God Already Knows (proper 12c)

 

God Already Knows

Homily delivered the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12; Year C RCL)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson
27 July 2025; 9:00 a.m. Sung Mass 
Parish Church of Emmanuel, Coos Bay (Oregon) 
Readings: Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-15; Luke 10:25-37

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

 

When I was ten years old, in fifth grade, I had my first male schoolteacher.   Mr. Franklin, an athletic and handsome 20-something, always wore a short-sleeved white dress shirt and skinny black tie to class.  Just out of teacher’s college, he had a sharp wit, demanded a lot of us.  He wore dark sunglasses when he stood as playground monitor.  My friend Jeff’s mom—in my small conservative town she was the rare Democrat—said that Mr. Franklin was part of the new direction of the whole country, with our young new president John Kennedy and his wife Jackie.  Mr. Franklin was what we were just then learning to call “cool.”

One day in November, the principal came into the classroom and asked to have a word with him outside.  He returned pale and visibly shaken and asked us to put our books away: “I have just been told that the President has been shot in Texas.  The radio says they have taken him to a hospital, but not how badly injured he is.  I think it would be a good time to have a few minutes of silence for him, his family, and our country.” 

The minutes that followed were surreal.  All of us students had known each other from kindergarten, but only as roles:  as class brains or dummies, teacher’s pets or problem kids, cut-ups or bullies, playground pals or rivals.  We who went to churches together knew each other in those same roles only in a different setting.  

 

 I had learned in Mormon Sunday School to pray free form—address God, say what you’re thankful for, and then say what you want God to do.   Remember to use “thee” and “thou” instead of “you” to show reverence.  Close “in the name of Jesus Christ” and say “amen.”  I silently asked God to keep John F. Kennedy alive and then give him full recovery.  I opened my eyes and looked around me at the strangely silent classroom. 

Some looked bored and puzzled.  Some looked stunned.  But most were praying.  One girl fervently held her hands in a little church, looked up with wide eyes at the ceiling, and muttered something obviously memorized.  She crossed herself.    Mr. Franklin sat at the head of the class, with one hand covering his face, as if to force his eyes shut with fingers and block out the whole evil world.  His lips moved silently.   

After a while, he left the classroom and came back with word that the President was dead.  That evening, my father said that the shot had killed the President instantly.  

I had always been taught that God heard and answered prayers.  Sunday School and home told me that if we just had enough faith when we asked for something in prayer, God would give it to us.   

But not only had God not given us what we had prayed for so fervently, all those prayers seemed kind of silly because the President was already dead at the time we offered them.   

 

That experience left me with a different, less confident, view of prayer.  It also gave me a very changed view of my classmates and my teacher.  In those few minutes I had glimpsed them as people, in all their rich complexity and depth, much more complicated than the various roles they each played. 
 

Today’s first lesson Abraham prays that Sodom and Gomorrah be spared a horrible fate.  He is trying to save his nephew Lot and his family, who live there.  He bargains with God, shamelessly haggles over how few righteous would be a minimum threshold to spare the cities.   He flatters and cajoles with Asian honorifics ("now don't be angry with this, but ...," "don't think your humble servant here is being presumptuous to say...," etc.)    In the end, God warns Lot and his family to flee before the burning sulfur starts falling.  In the Book of Exodus, Moses likewise bargains with God to save the children of Israel from destruction (Exod. 32).  

In both stories, God might seem to be an angry, petulant, ego-maniac who needs to be argued with, to be reminded to do the right thing, be merciful and true to his promises.  But this is a misreading.   The authors and editors know very well that God is better than that.  These scenes are a bold way of showing who God actually is—in both, the prophet appeals to what he knows as God’s most basic character:  merciful, faithful, and just.  The stories are thus saying that God is not petty, vain, and selfish.     

 

The parable of a bothersome friend at the door at midnight who just won’t take no for an answer in today’s Gospel (Luke 11:5-8) provokes a similar misunderstanding.   You’ve missed the story’s point if you think that God is like the sleepy householder, who can’t be bothered.  The point of comparison is the chutzpahand persistence of the guy knocking on the door. “Go ahead—bother God and keep bothering him,” says Jesus, not because God is annoyed at our prayers, but because we need to persist in prayer. 

