Our Good Samaritan

[Below you'll find video of the live stream presentations of both the 8:45 AM traditional and 11:00 AM modern worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, from earlier today. There were some audio issues during at the beginning of the early service, meaning that you may have to turn up the volume to hear it well. You'll also find the text prepared for the message. Have a good week!]





Luke 10:25-37

Near evening on the first Easter Sunday, you’ll recall, two disciples of Jesus headed for a village called Emmaus. They were saddened by Jesus’ crucifixion and baffled by claims from some of Jesus’ female disciples that Jesus was risen. The two disciples encounter a stranger. This stranger, it turns out, is the risen Jesus. Before revealing Himself, Jesus chastises the disciples for not believing that their Lord, once crucified, was now resurrected. Then we’re told: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27)

Jesus teaches that the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is about Him. One pastor has said that the Old Testament is about anticipation of Jesus; the Gospels are about the manifestation of Jesus; the book of Acts is the proclamation of Jesus; the letters of the New Testament give us the explanation of Jesus; and Revelation gives us the consummation of life in Jesus’ kingdom.

There are two main ways in which the Bible points us to Jesus. In the Law, we’re confronted by the will of God for human beings to which none of us measures up. In the Gospel–or God’s grace given in Jesus–by which Jesus, through His death, pays the price for our sin, and then rises to open eternity to all who believe in Him. The Law then shows us our need of Jesus, simply because we’re incapable of keeping God’s holy Law, and the Gospel gives us Jesus because Jesus has kept God’s Law perfectly for us. The Gospel assures us that, “...it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

So, what to make of today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 10:25-37? In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus tells the story of a man, presumably a Jew who is beaten and robbed by thieves on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Two Jews come upon the wounded man: a Levite–the Levites were charged with taking care of the temple in Jerusalem, and a priest–the priests were in charge of offering sacrifices at the temple. Even though God’s Law commands love for neighbor, both of the men walk away from their wounded countryman. But a foreigner, a Samaritan, happens upon the man, and takes extraordinary measures to save his life and provide for his recovery. At the conclusion of His parable, Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37)

On the face of it, Jesus seems to be saying, “Love your neighbor and you’ll have everlasting life.” We might think that because remember, Jesus told this parable in response to man who asked Him, “[W]hat must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25)

But if we can be saved by obeying God’s Law of love, by doing good deeds like the Samaritan did, then why did Jesus have to die on a cross for us? Is Jesus rescinding John 3:16? Or is He saying that we don’t need to take up our crosses and follow Him? (Luke 9:23) Is Jesus saying that the Law can save us?

We know none of that is true. So, let’s put our thinking caps on to understand what’s going on in our Gospel lesson. “Let Scripture interpret Scripture” is an important principle for understanding God’s Word. To understand a particular place in the Bible, it’s important to remember what the whole of the Bible tells us. The Bible, taken as a whole, presents us with coherent picture of God and the way to eternal life with God.

So, consider several truths gleaned from the rest of Scripture. First, consider who Jesus was responding to in our lesson. At the beginning, we’re told that an expert in God’s Law stood up to test Jesus. This man knew about every Law of God as given in the Old Testament, including the Ten Commandments, the Holiness Code–part of which makes up our first lesson today, and all the civic and ritual laws in the Bible. He presumably would have also known the 600+ additional laws recognized by the Jewish Pharisees. Believing that a human being could be saved from sin and death by obedience to the Law, the man asks Jesus what laws he needs to keep to have eternal life. (And by asking who his neighbor is, he wants Jesus to tell him who he can hate or ignore.)

The man clearly doesn’t believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world. He believed, like many do and all of us secretly want to believe, that he could save himself by being a good person. Jesus always told unbelievers like this man, parables, explaining, “This is why I speak to them in parables: ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.’” (Matthew 13:13) Jesus told parables in order to get unbelievers, not yet ready to follow Him, to perceive their need of Him and the salvation only He can bring. Honesty should have compelled the man to say, “If self-sacrificing love like that, the kind of love that looks out for people I hate or of whom I’m suspicious, is what I have to do to be saved, how can I possibly be saved?” The man wasn’t ready to admit, “I am in bondage to sin and cannot free myself.” The Law in Jesus’ parable should have caused the the expert in the Law to cry out to Jesus, “[H]ave mercy on me, a sinner.” (Luke 18:13) Instead, a man of doing, of action, apparently satisfied that he’s done enough good to earn eternal life, says nothing when Jesus tells Him, “Go and do likewise.”

The second thing to consider to understand Jesus’ parable is what comes next in Luke’s gospel. In Luke 10:38-42, we meet another person who thinks that good works and being a good person will gain them eternal life, Jesus’ friend Martha. You know the incident well. Jesus has come to the home of sisters Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. Jesus is teaching. Mary sits and listens to Jesus as He shares His Word of life. Martha though, is like the expert in the Law, a doer busy serving. Resentful, she asks Jesus to tell Mary to get busy too. But Jesus tells her, “Martha, Martha,...you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42) Jesus is telling Martha, a believer, directly, what He told the law expert indirectly through the parable of the Good Samaritan: You could never do enough good or be a good enough person to merit eternal life with God. But those who turn to Jesus and receive Him and His Word of love and forgiveness with faith, will be given the gift of eternity with God.

