Christmas I, Year A, 2010

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Listen to the sermon here.

Merry Christmas!

The last week or so we have been immersed in Matthew and Luke’s Christmas stories. We have heard the Angel Gabriel’s soothing words to Joseph.  We have journeyed with Mary and Joseph as they made the long journey to Bethlehem. We have seen children act out the famous scenes of shepherds and kings visiting the baby Jesus.

All week we’ve been soaking in the details of the birth of Jesus. We’ve experienced the exhaustion of Joseph and Mary as they attempted to find a place to sleep.  We’ve smelled the hay and the animals.  We’ve felt the chill of the night air as the shepherds were confronted with angels.  We’ve celebrated as the little baby was born.

Today, John’s Gospel widens the angle of our gaze.  We move from the details of Jesus’ birth to a cosmic understanding of who Jesus is and what he means for us.

John reminds us Jesus was not just a baby, but was the Word, co-eternal with God.  As long as God has existed—which is forever—the Word has existed.  John begins his Gospel with the words “In the beginning.”  These words evoke the very beginning of the Genesis, where we get the amazing imagery of a Creator God calling creation into being through the words he speaks.  The words were not simply language, but had the power to enact all of creation:  the ground under our feet, the pine trees we hang with garland, the moon, the stars, the solar systems beyond our imagination.

John makes the argument that Jesus is that Word and creation was called into being through him.  Jesus was there from the very beginning. Not as a human being, not as an infant, but as the Word, as God.   When we see Jesus, we see God.

In the incarnation, the worlds of the eternal and the temporal slam together.  The creator becomes the created, bringing all the light of the Holy with him.

Christmas lights pierce the darkness of winter with their tiny dots of light, turning a time of year that can be cold and dark and forbidding into something magical. These little lights remind us of the great light that pierced our darkness millennia ago.

Life can sometimes feel as dark as a late December day.  There is so much suffering, injustice and death in Creation and the way we have abused the Creation and each other.  When we are going through such suffering, we can feel utterly, hopelessly alone.

But, we’re not alone.  The Word entered that darkness.  He entered our dark world and immediately began shedding his light. He spent his life pursuing and loving people—especially those going through dark times.  He brought healing and new life with him wherever he went.

The Word that called Creation into being, also entered that same Creation in order to redeem it and make it holy.  Suddenly, everyday human experiences: birth, death, friendship, dinner become touched by God.  Bread and wine are no longer just food and drink, but at the Communion table hold the very presence of the divine.

Christ coming into our world transformed the world.  Now, our ordinary lives are infused with holiness and meaning.  In our dark days, we experience the light of Christ through our prayers, through the love of fellow Christians.  When we experience that light, we too become light bearers, Christ bearers into the darkness.

And so, this Christmas season, we celebrate.  We lift our voices in song, we dress up our children in costumes and watch them re-enact the ordinary, extraordinary birth of Christ.  We listen to brass and tympani clang out the good news that Christ has come.  The whole of God has entered our world as a tiny baby and transformed our lives for ever.

Thanks be to God.

Advent 3, Year A, 2011

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John the Baptist was a confident man.  You might have picked up on that in last weeks’ readings.  He had no problem wearing crazy clothes and eating bugs and spending his time shouting at people with great assurance in his words.  John was a prophet and he behaved like a prophet.

John the Baptist’s job was to prepare the world for the coming of Jesus.  Jesus was already alive and well, fully adult, but he had not yet begun his ministry.  We don’t know exactly what John the Baptist was expecting in a Messiah, but if you’ll remember he walked around saying things like, “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”  One gets the sense he was expecting at least a little bit of violence!  A little revolution!

In today’s reading we skip seven chapters ahead.  Jesus’ ministry has begun and it is filled with a lot of . . .talking.  Talking and healing.  Jesus has been saying things like : So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” And “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged” and “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.” Boooooring.

Jesus has not distributed any weapons, or talked at all about overthrowing the Romans or even the Pharisees.  When Jesus sends his disciples out, it is not to recruit an army, but to cast out demons and heal the sick and raise the dead.

By this point John has been imprisoned, so he is hearing about Jesus’ ministry second hand.  And John seems a little surprised about what he is hearing.  John’s confidence starts to seem a little shaky for the first time.  John had certain expectations about the Messiah that are not being met through Jesus’ ministry.  John sends a messenger to Jesus, asking him, “Are you the one to come, or are we to wait for another?”

I love this question.  It’s a really polite way to ask, “What the heck are you doing?”

John asks the question a lot of us ask Jesus at some point in our lives.  “Jesus, is that you?  Because you’re not really living up to my expectations.”

John the Baptist expected a warrior.  What do we expect Jesus to be?

Many Christians have all kind of misconceptions about who Jesus is.  They expect Jesus to be their matchmaker, their job head hunter, their addictions counselor, their financial advisor.  In their minds, Jesus becomes an errand boy and when Jesus does not provide the lover or employment opportunity or willpower or windfall, people think either that Jesus has let them down, or they have some how let Jesus down and they are being punished.

But Jesus is neither a personal assistant nor the head of a political revolution.  Initially, both we and John the Baptist are a bit disappointed.  Our Messiah is not who we think he is.  We are not being saved from what we thought our problems were.

Do you remember the line that Mr. Tumnus used to describe the Christ-figure Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia?  Alsan is not a tame lion.

Jesus is not a tame Savior.  Jesus is not interested in meeting our expectations.  Jesus is not even interested in meeting John the Baptist’s expectations.

The expectations that we have for Jesus are pretty small.  We expect him to be a little baby around December and to be resurrected in April.  We expect him to comfort us when we are grieving.  We expect to feel his presence in church, but maybe not think about him too much the rest of the week.  And, occasionally, we expect Jesus to act like our personal assistant.

And the expectations John the Baptist had may not have felt small to him, after all—a revolution is a pretty big dream—but compared to what Jesus had in mind, even John the Baptist’s expectations were small.

Jesus had a much bigger revolution planned than John the Baptist could imagine.  Rather than a political revolution, Jesus was conducting a spiritual revolution.

