thing came into being.

What has come into being in him was life,

and the life was the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness did not overcome it…

The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world.

He was in the world,

and the world came into being through him;

yet the world did not know him.

To his own he came,

Yet his own did not accept him. 

Any who did accept him

He empowered to become children of God…

The Word became flesh

And made his dwelling among us,

and we have seen his glory:

the glory as of a father’s only son,

full of grace and truth… 

Of his fullness we have all had a share:

Love upon love…

No one has ever seen God.

It is God the only Son, close to the Father’s heart,

who has made him known” (1:1-18)

A far earlier one, from the early 50s, is found in Philippians:

[Christ] was in the form of God,
    but did not regard equality with God
    as something to be wielded,
 but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name
    that is above every name,
     so that at the name of Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

 and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father. (2:6-11)

Today’s epistle reading includes a third one, from the later 50s: 

[Christ] is the image of the invisible God,

the firstborn of all creation;

for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created,

things visible and invisible,

whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—

all things have been created through him and for him.

He himself is above all things,

and in him all things hold together.

He is the head of the body, the church;

he is the beginning,

the firstborn from the dead,

so that he might come to have first place in all things.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,

whether on earth or in heaven,

by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:15-25)

“The image (icon) of the invisible God”: a visible showing of the unseen driver of the universe.  It is kind of a contradiction in terms: image of the invisible, the seen un-seeable.  But this ode to Christ resolves the contradiction in the very way creation occurred.

It plays with the various meanings of the word that begins the Bible: In the beginning (in Hebrew, Bereshith) (Genesis 1:1). The Hebrew word reshith, based on the root r‘š, to head or start, means many things, including head, firstborn, supreme, and beginning.  When we hear that Christ is the image of the unseen God, we are reminded of creation, where man and woman are created “in the image of God” (Gen 1:26).   We then hear that he is supreme (above all things), the head, the firstborn, and the beginning.  Even the preposition be of bereshith “in the beginning” is the object of meditation here: “in him,” “through him,” and “to him” all play with the different meanings of the preposition. 

 

The theology here is astounding. It turns on their head several images that are part and parcel of the Roman Imperial cult and state propaganda.  Augustus was seen as having providentially brought the Pax Romana, the Roman era of peace and prosperity, an object of thanks and pride for Roman citizens benefiting from it.  Others saw it differently: one Briton chieftain famously said, “They create a wasteland by war, and then call it peace.”  But for Romans, the Emperor was celebrated as “God’s son,” “the first citizen,” and Jupiter on earth.  The authority of the state—represented by abstracted Jupiter on earth.  All personified images of state power such as thrones, dominions, powers, and rulers were summed up in his person. 

But here, it is Jesus, a man who just twenty years before had been put to death by the Roman method of execution reserved for rebels and the worst criminals, who is before all things, in all things, and made all things.  It is Jesus who is the image of the invisible God, and not only the beginning and means of creation, but also its purpose, or end.  “In him,” says the hymn, “all things hold together.”   Jesus is Lord and God, says the hymn, not Caesar. 

It is popular in some circles today to lament the shift in early Christianity from the message of the historical Jesus—the kingdom of God is in our midst, so do justice, love compassion, and walk humbly with God—to a cult that worshipped the person of Christ and focused on rewards of punishments in the life after death rather than justice and mercy here and now.  I think, though, this caricature of early Christian faith misses the point.  Again, Jesus’s life and death was in the relatively recent memory of his Palestinian followers.  They continued to follow him after his miserable death because of his continued living presence among them.  They reached out to gentiles because of what they had learned from him about God’s universal love. 

