Listen to Readings and Sermon

7th Sunday after Pentecost

The Good News Written

Deuteronomy 30.9-14 (NRSV)

⁹And… your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the Lord will again take delight in prospering you… because you turn to… God with all your heart and with all your soul. ¹¹Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. ¹²It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” ¹³Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?” ¹⁴No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.

Luke 10.25-37 (NRSV)

²⁵Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ²⁶[Jesus] said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” ²⁷He answered, “You shall love… your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁸And [Jesus] said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” ²⁹But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” ³⁰Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. ³²So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. ³⁴He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. ³⁵The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ ³⁶Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” ³⁷He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

The Good News Proclaimed

Preached by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, July11, 2010.

“Inherit eternal life…”

Inherit suggests that the life in question is something that we can expect, it is something we are meant to have, it is what has been planned for us to receive from the beginning. It is what has been promised to us; it has been bequeathed to us.

“Eternal” doesn’t mean a never-ending existence beginning after we die. Eternity has no beginning and no ending. Eternity not only always will be but also always has been. So eternal life isn’t about unfathomable longevity… it refers to the quality of life we are meant to have. It refers to divine life… such life never ends, but more importantly, such life is filled with all that God is. What must we do to receive our inheritance of God-life? How do we share in the life that God is? How do we access that divine principle, that divine presence that Deuteronomy 30 told us today is already in our hearts? That is the question asked of Jesus in today’s gospel.

The answer to the question, Jesus suggests, can be found in scripture. And so he asks, “What do you read in scripture?” The answer comes from Deuteronomy, “Love God with your whole being…Love the All-in-love with all that you are” and from Leviticus, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This of course implies that one must love oneself… we can never give what we don’t have, and as we learn to recognize the God in us, we then recognize the God in others.

As we love God with all that we are, and we love ourselves as an expression of God, we then love others as well… and all that love is the way to experience God most fully… and God is divine, eternal life! “God is love and whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives in them” (1 John 4.16). How can we experience divine life? Allow the quality of divine life, which is love, to be what motivates your life.

When you love, God is expressing through you, and the love that God is, is eternal… without beginning, without ending, and without limitation. Love is what God is, and when show love, we are God’s action then in the world. How do we inherit what God is? We express what God is… and that is love.

Isn’t it amazing Jesus doesn’t say the secret to divine living is to never get angry. Of course not. Jesus got angry.

He didn’t say, “your relationships have to always be harmonious.” If all your relationships are harmonious, then most of your relationships aren’t with other people!

He didn’t say, “never make mistakes.” If we never made mistakes, we’d never learn anything.

He didn’t say, “believe certain things or be part of a certain group.”

And he certainly didn’t say, “spread a lot of hate and discontent.”

No, the way to know God isn’t about what we call ourselves or even about what we claim to believe… the way to know God is to allow God to be the action of our lives… the action of love. We won’t always measure up to that, but we are called back to it again and again. Of course we’ll fall short of such a lofty goal, but by having the goal, we can always return to it when we do fall short. Love the God of your understanding, love yourself, and love your neighbors. This is how we express eternal, that is, divine life.

The lawyer, looking for a loophole, says, “I get that I need to love my neighbor, but who exactly is my neighbor?” And that’s when Jesus breaks into story-telling mode:

Someone was leaving the big city and going down to Jericho. And he fell into the hands of robbers who beat him, stole from him, and left him for dead. A priest came by, and walked by. A Levite came by, and walked by. But a Samaritan was moved with compassion and offered kindness to the wounded person. Jesus asked, “Who acted like a neighbor?” The Samaritan of course. Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”

Now, whenever I hear this story… I know who I am in the story. I’m the Samaritan, of course! The goodhearted, well-intentioned person who would respond to human need rather than to tradition, dogma, or hierarchy. The one other religious people had condemned for being different, but who was loved by God and who was willing to allow the love of God to touch someone in need of healing… that’s who I am.

But the truth is, while I can be the Samaritan, and have been, and will be again… But I’m also the robbers, and the victim, and the priest, and the Levite… and so are you. The story shows us all the ways we can, and have, and will behave… and calls us to return to the highest path in those times when we give in to the temptation to be less than we are meant to be.

We’ve been the robbers… those who are so hurt, so scared, so wounded that all we know how to do is lash out. We try to meet our own needs or keep ourselves safe by vilifying others, discrediting them, blaming them, shaming them, trying to knock them down, never taking responsibility for our own actions and choices. Hurting people hurt people, and we’ve been those people. In fact, horizontal violence, the violence that people do to one another in oppressed communities is one of the most tragic effects of oppression. In our woundedness we lash out at our own in a desperate attempt to feel a little better about ourselves. Not getting our way, we try to tear down the one who held us accountable, or who simply didn’t play our game… and we try to rob them of their dignity…we are so hurt that all we can think of doing is hurting someone else… trying to cause as much trouble and damage as we possibly can. The robbers are wounded, soul-sick individuals…and we’ve been where they are.

We’ve been the traveler…the one who has been to the holy city…the one who has heard the good news and is trying to take it home to share with others, but not everyone is ready for it. And so with betrayal, with gossip, with abandonment, with insults, with half-truths and vicious lies, with slander, with name-calling, with abuse of all kinds they pounce on us and we wind up feeling less alive, less ourselves… robbed of hope, of dignity, of self-confidence. We’ve been the victimized traveler without even the strength to pull ourselves up.

We’ve been the priest and the Levite…no need denying it. We’ve been the verse quoting, wrist slapping, name calling, finger pointing practitioners of religiosity who in the name of orthodoxy or in the name of tradition or in the name of how its always been will simply walk by the people who have been wounded. You see… the Levite and the priest were following the rules, the tradition… they were being completely orthodox. They thought the body they saw was dead, and they were on the way to the Temple… touching a dead body would have made them unclean and they couldn’t have entered the temple. They valued the traditions, the way things had always been, the way religion had been traditionally taught and understood and they kept the letter of the law… but they forgot that human welfare is more sacred than any icon, scripture, ritual, or story. We’ve been the priest and the Levite… sacrificing our humanity in order to be religious. God forgive us.

But the good news is we’ve also been that Samaritan. The one on the margins, the one others had dismissed because of who we were, and yet when Compassion called us to be the love of God in action, we responded. We didn’t look it up in a book, the right thing to do was already in our heart, and we simply acted from love, and as we did, God worked through us to bring hope and healing to a painful situation.

We’ve been the robbers. We’ve been the traveler. We’ve been the strictly religious types. We’ve been the outsider who allowed Love to be expressed through us. We’ve been every character in this story, and we have the potential to be every character again and again. But Jesus asks very simply, who in the story shows what it means to be a neighbor? To love your neighbor as yourself means to make the choice to be a neighbor…who made that divine choice in the story today? Once we remember, then Jesus says, make that same choice once again. And we can. And I believe we will. This is the Good News!

The Good News Affirmed

God’s love is in me.

It strengthens me.

It comforts me.

It expresses through me.

It blesses those around me.

Good things are happening now.

And so it is.

The Good News Repeated

“Those who are prone to suspect evil are mostly looking in their neighbor for what they see in themselves.” Augustus Hare

Audio readings and sermon (http://sunshinecathedral.org/sermons/audio/20100711_1.mp3)