When John sent his messengers to ask Jesus that slightly passive-aggressive question, “Are you the one to come or are we to wait for another?”  Jesus replied with these words “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Jesus gently points John in a new direction.  Instead of saying, “Gee, John, not very loyal, are we?”, Jesus points to the amazing things he has been doing as signs of what kind of Messiah he is.  He reorients John’s understanding of Messiah from warrior to healer and life-giver.

As we pray and mature in our faith, Jesus reorients our understanding, too.  We learn that God does not exist in order to make us happy, but that God exists because God exists.  And God created us to be in relationship with him

Whether we are aware of it or not, our lives are made up of much more than our every day routines.  We are people created by God, who are actively loved by God. For generations human beings tried to love God back, but we always screwed up.  We ended up worshiping false idols, or got caught up in political or financial power.  We could not sustain a relationship with God.

And that’s where Jesus comes in.  God became human so he could show us that no matter what we do—even if we murder this enfleshed God—we cannot stop God from wanting a relationship with us.  God is stronger and more loving than our worst impulses.  Jesus spent his time healing and exorcising demons and teaching about new ways of living so that we could know this loving God more fully.

Being loved by God is not about having a warm and fuzzy relationship in which God just tells us how fantastic we are all the time and goes out and gets us lattes.  Being loved by God means we become a worker for the Kingdom of God—we become people who bring love and justice and mercy to this planet.  The more we pray and listen for God’s voice in our lives, the more we will hear about who we are and what we are called to do.

We may have a specific vision of who we are, but God will always expand that—our visions are almost invariably too narrow for what God can do through us.  You can do more good and affect more people that you can even imagine.

This Advent we’re invited to imagine—Imagine a God that created human beings out of love, and pursued us for thousands of years, even to the point of becoming human, so we could hear and touch and understand him in a new way.  Imagine a God who wants a relationship with us even after we reject his message and hang him on a cross.

Imagine a God who created you, who knows you, even all your flaws and poor choices, and who loves you anyway.  Imagine a God who created you to really make a difference in the world around you.  Imagine a God who created you to be part of Christ’s very body, enacting God’s love in the world.

This is the God that we celebrate and for whom we keep watch this Advent.  That’s the God that was born as a little baby, two thousand years ago.  That’s the God whose Spirit moves in this place and in our lives.

Thanks be to God.

Advent 1, Year A, 2010

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Listen to the sermon here.

(stage whisper)  Guess what?  Jesus is coming!

Aren’t you excited?  There is going to be a little baby and a manger and a star and some shepherds!  It’s going to be so great!

Today we start Advent, so we can stop complaining about all the Christmas decorations at Starbucks and the mall and finally yield to the inevitable.  Yes, you too, will soon be humming Christmas carols and craving eggnog, even if we at Trinity dutifully stay dressed in our Advent blue and hold off singing Christmas carols until Christmas.

What readings greet this auspicious beginning of such a joyful season?  Will it be the story of the Holy Spirit coming to Mary and offering her a really strange proposition?  Will it be that amazing scene where Mary and Elizabeth, both miraculously pregnant, greet each other in joy?  Whatever our readings are, they are bound to be cheerful and about that adorable holy baby, right?

Oh.  Maybe not.

Instead of sweet tableaus about the Holy Family, we’re speeding past Jesus’ birth this morning, we’re speeding past his childhood, his ministry, his death, even his resurrection!  The creators of the lectionary speed up the film of the story of Christ this first Sunday of Advent, to remind us that we’re not just waiting for a baby.  Rather than, “Guess what, Jesus is coming?”  The tone seems to be more of, “Watch out, Jesus is coming!”

The waiting of Advent is twofold.  We wait for Christmas morning and our chance to remember the birth of Christ.  But during Advent we also wait for the completion of Christ’s kingdom.  We remember that the birth of Christ was just the beginning of an incredible story and that we are still in the midst of that story, eagerly longing to see its conclusion.

Well, we’re supposed to eagerly long for its conclusion.  I’ll be honest with you, this passage from the Gospel of Matthew just makes me really, really nervous.  I’m the daughter of an elementary school principal and perhaps that makes me more prone to feel like I’m always just about to get into really big trouble.    Apocalyptic passages just make me worry that Jesus will come back right when I’m making fun of someone or eating a gluttonous meal, or spending money on myself instead of donating it to the poor.  Apocalyptic passages make me want to hide under a blanket, so I can be sure not be doing anything too rotten should Jesus decide to come back.

Luckily, theologians with more mature and sophisticated understandings of these kinds of writings have spent lots of time thinking about what this return of the Son of Man might mean.

Karl Barth explains what is happening in this passage.

the revelation of [The Kingdom of God’s] hidden reality will come soon and suddenly, like a thief in the night. . . .[the revelation] will come soon because it is the goal of the limited life in time of Jesus of Nazareth and will follow hard on His death and therefore in the foreseeable future.  And it will come suddenly because it is foreordained and foreknown by God alone, and will occur when men are least expecting it, beneficially, if terrifyingly upsetting all their expectations and plans, and thus their anxieties and hopes, as actually happened in the first instance of the resurrection of Jesus. (Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2, p. 499)

Barth understands the return of Jesus as an extension of the revelation that God has already begun.  This revelation begins with the birth of Christ—as we realize that the God of the entire universe has chosen to walk around on Earth—to fully live the human experience.  The revelation continues with Christ’s death—a God who is willing to sacrifice himself for us.  The revelation continues with Christ’s resurrection—a God who is more powerful than death.  However, the revelation does not end with the amazing news of the resurrection.

The next part of the revelation is about the Kingdom of God.  Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God all the time in parables.  The Kingdom of God is like a pearl, a mustard seed, a woman who has lost her coins, the metaphors go on and on.  The Kingdom of God is when Christ finally reigns over all of humanity and justice and peace and mercy are the markers of the human community.

We do not need to be afraid of this reign of God, because we already know what God is like!  God is not a scary monster in the sky who wants to zap us.  God loves us so much he became incarnate and ate with us and redeemed us through the life, death and resurrection of his Son.  The ultimate reign of Jesus will be a continuation of that process, which will reveal even more about God’s loving character.

And this reign of Jesus does not begin in some far off future when he comes back in some mystical blaze of glory.  In fact, the Kingdom of God began immediately after the resurrection and continues to grow through the work of the Church.  We function as the Body of Christ, doing our best to bring peace and justice and mercy to our planet.  We don’t sit idly by, anxiously waiting for Christ’s return.  We don’t hide under a blanket!  We do our work.  We love our families.  We volunteer and give away our money.   We hope and we expect, even when hope and expectation seem irrational.

