God made it rather easy to slide back into Advent this week. I had my choice of three modern sermon illustrations. The first was within a few minutes and miles of leaving Maine. There was a horrible crash right in front of us on I-95. The rear-ender was clearly totaled, but the occupants seemed mostly unhurt. The car careened off the four southbound lanes and was headed into the woods. The passenger thought it might never stop or would hit a tree and bailed in the grass on the side of the road. My family is used to such Good Samaritan events in our life, so David guided our car to the emergency shoulder on the right so I could see if anybody needed assistance. Thankfully, people were shook up but mostly unhurt. All I really had to do was threaten the driver that I would tackle her if she tried to make her way to the far left lane to check on the driver and dog of the car that got rear ended. The lady had given me a thumbs-up as I walked back to the car, but I-95 traffic is I-95 traffic, no matter where you are on it. People may have slowed to 65-70mph, but they were certainly whizzing between us and kicking up car parts that had ended up on the road as a result of the crash.
As I finished up at St. Mark’s
last week, a lady wanted to speak with me about Advent’s lack of clear
articulation of its opposition to abortion on our web page and about the
national church’s horrible policy. That discussion was way too
challenging for a homily, but I used our parable today to speak to our
neighbors’ needs in different parishes. We have way more people suffering
from food insecurity and address that far more prominently, though we get a good
laugh from time to time about the age of most of our women and the thought of
them having a Sarai-like experience and giving birth at 100 years of age! She was not amused, but I did ask if she
thought the beaten man in today’s story cared about the Samaritan’s view on any
number of subjects like abortion. That
hit home and where our conversation turned productive.
That left me with an event from a
virtual friend’s life. I will not name him, so do not worry. And we
are not friends in real life, as we have never actually met in person, though
we do trade e-mails and posts. Some of you might possibly recognize his
name from online threads and discussions, so I will leave it to him to share
his identity. The crazy thing is that we
do not agree on everything in the church. He might say that I am bit to
reformed in my sacramental theology to be a good priest for him, and I would
certainly say his love of sung services and smells and bells means he should
not be one of those sheep given me by God.
Good! We also mostly laugh at
such discussions.
This friend exited his gym on
Monday in NYC and encountered a gentleman laying on the ground. Despite
our disagreements on some things in church and in the world, I will state that
he seems always to be taking his faith seriously, far more seriously than some
colleagues of mine and friends of his would like. This past week, though,
he found himself in this position unprepared. What should he do?
NYC is a much different context than Nashville. For one, it’s what, 12-13
times bigger than here? That’s a LOT of people. That means there
are more con artists, scammers, and flat out criminals than we have in
Nashville. That means more people there will pretend to be helpless there
than here, hoping to find a sucker or weakling. Maybe he had a
knife? Maybe he was mentally ill? Maybe he was really sick?
What do we do if we encounter that need?
If you find yourself worried about how you would respond, welcome to
Jesus’ instruction. Everyone who heard
him in Luke’s narrative would have thought the priest and Levite acted
understandably.
I will say that every thought that
went through his head was appropriate. There was a chance a mentally ill
person might take out their frustration or anger on my friend, if he offered to
help. It was possible the man was passed-out drunk. It was possible, too, that he might be
robbed. It’s possible, too, that the individual was in desperate need of
assistance, assistance that my friend was unable and untrained to give. Heck,
it was possible the man in question had just decided to sleep in that spot, for
whatever reason. What to do?
Fortunately, within a few moments
of this encounter, an ambulance came careening around the corner with lights
flashing and siren wailing. My friend said it felt like he spent hours
trying to figure out what to do, though I am fairly certain it was just a few
seconds, and he was embarrassed that somebody had thought to call 911 before he
did.
His real question to me and other
clergy was what he should have done to glorify God in that situation.
In truth, Scripture gives us
principles rather than specific instructions. I could not tell him to
turn to 3 Thessalonians 32:3 to see what to do when one encounters a seeming
emergency like this upon exiting the gym. As we continued our
conversation this week, I could not even tell him I really thought he had
sinned or dishonored God in this situation. In fact, in the simple act of
staying until the EMTs arrived, he had been present, as much as the victim
could be aware of his presence. Maybe that was the role my friend was
meant to play in that scene and so glorified God. As he wrestled with this and the possibility
he had unintentionally dishonored God, I could not tell him that I thought he
needed Absolution. I would have granted
it were he present with me and could articulate a sin, but I was having a hard
time with that. In the end, I reminded
him that we pray to God to forgive us sins unknown. If there was an unknow sin in this situation,
God would forgive him because of His desire for mercy and in spite of our
ignorance.