All of this helps us to see Jesus’ parable in a different light. Yes, we’re called to be good neighbors, but not to earn eternal life. That comes to us as pure gift. You don’t deserve a gift. It springs entirely from the undeserved love the giver bears for us. You, friends–you and I–are the man left for dead by the side of the road in Jesus’ parable. The devil, the world, and our sinful selves constantly accost us and tempt us, luring us to death and away from God. We sin, violating God’s Law, even when we resolve to love Him completely and love others as we love ourselves. This past week, I posted on Twitter, “My name is Mark and I’m a recovering sin addict.” A  follower replied, “It’s been 17 seconds since my last sin…” To which another responded, “17 seconds? You’re GOOD!” We are, as Saint Paul puts it, so “dead in our trespasses” that we would have no hope for life with God were it not for our Good Samaritan. This good Samaritan, Jesus, comes to us, heals the wounds caused by the sin within and around us, scoops us up, and freely carries us into the eternal arms of God, kept in God’s grace today despite our sins and faults: forgiven, saved, freed from sin and death. But even more than that, like the good Samaritan of Jesus’ parable who promises to return for the wounded man, Jesus promises ti return for us. Right now, He says, He’s preparing an eternal place with God for His people: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” (John 14:3)

Jesus does what you and I cannot do for ourselves. He obeys God’s law of perfect love for God and for neighbor. Then, He takes all our sin into Himself so that He can give all His righteousness–everything that could fit a person for eternity with God–to us. As we turn to Jesus in our desperate helplessness and trust, He gives us an eternity with God we could never earn. Friends, Jesus is your Good Samaritan and He loves you into everlasting life with God. Trust in Him. Amen

Reckoning with Our Sins: Remembering Emmett Till

Just as we must never forget the Holocaust, we must never forget what happened to Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy murdered by white racists in 1955. His murderers were acquitted of their crime, then sold the story of how they killed the child to Look magazine.

The reason Emmet Till was murdered was that he was thought to have "flirted" with a young white woman. That was unacceptable in the Jim Crow South.

We must never forget the poisonous, murderous barbarisms that racism incites and justifies. Yet, to this day, there are white people who want to erase the memory of Emmett Till,  just as there are white people who want tours of the Old South's slave labor camps (otherwise known as plantations) to go easy on references to slavery.

Unless we reckon with the reality of the sin of racism and the place it has played in our history and plays in our present, we will not be free to become the society we are called to be. Racism is a sin, a violation of God's command that we love our neighbors, even those that our ethnic communities have taught us to hate or disdain. (See here.) Like all sins, God can forgive racism for which we repent in the name of Jesus. But until we honestly wrestle with racism and own it before God, we cannot be forgiven or have any part of God's kingdom.

This report from NPR's All Things Considered today was sobering.

Pilate, Juror #7, and Me

I read Luke, chapter 23, for my quiet time this morning. There, Luke narrates Jesus' arrest, kangaroo trial, crucifixion, and death. (His resurrection comes in the next chapter.)

I was particularly struck today by the spinelessness of Pilate, the Roman governor who ended up giving the order to have Jesus crucified.

Three times, Pilate told the crowds crying for Jesus' death that he found the accused innocent of any crime. (Herod, the puppet king of Judea, agreed.)

"I have found in [Jesus] no grounds for the death penalty [Pilate says]. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.” (Luke 23:22)

This is a strange thing for a man who claims to have the final say over the lives and destinies of a region, backed by the world's most powerful empire, to say: "He's not guilty. But since you don't like him, I'll rough him up and send him on his way." In a supposed show of strength, as is true of all thugs and would-be thugs in such circumstances, he lets everyone see what a wimp he truly is.

Like most people who think of themselves as powerful, confident, and self-sufficient, Pilate likes giving the appearance of power, confidence, and self-sufficiency without actually possessing these characteristic. When the comfort of such people is threatened, they will opt for their comfort for themselves. They'll brag while dispatching others to do their wimp-rooted dirty work.

And so, despite the facts, Pilate orders Jesus' crucifixion.

As I read about Pilate today, I couldn't help thinking of the character, Juror #7, played by Jack Warden in the classic jury room drama, Twelve Angry Men. The jury deliberates its verdict in a capital trial involving a defendant, a young man who is a member of an unidentified minority group. Juror #7, who apparently sees himself as a tough, no-nonsense guy, is anxious to get on with things because he has tickets to a baseball game. Initially, he insists on the defendant's guilt, until some begin raising doubts about the prosecution's case. (I also love George Voskovec's performance here.)



Pilate had had enough and so he caved in to "the room," sending Jesus off to His death.

Of course, Pilate was playing into God's hand: God the Father sent God the Son expressly into the world to become the sinless sacrifice--the spotless "Lamb of God"--for sinners like me, His atoning sacrifice making it possible for all who renounce sin and trust in Jesus as their God and Savior to have new, eternal life with God.

But Pilate didn't understand all that. He was Juror #7, weak at the knees over bucking the crowd and hellbent on using the tickets he had for whatever pleasure beckoned to him at that moment.

Pilate was like the priest and Levite in Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, who, for whatever reason, didn't take the time to address a matter of life and death, justice and injustice for another human being, seriously.

"Tough guys" too busy to care. How often are we those guys or those women? Lord, have mercy, I confess to being Pilate or Juror #7. I confess to too often being so caught up in my own agenda and my own pursuit of pleasure to love You with my whole being and to love my neighbor as much as I love myself.

God, forgive me the indifference with which I view the lives of others. Out of the Christian compassion Your Holy Spirit makes possible for believers in Jesus, help me to share the saving good news of Jesus with someone who may need it today. Out of  this same compassion, help me to show compassion for the victims of indifference and injustice today. Help me today to live as the loving person that Your grace in Christ has set me free to be! In Jesus' name I pray. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

God Says to Love Everyone...How Can We Do That?

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio , his morning.]

Luke 10:25-37
One point of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, which makes up today’s gospel lesson, is that every person in the world is my neighbor. Whether that person lives in Centerville, Washington DC, Iran, Haiti, Guatemala, or South Africa, whatever religion or whether they have no religion, she or he is a human being made in the image of God. She or he is also someone for whom Jesus died and rose and to whom He makes the offer of new and everlasting life through faith in Him.

But if we view Jesus’ parable as a simple admonition to see every human being as a neighbor we are obligated to love, we will be getting only one point. 

Since when has an admonition from God to we fallen human beings, ever been sufficient to change our behavior? 

The God we know in Jesus Christ also admonishes us not to have other gods, but we still tend to worship all kinds of things. 

God admonishes us not to take His name in vain, yet people do it all the time...even preachers teaching false gospels. 

God admonishes us not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to covet what belongs to others, not to lie, not to sleep in when we should be worshiping God; yet people still ignore God’s admonitions. 