The anthem at our 9:00 and 11:00 services today is Paul Manz’s E’en So, Lord Jesus Quickly Come. If I had known earlier in the week this would be our anthem, I would have been tempted not to preach at all and just have the choir sing this to us several times!  Legend has it that Manz wrote this piece in 1953 when his young son was terribly ill and hospitalized.  The anthem perfectly captures the tension between the difficulties of our lives and the hope we still carry for Christ to make himself known in this world.

The text comes from Revelation and ends with the expression, “E’en so Lord Jesus, quickly come, and night shall be no more; they need no light nor lamp nor sun, for Christ will be their All!”  And unfortunately for those of you in the 8:00 crowd, the text only begins to express the tension and grief and hope of this piece.  The music perfectly captures the longing of what it means to be human.  We live these everyday lives, peppered with great losses, but still Christ breaks in to give us light and hope.  And that taste of light and hope makes us yearn for even more.  That is the promise of the completion of Christ’s kingdom.  That is why we can eagerly await Christ’s return rather than hiding under a blanket.

That is why we can say with great excitement.  Guess what!  Jesus is coming!

Amen.

All Saints’ Day, Year C, 2010

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Listen to the sermon here.

Today we celebrate All Saints’ Day.  And when we say All Saints’ Day, we mean Allll Saints’ Day.  We don’t just celebrate Mother Theresa and Hildegard, we celebrate all those Christians who have lived and died before us, and who now have—in the words of our Ephesians reading today—received their inheritance and have been redeemed by God.

All Saints Day can be a sad day, as we remember people we dearly loved who have died in the last year.  We read their names and we think of them fondly and wish they were still with us, but that grief is just the beginning of what God has for us on this day.  This day is a celebratory, victorious day that reminds us of who God is and who we are.

The book of Ephesians reminds us that God has adopted us as his children.  Not only has he adopted us as his children, but he also gives us an inheritance.  Now, usually, inheritance is where grief gets really tricky.  Usually the person who has died has set aside some money for the people he or she loves, but in the worst case scenarios, there is a real sense of competition, as if the inheritance was a prize.  People sue each other, even commit murder, all in an attempt to get what they think of as theirs.  More than one family has fallen apart for a time over hurt feelings related to an inheritance.

Well, in New Testament times, inheritance worked a little differently.  Generally only one child was chosen to receive the family inheritance and that child was almost always a son, and usually the elder son.  Other children had to hope their older sibling was generous and would look after them.

So, when early Christians read this passage in Ephesians, they were blown away!  God doesn’t just choose Jesus to receive his inheritance.  In fact, God doesn’t just choose the best or the oldest believers to receive his inheritance.  Nope, God offers all of us his inheritance.

And while a parent may offer us a trust fund or a house or a beloved piece of furniture as an inheritance, God offers us redemption as our inheritance.  We become God’s people, we go from being estranged to being in relationship.  And when we die, we don’t just die, we join other saints and angels and archangels in the very presence of God.

So yes, on All Saints’ Day we mourn those who have gone before us, but we also celebrate that they have moved on to a new stage in their journey, where they are at one with the God who created them and who loves them.

The Saints who have gone on before us were specific individuals who we knew and loved, but they also become symbols for us.  They remind us of the meaning that can be found mixed in with the struggle of life.  They remind us that we share in the same inheritance.  That we, too, are claimed by God.

They also remind us that we don’t have to wait until we die to start behaving like we’re God’s children.  The moment we are baptized we become part of the community of Saints.  We become people who belong to God’s family and God invites us to help make his Kingdom apparent not just in the metaphysical realm, but right here on earth, too.

In the Kingdom of God the poor rule, the meek inherit, the weeping laugh.  We are called to start making the Kingdom a reality as we go about our own lives.  The saints urge us onward as we live lives oriented to the reality that God is real and makes a difference in the world.

The saints offer us hope that when the world seems ugly and corrupt and filled with violence, God is still at work in the midst of the darkness, using members of his Kingdom to bring beauty and justice and peace.

When you teach a child about God, when you participate in a Done in a Day project, or help with Rummage, or give glory to God by singing in the choir, you help build the Kingdom of God.  When you serve God by loving your coworkers, being kind to outsiders, welcoming newcomers, you help build the Kingdom of God.  When you support Housing Initiatives of Princeton, and Trenton After School Program and the Crisis Ministry, you help build the Kingdom of God.

The Saints who have gone before us were not superheroes.  When you look at the list in our bulletin today, none of our parish family that died this year ever miraculously healed someone or raised anyone from the dead.  But they were people of faith, and many of them showed us what it means to live the quiet life of a saint through their dedication to God, love for their families and communities, generosity of spirit and dignity and determination through adversity and illness.

Today we give thanks for them, and we honor their memory by trying to walk in their shoes.  Amen.

Proper 25, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / 4 Comments

Listen to the sermon here.

Last fall, when we first moved to Princeton, my husband and I attended a couple of parties one weekend.  Now, having lived in Virginia, we were used to a certain kind of party chatter.  My favorite party story to share was about the time I accidentally locked myself in a trash corral while wearing an entirely pink outfit, including pink galoshes.  I was 28 at the time.  Other friends had their own stories of times they had embarrassed themselves or crazy things their co-workers had said.  So, we were prepared with our funny party stories when we moved to Princeton.  We realized there was a problem with our plan, when at the first party we attended in Princeton, we got into a long conversation with a young man who had just returned from his Fulbright year in Spain.  In fact, everyone seemed to have a story about either their fabulous year in a foreign country or their doctorate or their first book or how they were developing some new economic theory.  So our stories about that time our dog rolled around in goose poop suddenly did not seem that scintillating.

We started to realize that Princeton is a different kind of town.  Princeton is made up of high achievers. You can’t throw a stone in Princeton without hitting someone who is an expert in their field.  And if you threw enough stones you would be bound to hit a Nobel prize winner or two.  About twice a week I hear some expert from Princeton pontificating on issues on NPR.  The brain power in this town is amazing!

