Luke 10:25-37 "So Who Is My Neighbor?"

You know, one of the problems with being raised in the church is that the completely shocking and horrifying things that Jesus said throughout his ministry and God did throughout the history of the world don’t hold their impact.

Jesus’ teachings were revolutionary for their time and many of them, if taken seriously, would completely change the way we lived today. And yet, because we have grown up knowing the stories and hearing the teachings, they don’t hold the impact, they don’t have the punch, that they should have.

Imagine if you will, hearing Jesus’ teaching for the first time. He tells us not to worry about what we are going to eat or what we are going to wear. He tells us not to save up for a rainy day but to trust that God will provide for all of our needs. He tells us that when someone tries to steal something from us, to give them more than they ask for. He tells us that if someone attacks you, don’t fight back, instead allow them to have their way with you.

These are just a few of Jesus’ teachings; some of the ones that don’t much make sense to us. These are teachings that we read and hear, but file away as not really relevant to our world today.

And then, there are the teachings that do make sense to us, that we take very seriously, but still don’t hold their wow-factor. I think of the story of the prodigal son, an incredible story of a father’s love that shows how much God truly loves us and will accept us no matter how far we’ll stray. And yet, I am loath to hear someone preach on it because I’ve heard it preached on so many times.

And that is sort of where I am with the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a story I’ve heard so many times and heard so many sermons about that it seems somewhat pointless to preach about it myself. And yet, here we are, preaching about it today, seeing if it has anything new to tell us.

I. Moving Purses

My mother, since I was born, works the evening shift at the hospital. She would go to work about 3:30 or so and would get home after midnight. My parents decided to do this so that there were just a couple hours during the day where my sister and I would have to be with a babysitter. One night when I was in high school, my mom was driving home from work. There was a purse sitting in the middle of the road. She stopped to pick it up so that she could find who it belonged to and return it. She pulled over to the side of the road, left the car running and the lights on, got out of the car to get the purse. As she reached for it, it moved across the road to the other side. She screamed, ran back to the car, got in the drivers seat and began heading home. Suddenly she realized that someone could very well be sitting in the back seat of her car right now. She raced home, ran upstairs and got my dad, and they went out to check the car. There was nobody there. It must have been some kids playing pranks through the night.

II. The Good Islamofascist

The biggest obstacle to our understanding of the story of the Good Samaritan is not our familiarity with it, though. I think the biggest obstacle to our understanding of it is the fact that it is about Israelites and Samaritans two thousand years ago. The fact is that saying Good Samaritan does not seem like an oxymoron to us. Actually, we sometimes even shorten it up and when we see someone who is doing good for someone else, we refer to them as a Samaritan. There’s actually a superhero I like named the Samaritan. And he was created with all the positive baggage that that name comes with.

So even though we know that to the Jews of Jesus’ day, a Samaritan was considered a bad person, we don’t necessarily read it that way. If Jesus were telling this story in Israel today to the people of Israel today, he would tell the story of a Good Palestinian. And if Jesus were telling this story today to Americans in our world, it wouldn’t be about Samaritans at all, it would be titled the Good Islamofascist.

You see, for the Israelites of Jesus’ day the Samaritans were the enemy. They were the ones they were brought up to hate. They were taught to not see any redeeming qualities in them. And so when Jesus tells a story where someone gets injured and two upstanding citizens ignore the man because they are afraid of the consequences, it is the enemy, it is someone most unlikely, who comes to the rescue. And this is the neighbor that Jesus tells those around him to love.

The point of this distinction is, first of all, for shock value. Jesus was trying to say something shocking. He was trying to show that even an enemy could show kindness. He was trying to get those who were listening to him to move outside their comfort zones and think beyond their preconceptions. Even the people in the Middle East, who are daily trying to come up with ways to kill us, even the ones who want to take away our freedom of religion and force us all to worship Allah, even they are our neighbors. But there is something else going on in Jesus’ story as well. You see, the Good Islamofascist, the Good Samaritan, wasn’t good intrinsically. He wasn’t good because he was necessarily raised that way. He wasn’t good because he was a Samaritan. No, the reason he was neighbor to the man on the side of the road who was wounded was that he had a situation arise in front of him and he decided to do the right thing.

The Good Samaritan didn’t plan to do a good deed that day. This is not something he learned or trained for. It is not something that he could possible prepare himself for. It is great when someone can come up with some good deed to do for someone else, and plan it out and act upon that plan. But this is not the situation that is before us in this parable. No, the Samaritan was wandering down the road, minding his own business, when a situation rose before him. He was given a spur of the moment decision to make and he chose to help the man.

