“A Life of Response”
July 31, 2022
Dear brothers and sisters, grace and
peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ, Amen.
Yesterday, for the first time in
three years, I had a chance to go back to the Dayton Celtic Festival. Since it
had been cancelled the past couple of years, mainly due to the pandemic, it
felt really good to go back again, just to enjoy the happy atmosphere, music,
and food. While I was walking back from one of the stages, I passed by one of
the food lines, and a woman in the line greeted me, and, unexpectedly, asked me
if I was in need of prayer. I told her who I was, that I was the Pastor of St.
Andrew Lutheran Church in Farmersville, had to explain where Farmersville was,
and then she and two others who were with her offered to pray for me again.
Which they did – and they offered an incredibly encouraging and uplifting
prayer, which in turn I came away from feeling refreshed and renewed –
something I had needed for about the past couple of days. I believe that what
they did was not just something nice, but it was a real gift from God,
something which He caused to happen because He knew I needed it. This was an
unexpected gift, and one which came as a form of help at just the right time.
Which is the best kind of gift we all can offer anyone: help that comes at just
the right time. And, opportunities both to give help and receive help are
always there, and come to us at moments when we need them the most.
This is especially the case in
today’s Gospel reading, where we hear one of the most well-known and beloved
parables of Jesus: the Good Samaritan. At first glance, it would look like a
simple story with a simple message: be a nice person and help people in need.
But there’s actually more to it than that: the point of the story is actually
talking about how to follow God’s law. Now, we have to make something clear,
because there have been two ideas which we have been conditioned to believe,
that keep us from truly understanding what following God’s law means. First, there
is a misconception that the law has been abolished. In fact, the law has not
been abolished – yet it is something more than what we think it is. In our
First Reading from Deuteronomy, verse 14 says, “The word is very near you; it
is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.” So, we are still to
obey God’s law. But what is this law? Our Gospel reading tells us: the person
who asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life says:
“Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” This is
what God’s law is: it is all about love – love for God, and love for neighbor
lived out of in response to God’s love for us. Even the Ten Commandments can
best be summarized in this way: the first three tell us how to love, respect,
and honor God; and the other seven show us how to honor, respect, and love our
families, authority figures, and our neighbors. That’s all it is: any other
requirements we try to lay on ourselves, or each other, to attempt to live a
life of “morality” or “holiness” only distract us from what God’s law actually
is. Even trying to have a correct intellectual understanding of Christian
teaching and doctrine takes us away from what God really desires of us. As will
be explained in just a moment, for us, the law is no longer a set of rules of
expectations, but is instead the principle by which we live, our very lifestyle.
Our very lives, the decisions we make, especially those affecting ourselves and
our relationships with other people, are to be guided by this principle: what
is the best and most meaningful way we can show love? How can what we do for
someone be of the greatest benefit to them? And, not just some kind of fondness
for someone else, but a genuine desire to be of help and service,
unconditionally, not thinking about who someone is, or trying to put our own
conditions on offering them assistance, but simply helping out of a desire to
show the kind of love to another person God shows us. We can say, with all
honesty, that if we do this, then we are following God’s law.
The problem is, when we think of law,
and this is the second misconception, or if we think of what it means to live a
Christian life in general, we think of it being a sort of checklist, which, if
we fail to live up to any of them, result in punishment. That is, whether or
not we realize it, the way we have been conditioned: to think that if we do
good, then God will bless us and cause good things to happen to us; but if we
do bad, then God will punish us by causing bad things to happen to us. Even
though this is what we have been trained to believe, nothing could be farther
from the truth. While there are consequences that happen if we do things to
inflict any kind of hurt on ourselves or other people, it does not mean that
breaking rules necessarily results in eternal punishment. Even these
consequences do not last forever, but often end up teaching us valuable
lessons, which we can use to be able to guide and teach others – especially as
testimonies for how God has changed us and turned us around. God does not want
for people, for us, to suffer eternally. This is why Jesus came in the first
place: to die on the cross to suffer the eternal consequences for breaking the
law, which means we no longer need to fear punishment for sin. We are free from
having to save ourselves, and so we are now free to live for others. This is
also just one of the many ways God is really good to us: He shows us His love
in so many different ways every day. If someone does something nice, kind, or
loving for us, we almost always want to say thank you. The best way we can say
thank you to God for everything He’s done for us is to pass along what we’ve
been given. Just as an example, if someone were to give us an unexpected gift
of some money or food, we wouldn’t just want to keep it for ourselves – we’d
want to use it to benefit someone else, we’d want to pass it along, to show how
grateful we are for what we have. In the same way, living a Christian life
means living outwards, towards others, and thinking about how we can be of the
greatest good for others. Our daily devotions, Bible reading, prayer,
everything else we do to deepen our relationship with God and spend time with Him,
are to have the goal of causing us to want to live as God lives – in love for
other people.