Even the Christian who knows God’s Word inside out can say with the apostle Paul: “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me...I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” (Romans 7:21-23, 25b)

Our daughter has a dog, Peanut. He’s a loving and well-dispositioned animal who likes nothing better than being petted. But he’s still a dog. He still sniffs at the grass to find the right place to do his business, still barks at strangers, and still views anything within eyesight of our condo as part of the universe of his pack, which includes the three of us and him, and excludes anyone else. These are common dog behaviors. And no matter how compliant Peanut is to us, no amount of admonition will ever stop him from following his dog nature. I could tell Peanut, “Stop being a dog” until I’m blue in the face and it wouldn’t change him. 

Admonitions from God, God’s Law, can’t change us either. We can be given God’s commands--including Jesus’ command that we see all people as neighbors to be loved--and remain unreconstructed sinners who never stop following our sinful human nature. 

So, what good is it for Jesus to tell us to love our neighbor if, within ourselves, we have no capacity for loving our neighbor as we love ourselves? 

Well, Paul says, also in Romans 7, that God’s Law does have an important function: “it was the Law that made me know what sin is…” (Romans 7:7) God’s admonitions--His Law--forces me to wrestle with the fact that I am a sinner. And sinners deserve death and condemnation. That, in turn, should cause us to take the wise step of looking for Someone Who can save me from my sins and from myself. But that’s not the only reason that Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan!

Remember how Jesus happens to tell the parable in the first place. An expert in Biblical law asks Jesus, “[W]hat must I do to receive eternal life?” (Luke 10:25) The guy is looking for some plan of performance by which he can earn eternal life from God. 

We might paraphrase Jesus as asking the man, “Since you’re hung up on what you need to do, what does God’s Law in the Scriptures, say that you should do?” The man summarizes the Ten Commandments' admonition that we love God completely and to love our neighbors as ourselves. “Good answer,” Jesus basically tells the man. “Do those things and you’ll have life with God.”

Of course, if you and I could do those things on our own, we would have life with God...and there would be no reason for Jesus and His cross. The problem is that since Adam and Eve, the whole human race has inherited sin from them. We’re born sinners, separated from God. 

But the teacher of the law isn’t thinking about any of that at all. Instead, he wants to find a loophole in the law. There are people he apparently doesn’t love and doesn’t think God should unreasonably expect him to love. (Like maybe Samaritans.) So, he asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” He would have been satisfied if Jesus had said, “Your neighbor is the good person you like.” But that’s not how Jesus answers the man.

Instead, He tells the parable of the good Samaritan that you know well. A man, presumably a Judean, is accosted by robbers on the road that descends north from Jerusalem to Jericho. Two religious figures, a priest and a Levite, respected Jewish persons pass by the man. But a hated Samaritan sees the wounded man, cares for him, takes him to a nearby inn, and foots the bill for the wounded man’s care. 

So, Jesus asks the teacher of the law, who of the three who encountered the wounded Judean on the road was the man’s neighbor? Unable to even say “Samaritan” in a good light, the teacher of the law replies, “The one who was kind to him.” Verse 37: “Jesus replied, ‘You go, then, and do the same.’”

Honesty before the Lord should have compelled the teacher of the law to respond, “Lord, I don’t love my neighbor like that. Forgive me. Help me to love all my neighbors.” 

Jesus is leaving the possibility of forgiveness and a new life born of complete dependence on Jesus for the man, it he will only repent and trust in Him. But he takes a pass. Uninterested in loving all people, certain that Jesus couldn’t possibly understand what it means to love the unlovable (like him, or you, or me), the teacher of the law asks nothing else of Jesus. He walks away, untouched, unchanged, unforgiven. Like most people in the world, including many in the Church, the man didn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus if following Jesus meant changing the way he wanted to live his life.

This encounter, by itself, would leave us only with God’s command that we love all people and that we, in fact, are incapable on our own of loving all people, if it weren’t for what happens next, in the verses just beyond our lesson, Luke 10:38-42. 

Let me explain why I take you there. 

In his gospel, Luke often pairs incidents. He'll have one incident involving a man followed by another one involving a woman. Sometimes he does it to create comparisons. Other times he creates contrasts.

For example, Luke tells us first that Zechariah was told by the angel that he would become father of John the Baptist and he greeted the news with skepticism. But immediately after that, the angel tells Mary that she will give birth to Jesus and she receives the news with faith.

When Jesus was taken to the temple in Jerusalem to be dedicated to God and circumcised at eight days old, His identity as the Messiah was affirmed first by a man, Zechariah, then by a woman, Anna.

At Easter, the women were told that Jesus was raised from the dead and believed it while the male disciples greeted this news with faith.


With the incident of Mary and Martha, we see this same male/female pattern, and in it, Jesus makes an important point.

There we encounter two sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha is a kindred spirit to the teacher of the law, certain of her own righteousness. Martha is also hung up on doing, playing the hostess with the mostest. Mary, meanwhile, “sat down at the feet of the Lord and listened to his teaching.” (Luke 10:39) Martha resented Mary’s apparent laziness. But when she bellyaches about things to Jesus, He tells her, “Martha, Martha! You are worried and troubled over so many things, but just one is needed. Mary has chosen the right thing, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42)

Now, we’ll look at this incident involving Martha and Mary in more detail next Sunday. But surely, Luke meant it to be the exclamation point to the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

It’s not enough to be told that God wants us to love our neighbor. Because, deep down, I have neither the inclination nor the capacity to love others as I love myself, the God we can only know through Jesus Christ needs to give us both the ability and the desire to love others.

How does that happen? 

It happens when we submit ourselves, day in and day out, to Jesus. This happens through the gifts of regular worship, the Sacrament, quiet time in God’s Word and prayer in Jesus’ name, and study of God’s Word with others that Jesus comes to us and God changes us. 

Jesus has perfectly fulfilled the Law of God for us and to those who trustingly surrender to Him, like Mary, He creates a new way to be human, He makes us new people who cease to look for loopholes in the Law and instead look for new ways to live in His grace while loving  others in that grace.

Who’s the neighbor I am to love? Everyone. 

How am I to do that? By relying on only Christ, Who forgives our sins and empowers us to love others with the same patience and charity He gives to us. And that, surely, is the second point of the parable. “This is love,” we’re told in 1 John 4:10, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 

Live in, daily absorb, and totally depend on God’s love given to you in Christ and He will not only give you eternity, He will also change the way you view others, He will also love them through you. 