III. Quick Decisions

Being a good neighbor, which is what this scripture is all about, doesn’t have to do with what you plan out. It doesn’t have to do with all the good things you can think to do to show those around you how great you are. No, it has to do with those situations that arise spur of the moment, where you have to decide whether to do the right thing or not. These are the moments where we are called to be good neighbors. These are the moments where we are called to put the needs of others before our own needs. The priest and the scholar both were turned in on themselves. When they saw the man laying on the side of the road, they worried about what would happen to them if they tried to help this man. The Samaritan worried about the man on the side of the road instead of worrying about himself. This is not the smart decision, it is not the safe decision, but it is the right decision.

This last February, the evening of the great blizzard, Lisa and I were settling in. It was our first real blizzard since we’d moved to Iowa and we had plenty of supplies to get us through the weekend, so we were looking forward to sitting back and enjoying the weather. And that is precisely what we did until we got a phone call. It was police dispatch. There had been a driver trying to get to Sioux City and he got stuck in a drift about three miles from the intersection of Highway 3 and 29. They were looking for a place for him to stay for the night.

Lisa and I looked at each other. We weren’t exactly sure what to do. On the one hand it is nice to be able to help someone in need. That’s what the Bible tells us to do and all, but on the other hand. Lisa was getting close to being eight months pregnant. Someone foolish enough to try to drive in the blizzard probably didn’t always make the best decisions. Surely they could find someone else who would be more comfortable housing a stranger. The dispatcher told me that they were just asking and we could easily say no, they wouldn’t hold it against us.

It was a true Good Samaritan moment. There were so many reasons that it would be easier and better to say, “Sorry, we can’t help you this time.” But we knew what the right thing to do was.

So we got the guest room made up, turned on the porch light, grabbed my sword and put it next to our bed, just in case, and waited for this stranger to come to our house.

We had a wonderful visit with the gentleman who visited and hopefully began a friendship with him that will continue. Because we were open to taking even a small risk to help someone in need, we were blessed by this experience in a number of ways. And, I hope, God taught us not to be as stingy with all that he has given us.

The wise thing to do is be distrustful of strange situations like purses in the middle of the road. The smart thing to do is to just leave things there so you don’t open yourself up to getting hurt. But the parable that Jesus told us says that protecting yourself is not the most important thing in life. Sometimes being a good neighbor means that we are called to go out on a limb for someone else; even someone who hates us. When we are doing that we then answering the call that Jesus has put before us. When we are doing that, then we find that God can use us in ways that we didn’t even think possible.

Being a good neighbor isn’t about planning and working at goodness. It is about being open to God’s leading when certain situations arise. It is about putting others above your fears and trusting, truly trusting, that God will protect you. This is the life that God calls us to. It sounds scary, but it also is freeing. It means we don’t need to live in bondage to our fears. It means we can live much fuller and healthier lives. It means that God can work through us in ways we can only begin to imagine.

Hosea 11.1-11 "Gomer"

When I was in high school we were in American history class and studying the history of slavery. The story was told of Nat Turner, a slave who had visions from God that told him to lead a revolt against his masters and lead his people to freedom. Unfortunately, Nat Turner’s revolt failed and he was hanged. Everybody in my class took this at face value. I rose my hand and asked the question that nobody else seemed to think of. “Did Nat Turner really receive visions from God telling him to revolt?” The teacher looked at me, confused. My classmates looked at me, confused. This was a Christian school, mind you, we would talk about faith and religion in our classes pretty regularly.

The teacher and the class seemed perfectly willing to accept that God told Nat Turner to revolt. But I had a harder time accepting this because the revolt failed. I could accept Nat Turner following his understanding of what God desires and fighting for freedom because there was no other way to live in accordance with God’s word. I buy that. I buy him being convicted by his faith and knowing that he must fight against oppression. Many other slave revolts were started by very devout Christians for precisely that reason. And those I bought. But if God gave a man a vision saying that he should revolt and win and then he lost, could that vision truly be from God?

In the discussion that we had, I seemed to be the only one seeing it from my perspective, yet the teacher did make a good point that justice did increase through this event as the plight of the slaves reached more and more people because of what Nat Turner did and though he didn’t get the freedom he longed for, he did pave the way for a future freedom for his people.