And so, as I have been following the Tyler Clementi case in the news, I’ve been really saddened to see that the two students, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, accused of leaking the video that led to his suicide, were West Windsor kids, our kids. Some of our parishioners went to high school with them.  I started to wonder whether our culture of excellence somehow backfired and contributed to their behavior.

Because it turns out there is a danger in living in one of the smartest towns in America.  I would not call Princetonians intellectual Pharisees, but there is a drive toward perfection in this town.  We may not stand in the center of town bragging about how amazing we are, like the Pharisee in our reading today, but there is a constant push towards excellence.  There are at least six private schools on Great Road alone, each promising to help your child to be the smartest, most responsible child he can be.  And our public schools are filled with incredible teachers and bright students all pushing, pushing, pushing to be the best.  And adults are jockeying for tenure, and promotions, and seats on the quiet car on the train, all while trying to pay for the incredibly high cost of living here.

But what happens when you’re not the best?  What happens when you’re not an A student?  What happens if you’re just an average student?  I have had several parents come up to me in the last year who were just devastated by how their beautiful children were left behind in their schools because they weren’t the best.  These kids dealt with feelings of failure well into their adult years.

And our excellent students may not be getting what they need, either.  News reports about Molly Wei and Dharun Ravi indicate they were really bright students.  Ravi had almost perfect SAT scores, ran track, was captain of an ultimate Frisbee team.  Wei was an honors student who took many AP classes.

Being smart is a wonderful thing.  Smart people contribute greatly to the world.  Educated people help us solve many of the world’s problems.  But being smart and being educated is not enough.

Our scripture reading for today is not about intelligence, but it is about attitude.  God does not raise up the person who has done everything right.  This Pharisee tithes, prays, does not sin, but his heart is cold and proud.  The tax collector on the other hand sees himself clearly, knows he is broken, and bows before God, humbly.

God honors the broken man, rather than the perfect man.

And this is true throughout Scripture.  Jesus does not choose the head of rabbinical schools to be his followers, he chooses fishermen.  God does not call the smartest of Jesse’s children to be King, he chooses David  the smallest, the musician, the guy who will later do all kinds of dumb things.  God does not call a sinless man to lead Israel out of Egypt, he chooses Moses, an abandoned baby who grows up to be an anxious, whiny leader, not to mention a murderer.

God chooses real, complex people to do his work.  Being fully human in God’s eyes is not about how many accomplishments we rack up, it’s about having a heart that is open to God.  Being fully human is about being able to see and love the other.  Being fully human is about being humble and seeing ourselves clearly, and admitting our weaknesses when we have them.  Being fully human is about letting go of seeking our own accomplishments and asking God what he would have us do.

If we believe God created each of us, then we believe there is something good at the core of each of us.  Whether we are A students or C students, God can use us for good in this world. When we talk about our children to one another, we have a habit of talking about how they are doing in school or in sports or in extra-curricular activities.

We list their accomplishments, brag about their grades. What if, instead, we talked about their character, not their accomplishments?  What if we praised the way they stuck up for a bullied kid at school?  What if we talked about how quickly they accept responsibilities for mistakes?  What if we talked about how forgave a sibling after a misunderstanding?

Our children are so much more than their accomplishments; they are spiritual and moral beings who need love and guidance about what it means to be a child of God.  Children need to learn that showing others love and respect is even more important than being at the top of their class.  Children need to learn how to respectfully disagree with a friend, how to ask forgiveness when they have made a mistake. Children need to learn how to pick themselves up after a setback. Children need to learn that they are fearfully and wonderfully made, no matter their skin color or sexual orientation.  Children need to see all these things modeled in us.

But even more than a moral education, we, like the tax collector in today’s reading, need to show our kids how to actively and humbly draw towards the holy.  The primary influence in a child’s spiritual life is not Sunday School teachers or youth ministers or clergy.  The primary influence in a child’s spiritual life is her parents.  If children see parents praying, reading scripture, making decisions based on spiritual rather than financial or practical reasons, they learn crucial skills.  Paul and I are reading Kenda Creasy Dean’s Almost Christians as part of our local clergy group.  Dean reminds us that the skills of the Christian life:  prayer, scripture reading, being in community, are skills that must be learned and practiced, just like the skills that come into play when a child is learning a sport or an instrument.

There are many different ways to start integrating these practices into your family life.  My favorite recent example is the practice of my friend MaryAnn McKibben Dana and her family.  MaryAnn is a Presbyterian pastor and writer who has three young children.  Over the dinner table, they practice the Ignatian practice of the examen.  The examen is a spiritual practice in which at the end of the day you ask yourself a series of questions about the day, you explore the gifts of the day, the reasons behind the decisions you made, where you saw God move in the day, where you saw your own brokenness interfere with the day and so on.  What is brilliant about what MaryAnn and her husband are doing is that the kids have no idea.  MaryAnn does not sit down and say, “OK kids, it’s examen time!”  Instead, she weaves these questions into ordinary conversation.  She is helping her kids learn to think theologically about their day, to take responsibility for their choices, to see God at work in the ordinary stuff of pre-school, playground fights, and homework assignments.

We owe it to our children to take our own spiritual development, and their spiritual development as seriously as we take their SAT scores.  Their SAT scores will get them into college, but their spiritual development will make them loving human beings who contribute to the world.

And for those of us who do not have children, we are not off the hook.  If you have ever been to a baptism here, you have promised to help uphold the baptized child’s life in the church.  Adults in the church can be crucial conveyers of God’s grace to children and youth.  And the children and youth in this parish are amazing.  They are funny, complicated, loving, honest, shy, outgoing and all made in God’s image.  We, as a congregation, have the opportunity to offer them kindness, express interest in their lives, pray for them and demonstrate God’s grace in the way we treat each other.

The pressure of developing our own, not to mention our children’s, spiritual life can seem really overwhelming!  When it seems like too much responsibility, just remember the words Angel Gabriel said to Mary, “Be not afraid!”  Our God is a powerful, loving God who is always in the business of drawing us near.  If you take one teensy step, he will take a giant cosmic step.  God is waiting for you with open, loving arms and will never turn you or our children away.