And in reflecting on the astounding turn-around of things after his death, when he came to them again more alive and real than he had ever before Calvary, they realized that the whole world made sense only in light of the resurrection of Jesus, only in the reality of his person.  It was only in his person that they could see exactly who God is and what God intends.  All things depended on Christ, and creation itself came from him and for him.   They came to this faith not as a betrayal of his memory, but precisely because of it and how it connected with their experience of him as living Lord in the present.   There was a continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith, between what Marcus Borg called pre-Easter Jesus and post-Easter Jesus.  The continuity was his person, and in this all things began to make sense in a new way.  The cross, what had been a despised and feared instrument of state terror used against Jesus, became the basis of hope and a sign of forgiveness.  The lords and powers of the world paled in comparison.  The “peace” of Rome paled by comparison.   Incarnation, the divine becoming flesh, took a central position in our understanding of the world.  

This is what lies behind the idea of mystery in the section of today’s epistle reading just after the hymn: “the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  Just as God was in Jesus, Christ is in us.  Incarnation.  The invisible made visible. 

Living the kingdom—doing justice, loving compassion, and walking humbly—this was what it meant to make Christ known through our way of life.  Acts of hospitality and generosity—like those in the other lessons today (Abraham and Sarah welcome the three strangers, Mary and Martha welcome Jesus and learn something about simplicity and intentionality from him in the process)—these acts were increasingly seen in light of incarnation, as ways both of welcoming and serving the head of all things and of making the love of God present for those in the world with us, of making the invisible become visible.   And so we come back to the kingdom: do justice, love compassion, walk humbly. 

Hymns express our faith, and these early ones helped make it.  And in so doing, they imagined the world in a wholly new way, and made hope, life, and joy possible in an otherwise grim and forbidding world.     

 In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Generous Hospitality

 Andre Rublev, Trinity Icon

Generous Hospitality

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

July 13, 2016

“Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.  Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received” (1 Peter 4:8-20). 

The Gospel lesson for Morning Prayer today is the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:  on judgment day, the King divides everyone into two groups, one on the left and one on the right, the goats and the sheep.  He divides them by whether they have helped him in time of need:  fed him while hungry, gave to drink while thirsty, clothed while naked, or visited when sick or in prison.  The blessed on his right are surprised:  “When did we ever do any of these things for you?” they ask.  Those being cast out are indignant: “When did we ever refuse such things for you?” they ask.  The King replies:  if your did it or refused it to any of the most insignificant of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it or refused it to me myself as if I had been standing there in person.”  When all is said and done, says Jesus, all that will matter is whether we helped people in need.    Generosity and hospitality are thus at the heart of what matters to us as human beings trying to live as God intends. 

This coming Sunday, the readings are about hospitality: Abraham and Sarah welcome with a meal and care three strangers, who then bless them with a promise of a child in their old age; Mary and Martha welcome Jesus to dinner and when Martha accuses Mary of being a slacker in the welcome, Jesus asks her to show as much generosity to her as she herself has shown to him.     

Generous hospitality is one of the virtues we as followers of Jesus must cultivate and practice.   Welcoming and feeding others, opening our homes to them, visiting them and simply standing with them are not sidebars in a Christian life.  They are its core text, our individual and corporate responsibility. 

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+

 

From the Heart (Proper 10C)

From the Heart
Homily delivered the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10; Year C RCL)
10 July 2016; 8:00 a.m. said, 10:00 a.m. sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings: Amos 7:7-17 and Psalm 82 or Deuteronomy 30:9-14 and Psalm 25:1-9; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Finding a dead body lying out in the open is a very disturbing experience.   When Elena and I lived in West Africa, one Sunday morning we were running on the beach.  She got ahead of me, as she usually did when we ran.  I heard her start screaming for help and hurried to catch up with her.  There beside us in the sand was what used to be a human being, now bloated and already a meal for the crabs.   We ran to get the port authorities, who recovered the body, identified it as a fisherman who had fallen from his boat a week earlier a few miles up the coast, and returned it to his grieving family.  Another time, on a trip into Lagos Nigeria, I spotted a body lying along side the road.  My driver refused to stop to try to get help, since the area was notoriously known as the haunt of criminal gangs who would rob anyone who had the misfortune of stopping their car. 

Today’s Gospel reading is a parable that describes just such a disturbing scene. 

A lawyer, to test Jesus, asks Jesus a question of Jewish Law: “Master, of all the commandments in the Torah, what is the essential that I need to do to please God?”  Jesus cautiously asks him what he thinks is the heart of the Law. 