You see, God didn’t promise Nat Turner victory. What he promised him was a continued struggle for what is right. This is the same thing that God promises each of us. This is the same thing that God commands for each of us to do. But God offers us something as well, he offers us his love and he offers to be with us as we fight for what is right.

I. A Difficult Marriage

The book of Hosea is a difficult one to read, at first because it gives us this strange life acted out by the prophet. You see, Hosea is commanded to live out his life in a somewhat difficult way. He isn’t asked to fight as Nat Turner was, rather he is asked to love the unlovable. And in doing so, he is able to understand God’s desire for God’s people in a real way and we catch a glimpse of that understanding when we read Hosea 11. But before we get to Hosea 11 and God’s relationship, and love, for his people, I’d like to look a little bit at Hosea’s relationship with his wife… you, know, it being Valentine’s Day this Wednesday and all.

Unfortunately, Hosea’s life and his relationship is not the kind that you’d think of celebrating on Valentine’s Day. The first three chapters of Hosea tell us, in somewhat graphic detail, about his relationship with his wife, Gomer, and it’s not a pretty picture.

You see, Hosea’s wife cheated on him. She cheated on him and she left him and that was it. After they were married, Gomer had three children. The first, Jezreel, was Hosea’s son. But the following daughter and then son were not even his children. And worst of all, it seems that Hosea was told to marry this woman by God. Now I’ve got to be a bit honest with you, I’m somewhat skeptical of when God starts telling someone what to do with their romantic lives. I mean as a pastor, if someone came to me and told me that God had told them to marry someone else, I would have a hard time taking them seriously. It’s just that I feel that we can sometimes mistake our own emotions for God’s call on our lives. I’ve mentioned before that when it comes to hearing God speak, I am very cautious of my own emotions. I’ve distinctly heard God telling me something in the past only later to discover that it wasn’t God speaking, but my own desires. So I come into Hosea 1 somewhat skeptical. When Hosea states that God told him to marry a woman who was going to be unfaithful to him, I wonder if he might be imagining it. But then in Hosea 3 God comes to him again and tells him to go find his wife, who has left him and has become a slave, and buy her freedom for her and welcome her back… and here’s the clincher… and love her!

Now this is what truly convinces me that Hosea is following God’s command. I’ve seen too many relationships end badly and when somebody has been treated by their spouse as poorly as Hosea was, they aren’t going to find it in themself to love that spouse again. And so we see that God gives Hosea a command. He must take back his wife. He must love her again. But God never gives a command without giving the ability to fulfill that command. So not only did God give Hosea the command to love Gomer, he gave him the love for her he needed. And he did this by showing his own love to his own people, who had been and continued to be unfaithful to him.

God actually does the same for us, showing his love for us even though we are unfaithful to him. He loves us and calls us to join him in that love. Hosea understood this because of the relationship he had with Gomer and therefore he was able to catch a glimpse of God’s love for his people in a way that others haven’t been able to do. We see that love fully displayed in Hosea 11.

II. God’s Love

Hosea 11 begins by telling us about God’s love for his people, particularly Israel. It is truly looked upon as the love of a parent for his child. It even comes across as a motherly love in many ways. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim (a name for Israel… one of Jacob’s sons, particularly, and the tribe that now ruled over Israel) to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek and I bent down to feed them.”

Do you get the energy in that? Do you get the pathos? Do you feel the emotions? God is really hurt when we take him for granted. It pains him. And, just like Israel in the past, we do take God for granted.

II. What God Wants

Hosea talked about two ways that Israel took God for granted, and I fear that we make these same mistakes, though in a slightly different way. First, the people of Israel, though they worshipped God, also worshipped other gods, idols, Baals. Now we don’t necessarily have idols in our homes and offer sacrifices to them, but when you look at what worship really is, you will see that we do allow ourselves to worship things other than God. When someone asks what it is that you worship, the best way to answer this question is by seeing what it is that you spend your time and energy on. We claim to worship God, but many of us only make time for him for an hour on Sunday morning. How is this truly worshipping him with our whole being? We are willing to spend how much time in front of the television, or at a movie theater, or watching sports, or working, or having fun… but we find it difficult to commit to the things of God. So what is it that we worship? Well, I have to work, I have to make a living, I have to support my family. Of course we do, but how many of the things we have are really needed? We live lives where we expect to have things that our parents or grandparents never dreamed of. And then we wear ourselves out so that we can afford these things. And we don’t have the energy for God or for our family because all our energy is going into these things. So, what do we worship?