Amen


[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Reflections on Charlottesville and Racism

These are remarks I shared at the beginning of both worship services today at Living Water Lutheran Church. (It lasts a bit more than four minutes.)

I didn't preach today, but our worship director, Mark Brennan, presented an excellent sermon, which you can find here.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

So, what's stopping us?

John 4:5-42
The fourth chapter of the gospel of John, with its account of Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman and what results from it, is among my favorite places in Scripture.

I've taught on this passage many times. But, so far as I can remember, I’ve never preached about it. A thirty-eight verse lesson is a big bite to chew for preacher and congregation. Yet, the whole passage goes together as a cohesive unit and, in it, there are important things God has to tell us. So, this morning, let’s supersize, and listen to what God says to us in this meeting between Jesus--God the Son, the Word made flesh--and a woman who’d spent her entire life deep in the sins of human flesh.

[Samaritan Woman at the Well by He Qi]

Jesus has left Judea accompanied by His disciples, with whom He’s headed to their common home region of Galilee.

They have to cut through a sliver of Samaria to get there.

Now, the Samaritans could trace their lineage back to Abraham and Sarah, the ancestors of all Jews, and lived in what had once been the northern portion of Israel. They were then, partly, Hebrews or Jews by heritage. But they had formed their own separate kingdom, the northern kingdom, with its own earthly ruler and their own center of worship. This happened after the death of Solomon in Old Testament times.

The Samaritans endured the scorn of the people of Judah to the south because they had intermingled the worship of Yahweh, I AM, with the worship of other gods; had removed themselves from Jerusalem as the place they offered sacrifices; had intermarried with unbelievers; and mixed the falsehoods of other religions with the revealed truth of God. And do you know what you get when you mix the revealed truth of God and the falsehoods of other religions? Nothing but falsehood that leaves you far from God.

Samaritans were hated by the Judeans, which is one reason why Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan scandalized them; they regarded the Samaritans as low-lives.*

When Jesus and the disciples got to the outskirts of the Samaritan village of Sychar, Jesus sat down at the well because He was exhausted, and the disciples went into the village to see if they could buy some food.

Take a look at what happens next, starting in John 4:7. “When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Will you give me a drink?’”

Then verse 9: “The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’ (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’ ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?’ Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.’”

Jesus starts out His conversation with this woman not by looking down on her. Jesus gives her dignity. He makes her feel that she has something to give to Him, even though His people demean Samaritans; even though He’s a man and she’s a woman living in an age in which women were to be seen but not heard; even though you and I know that He’s God in the flesh.

Sometimes, we Christians are guilty of looking down on people we think are less than us. If we reach out to them, we can be patronizing, our attitudes and words signaling the message, “Look at me being nice to you, even though you don’t deserve it.”

Jesus asked the woman if she would do something for Him. Sometimes the best act of loving service we can do for others is to let them serve us. When we do this, we give them respect.

A few weeks ago, my dad handed me a covered bowl of green beans and boiled potatoes, to take home. I could have said, “Dad, you don’t have to do that. You made that for mom and you and if I take any of it, there will be less for you.” But I thanked dad and took the green beans and boiled potatoes home with me.

I heated them up and, I have to tell you, they were delicious. I phoned my dad to tell him so. I genuinely appreciated this touch of home that I remember from my childhood at those times when dad sometimes fixed our meals.

But, I think it also made my dad feel good being able to do something for me...again.

That’s how the Samaritan woman felt.

But she was also stunned! She couldn’t believe a Jewish man was speaking to her.

Then, she gets practical: Jesus had nothing in which to hold water. And Jesus tells her that if she asked, He would give her water that would last forever.

This appealed to her because the Samaritan woman was likely even hated by her fellow Samaritans.

This is why she was at the well at the sixth hour, noon. As we’ll see, the woman was of less than sterling morals and had she gone to the well at the times when all the other women of the village were there--in the morning or at dusk--she would have been subjected to shunning or insults.

No wonder she jumped at the prospect of getting a never-ending supply of water!

How many people do we Christians alienate because we think that their morals don’t measure up?

How many people fail to drink Christ’s living water because we Christians refuse to dole it out to people whose sins we deem more odious than our own?

We can be guilty of making these kinds of judgments even though we know, to name a few examples:

• that homosexuality is no worse a sin than pride,
• that murder is no worse a sin than failing to love our neighbor,
• that adultery is no worse than taking God’s name in vain.

The woman has given Jesus an opening for sharing more than a bucket of water. He, in turn, wants to give her the eternal life available to all who entrust their past and present sins, along with their whole lives, to Him in faith.

Verse 16: “He told her, ‘Go, call your husband and come back.’ ‘I have no husband,’ she replied. Jesus said to her, ‘You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.’”

By treating this woman with respect, Jesus has now earned the right to be honest with her.

We earn the right to share God’s Word and God’s sometimes uncomfortable truth with our neighbors when we treat them with respect.

Jesus knows that this woman has had five husbands and that now she’s shacking up with another man without the benefit of marriage, the rite instituted by God to be the exclusive place of intimacy between a man and a woman.

But Jesus is calling attention to more than just the woman’s adultery and fornication.

In the Old Testament, God referred to Himself as the husband of His people Israel (Isaiah 54:5-6) and He compared the idol worship that characterized life in Samaria as adultery (Jeremiah 3:20).

We commit adultery against God whenever we let anything--our jobs, our families, our country, our security--anything take the place in our lives that belongs exclusively to God.

In the New Testament, Jesus is called the Bridegroom to His bride, the Church (Revelation 21:2; Revelation 19:7; Mark 2:19).

Jesus is confronting this woman for the adultery she was daily committing both with the man with whom she lived and with the false gods she worshiped along with her people.

Now, this woman understands that Jesus is more than just a Jewish man at a Samaritan well. She tells Jesus that He must be a prophet. And then, she does something secular people often do when they meet someone who professes faith: She started talking religion.