Now, at this point, I want to
lift up something that I greatly appreciate about our church family, and which
has been one of the most refreshing parts of serving you as your pastor the
past five and a half years. Whenever any one of us has been struggling in any
way, and if any one of us have been unable to do what we normally do, we, as a
church family, have been really good about rallying around to help pick things
up and cover for each other. We’ve also been really good at being
understanding, at being able to see where each other has been coming from if any
of us are struggling or falling down in any way. And it’s not just our church
family: this is the way we as the Village of Farmersville are. If any one of us
have been struggling and have needed help, we’ve been able to provide any kind
of needed assistance and support, whether it’s been after a snowstorm, during a
health struggle, after a fire, tornado, or house flood, whatever it’s been, we
have been really good at being supportive neighbors to each other. This is even
what CAMP is about: it’s not just giving out food to the hungry: it’s neighbors
helping neighbors. At any time, any one of us could be in the position where we
need assistance with food and personal items, and any one of us could also have
the opportunity to provide these things to someone we know. We, as a community,
are also incredibly supportive and encouraging for each other: we are always
able to offer an uplifting word at just the right moment. We are able to
celebrate with others who celebrate, and sorrow with others who sorrow. I want
to encourage us to keep being this way, because not only does this help us keep
strong and close-knit as a church family and as a community, but it creates a
positive atmosphere for everyone. People tend to respond to atmospheres, and
especially thrive in positive, uplifting ones. So the more supportive and
encouraging one we create in this church and this community, the more we will
want to continue to help, support, affirm, and build each other up. This means
that people will be more attracted to us and want to be a part of us, because
we can offer so much love and helpfulness.
And the best way this can happen
is if we continue to accept each other as neighbors, and and prevent anything
which would want us to keep from reaching out to each other. It’s actually easy
for us to try to think of excuses why we shouldn’t even want to reach out to
other people – and sometimes we can even think it’s because we don’t want to
get our hands dirty, or do anything beneath us to help someone else. Notice
that in Good Samaritan story, who the two people who passed the man by were:
people who knew God’s law. But they were both more concerned about purity:
according to the standards of the time, anyone who came in contact, or even
came near, a dead body, which they probably thought the man was, would become
unclean, and unable to enter the temple or perform any religious ceremonies.
But that was the problem: they were more concerned about their own idea of
holiness, and keeping themselves separate from what they thought was something
unclean, that they missed the opportunity to be able help someone in desperate
need, and actually follow God’s law. The Samaritan, on the other hand, was
someone who, by the religious standards of the time, was someone who was a
law-breaker, who was not following God’s commandments properly because of not
belonging to the right religion as defined by one particular group – but who,
according to Jesus, actually obeyed God’s law more than the other two by being
compassionate to someone in need. Now, even though we might be quick to judge
those two men and criticize them because they misunderstood what it meant to
follow God, we have to take a look at ourselves. We have to ask ourselves
honestly: when have I been more concerned about rules than reaching out to another
person? When have I let my personal ideals get in the way of making a
relationship with someone? The question we can be asking as to how to live
according to God’s law of love in response to God loving us is not “How can I
be a better person?” or even, “Who is my neighbor?”, but instead, “How can I be
a neighbor to my neighbor?” If we are living a lifestyle where love is what
determines how we treat ourselves and other people, then we really are
following God’s law. So let’s continue to live a Godly life – one of love for
others.
Now may the peace of God, which
passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord,
Amen.
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