Proper 23, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

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I had this habit as a kid that drove my sister crazy.  During the ritual opening of Christmas presents I would over emote about each gift.  “An etch-a-sketch!  That’s so great!”, “A cabbage patch doll!  I’ve always WANTED a cabbage patch doll!”, “Blue socks?  They’ll go great with my blue shoes!”, We found an old video recently from when I’m about eight years old, and my reactions are incredibly cloying.  I actually profusely thanked Santa, who because of his busy Christmas morning schedule, was not in the room.   And while I’m sure part of my enthusiasm was about me being a first born suck-up, I would argue that there was a core of genuine, spontaneous thanksgiving in my little performance.

Real gratitude is tricky when you live in a society where you are used to getting exactly what you want.  As adults, my immediate family gives each other lists of Christmas presents we would like and then we receive those presents.  It’s fantastic, and we’re grateful to each other, but the spontaneous joy of gratitude is missing.

That spontaneous thanksgiving is missing from much of my life.  I don’t enthusiastically thank you all twice a month when I receive my paycheck.  I don’t thank God every day for my amazing husband or my sweet dog.  I don’t thank my parents weekly for the hard work that went in raising me or my sister for putting up with my annoying first-born habits.

Our gospel lesson today really challenges us and our attitudes about thanksgiving.  In the story, Jesus heals ten lepers.  He tells them to show themselves to the priest and off they go, getting cleansed from their leprosy in the meantime.  Now, they are all obedient to Jesus.  They all do exactly what he asks them to do.  Well, all but one.  One of the lepers is a Samaritan.  He is an outsider.  He’s unclean.  He’s different.  But that Samaritan is so excited he is cleansed, he runs back to Jesus, praises God and throws himself at Jesus’ feet thanking him.  What a reaction!  The other nine lepers were obedient, but the Samaritan leper had a genuine moment of intense gratitude that he can’t help but express.

We are a guarded, cautious people here at Trinity Church..  We aren’t prone to big emotional outbursts.  We don’t clap when we sing.  We don’t raise our arms and shout when Paul makes a good point in a sermon.  We don’t stand up during announcements to praise God and share what God has done in our lives.  But that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t reach out to us and heal us and work in our lives in such a way that we should be thankful.  We don’t have to be loud to be thankful.

When I was a parishioner at St. James’, Richmond, during stewardship season they had a tradition of parishioners speaking each week about what stewardship meant to them.  One Sunday, a young couple with small children stood up.  They told us that during the previous year, as they got more involved with church and developed a closer relationship with God, they had a transformative moment together. They decided that since God had given them so many gifts, they wanted to give him a big gift in return.  They decided that their pledge check to the church should be the biggest check they wrote every month.  Bigger than their mortgage, bigger than car payments, bigger than tuition payments.

I remember my jaw dropping.  The freedom and joy they felt was so manifest.  Their money did not control them.  Fear did not control them.  They made a decision based purely out of the kind of wild-eyed gratitude that the tenth leper showed Jesus.

I’ll be honest with you, I’m not there yet.  Our monthly pledge payments to the two churches we support are about a third of our monthly rent.  And our rent is cheap!  But whenever I think about stewardship, I think about that couple.  I think about what it would mean to have such deep gratitude for God’s work in my life and deep confidence that God will provide for me, that I could just throw caution to the wind and give away a giant chunk of money every month.

Giving money to the church is a financial decision.  You’ll sit down with Quicken or your budget and figure out just how much you’ll give.  You’ll come to a rational choice.   But the decision to give money to the church is also a spiritual one.  Giving money back to God is an act of thanksgiving.  As a person who is paid because of your generosity, of course I want you to give to the church!  But what I really pray for is that God might grant you a tenth leper experience.

I pray that you have experiences of healing and God’s intervention in your life.  I pray that you feel cleansed of anything that haunts you.  I pray that God grants you such deep gratitude, that you feel compelled to throw yourself at the feet of Jesus.  I pray that Jesus makes you well.

The text tells us that when the leper came back to Jesus in thanksgiving, that the leper was made well.  The leper was cleansed from leprosy by Jesus’ healing, but something in his thankful response inspired Jesus to give him an even fuller healing.  Jesus says that the leper’s faith made him well.  The leper’s thanksgiving was more than gratitude, it was a statement of faith.  We, too, can make a statement of faith by expressing our thanksgiving to God.

When we give to God through gifts to the Church, we claim the tenth leper’s thanksgiving as our own.  We claim the tenth leper’s faith as our own.  We claim the tenth leper’s healing as our own.

When we stand up for Stewardship, we claim our place in the line of saints who have been blessed by God and want to return the blessing.

Amen.

Proper 21, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click here.

What did you see this morning on your way to church?

Did you see the clothes you picked out to wear, your pets as you fed them, your car as you got into it?

What about on your drive?  Could you tell me who you passed on the way to church?  What did they look like?  How old were they?

How about this, if you came to church with a friend or family member, without looking at them, could you tell me what they were wearing today?

We open our eyes when we wake up in the morning, but we can go through an entire day without seeing anything.  Especially something upsetting.

The rich man in today’s parable had a hard time seeing.  While he was inside his fabulous house, dressed in the finest fabrics he could buy, eating a sumptuous meal; a poor man named Lazarus was sitting outside the gate, covered in sores.

The rich man walked by Lazarus every time he left and entered his home, but he did not see him.  Sure, if you asked him, he could have told you he was there, but Lazarus was not someone he thought much about.  He certainly never considered offering Lazarus something to wear or to eat.

In the culture of the time, abundance was a zero sum game.  There were a limited number of resources, spread between people.  If one person had riches, it means another person did not.  If a person had riches, they were obligated to give alms to the poor, to balance out the distribution.

We don’t know whether the rich man gave alms, but he certainly did not give any to Lazarus.  To him, Lazarus was the lowest of the low.  For heaven’s sake, the text tells us that dogs licked his sores!  You can’t get much more pathetic than that.  Lazarus was not worth the rich man’s time.

Well, imagine the rich man’s surprise when they both die and the rich man finds Lazarus with Abraham in heaven and he in Hades! Even death is not a strong enough force to help the rich man see his situation clearly.  Even though he is in Hades, he still thinks Lazarus is a lower order of creature.  He does not address Lazarus directly, but instead tells Abraham to send Lazarus down to bring him a drop of water to help cool him off.  He sees Lazarus now, but only in terms of how Lazarus can be helpful to him.