I have this happen to me all the time. I'll be on a plane having a conversation with the passenger next to me. The conversation may go on for a time when they ask me what work I do. When I tell them that I'm a pastor, suddenly they start talking religion. Often they'll come up with the weirdest combination of religious ideas you can imagine. A woman once told me, "I believe in Jesus and stuff. But I also believe in reincarnation." Oy! We had quite a little talk after that.

People do this with me all the time. When they learn that I’m a pastor, they feel the need to start talking about their own religious beliefs, trying to prove to me how righteous they are.

But you know what? My opinion of people’s righteousness is totally unimportant. The only One Whose opinion matters is God. And God says that we are only righteous when we stop trying to justify ourselves and instead, humbly surrender to Him and trust in Jesus Christ for life. When we believe in Jesus, God covers us in Jesus' righteousness, the only brand of righteousness that impresses God or gains us entrance into God's kingdom.

Jesus refuses to accept any of this woman’s religious talk. Verse 21: “...a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem,” He says. Then in verse 23, He tells her: “...a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”

At this, the woman shifts gears and starts talking about the Messiah. And it's here Jesus confronts her with the most amazing thing she will ever hear in her life. Verse 26, Jesus tells the woman:

“I, the one speaking to you—I am (Yahweh) he.”

What happens next is truly stunning.

This woman, who has been avoiding contact with anyone, runs back to the village to tell everyone: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

If you remember nothing else from today’s message, remember this: The time to tell others about Jesus is now!

This woman doesn’t wait to go to seminary or attend a class or become familiar with all sixty-six books of the Bible. She has met Jesus. Now she's telling people about Jesus.

We make all sorts of excuses for not telling others about Jesus. Things like: “I’m not well enough informed.” “What if they ask me a question I can’t answer?”

The Samaritan woman was too excited about encountering Jesus to keep it to herself.

How excited are you about Jesus, our Living Water?

If you and I believe in Jesus, we have no excuses for not telling others about Him. Or, for failing to get to know Him better each day ourselves.

The woman got over herself to tell others about Jesus. We need to get over ourselves too!

In verse 39, the Samaritan woman tells the people of Sychar: “He told me everything I did.” “He knows all my sins,” she’s saying, “and He offered me the living water of forgiven sin and resurrection life through faith in Him anyway!”

The villagers come running to Jesus and say in verse 42: “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

Who could you establish a relationship with so that you could, like the woman at the well, earn the right to invite others to come and see Jesus?

Begin praying about that this week, please.

There’s a world of people like her--people running from their sins, running from others, running from life, running from God--who would come running to God if only you and I would tell them about Jesus, the living water.

So, what’s stopping us?

*Notice that after Jesus has told the parable of the Good Samaritan, the man who identified which of the three men who had encountered the wounded man on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho couldn't even bring himself to say that it was the Samaritan who had fulfilled God's law of love. The Judeans were loathe to ascribe anything positive to a Samaritan, even a fictional one. This is how bigotry can cloud the human heart.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This was the message for worship this morning.]

No surprise: For the long haul, study says, women prefer altruism to hunkiness

The online edition of The Week refers to a study that answers the age-old question of what women look for in men they want to be with for life:

"Individuals who displayed high levels of altruism were rated significantly more desirable overall," the researchers write. While the self-absorbed guys were viewed as more attractive candidates for a one-night stand — suggesting a night with a "bad boy" retains its short-term appeal — altruistic guys were rated as "more desirable for long-term relationships."

In the study, 202 women were shown a series of photographs of two men--one hunky, the other not so much.

For each set of two pictures, scenarios described the varied reactions of the two men in question, one of which was selfish and the other altruistic or caring.

Researchers "mixed their pitches," sometimes ascribing altruism to hunks, other times to the plain men, sometimes to both, and at other times to neither. In this way, they controlled for finding how appealing altruism really was the women in the study.

One scenario particularly caught my attention:

"Two people are walking through a busy town, and notice a homeless person sitting near a cafe. Person E decides to go into the cafe to buy a sandwich and a cup of tea to give to the homeless person outside. Person F pretends to use his mobile phone and walks straight past the homeless person."

This little vignette reminds me of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan in which two religious figures pass on the opposite side of a road from a man who has been badly beaten by thieves.

But the hero of Jesus' story, Mr. Altruistic, the man who proves to be the neighbor to this unknown man, walks toward the man, not away from hims, and then puts salves on his wounds, then takes him to an inn where he tells the innkeeper to track his expenses for the care of the injured man until he comes back to settle accounts.

Jesus told this story in response to a man trying to limit the definition of his neighbor. (He wants to make sure that with some people, like people who don't look like him or live in his own neighborhood, it's cool to like Person F above, able to keep doing what he wants to do, other people damned.)

But, through the parable, Jesus is teaching him (and us) that, in the eyes of God, our neighbor is any person whose need comes to our attention.

Altruism, in fact, is woven in as part of Jesus' Great Commandment, in which He says that all of God's moral laws--seen in the Ten Commandments--can be boiled down to summaries that come to us from the Old Testament: to love God completely and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Altruism toward our neighbors, including being charitable in the words we say about them to others, is meant to be the behavior of spiritual superstars, but of every human being.

Now you may have noticed something about human nature, if not about your own nature: Altruism doesn't come naturally to us, selfishness does.

That's exactly why God had to give His moral law. With it, we understand what it is to be fully human made in the image of God. But we also understand how most often we fail to be fully human by being altruistic.

And that's why God took on human flesh in the person of Jesus, bore our sins--our selfishness and self-centeredness--on the cross, taking the punishment of death we deserve and then rose from the dead to give forgiveness and eternal life and, for this life, the power of the Holy Spirit working within us to help us to repent, be made new, and to seek each day in that power to be altruistic, to be fully human.

Altruism is a trait none of us fully reaches in this life. That's why people like Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr., Christians who struggled in the name of Christ and in the power of the Spirit to not be "in it for themselves," who strove and often failed to be the altruists God meant human beings to be, yet knew to return repeatedly to God in Christ's name to repent for their failures to love, to seek forgiveness, and to receive power to try to live love, the pure selfless love demonstrated on the cross, again today.

Altruism is a trait God wants to build up in us as we live in an ever-deepening relationship with Christ.