And then I played priest and
reminded him that he would never again hear the parable of the Good Samaritan
in the same way. It would be far more personal from this week forward.
But now he had a chance to consider what he did, bounce his behavior off
friends and clergy, and discern what other steps he might take in the future,
were he to find himself in a similar situation. God often disciples us in
small manageable steps. He needed to be
prepared for the next similar event. It
was not until Wednesday or Thursday that he realized the parable was assigned
for today.
The story of the Good Samaritan
serves as a great parable for a baptism. Jesus reminds us that our job is
to love God with everything we have and to love our neighbors as ourselves as
the summation of the torah. Baptism, in a sacramental way, reminds us of
that instruction, and spells out the relationship into which we enter when we
are baptized. Those who heard the parable in the narrative of Luke would
have understood why the priest and the Levite passed by, just as you and I
understand why my friend struggled in his predicament. Their likely issue
was one of cleanliness as ours is one of safety. But the reminder is that this is not what God
intended. Even at our very best, God meant for us to experience far more
wonders. Though Forest has no say in the matter today, Robyn and Patrick
and the rest of his family and all of us at Advent are promising God today that
we will do our very best to help Forest to grow in his love and knowledge of
God and his neighbors and that, when he fails like us, he and we need only
repent and return to God. We will be successful, we acknowledge and
proclaim, only with God’s help in that effort. Much of what we do, what
the Church calls liturgy, is the work of creating spiritual muscle. We will incarnate the vow that Robyn and
Patrick make today on his behalf and, hopefully, one day Forest takes on for
himself at Confirmation. God will make
us signs of the individual graces that our in us, to use a bit more Episcopal
language. At our very best, our words
and actions will align, but we remind ourselves this day that sin is ever
present, that our values do not always align, and STILL God loves us like He
does little Forest.
In some ways, little Forest is
blessed, though there may be times in the future, especially the teenage
future, where he disagrees with that statement. He is being baptized into
this community. We take our calling to love God above all things and our
neighbor as ourselves seriously. The most visible sign of that grace present
in us is Body & Soul, a name chosen by Hilary & Nancy to reflect the
work to which they thought us called. We give our neighbors suffering
from food insecurity our best, because God the Father gave us His very best in
HIs Son our Lord. We give those whom we serve choice, in part hoping that
they, in turn, will honor the choice given them by God and choose to worship
Him, to serve others in His Name. And those working on the frontline of
that ministry get to experience the wonder and joy of those whom we
serve. When we offer them steaks or lamb or lobster or fresh produce or
ice cream or whatever, and they thank us, we get that bit of insight of the joy
and thankfulness which God’s people throughout time and in all contexts are
called to evidence in their lives, right? Best of all, we do all of this
as ourselves! Nobody needs to pretend to be anything. We are not
holy; we are not whom we will be in Christ when He returns. But we are
serving our Lord because He first served us! We can be ourselves, with a
few self-limitations for Episcopal decorum, because we understand at a
fundamental level that God loved our uniqueness enough to go through the agony
of the Cross on our behalf! We know what it truly means to have someone
loving us and seeing us as individuals worth saving.
Other
ministries, such as Room in the Inn or our work with Insight or our efforts to
work ecumenically with the Armenians, the Mar Thoma, and the MCF, or even our
efforts to create this sacred space where people can just sit and know that God
is near, enable us to incarnate that grace better, through God’s help, in the
lives of all those around us, but especially for those who are likewise
baptized into Christ’s Death and Resurrection.
Though Forest has advantages over
some, life will likely not be a bed of roses. He will make
mistakes. He will sin. Perhaps the sins of others will impact
him. And then we get to show Him grace. Fortunately for us, Robyn
and Patrick get the bulk of THAT responsibility in young Forest’s life—that’s
the big challenge of parenting. But if
Robyn and Patrick and all of us do our jobs, Forest will learn that God uses
suffering over and over again to reach others, that God is aware of any
suffering he might experience, and that God promises in the end to redeem our
suffering for His own glory. And because God binds Himself to Forest in
this sacrament today, he and we know that God shares in the honor and dishonor
which he and we experience each and every moment of life. Best of all, he
like we is promised that the baptism into Christ’s death means, in the end, he
will be raised with us (hopefully some time in the long distant future) into
Christ’s Resurrection!
Best of all, and maybe craziest of
all, God entrusts that knowledge and hope will be passed on by individuals like
us and like Forest will, one day, become! God calls us to love Him with
everything and to love our neighbors as ourselves, that the world may know the
heart of its Creator and turn to the Lord’s saving embrace. So often that first step, that first nudge is
a helping hand, a compassionate heart.
But such is the hand and heart our Lord modeled for us as He worked His
way to Calvary!
In His Promise,
Brian+
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