When Abraham refuses the rich man’s request, the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers, so they might not suffer the same fate.  But once, again, the rich man is not seeing the situation clearly.

Abraham tells the rich man that even if Lazarus was sent to his brothers, back from the dead, they would not be impressed.  If they could not see the truth by reading Hebrew Scriptures, they would not see the truth if it was standing in front of their faces in the form of a resurrected Lazarus.

The implication here is devastating.  Abraham implies that by not seeing Lazarus, the rich man also did not really see the scriptures.  Or maybe it is the other way around, because the rich man did not understand the Scriptures, he was not able to see Lazarus.

This story asks us again, what do we see?  What do we understand?

When we read stories like this from Scripture, do we think they are directed as someone else?  Can we see ourselves in these stories?

I just finished a fascinating novel called The City & The City.  It tells the story of two cities, Ul Qoma and Beszel, that are right next to each other.  In fact, large parts of them overlap, so that one side of a street belongs to Ul Qoma and the other side belongs to the Beszel.   Because of past political tensions, the inhabitants of the cities are forbidden to see the city in which they do not live, even if that city is only feet away.  There are terrible penalties if a person breaches, and interacts with the other city.  So, from a young age, residents in each city learn to unsee.  Citizens are taught to look upon the other city without registering its activities, inhabitants or architecture.  The city remains a total mystery, even though it is close enough to touch.

In a lot of ways, I think we learn to unsee in our own cities, as well.  We learn not to make eye contact with beggars.  We learn to not drive through certain parts of town.

We learn to avoid certain bars and restaurants that host people different from us.  Like the rich man, we wear our fancy fabrics—our suede and cashmere.  Like the rich man, we dine on sumptuous food at Eno Terra and Blue Point.  Like the rich man, we read the scriptures, but we don’t always apply them to our lives.

Unlike the rich man, there is still hope for us.  Jesus shows us a new way of interacting with the world.  Jesus saw everyone.  Jesus went up to the weirdest, poorest, smelliest people and looked them in the eye and treated them with respect.  He listened to their problems and offered them healing.

Jesus transformed what it means for people to really see each other.  Jesus stripped away the hierarchy of what it means to be worthy and unworthy.  Jesus gathered people of all walks of life and expected them to dine together, to live together.

We learn to unsee because we are afraid.  We are afraid of getting hurt.  We are afraid of being embarrassed.  We are afraid of saying the wrong thing.

But when we are in relationship with Jesus, when Jesus is looking right at us and seeing us for who we are, we gain courage.  Jesus sees inside our fancy cars, and through our fancy clothing.  Jesus knows who we are underneath all that.  Jesus knows our shallow hopes and big insecurities and he loves us anyway.

And when we realize the kind of love Jesus has for us, we are freed to love others, to look others in the eye, even if they are different from us, even if their poverty makes us feel uncomfortable and threatened.  Because, when Jesus looks at us and really sees us, we understand that there is no us and them.  We are all the same in Jesus’ eyes.  We are all loved.  We are all Lazarus.  We are all seen.

Amen.

Proper 15, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click here.

Today should be called rhetoric Sunday!  In all three of our readings this morning, we have preachers at the top of their game.  It is impossible to read these three snippets of scripture without imagining them preached in booming voices.  Our reading from Hebrews today has a particularly pleasing cadence.  The author is describing the exploits of the heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures and he writes they “through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight”.  Yes!  It makes my day seem very pale in comparison.  “I woke up on time!  Ate some toasted oatmeal!  And dressed myself in matching clothes!”

The writing in the letter to the Hebrews can seem overwrought, but the author’s tone makes sense when we understand his intention.  The author, as far as we can tell from the little information the letter gives us, is writing to a group of second generation Christians.  They love Jesus, but they are running out of energy to be Christians.  They have expected Jesus to come back for years and he has never showed up.  The novelty of this new religion is wearing off and the reality of day to day living has set in.  To top it all off, the authorities are beginning to crack down on Christianity and they are frightened.  The author of the Hebrews is exhorting them to hold on, to keep the faith!  He is their coach and their cheerleader.

The Letter to the Hebrews develops all sorts of theological ideas, but the eleventh chapter of Hebrews is all about faith.  This faith is robust!  This faith has legs!  This faith has teeth!  This is the faith of Gideon, Samson, Rahab—heroes of the faith.  The metaphor the author uses is that of a race.  Like a race, faith takes training and an enormous amount of effort.

Now, you all know that our wonderful rector is an accomplished runner.  He runs several times a week and has run several marathons at respectable paces.  Well you may not know that your assistant rector was a runner, too.  More specifically, she was a runner from the fall of 2005 until the spring of 2006.  My brief endeavor as a runner came about because of my next door neighbor and close friend, also named Sarah.  Sarah was the kind of person who did whatever she set her mind to.  Sarah was going to train for the Charlottesville 10 mile race and somehow she talked me into training, too.

Let me tell you, training for a race is no fun.  We ran several times a week, in increasingly large distances.  On Saturdays we woke up when the sun did and met trainers in downtown Charlottesville.  They would yell things like, “Now, run at your fastest pace!  Now, slow down and run at a comfortable pace!  Now, back at the fast pace again!”  The problem was, I only had one pace.  Eleven and half miles a minute.  That was my fast speed and that was my slow speed.  If I did not know Sarah was waiting for me those Saturday mornings, there was no way I would  have gotten out of bed for that torture!

We ran a 10K a few months into our training to get used to a race environment.  Sarah took pity on me and ran at my pace.  We were really slow.  We were so slow that eventually we were the last two runners.  We were so slow that they started pulling up the cones marking the outline of the course before we got to them.  We were so slow that eventually the police car trailing the race pulled alongside of us and said, “Ladies, you can run in the middle of the street if you’d like.  We’ll follow you.”

Humiliating.

But we did not quit.  Thanks to Sarah’s constant encouragement and occasional bullying, I kept training.  I did not get any faster.  My form did not get any more elegant.  My knees and shoulders did not get any less sore. But on April the 1st, 2006, I ran that ten mile race.  The crowds lined up on sidewalks cheered us on and helped me to go that much further. With Sarah’s coaching and the crowd’s encouragement, I hobbled to the finish line.