Jesus here adds another parable as if to correct any misunderstanding we might have from that first one: “If any of you have a child who asks him for a fish, will you give him a snake?  Or if he asks for an egg, you give him a scorpion?  If you, who aren’t all that perfect, know how to give your children what they need, how much more will your Heavenly Father know how to treat you?” (Luke 11:11-13). God is better, more loving, than a typical parent, not like a sleepy householder who can’t be bothered. 

When prayer doesn’t seem to deliver what we think it’s supposed to, we get disillusioned and maybe stop praying, or only go through the motions of prayer out of a sense of duty, but without any hope or faith that it matters.   But Jesus says persist like that friend at midnight.  

 

 

Many scriptures that say that God will give us whatever we ask in faith.   But this is a metaphor, a way of saying that God is on our side and will give us what we need, not that we will always get what we want.    Jesus’ own prayer in Gethsemane, “Let this cup of suffering pass from me,” was not granted.  The point here is that is that we persist in prayer, regardless of how things “turn out.”   In the process we are changed and our will becomes closer to God’s.  We are able to say, with Jesus, “thy will, not mine, be done.”    Through prayer we gain acceptance of what we can’t change and strength for the truly intolerable.  

When Paul says “make your desires known to God,” he is consciously using an imperfect metaphor.  Paul understands perfectly well that God already knows whatever we might tell him in prayer.  When we pray, we aren’t “letting God know” anything that he doesn’t already know.  Changing God’s knowledge or will is not what prayer is about.  The point of prayer is not about having an effect on God by telling God something he doesn’t already know.

 

 

The point of prayer is that we are the ones doing it, that prayer has an effect on us.  Like lovers who undress and reveal themselves before the act of love, though the Beloved already knows what is under the clothes, in prayer we voluntarily disclose ourselves to God, reveal ourselves with intention, even though God already knows everything in our hearts.  

Our prayers are not about changing God.  They are about changing us.   After the death of his wife Joy Davidman, C.S. Lewis was asked whether it was worth it—had any of the prayers offered on her behalf during her cancer changed anything.  He replied, “They changed me.”   I knew as a boy that those prayers for John F. Kennedy that day were not silly, even though the way I understood prayer at the time made them look so.  I sensed, and still believe, that they were exactly what God wanted us to do.  

 

 

Our prayers are a way we establish intimacy with God, and let God establish intimacy with us.   We often find that if we are honest about telling God our desires, some can only be put before him as confessions of sin.  

Persistence in prayer is not just about asking. As we pray, we learn that we need not just prayers of petition, but also ones of thanksgiving, adoration, and intercession for others.  As we persist in prayer, we often find that these other forms of prayer begin to predominate.

I was raised in a tradition that used almost exclusively free-form prayers, and looked down on set or written prayers.  I found that if I tried to persist in prayer over time, I ended up using repeated phrases of my own, and often not particularly well formed or uplifting.  In the long haul, I have found that I need both occasional free-form prayers from the heart, but also lots of repeated, written prayers handed down us from those who have gone before, the “Our Father” foremost among them.  The Psalter and the other poetic passages of the Bible we know as the Canticles form a major part of my prayer life, as does daily scripture reading.   When we promise in baptism to “continue in the Apostles’ faith and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers,” this is what we are talking about.  

The liturgy of Morning and Evening Prayer every day helps create a rhythm in my life that helps me grow closer to God and better serve those around me.   It makes me part of a great dialogue of prayer of the Christian Church that has been going on more than 2,000 years.   But it takes time, at least 20 minutes in the morning and 10 in the evening.  In prayer, as in so many other human endeavors, you get what you put into it.  