But worshipping things, putting our time and our energy into things, other than God is not the only sin that Hosea spoke against. He also was angry at Israel for trying to find their deliverance from places other than God. Israel sought out other countries around them to protect them and keep them safe. They paid bribes so that they would not be overtaken by enemies. God didn’t want them to make political deals, rather he just desired that they would trust in him and his way. God wants us to rely on him; not on ourselves, not on our jobs, not on our pastors, not on our political leaders, not on politics in general, but on him.

But, unfortunately, this is something that we are not good at at all. We find ways to take care of ourselves. We feel that it is our responsibility to make sure that we, and our families, are going to be okay. But God has something else in mind. He wants us to turn our troubles and our worries over to him and allow him to be the master of our futures. He wants us to know, truly know, that we are in good hands when we are in his hands.

I was awakened at 2am one morning by a phone message machine. I think that perhaps they thought they were calling a church and not a parsonage. I picked up the phone and listened as a machine told me of what trouble the church today is in. We are beset at every side by the wicked ways of the world around us and if we don’t stand up and fight there will be no next generation of Christians. We need to fight the world around us. We need to battle against these evil people around us ready to do us in. We need to give money to politicians that will help our cause, we need to boycott television shows that encourage godlessness, if we don’t do our job, Christianity is going to fail. There is something of truth in what was being said, but it missed the point. God is not going to fail. He isn’t going to give us a mission where we will not succeed. And he doesn’t want us to rely on boycotts and politicians for his truth to reach the rest of the world. That’s right up there with buying off the Assyrians so they won’t attack us. Rather, God wants us to trust him because he loves us. He wants us to share his message of love with those around us. And once we realize that our lives and our future are in his hands, then we can seek his will to see what is next for us.

For Christmas, Lisa and I got a game from my parents: Dread Pirate. It’s a board game where you roll dice and move across a board and attempt to get jewels and gold from your opponents. It’s a fun game with really fancy parts. I looked up a couple reviews of the game online. People complained about it totally. They liked the production values, but they felt that it was just a dice shoot. They felt that everything was chance and you really had no control over it yourself. They complained because anybody could win it and you really couldn’t come in with a strategy that would help you. I disagree, you can choose to play the game aggressively and take a lot of risks or you can choose to play it conservatively, without as many risks. You can approach the game either way. But unfortunately you never know whether being aggressive or conservative is the right answer for you, because you don’t know what the dice are going to do. This is the truth of our lives as well, we have choices we can make, we can choose how we are going to live, but there are certain things that are completely outside our control. But we aren’t relying on dice and luck… we need to realize that we can rely on God in these circumstances. And more than that, we are relying on a God who loves us in a way that we cannot possibly comprehend. He tells us in Hosea 11:9 that he is God, not a human being. His ways are greater and more wonderful than ours. Are you willing to put yourself in his hands? Are you willing to rely on his love?

Amos 7.7-21 "Plumb Line"

I. Not about Telling the Future

Usually, when you hear about prophecy in the Bible, the first thing you think of is someone telling the future. When we look at prophecy, and therefore prophets, we figure that we are going to find out something about what is going to happen. If you went to a class on “prophecy” this is what you would expect… especially if the class was called “end times prophecy”.

But I’m going to let you in on a secret of the Bible. Okay, it’s not really a secret, but it might as well be one because we sure don’t seem to get it as modern day Christians. The secret is this: the purpose of prophecy in the Bible isn’t to tell the future. Actually, getting the future told is something that is outlawed in scripture. It’s called fortune telling and it is not something that God wants his children to do. Instead, what God desires is for us, his children, to trust the future into his hands. Jesus’ words on this are very clear: “So do not worry, saying, ‘what shall we eat?’ or ‘what shall we drink?’ or ‘what shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” (Matthew 6:31-34)

So, if prophecy isn’t about finding out the future, what is it for? Well, first of all, sometimes prophets do predict the future. This is a part of their message to the people. But it is by no means the center of their message. Kind of like how Jesus healed the sick, but this wasn’t the center of his mission on this earth. And prophecy that predicts the future never does this just for the sake of doing so. No, the predictions are there to help the rest of the prophet’s message. And the rest of the prophet’s message is the important part. What is the rest of the prophet’s message? What is prophecy really about? It is about God communicating his will, his desire, his priorities to his people. The prophet comes to a group of people to tell them what God desires from them. Sometimes they listen to the prophet, other times they don’t. The prophet has many different tools that they may use. Some prophets would heal. Others would tell stories. And many would talk about what will happen to people if they don’t turn from their ways. A prophet doesn’t tell the future just to show off. No, they tell it so that people can know the consequences of their actions and they tell it so that people can know the love of God.