He replies, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deut. 6:4) and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18).  Jesus agrees:  “That’s right.  If you do that, you won’t have any problem pleasing God.” 

But then the lawyer asks another question, seeking, as lawyers are wont, clear definitions of terms.  “And who, rabbi, exactly is my neighbor?”   He wants to know the exact scope of his obligation to love others so that he can have a clear idea of who it is that he is not obligated to love.  

Different people of that age gave different answers to the question.  Some said it was fellow observant Jews (Sir. 12:1-7), others, members of their own little Jewish sect (1QS 1.1-3, 9-10), others, the broader scope of humanity (Philo, Spec. Leg. 2.63).  

Jesus answers the question not with a definition but with a story. 

A man goes down the steep, dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  He meets up with robbers, is beaten unconscious, stripped of all his clothing, and left for dead.  But then by chance someone comes by.  It is a Priest, commuting between his home in Jericho and his intermittent work in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Surely a priest—a religious person and an exemplar—will help a fellow countryman who is almost dead, right?   But when he sees the man, he hurries to the other side of the road, and walks on. Then another religious leader, a temple assistant called a Levite, also comes along.   He too avoids what appears to be the naked corpse on the side of the road.  

The Priest and Levite had reasons for not stopping. The Law of Moses stipulated that Priests and Levites said they must be ritually pure for their service in the Temple; any contact with a corpse brought with it ritual impurity.  

At this point in the story, Jesus’ listeners realize that the man might actually die because he looks dead, because religious people won’t help him because they are scrupulously trying to follow the commandments of God.  To be sure, the Law provided over-ride clauses where saving someone’s life or even helping them save their ox from the mire took precedence over various commandments.  But such acts of mercy did not prevent or get rid of the ritual pollution. 

Like good storytellers everywhere, Jesus here follows the rule of three: “an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scot, or perhaps a Rabbi, a Priest, and a Baptist Preacher walk into a bar.” Here is it a Priest, a Levite, and a…   Jesus’ audience knows it will be a normal resident of that part of the country, a Judean.  He won’t be constrained by the heavier purity concerns and he’ll save our poor victim, right? 

No.  The third traveler is not a Judean.  It is a Samaritan.  Now to Jesus’ audience, a Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan is like someone today telling story about Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, and Usama bin Laden.   

Samaritans were seen as contemptible half-breeds and heretics, immoral, ritually unclean, and contaminating.   The poor Jewish man who is about to die himself will be ritually polluted by accepting anything from the Samaritan.  But at this point, he isn’t being particular. 

When this Samaritan sees the wounded man, he stops, is moved to compassion, takes good care of him, and even provides for him.  

Jesus closes his story, “Who do you think acted like a neighbor to that unfortunate man?”

The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say, “The Samaritan.”  He replies abashedly, “the one who showed him compassion.” 

“Go and do likewise.  Be like that Samaritan,” is Jesus’ reply. 

For Jesus, the lawyer has got it all wrong.  The commandments to love God and to love neighbor are, above all else, commandments to love. When the lawyer asks in essence “and who exactly is it that I don’t have to love,” Jesus throws the parable at him to shake his worldview.  Like a Zen koan, the parable is meant to shock us into a new way of feeling and perceiving. 

We tend to take faith and religion as an outward set of rules and propositions about the world.  You see it in the other scripture readings today:  the passage from Deuteronomy says if you follow God’s rules, God will bless you; if you don’t you’ll suffer.  That’s the difference between God’s own and the great unwashed.  Us and them, divided by conformity to rules.  The Psalm says it too:  there are the righteous and the wicked.   Help me, God, one of the righteous, to never suffer humiliation.  Punish those who persecute me!   Us and them, the righteous vs. the wicked.  Me vs. my enemies.   Colossians says it too:  the saints, the children of light, vs. the wicked and those outside.  May God bless you and make you one of the elect. 