I challenge all of us this week to pray daily, and to put some effort and thought into it.  If Daily Morning and Evening Prayer is too much, then start small—look at “Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families” on page 137 of the Prayer Book and start there.  Or if it works better for you, use any of the great devotional prayer books that exist, whether in the Celtic, Contemplative, Wisdom, or Interfaith traditions.  All of us can revitalize our prayer life in some way.  The important thing is to set the time aside, and go ahead and bother the God who is never bothered:  just like that annoying guy in the middle of the night bothered his friend.  Let us persist in prayer.  

In the name of God,  Amen.

Neither Domestic nor Dragon-Slayer (Proper 11C)

 

Neither Domestic nor Dragon-slayer
Homily delivered the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11C)
20 July 2025; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Mission Church of the Holy Spirit, Sutherlin (Oregon)

The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
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.

Luke’s story about Mary and Martha touches raw nerves.  Few passages of the Gospels seem to draw so many complaints, almost all from women.  “Why is Jesus tolerating that lazy sister Mary?”  “Why does he come down so hard on Martha?”

The early and medieval Church took the story to contrast Christian action and service, seen in Martha, with contemplative study, seen in Mary.  An early legend says that later in her life, Martha went to the south of France, where she confronted a dragon that had been ravaging the country.  Unlike St. George, the patron saint of soldiers and England, Martha does not slay the dragon with a sword.  She charms it with her hospitality and the word of God so that it can be chained and controlled.  That is why in medieval representations of St. Martha, she holds a cross and stands over a dragon. 
 

Modern sociological and feminist approaches to this story base their understanding upon the social customs described in the story.  Martha is fulfilling a very traditional role endorsed by the religion and culture of the time.  Mary, on the other hand, appears to abandon what was a woman’s work and role by opting for religious study and discussion, seen as the domain of men.  Martha honors her duty and behaves decently; Mary shamelessly crosses a gender barrier.    

Some commentators say that Jesus here endorses the transgressive sister engaged in inappropriate activity and chastens the conventional sister.  He thus favors liberation and rejects structures of oppression.   Others are less sanguine:  they say Jesus, though indeed endorsing broader roles for women, values primarily the actions, roles, and perspectives traditionally seen as male and thus devalues traditional female ones.  He thus implicitly buys into the oppression of women and rejects autonomous womanhood. 

I beg to differ with this view.   

It is clear that in this story, Jesus legitimates a woman taking on the role of a man in the ordering of the early Christian community.  He does so, however, not because he thinks man’s roles and perspectives are better.  It is because, as seen in so many other passages of the Gospels, he believes that God’s kingdom is breaking into our lives, and as a result, there is no place for oppression, no place for bondage.  Roles based on boundaries are thus suspect.  Roles that oppress are part of the evil world the kingdom of God will replace. 

Again and again we see in the New Testament Jesus lives out what Saint Paul later puts into words: “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, neither free or slave, or male or female, for all are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).  

Today’s story talks about why such divisions don’t matter.  The contrast between Martha and Mary is not about the roles we play, but rather about we each react to them.   God didn't create us to fulfill roles. God made us for love -- to be loved by God, to love God, and then to love one another and show this love in service.  

 

Martha is the home-owner and mistress, with no apparent husband around.  (Her name in Aramaic, Mar’etha, in fact, means “Boss Lady” or mistress of the house.)  Mary is not the only woman stepping out of traditional roles. 

The contrast is also not between the active and the contemplative life.  Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, totally lost in his words.  This is the language of discipleship.  This describes a focused student of the master’s words.  Buddhists would say that she is “in the moment,” or “fully present.” 

Martha, however, is “worried, distracted by her many tasks” in being hospitable to Jesus.  The point here is not her service, but rather the distraction it has caused her. 

Martha’s complaint is perfectly reasonable.  Mary as family also has an obligation of hospitality to Jesus.  If anything, Martha is a little too gentle.  She doesn’t confront her sister and say bluntly “Sis, hate to break in on this, but you are not carrying your weight here, so get with the program, and get to work.  Let’s talk with Jesus while we set the table.” Martha realizes that Mary is totally absorbed listening to Jesus. 

