While I didn’t preach on the Parable of the Good Samaritan this time around in the lectionary texts, I’ve been thinking a lot about the story, and remembering what writer Frederick Buechner has to say about it all.
In Christ’s parable, a third man finally did come along. “I prefer to think that the difference between the Samaritan and the Levite and the priest was not just that he was more morally sensitive than they were, but that he had, as they had not … an eye that was able to look at the man in the ditch and see in all its extraordinary unexpectedness the truth itself, which was that at the deepest level of their being, he and that other one there were not entirely separate selves at all. Not really at all,” writes Buechner. (Listening to Your Life)
I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be a neighbor – to share life in a community and belong in a neighborhood where folks care for one another. “I’m just helping a neighbor,” I find myself saying from day to day. In ways beyond our understanding we are not our own, but we belong to one another, created by God to live in relationship with God and with one another.
Frederick Buechner goes on to say, “Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality – not as we expect it to be, but as it is – is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily: that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.” (Listening to Your Life)
“I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?” asks Mother Teresa. St. John says we lie if we say we love God and we don't love our neighbor. How can we love God whom we do not see, if we do not love our neighbor whom we see, whom we touch, with whom we live?
Giving thanks for good neighbors, for opportunities to be a good neighbor, and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.
Elizabeth
In yesterday’s gospel passage, Jesus told stories about lost things – a lost sheep and a lost coin. These stories tell us much about the character of God, and about the attitude God encourages us to have toward one another. Like the shepherd who found his lost sheep and brought that sheep home, rejoicing; like the woman who searched high and low for her lost coin, and calls her neighbors in to celebrate her good fortune in finding it - so God rejoices when God finds us, and calls us to do the same for each other.
These stories challenge us with the vision of a new community where we love and value one another as God loves and values us. In some moments, we are recipients of God’s love and grace; in other moments, we are bearers of that love and grace to others.
At one time or another we’ve all lost something, or someone. We lose our self-respect, our temper, our courage, our sense of purpose or direction. We lose heart and health and hopes and dream; we lose our perspective from time to time. We know what it is to be lost and unable to find where we are going, and we know what it is to be lost all the while knowing exactly where we are! Again and again on life’s journey, we find ourselves away from where we belong, separated from the person God created us to be. We lose our way for a season and find ourselves feeling outside of God’s care and keeping.
On a regular basis, each of us turns out to be a lost sheep; and time and again, we are that precious coin that disappears and just cannot be found. At such times, God, like a shepherd with no common sense, leaves the rest of the flock and searches everywhere in order to find us. God, like a housewife gone crazy, tears the place apart, searching every dark corner to find us. The faithful shepherd travels into the thicket to pull us out and will crawl into the hole we have dug for ourselves and lift us up. If we’re hidden, he turns up in the crawl space of our soul, calling us to take heart, reminding us that we are God’s own.
May the God of lost sheep and lost coins and lost sons and daughters help us to find what we’ve lost in our years of living, that we might begin to live abundantly, called to new life in areas that are troubled and broken and wounded. May the God of lost sheep and lost coins and lost children redeem our past, help us to live fully in the present and open to us a future filled with hope and possibility – and give us grace to help each other along the way.
Giving thanks for our faithful God who finds us in our hiding places, and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.
Elizabeth
Last week, a young mother shared with me a pediatric nurse told her that her 18-month-old son should know how to point to his body parts when the word is spoken. “Could your children do that at 18 months?” she asked. As I’ve reflected on her question, I’ve come to remember that my children probably learned that skill in the Nursery Department of Sunday School.
“From my head down to my toes, God made me, ” they would sing…… “from my head down to my toes, my eyes, my ears, my nose! From my head down to my toes, God made me.” Other verses reminded them: “from my head down to my toes, God loves me; from my head down to my toes, God sends me and from my head down to my toes, God’s with me.” And there were other songs, “Oh, be careful little feet where you go……be careful little hands what you so……be careful little mouth what you say….be careful little ears, what you hear……….for your Father up above is looking down in love…..”
God’s children of all ages at Jackson Springs Presbyterian heard a wonderful message from another children’s favorite: “Hokey Pokey.” Putting first our left hand in, then our right hand in, we finally put our “whole self” in and remembered “that’s what it’s all about.” The smiles and knowing nods throughout the congregation affirmed the message had been received!
Verses from Psalm 139 served as our Call to Worship for the day. The message of this Psalm comes through words of relationship. It’s about our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us, what we do, where we are, even that we are – all are in the context of God’s loving provision and care. We see our very existence described in terms of the activity of God, in terms of who God is and in light of all God has done. The psalmist assures us that when we take off in all directions, and find ourselves in the best of times or in the worst of times, even there, wherever we find ourselves, God’s hand is leading us and God’s right hand holding us fast. (Psalm 139:10) Though we may not always feel God’s presence, hear God’s voice, or see God at work in our lives, we can rest assured that we are in God’s hands – strong and loving hands, that will never let us go!
I give thanks for heart knowledge of God’s loving care from day to day and for Nursey Class songs that planted that truth in my heart. I see now that these songs little ones sing about “body parts” also teach them the deeper truth of being a part of the Body of Christ, the church. “Let’s put our whole selves in and take our whole selves out … that’s what it’s all about!”
Elizabeth