How to begin?
What needs to be heard? What needs to be said?
Beginnings and endings are important. Our lives are full of both. We are always beginning, always ending all the time.
That is how we mark our grave stones, with the dates of beginning and ending with a dash in-between. We pack a whole lifetime into that little dash.
Beginnings are exciting.
To start I would like to say, “Hello, Grace.”, and “Thank-you” for the warm welcomes my family and I have received so far, and for all the fun as well.
I have had a strange feeling of home coming since soon after I accepted the call to be your priest, and that is a real blessing.
One of the things you will notice is that my sermons tend to dwell on the scripture lessons. I don’t like sermons that are only editorials on the latest hot button issue. Though, at times I do indulge in editorials.
But, on the whole I think the pulpit is a place for a fresh perspective that dwells on things that endure, the kingdom of God come near, the Good News of Jesus Christ, love of God, love of neighbor, the Grace that seeks us out in our darkness.
So I look forward to many years together as we explore and live out the enduring message of the gospel, but what I really want to do now is to take a look at the Gospel lesson for today.
I can’t think of a better way to begin our life together than with Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan that Luke gives us today.
It is a story of beginnings and endings.
It is the ending of the life that has not encountered the mercy of God and the beginning of the life that has been surprised by the sweet mercy of God.
We hear the story of the Good Samaritan so often that it is hard to pay attention to it. The lawyer wants to prove himself by starting up the old debate over who qualifies as a neighbor who is to be loved. And Jesus sidesteps the whole debate by redefining the whole concept of neighbor.
The neighbor is no longer a social category; it has become an action verb.
The question isn’t, “Who is my neighbor?” The question is rather will I be the neighbor? Will I be the one who actively and sacrificially shows mercy?
At the heart of the Gospel is the message of the neighborliness of God, and Jesus is that Mercy of God seeking us out on the side of the road, robbed, beaten and stripped.
To encounter that divine mercy is to be changed by it and to become like it. We give mercy because God has shown us mercy.
All the relationships and chance encounters in our lives are invitations to meet that mercy and to become agents of that mercy. All our relationships and chance encounters are about loving the God who is constantly interrupting our lives and reminding us to reorder our lives so that sacrificial love, mercy and compassion are the organizing principles that every day is built around.
Mercy and being a neighbor are eager spiritual disciplines. They are eager because we hope to encounter our Lord. They are disciplines because they require vigilance and training and intentionality to overcome our forgetfulness, distractedness, and general misplaced business.
Mercy that is only a sentiment is a perversion. Being a neighbor that involves only nice warm feelings is blasphemous. That is what Jesus gave such stern and harsh judgments against.
The flesh of God is not a sentiment.
The Blood of the Messiah is not warm feeling.
The Eucharist is not only inward and spiritual it is also outward and visible.
The love of God and being a loving neighbor are so intertwined that they cannot be separated. They have forever been fused together in the person of Christ.
He is the love of God, love of neighbor walking in our midst, interrupting our lives and opening us to the mercy of God that is so vast that we can only fall down before it and worship, the mercy that is so vast that it wells up and erupts into our own lives pouring out like a fountain, and even the most vehement enemies can’t help but help one another on the side of the road.
As your priest I will work with you so that mercy can continue to become the organizing principle around which this parish builds its daily life. That means organizing to vigilantly care for each other in the parish and to eagerly reach out to meet the pain that is in this world.
It is my vocation, all our vocations to see that the pastoral care and outreach of this parish are as organized and responsive and as all important as the Sunday worship.
Imagine a parish where everyone was as eager and anxious about taking part in the pastoral care and outreach as they were about Sunday Worship. These things cannot be separated from each other. I will be asking and expecting and helping each member to take on part of that burden.
That is the lesson of the Good Samaritan, a familiar story with so much still to teach us. That is Good News, and that is a good beginning.