So she asks Jesus to intervene.  She is pretty confident that he is a fair-minded fellow who will remedy the situation with no hurt feelings or loss of face to anyone.
  
Jesus’ answer, while totally unexpected from Martha’s viewpoint, is similarly kind-hearted.  The double use of the name, “Martha, Martha,” is a clear sign of gentle chiding, not harsh criticism. 

“You are busy with many things,” he says.  He is sensitive to Martha’s plight—she has planned just too grand a dinner, in the great Middle Eastern tradition of mezze, and forgotten how complicated it was to do so many dishes. 

But then he surprises her.  “You only really need one thing.”  Jesus seems to be telling the hostess how to do her business.  “Stressed from trying to serve too many dishes?   Well then simplify and only serve me one.”    “Simplicity.” Jesus might have been talking 2,000 years ahead of time to Martha… Stewart!  “Simplicity.”

 
But that’s not the kind of simplification Jesus is really talking about, as becomes clear in his next phrase.  “Mary has chosen the best bit. I won’t take that away from her.”  It’s not the number of mezze dishes at issue here. 

The point is not that Martha chose the bad part, or even the less good part.  The point is that being lost in hearing God’s word is what we were made for, and what gives our service and love direction and meaning. 

Jesus knows that such moments of hearing God have come and will come for Martha.  But he is not going to break the moment of communion with God that Mary is experiencing for the sake of a few more dishes on the table, especially when they are for him to eat. 

 

Martha’s complaint brings to mind two of Jesus’ parables.   In one, an older brother gets angry at the forgiving love shown by his father to a wayward younger brother who has squandered the family estate and bitterly complains about it (Luke 15:12-38).  In another, a group of laborers who have worked a hard, long day almost riot when latecomers are paid the same wage (Matthew (20:1-16).  

The two parables make the point that we shouldn’t begrudge the grace given to others.  And so it is here.  Martha’s desire for simply fair division of labor has stepped onto holy ground.   Jesus won’t criticize her complaint, but he won’t grant her request, either, and ruin the moment for Mary. 

There are many, many ways of begrudging the grace given to others.  We can belittle the grace, and say it isn’t God at work, despite the clear goodness before our eyes.  We can point out how different this is from how we received grace, as if to say that God can work with others only in the way he worked with us.  We can point out that the recipient is unworthy, as if grace were something that comes from deserving.  There are many, many ways of begrudging the grace given to others.  And most of them stem from our own fears of perhaps not experiencing grace again. 

 

A couple of weeks ago, we saw the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, which made marriage equality the law of the law of the land.  There are efforts underway to challenge Obergefell, and perhaps take away marriage equality.  People say “it’s the principle of the thing.”  But I have learned again and again in my life that when people say “it’s the principle of thin thing that count,” it most definitely is not “the principle of the thing.”  If you don’t like the idea of gay marriage, then don’t marry someone who shares your gender.   At heart, I think, the greatest argument for marriage equality in our society is that we should not begrudge people the graces they receive. Marriage is a good thing; commitment is a good thing; public honoring of such relationships is a good thing.  Why should straight people begrudge this grace to those who have loves that are different from theirs? 

  

Martha and Mary also show up in the Gospel of John.  When Lazarus dies, Mary stays inside mourning quietly, while it is Martha who goes out to confront Jesus about his delay in coming, in her mind the cause of her brother’s death.  “You can still do something,” she says.  Jesus replies Lazarus will come forth from the dead.  Martha replies, in effect, “Yeah, yeah, we’ll all be raised from the dead one day.  That’s not very satisfying right now, is it?”  It is at this moment that Jesus tells her, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and then proceeds to bring Lazarus back from the dead.  In that story of glorious mystery, Martha affirms her faith in Jesus, well before the miracle (John 11:17-44).
 
It is clear that Martha and Jesus had the kind of relationship where she felt she could tell him exactly what she was thinking and feeling, and not be afraid.  Jesus clearly felt the same way.  Oh that we could all have such a relationship with Jesus, and freely tell him what is really on our hearts and minds!