And, young men wondering why you find it hard to establish long-term relationships with women, it turns out that while women may like a jerk for a while--most people, women and men alike, are prone at young ages to want to take a walk on the wild side.

But, in the end young men, what women really want are men who have the strength of character to unselfishly care about others more than they care about themselves.

For marriage, the study suggests, women choose altruism over hunkiness. Of course they do, no surprise there: In men who can, at least occasionally, rise to the level of altruism, they get a glimpse of what God made we human beings to be like. And that's attractive!

[The story in The Week distills a lengthier discussion of the study found in Evolutionary Psychology and distilled in Pacific Standard.]

Loving Others

[This was prepared to be shared during this morning's two worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]

Matthew 22:36-40
During this Lenten season, we’re considering five building blocks for our Christian discipleship and for the faithful mission of Christ’s Church that come to us from three passages of Scripture. In them, Jesus gives to us the Great Commandment, the Great Commission, and the New Commandment. Last week, our focus was on what Jesus calls the first and greatest commandment, reiterating the Old Testament, that we are to love God.

Today, we consider the command which Jesus says is of the same importance as loving God. Please turn again to Matthew 22:36-40 (page 692 in the sanctuary Bible).

It says that a Pharisee approached Jesus with a question:

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

“Love your neighbor as yourself” was not a commandment that Jesus just made up. It’s not a new commandment. In Leviticus 19:18, part of that section of the Old Testament referred to as “the holiness code,” God told His ancient people Israel: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”

From the beginning, God intended human beings to live in a community of shalom--a community of peace and wholeness--with God and with other human beings.

This comes through in Genesis, after the first murder had taken place. The blood--the very life--of Abel cried out to God after Abel had been murdered by his brother Cain. When God asked Cain where Abel was, Cain responded with words that must have broken God’s heart: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” For God, the answer to that question was, has always been, and always will remain “Yes.”

We are called to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Human beings may sometimes crave and need solitude. Even Jesus would sometimes pull away from the needy crowds in order to rest and pray in the presence of God the Father. But we are not made to live outside of loving community with others.

In the Old Testament, God commanded His people to, first of all, love and care for their fellow Israelites, especially the weak, the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned.

But they were also to extend precisely that same love to the “resident aliens,” the foreigners who lived among them. God told the Israelites through Moses in Deuteronomy 10:19: “...you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” (There's a lesson to be learned there for those of us who are descendants of people who were at one time foreigners in what is now the United States of America.)

And even in Old Testament times, God commanded that His people love their enemies. (This may surprise those who support the stereotype that the God of Old Testament is stern and vengeful, while the God of the New Testament is mooshy. Neither stereotype is true.) Proverbs 25:21, for example, says: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.”

The Pharisee who asked Jesus about what the greatest commandment was had hoped to trap Jesus, showing to be some wild-eyed leader of a cult, introducing notions about God different from what God had revealed of Himself and His will through the centuries to Israel, as recorded in what we call the Old Testament.

But far from trapping Jesus, the Pharisee who asked Jesus what the greatest commandment was, found Jesus upholding the very law and the prophets--the Old Testament canon--which they claimed Jesus threatened.

Jesus underscored the central importance of love of brother and sister or love of neighbor, repeatedly. In Luke 10 for example, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which a foreigner who happened upon a man who had been beaten by thugs, helps the man, cares for him, and provides for him. Jesus says that whoever we come across in need is our neighbor and that we are to love them.

Under the influence both of his time with Jesus and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the apostle John wrote in his later years in 1 John 4:20: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (How's that for directness?)

But one thing we should be clear about is that from the Bible’s perspective, love is not primarily a feeling. Feelings of affection come and go. They fluctuate in intensity. Love, the Bible insists, is something different.

There’s an old preacher story told about a young man in love. (I've updated a little bit so that I don't seem hopelessly ancient!) This guy texts his girlfriend: “I would climb the highest mountain for you. I would swim the deepest ocean. I’d cross the Mojave Desert. I would even go to a Justin Bieber concert. I would do anything for you. By the way, I’ll be over tonight if it doesn’t rain too much.”

His girlfriend may have wondered how much he really loved her, not because his words were so objectionable but because his commitment to the deeds of love seemed questionable.

The Bible does say that our love for others must be rendered from our hearts, meaning that we should be intent on loving others and not render acts of love resentfully or with selfish ulterior motives.

But love isn't primarily an emotion. And it's not just words. Love is a verb.

It’s about the good we do for others, even when we don’t feel like doing it.

Jesus‘ earthly brother James writes in James 2:14-17: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” Where is our faith if we don't love others? Where is our love?

We can claim to love our neighbors--from the people who occupy the same homes in which we live to the victims of poverty, calamity, or despotism in foreign countries--but unless that sentiment is backed by deeds of self-sacrifice and compassion, our claims will be hollow and without meaning.  

The most famous portrait of love in the Bible probably is the so-called “love chapter,” 1 Corinthians 13. It’s often read at weddings, although the original issues Paul was addressing when he wrote to the Christians in first-century Corinth included the pride that some in the church had because they’d been given the gift of tongues and the arrogance of the wealthier members toward those with less.

Yet it does bear relevance to any discussion about love.

Take a look at part of it now with me, please. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (page 800). It says:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

I have to tell you that when I consider that portrait of love, I feel ashamed.

I do not measure up.

More often than not, I don’t love my neighbor as I love myself. I am self-absorbed and often selfish. I’m not always patient or kind. And I often watch news reports about people who are hurting in other places and don’t even muster enough compassion to pray for them. (A friend of mine always prays when a squad passes by and I find it hard even to remember to do that!)

Yet, here today we again confront Jesus’ command that we love others as we love ourselves. It is a core element in God’s will for us all, summarizing the second table of the Ten Commandments.

It’s part of the law written on every human heart.

And, I don’t keep this commandment.

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says that it’s instructive to notice where in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus gives the Great Commandment.

The Pharisee’s question was more or less a last ditch effort to derail Jesus’ credibility among His fellow Judeans. But Jesus gave an answer to which no one could object.

And then, Jesus asks a question of them: “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They reply without hesitation: “The Son of David.” Then, we’re told in Matthew 22:43-46:

“[Jesus] said to them, 'How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him "Lord"? For he says, '"'The Lord said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." If then David calls him "Lord," how can he be his son?' No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.”