The metaphor of a race for our faith is apt.  Faith takes a lot of work.  Faith takes encouragement.  Faith takes discipline.  But like training for a race, we are not alone.

In the race metaphor, Jesus is our coach.  Jesus has run the race ahead of us, knows what to expect, and runs by our side telling us when to speed up or slow down.  Jesus encourages us when we are frustrated and gives us a boost when we are ready to give up.   Hebrews says that Jesus is the pioneer and perfector of our faith.  He shows us how to follow God—even if it leads to a cross.  Jesus shows us what it means to be faithful, what it means to have an intimate relationship with God.  When we lose our way, we can read the Bible and be reminded of Jesus’ faithfulness, which will help us to be faithful.  And when we can’t live up to the kind of faith we want to have, Jesus’ grace covers us, helping us to cross the finish line.

The crowd that cheers on the racers is the cloud of witnesses.  The cloud of witnesses are the Saints that surround us—David, Samuel, the Prophets—and the millions of ordinary people of faith who have and who are running the race before and with us.  When we read a biography of Augustine, or Dr. King’s letters, or read the notes in the bibles of our own faithful grandmothers, we are encouraged that people have been living in our complicated world for millennia and have been able to follow God no matter what the circumstances.

We in the church are part of this cloud of witnesses, too.  We are each other’s cheerleaders.  When one of us cannot pray, we pray for her.  When one of us needs to talk through a theological issue, we listen.  When someone is discouraged in his study of the bible, we encourage him.  We need each other to live lives faithful to God.

Where the race metaphor breaks down is that in a physical race, the goal is to win, to beat everyone else, to be first.  The wonderful thing about God, is that even if we are the very last person in the race of faith, hobbling along after everyone else, we still get to cross the finish line and get welcomed into the Kingdom of God.  Faith looks a lot more like a race in the Special Olympics, where participants have no problem stopping to help a runner who has fallen, or linking arms so runners can cross the finish line together.  Faith is a race, but it is not a competition.

Our culture treats religion and spirituality as if they are private, personal, individual activities.  But in the Bible, faith is always a community activity.  God appears to individuals, but only in their roles as representatives of their communities.  One cannot truly be Christian if one is not in Christian community of some kind.  But our community is not limited to the people with whom we attend church.  We are in community with Christians all over the world, and with those who have gone before us.  Every Sunday in the Eucharistic prayer we say, “Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven.”  That company of heaven is all the believers that have gone before us, who have already run the race and have achieved their prize.  When we gather to receive communion, they gather with us.

And it is this image that helped those early Christians hold on.  Those early Christians held on to the faith, they finished the race, even when threatened with imprisonment and death.  And now they are part of that cloud of witnesses that urges us to hold on, to have faith, no matter how difficult that may seem.

Amen.

Proper 13, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

I am one of two sisters.  My parents, wary of the tensions that can rise between sisters, treated us extremely fairly.  If one of us got a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas, we both got a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas.  When I was ten, I received a portable stereo.  When my sister was ten, she received a portable stereo.  When I graduated from college, they generously gave me a silver Honda Civic.  When my sister graduated from college they gave her a silver Honda Civic.  You get the idea!

Their experiment was a success.  My sister and I have an extremely close, loving, supportive, non-competitive relationship.  But, even in this story of an extremely loving, healthy family, I still felt jealousy.  How you ask?  How could I feel jealous when my sister received the exact same presents that I did?  Well, you see, Marianne is my younger sister.  When I received that stereo, it only had a tape player, because my father thought CDs were just a fad.  My sister, four years younger, got the CD player.  And while our Honda Civics looked identical, my younger sister’s Honda Civic had automatic windows and cruise control.  While I was not caught up in a violent fit of jealousy, I could feel little pinpricks of covetousness for what my sister had.  (In the end, of course, things all work out.  Last year when we moved to New Jersey, I bought my sister’s 8 year old Honda Civic and now I have automatic windows and cruise control and she has the New York subway system!)

Competition between siblings is as old as the relationship between Cain and Abel.  There is something about that first peer relationship that makes us just a little crazy.  Especially if money is involved.

Our passage from the Gospel of Luke today is almost comic.  Right before this brother interrupts Jesus, Jesus has been speaking to the crowd about really lofty, opaque, theological ideas.  He has just said,

And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

I picture Jesus saying those words in a booming voice and then looking around at the crowd meaningfully, hoping to see some nods of recognition.  Instead he gets a guy saying, “Hey—make my brother share the family inheritence!”

In retrospect, Jesus’ response is incredibly kind.  I would have been tempted to say, “Are you even listening to me, you jerk?”

Jesus, like a wise mother, does not take sides in the argument.  He does not ask to hear the details.  He does not ask the man to read the text of the will.  He does not cluck his tongue in sympathy.

Instead, Jesus tells a parable about a perfectly nice farmer who had a very good harvest and wanted to build more barns to store the harvest in, so he could just relax and enjoy the rest of his life.

That basically sums up our lives, doesn’t it?  We open retirement accounts and emergency savings accounts and 529s to save for our children’s education.  We become priests in the Episcopal Church and think about that nice pension we’re going to get starting in 2035.  Oh, well, maybe that part is just me.  I’ll be honest with you, I already know what retirement community I want to join.  Westminster-Canterbury rests in the hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  You can start out in a free standing home, then move to an apartment, then to assisted living and end up in the Alzheimer’s unit, if you need to.  They have an art studio, a pool, a gym, a beauty parlor and a pretty tasty cafeteria.  I have it all figured out.  I’ll convince my best friends to move there and we’ll end our lives sitting on porches, telling stories, and playing bridge. My grandchildren, who will adore me and write me letters weekly, will visit three or four times a year.  And then one day, when I feel that I’ve lived a good long life, I will die peacefully in my sleep.  It’s going to be great!

Unfortunately for me, and the farmer, life isn’t that simple.  The farmer is not portrayed as a villain and yet in the parable God yells at him!  God says, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”  God reminds the farmer that all our frantic preparation is really for naught.

I can save all the money I want to, but that won’t stop me from dying in a tragic car accident, or getting MS, or having my husband leave me out of the blue, or suddenly having to take care of a sick parent, or giving birth to a disabled child, or having my grandchildren ignore me for the last twenty years of my life.