In closing, God did not create us for roles.  God did not create Martha to be a mere domestic, nor a dragon-slayer.  He intended a loved and a loving child, at peace with herself and others. It is clear from Luke’s portrayal that Martha loved Jesus, loved others, and served, and served, and served.   It is clear from that story in John that Martha herself at times had moments like the one of Mary.  

Those moments, where we sit at Jesus’ feet, listen hard, and truly hear are rare enough that we need to treasure them, and value when they happen to others.  Let us not begrudge the grace that others experience, even when it seems unfair, or appears to put us at a disadvantage.   Grace is unwarranted, unbidden love.  And love, after all, is what ties all of us, and all things, together as one.

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

 

Making Neighbors (Proper 10C)

 

                                                            The Good Samaritan, He Qi

  Making Neighbors
Homily delivered Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10; Year C RCL)
13 July 2025; 9:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Immanuel Episcopal Church, Coos Bay OR

The Rev. Anthony Hutchinson, Ph.D., SCP
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 my wife and I lived in West Africa several years ago, one Sunday morning we were running of the beach.  She got ahead of me, as she usually does when we’re running.  I heard her start screaming in terror and hurried to catch up with her.  There beside us, in sand at the high tide mark, was what used to be a human being, now bloated in the heat 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, and returned it to his grieving family.  It was not the only corpse I saw in Africa.  Once, on a trip into Lagos Nigeria, I spotted a body lying alongside 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 often would rob anyone who stopped their car. 

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

A lawyer asks Jesus a question of Jewish Law: “Master, of all the 615 commandments in the Torah, 365 'Thou shalt not's' and 248 'Thou shalt's,” what is the essential that I need to do to please God? “ 

Luke says the lawyer is asking Jesus the question trying to test him (10:25).  Jesus is cautious, and asks the lawyer what he thinks the Law establishes as its core (10:26). 

The Lawyer replies in these words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deut. 6:4) and then “Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). 

This two-part epitome of the Law is probably the historical Jesus’ own.  Matthew and Mark place it on his lips. It shows up in other rabbi’s mouths only well after Jesus’ death.   The first part is from the Shema, the creed of Judaism recited in daily prayers (Deut. 6:4); the second, which Jesus says is “just as important as the first,” is a commandment from the Levitical Holiness Code (Lev 19:18). 

“Love God; love your neighbor.”  Jesus says if you do that, you won’t have any problem pleasing God.

Then the lawyer follows up with another question, seeking, as lawyers are wont to do, clear definitions of terms and scope of the law.  “And who, rabbi, exactly is my neighbor?” 

Luke tells us that the lawyer asked this in order to justify himself.  He wants to know who this “neighbor” he must love is, so that he can have also know who non-neighbors are, those he is not obligated to love.  

Jesus replies not with a legal definition, but with a story. 

A man goes down the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Remember Jerusalem is 2700 feet above sea level while Jericho is 800 feet below it.  With only 17 miles between, it means there is a 200 foot drop every mile.  There are lots of switchbacks in the steep road where many nooks and crannies can easily hide bad guys. 

He meets up with robbers, is beaten unconscious, stripped of all his clothing, and left for dead. 

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 example of doing the right thing—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 a naked corpse on the side of the road.  

Now we mustn’t think too ill of the Priest or the Levite.  The Torah stipulated that Priests and Levites had to be ritually pure for their service in the Temple, and also clearly stated that any contact with a corpse contaminated and brought with it ritual impurity.  

Just about at this point in the story, Jesus’ listeners would realize that the fact that the man looked dead might in reality cause his actual death through lack of care, and all because of religious people scrupulously trying to follow the commandments of God. 

The Law taught that saving someone’s life or even helping someone save their ox from the mire took precedence over purity requirements.  But such acts of compassion still did not get prevent you from incurring ta corpse’s ritual pollution. 

Like any good storyteller, Jesus here follows the rule of three.  You know, like once there was an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scot, or other perhaps, a Rabbi, a Catholic Priest, and a Baptist Preacher.  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 on his way is not a Judean.  It is a Samaritan.