The Pharisees, who had wanted to stump Jesus, were now stumped themselves. They could marshall no evidence warranting Jesus’ death. So, in order to get rid of Him--in order to get rid of the authority of God over their lives and their religious fiefdoms, they would have to resort to trumping up fake evidence to put Jesus on the executioner’s cross. That’s exactly what they did.

But in doing so, of course, they played into Jesus’ hands.

This One Who perfectly loved God and loved neighbor and Who was the Messiah called Lord by King David multiple centuries earlier had come for the express purpose of living out His love for us by dying on the cross, the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Jesus lived the love He commands. He demonstrated that He is the Messiah, the King above all kings, by doing love’s ultimate deed, taking the punishment for sin you and I deserve so that when we repent for sin and believe in Him, we have everlasting life with God.

And He gives the righteousness that He lived--including the righteous obedience of the command to love others as we love ourselves--to all who believe in Him. Jesus gives His perfect obedience to us and then pours God's Holy Spirit into all with faith in Him.

Through Jesus then, N.T. Wright says, having been made right with God not by our deeds of love, but by Jesus’ deed of love rendered on the cross, we see that the Great Commandment--to love God and love neighbor--isn’t so much an order “to be obeyed in our own strength”--which we can not do anyway--but an invitation and a promise to new way of life.

The God Who claims us as His own by grace through our faith in Christ will, as we daily  call on Him to be in our lives, give us “a new way of life in which, bit by bit, hatred and pride can be left behind and love can become [a larger and larger] reality [in our lives].”

During our recent study of Ole Hallesby's book, Prayer, we noticed that the content of our prayer in Jesus' Name isn't as important that in praying in Jesus' Name, we invite Jesus into our lives and circumstances.

We may approach God with a perceived need or desire. But in responding to Jesus' call and command to pray, we actually are inviting Him in to do what He deems best in our lives. Give Jesus an inch and He will take a mile! As we pray in Jesus' Name, He takes up residence in our lives, usually with consequences we couldn't imagine, most especially consequences for our faith, our characters, and our priorities.

The simple fact is that we cannot love our neighbor unless we first let Jesus love us into following Him and surrendering to Him.

But as we dare to let Jesus into our lives each day--when we let Him know our dreams and our sins, our fears and our personal challenges and invite Him to be Lord over all our lives, to transform all our lives in accordance with the will of God--He will gradually, often without our even knowing it, usually without our even knowing it, help us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Not just in words and not just in feelings, but in deeds and in living.

Jesus comes to live in the lives of all who call on Him and as we call on Him, both we and all the people with whom we come in contact are the better for it.

Our call is to let Jesus in, so that His love can go from us to all the world. Amen

Truly Welcoming Jesus: The Good Part

[This was prepared to be shared during the Sunday morning worship services of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Luke 10:38-42
God values hospitality.

In our first lesson for this morning, Abraham and Sarah welcome three strangers to their tent. At least one of the strangers is God, although Saint Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, believed that Abraham and Sarah welcomed God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whatever the case may be, their hospitality is a great example of how people of faith should act. With Genesis 18 in mind, the preacher in Hebrews writes, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”

It’s no exaggeration to say that salvation comes to us when we welcome Jesus Christ and the good news that all who turn from sin and believe in Him have life in His Name with hospitality. Near the beginning of his gospel, John writes of Jesus, the Word made flesh: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name...”

Only those willing to welcome Jesus as their God and King know the salvation and new life He came to bring through His death and resurrection.

When hospitality is given for the right reasons, it’s a beautiful expression of faith in Christ.

But there’s more to hospitality than fixing dinner, handing your guest something cold to drink, and ensuring that your guests have a good time.

All of which leads us to today’s gospel lesson. Please open your Bible or your bulletin to it, Luke 10:38-42. It says: “Now it happened as they went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.” Martha, at least at one level, practices hospitality. She welcomes Jesus into her home. That’s good.

But does she really welcome Jesus? Or is Martha like I can sometimes be, welcoming Jesus just enough to claim to know Him, but not allowing His Lordship to permeate my resistance to having someone else in charge of my life? Leave those questions in the back of your mind for now.

Let’s read on. Verse 39: “And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus’ feet and heard His word.” Something that often gets overlooked in this passage is the true meaning of Mary sitting “at Jesus’ feet.”

When we talk today about someone sitting at another person’s feet, we usually mean that they sit dreamy-eyed, devoid of independent thought. But this isn’t what Luke meant when he used the phrase.

Let me explain: The title that almost everyone gave to Jesus while He did His earthly ministry was rabbi, meaning teacher. A rabbi’s students--the formal word is disciples--were always said to sit at the rabbi’s feet. It meant that they were learning from the rabbi so that they too could become rabbis, teachers. Disciples hung on their rabbis’ every word because they knew that they would one day have the responsibility of imparting his teaching to others.

But here’s the thing: In those days, women were never rabbis. Women were never disciples. And knowing God’s Word, sharing God’s Word, wasn’t considered a woman’s place. A woman’s place in that culture was in the kitchen, as we see in Sarah in our first lesson.

But that’s not how things work in the kingdom of God that Jesus ushers into the world. As the apostle Paul puts it in Galatians 3:28, in Jesus’ kingdom: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

In the Church, everyone is called to be a disciple, a scribe of God’s kingdom, a rabbi who teaches the Gospel to others who need to know or be re-acquainted with the crucified and risen Jesus and the good news that all who turn from sin and believe in Him have a life with God that lasts for eternity.

But it was hard for Martha to accept that her sister or even she herself could be a disciple and one day, a rabbi, like the men who followed Jesus.

Look at what happens in verse 40: “But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached [Jesus] and said, ‘Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Therefore tell her to help me.’"

Now, let’s be clear: Along with what I've said about Martha being hung up on the idea that women had no place in hearing or teaching the Word of God, Martha also appears to be a workaholic, one of those people who believes that by doing good works, she will receive approval from God or from others or will feel like a worthy person. Her hospitality doesn’t seem to be an expression of faith, but of pride and of a controlling personality.