Money is fantastic for some things.  It can give us a roof over our head, and good food for every meal.  It can buy us clothes that make us feel good about ourselves and vacations that help us discover the world.  Money can pay for surgery, and special schools and therapy.

But ultimately, money can’t protect us.  Money can’t protect us from illness, broken relationships, disappointments, natural disasters.  Money can’t protect us from being held accountable by God.  And money can’t protect us from death.

No matter how much we acquire, we all end up in the same place.  And in that place, the currency we need is not money.  The currency we need in that place, when we stand in the presence of God, is love.  Love for God and love for our neighbor.

I have seen more than one family fall apart after the death of a rich relative.  There is something about an inheritance that brings out the worst in people.  That part of us that longs for the love and approval of the person who dies and the part of us that experiences greed, crash together in the worst of ways.  The brother that asks Jesus to adjudicate his dispute is missing his father, is feeling slighted, and just wants some justice.

But Jesus knows that is not what the brother needs.  The brother will not suddenly receive his father’s love and approval if the money becomes his.  He will not finally feel equal to his brother.  He will not be satisfied.  What the brother really needs to work on is his own heart and internal life.  The brother needs to get re-centered and focused on God.

Warren Buffet has famously informed his family that his vast fortune will be going to charity, not to them and I’m sure many of them were furious when they heard that news.  But in the end, I think Mr. Buffet is doing them a huge favor.  Without the money they will be forced to look into their own hearts.  They will be forced to figure out what their gifts and talents are.  They will be forced to work and be disciplined.  They will be forced to rely on others.  All these things are what help create a moral life, a life of love and respect for others.

The brother in our story today did not get the answer from Jesus for which he had hoped, but he got the answer he needed.

In the same way, when we ask God why we are unemployed, or why our best friend makes so much more than we do, or why our parent cut us out of their will, we are probably not that likely to get a direct answer from God.  However, if we ask God questions about the God’s currency, I’m guessing we’ll hear a reply pretty soon.  If we ask God how we can better love him.  If we ask God, how we can serve the poor better. If we ask God how we can show our families that we would do anything for them.  If we ask God where he wants us to serve him in this world.  If we start asking these kinds of questions, we’ll be amazed at the answers we receive and the life they bring us.

Amen.

Proper 10, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

Have you heard the story about Capt. Matt Clauer that has been circulating this week?  Capt. Clauer was serving in Iraq last year when he got a frantic phone call from his wife, Mary.  Together, they owned a $300,000 house, for which they had completely paid.  Mary was calling because she had just learned that their Homeowner’s Association had foreclosed on the house, because Mary had neglected to pay the HOA dues two months in a row, worth a total of $800. By the time he returned from Iraq, the house had been sold at auction for $3,500 and resold again for $135,000.  Mary and Matt are still living in the home, and fighting in the court of law to reclaim it.

If they were here today, they probably would have a thing or two they would like to say about neighbors.   I wonder how many of their Texas neighbors, members of the HOA board, are sitting in churches today, listening to the story of the Good Samaritan.   I wonder if the Clauers are in church this morning, hearing this story and wondering how in the heck they are supposed to love neighbors like theirs.

I wonder if any of you, thinking about your neighbors, are wondering how you’re supposed to love them?

That’s the thing about neighbors—they are just around all the time. In Charlottesville, I had a neighbor who always raced at least ten miles over the speed limit through the neighborhood AND who let his dogs poop wherever they wanted without cleaning it up.  He drove me crazy because there was no way I could get away from him.

And neighbors are problem enough, but what about friends and family?  They are really hard to shake off.

I wonder, if in the story, we hear today, whether the priest or the Levite knew the poor unfortunate soul lying in the ditch.  I wonder if they passed by and said, “Oh Frank.  Always getting into trouble.” and walked on by.  I wonder the intimacy, the neighborliness they might have had with our victim actually prevented them from helping.

As lovely as it was for the Samaritan to help this guy, helping a stranger is sometimes easier than helping someone close to you.  If an out of work alcoholic comes by the church needing a little help, we can graciously point him in the direction of several places that can be useful to him.  If I had an out of work alcoholic relative approach me, I’d probably feel a lot less gracious toward them.

When the person in our lives who is in trouble is close to us, we know that there is danger in our lives being disrupted.  If we enter into another person’s crisis, we run the risk of getting entangled in their lives, creating a web of obligations and favors from which we may not be able to extricate ourselves.

And yet, Jesus calls us to be that kind of neighbor.  He calls us to act like the Samaritan, even when we’re not breezing through a strange town.  Even when the person in the ditch lives next door and you well know you might need to pull him out of the ditch a second, or third time.

The Samaritan does set a good example for us in terms of boundaries to help us with these challenges.  The Samaritan does not take the victim home with him.  The Samaritan takes him to an inn, does what first aid he can, makes sure the innkeeper will check on him, and then leaves town.

The Samaritan does not appoint himself the victim’s social worker for life.  He sees an acute crisis and responds.  And then he goes back to Samaria.

Knowing how to respond to a neighbor, friend, or relative in crisis is really difficult.  But knowing what our role is can be helpful.  First of all, it is important to remember that we are not God.  Now, I know that can be difficult to remember, but just absorb it for a minute.  You are not God. Your role is not that of omniscient being who has the power to solve everything.  All we can do is our loving best.

If the crisis happens to our spouse, child or parent, our role may be to function as that person’s advocate, making sure they get to the doctor, to court, or to rehab when they are scheduled to do so.  If the person in crisis is a friend, our role may be that of listener—giving our friend a safe place to express all her fears.  If the person in crisis is a neighbor, our role may be that of practical help—mowing the lawn, bringing over a meal.  Our response will change depending on who is in trouble and what their circumstances are.  Sometimes our response will be pointing our neighbor in the direction of people who can be more helpful than we can.

Whatever our role is, the Good Samaritan challenges us to live out our faith. He challenges us to pay attention to the world around us.  He challenges us to respond to another’s pain, when it would be just as easy to walk on by.  He challenges us to live the way Jesus taught us to live: We shall love the Lord our God with all our hearts, and with all our souls, and with all our strengths, and with all our minds; and our neighbors as ourselves.

Amen.