Now to Jesus’ Jewish audience, having a Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan being the three is like someone today telling story and having the three be the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and Usama bin Laden.   

Samaritans were seen as contemptible half-breeds, heretics and blasphemers, allies with the foreign occupiers, and immoral.  They themselves were considered by Jews to be 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 particular about who he can accept help from.  Better unclean and alive than unclean because you’re dead. 

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

Note that the Samaritans also had their own version of the Torah, and the same basic rules about corpses were found there.  But the Samaritan disregards the contamination and helps out anyway.

Jesus closes the story by asking, “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. 

This answer by Jesus places him squarely on one side of a major division within the Biblical tradition. 

Walther Bruggemann, in his magisterial Theology of the Old Testament, points out that there are two great thematic threads throughout the Hebrew Bible. On one side, there is the striving for purity and ritual holiness, for being special and set aside for God’s service.  “You shall be holy for I am holy,” we read in Leviticus, and there follows hundreds of detailed rules setting boundaries and defining categories to help achieve holiness.  On the other side there is striving for justice, for treating people, especially the marginalized, decently and fairly. 

The two themes often seem in opposition.  The priests and the Law tend to talk a lot about purity and holiness.  The prophets tend to talk about dealing with others justly.  For them, God says things like:  “I expect obedience, not sacrifice.” “I hate your sacrifices because you mistreat the widow and the orphan.”    “All I really ask of you is to treat the poor fairly, and to walk humbly with me.”  For the priests and teachers of halachic law, however, God say things like, “You will be Holy for I am Holy, says the Lord.”  “You shall not pollute the land with impurity, or I will destroy you.”  “You shall drive out pollution from among your midst and separate yourself from uncleanness.” 

The two traditions are both important and mutually corrective. The boundaries established by the Law are what define and preserve the People of God, and allow ethical monotheism to flourish.  But if holiness is not tempered with the call for social justice, it becomes empty ritual, a mode of oppression.  On the other hand, calls for social justice in the absence of an authentic call to holiness rapidly degenerate into the most obvious self-serving form of interest-group politics. 

It is very important to note that in the Gospels, whenever social justice is placed in conflict with ritual purity and Jesus is asked to decide between them, in every single case he opts for social justice.  For him, justice trumps purity and holiness in this sense every time.  

This is because he sees God as Parent of everyone, not just of the Jewish nation, or righteous people.  “God makes the sun shine and the rain fall on both the righteous and the wicked,” he says (Matt. 5:45).  Be un-discriminating in blessing people, just like God. 

The Lawyer has framed the wrong question.  The commandments to love God and to love neighbor are, above all else, commandments to love. When the lawyer asks “and who exactly is it that I don’t have to love,” Jesus throws this surprising story at him to shake his world view.  Like a Zen koan, the parable is meant to shock the lawyer into a new way of feeling and perceiving. 

All of us have our ways, like the lawyer, of seeking to justify ourselves and say to the God who calls us to love, “Enough, already!”  We all too often use boundaries as a means to do this, whether national, ethnic, political, gender, or even what we consider to be moral boundaries. 

Granted, we need definitions and limits, or our lives are chaotic and unordered.  Boundaries are a good thing, something we all need, whether we are talking moral boundaries, legal boundaries, or personal space and autonomy boundaries.  We need them because without them we are hot messes. 

But we must never let boundaries become a strait-jacket that makes us unable to reach out in love to others.  

Good fences may indeed help make good neighbors, but not if we do not chat across them and as needed reach over them. 

I challenge each of us this week to look at ourselves.  Take 10 or 15 minutes during your prayer time or meditation time, or even exercise time, and ask these questions:  1) Where am I transgressing boundaries with resulting harm to myself or others? 2) Where am I using boundaries as an excuse to not do the right thing?

Once you have some answers, then look again at this story. 

Remember that lawyer and his self-justifying question.  And then really think about the story of that loathsome stranger doing kindness to a fellow human being, no matter how different, no matter how alien.

And go and do likewise. 

In the name of God,  Amen.