It’s also true that Martha stands as a warning to all Christians to relax, to rest easy in the grace of God, in the knowledge that we are not saved by what we do but by God’s grace given to all who believe in Jesus Christ.

One of the tragedies of the Church is that so many Christians who could live in the freedom of knowing that Christ gives them a friendship with God and the forgiveness of their sins as free gifts to those who trust their lives to Christ, instead turn their Christianity into a list of do’s and don’ts and religious obligations. Martha traded in a relationship with God through faith in Christ for a religion.

That’s not the life that God intends for us!

God wants us to know that He accepts and loves us just as we are and that as we grow closer to Him, the good things we do will simply be an outgrowth of our friendship with Him--what the Bible calls a “fruit of the Spirit”--and not something we feel that we have to do.

Martha is caught up in what Martin Luther called "works righteousness." She's a slave to staying busy instead of living as a free child of God. Misery loves company, you know. So, Martha wants Mary to submit to the same religious slavery she has chosen for herself. That’s why she lashes out at Mary!

Verses 41 and 42 give Jesus’ response to Martha’s outburst: “And Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.’" So, what’s Jesus saying here? Let everything go to seed? Don’t do anything but listen to sermons and Bible lessons all day long? We all know people who, as I've said before, are so heavenly-minded that they're no earthly good.

Is that how Jesus wants us to be. Hardly!

I believe that we can’t really read what Jesus says here without remembering the passage that came immediately before it, Luke 10:25-37. You’ll remember that right after Jesus told a scribe, an expert in the Bible, the parable of the Good Samaritan, He also told him to go and do the same thing. The Scribe’s problem was that he knew all about the faith, but he didn’t do it, didn’t live it.

In today’s lesson, Martha’s problem is that she’s constantly doing, but she has no interest in the Word of God. Without living under the will and Word of God revealed ultimately in Jesus, she was living in futility, relying on her own goodness and her own power to work, instead of on God’s grace, to save her.

That is a dangerous way to live! People, like Martha, who know who Jesus is, who may even be active members of a church yet rely on their good works to save them from sin and death are as eternally lost as those who have never confessed belief in Jesus as their God and Lord. This is why Jesus told Martha that Mary had chosen the good part.

You see, every Christian needs to be a Mary!

That’s why engaging in the study of Scripture, especially in the company of other Christians, is essential to the Christian life. Reading, hearing, and studying God’s Word reminds us of Who God is and, simply soaking up His Word with faith in Christ, can build faith in us even when we know ourselves to be incapable of believing in God or living in Christian hope. That's because the Word of God is powerful! As the apostle Paul reminds us, faith comes when we hear God's Word!

Jesus knew that by taking in His Word, Mary wouldn’t sit for long! When His Word takes hold and creates faith in Christ within us, we will, not from pride, not to control, but from simple gratitude to the God Who went to the cross and offers life forever with God as a free gift to all who dare to believe in Jesus Christ, do their faith in Jesus. They will live like the people set free from the prison of sin and death that they are. [See Luke 8:15.]

Someone asked me this past week, "If we're saved by God's grace through faith in Christ, why doesn't God just let us die and be resurrected so we don't have to put up with this world any more?" Here, I think, is the big reason: Once we have become certain of our place in eternity with God through our relationship with Christ, God wants us to take as many people to heaven with Him as possible. God gives us time on this earth so that we can fulfill that commission. [See 2 Peter 3:9.]

When you and I take time to sit at Jesus’ feet, the Holy Spirit will then empower us be Jesus’ feet, Jesus’ hands, and Jesus’ voice in the world!

We know that Mary chose the good part because it’s only those who live in utter dependence on Christ and His grace who have the power from God to live and serve in Jesus’ Name long after those who try to be live like Christians without the power of Jesus’ Word working in them have given up!

Every burnt-out Christian I have ever known was one who thought they had to do everything themselves, like Martha.

Every joyful Christian I’ve ever known has been one who knew that they were completely dependent on Christ and that being a Christian is a team activity best lived out in that company of other forgiven sinners called the Church.

And joyful Christians change the world!

I recently heard the true story of Pastor Gil, who served a congregation in a poverty stricken barrio in the Virgin Islands.

Gil wanted to reach out to others with the good news of Jesus Christ, but few responded.

Then, he befriended an alcoholic named Sam. He shared the gospel with Sam and over time, a miracle happened. Sam received Christ as his Savior and was able to enter recovery from his addiction.

Sam, like Pastor Gil, wanted to share Christ with others, but few were interested in coming to worship to hear the gospel.

Then, Sam had an idea: “Pastor, come bless my house. I’ll invite my neighbors and friends. They can have parts in the blessing. You can tell the good news about Jesus and they will want to follow Jesus too.”

The house blessing happened. But no one responded to the gospel. No one came to church.

One night some time later, while working on a sermon, Pastor Gil became aware of a commotion. He looked out his window and saw that something was on fire. Along with others in the community, he ran to the fire to see if he could help.

The building on fire was Sam’s house, the one Gil had blessed. It burned to the ground. Sam’s friends laughed as the last embers were extinguished: “You thought Jesus would protect you.”

Sam pretended not to hear their words of derision. Instead, he fell at Pastor Gil’s feet. “Thank you, pastor,” he said, “for blessing my house. Something woke me up. Had you not offered a blessing, I would have died in the fire.”

Over the next four months, Pastor Gil blessed forty-eight homes and twenty-nine people came to faith in Jesus Christ.

A pastor and a parishioner steeped in the Word of God, like Mary, let their faith lead them to action, and twenty-nine people who might have otherwise remained separated from the new and everlasting life that only Jesus Christ can give, came to faith in Christ and to eternal life!*

My message to you this morning is simple. Be a Mary! Be a Gil! Be a Sam! Welcome Jesus and His Word of grace and power into the center of your life. Then do your faith in Jesus wherever God and your life may take you. You never can tell what God might do in you and through you. Amen!

*This vignette was shared by Bishop John Bradosky during a recent sermon.

[I am indebted to the scholarship of Fred Craddock and N.T. Wright in helping me to more clearly understand this incident from Jesus' ministry than I had previously.]