Yet even in passages that make this dichotomy and externalize faith, there are repeated reminders that what really matters is the heart.  In Deuteronomy today: “the law is not far out there, but it is in your heart.”  

Jesus taught repeatedly that life is not about us vs. them: we are all in this together.  The sun and rain are gifts from God both for the godly and the wicked.  Sinners who yearn for God are closer to the Kingdom than the religiously observant.  It’s not about dividing the world into us vs. them by religion or ethnic observance:  nothing that you eat defiles, but what you say, what comes from your heart, is what defiles or makes holy.  Don’t ask “why did this bad thing happen to this person, what punishment God is meting out.  Instead, ask what you can do to help. 

“Who is my neighbor and who isn’t?”   For Jesus, this is a line of identity group politics, profoundly immoral at its core.  Because the question is not who is worthy or not of my compassion.  The question is how can I show compassion to others, how can I treat as neighbors those beside me and before me.

This week was hard. On Tuesday, white police officers in Louisiana killed African American male Alton Sterling.  No reasonable rule of use of deadly force could justify what happened.   On Wednesday, it was the slaying in Minnesota of Philando Castile, a gentle elementary school educator who politely tried to follow the rules and instructions of the officer challenging him over a broken headlight. Both are grim reminders of how little progress we’ve made since Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson Missouri nearly two years ago, the event that launched the #BlackLivesMatter movement seeking to call the agents of state power in our society to common decency and fairness.  Then on Thursday evening, five white Dallas police officers—Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, and Lorne Ahrens—were killed by a black sniper in what appears to be a profoundly misguided act to even the score.  Violence has begotten violence.  Hatred, in its incessant, hidden face of smiling white privilege, and in its brutal form of legally authorized violence against the underprivileged, has begotten hatred.    Us vs. them.  The right ones and the wrong ones. 

These sad events have made many of us weep.  After 9/11, Fred Rogers, known to most of us as Mr. Rogers, said this, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”    Those who act from the heart and show compassion are present in almost all of these sad scenes.  And that should give us hope. 

Near the end of the week, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry made a statement about Black Lives Matter.  He said when a house is on fire, you call 911.  You do not say "all houses need to be cared for."  You report the crisis at hand.  When we say black lives matter we are not saying other lives don't.  We are simply bringing attention to a crisis.  We have a problem in this country.  And we should not  avoid it by speaking in generalities or looking at other needs. 

This koan of Jesus asks, “what if we behaved as if there were no groups, as if there were no privilege or disadvantage, but simply all of us together, sharing a common humanity and caring for each other? Imagine a world were we help those in need simply because they need, not because of rules or boundaries.”   Jesus did not say we need to pretend oppression is not there.  His compassion is not a generic: “all lives matter.”  It is always specific, especially toward the oppressed or marginalized: Samaritan lives matter, tax collectors matter, sinners, drunks, prostitutes, lepers, insane people—their lives all matter.  This parable suggests that we never going to make any real progress in our efforts for justice and fairness unless we first start making compassion for those who are different from us as a basic rule of life. 

Righteousness, says Jesus, comes from compassion.  Justice comes from compassion.  And compassion comes not from rules and group boundaries, but from the human heart. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.   

A Prayer for our Nation in Time of Trouble 

All nurturing God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth and created with great diversity and beauty each human being in your own image.  Help us to see this your image in all your children, especially those who differ from us in any way.  Grant that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart and especially the hearts of the people of this land, that barriers which divide us may crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace.  You have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to communicate with each other without hatred, bitterness, or violence, and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect.  Heavenly Father, in your Word you have given us a vision of that holy City to which all the peoples of the world bring their glory: Behold and visit, we pray, the cities of the earth, and especially of this our land.  Renew the ties of mutual regard which form our civic life.  Help us choose honest and able leaders. Enable us to eliminate poverty, prejudice, and oppression, that peace may prevail with righteousness, and justice with order, and that men and women of differing backgrounds and gifts may find with one another the fulfillment of their humanity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our Lady Mother of Ferguson and All Killed By Guns, an icon written by  Mark Dukes at Trinity Wall Street