Amos does both these things. He prophecies horrible things that will happen to the nation of Israel if they do not turn from their ways. And at the end of the book, in chapter 9, he prophecies that God will save a group of them, bring them out of their time of trial and give them a wonderful future. Why? Because he loves his people. And so, we see a prophet in the midst of his prophesying, predicting the future, but this is not the center of his message. And yet, when we look at prophecy in the Bible, we often look at it to try to discover what it will say about the future or the present. By doing this we are missing the point. Yes, scripture tells us the future, but again it is made very clear that we cannot expect to understand prophecy until it has already come to pass. But God did want prophecy to show up in scripture, it has a place there, it has a reason. And the reason is to help us understand what it is that God desires from us, his people. And so, as we look at Amos, that we read a piece of today, we can see what it is that God desires from us.

II. A Shepherd Prophet

Now, Amos was by no means the first of the prophets to the people of Israel. We have Elijah, Elisha, Samuel and many more that came before him. And there were actually schools in Amos’ day where people trained to be prophets. Again, people weren’t being trained to tell the future, but to share God’s truth with God’s people. Basically, the prophet schools were like seminary and the “sons of prophets” were seminary students. But Amos did bring something new to his message. He was the first writer prophet. He shared his message orally, speaking it out to those who needed to hear it. But then he went back home and wrote down his message as well, perhaps realizing that the message God had given him was for more than just those who he had spoken it to. And it is a good thing, for when we look at Amos’ message we see that it speaks to us, here, today.

Amos was not popular with the religious leaders in his day. We read this morning about a priest who came to him telling him to go back home and make his living in his own town. This is where Amos made it clear that he wasn’t a prophet by his own choice. It wasn’t a living for him. Instead, it was a call that had been put upon his heart by God. He wasn’t giving his message to make money or to make himself famous. He hadn’t gone to school to become a prophet. No, God had given him a message, and as God’s follower, as God’s child, he could do nothing but share that message. And so a shepherd found himself preaching God’s truth to people who did not want to hear it.

We all aren’t called to be prophets, but God does put a call on our lives as well. I go back to 1^st Corinthians 12 where we are told that the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to each of us, his children. What are you doing with the gift God has given you? You could just go back to what you’ve done your whole life or you could step out like Amos did and use that gift, whatever it may be, to further God’s kingdom.

III. Measuring Up

Amos has an important question for the people of his day. And I think it’s an important question that we need to ask today. The question is this: Do you measure up?

Are you living the life that God has called you to? Oh, you’re here at church. You sing your worship. You make sacrifices. But are you measuring up? Amos has some harsh words for us. He tells us that God hates religious feasts and assemblies when the people are not living out God’s call in their lives. That’s a pretty harsh word, “hate”. He uses another one, “despise”. You see, the people of the day were worshipping God and doing the things they thought they should do with their spiritual lives. But they weren’t letting their worship of God carry over to the rest of their lives. They took advantage of the poor. They thought that since life was good it meant that God was blessing them and they could do anything they wanted. So they sold people who owed them money into slavery. They took bribes from the rich so they could do whatever they wanted. They treated the wealthy with justice, but justice did not extend to the poor. And because they did not let true justice rule them, their worship was meaningless to God.

Amos says that God is holding up a plumb line to us, to our structure to our faith, to our devotion. He is checking to see if we are built straight. Now, this is a dangerous message because it seems to go against our understanding of the gospel. It can possibly come across as some sort of works righteousness. But it is not. Works righteousness tells us that we are saved by doing things. Amos isn’t talking about our salvation. Rather, he is talking about something much more important. More important than salvation? How can that be? No, what Amos is talking about is whether we are truly following God. What Amos is checking us for is to see if we are living the life that God calls us to. The people in Amos’ day did not measure up. They were worshipping good, but they did not live out the justice they claimed to follow. Do we as individuals measure up? Do we as a church measure up? Do we as a society measure up? I don’t believe so. But I don’t think it is because of all the moral sins in the society around us. I think it is because we don’t allow God’s justice to rule our decision-making. I think we are making the same mistake that the people of Amos’ day made. We think that the stuff we have is proof that God approves of our lifestyle. It doesn’t. I move you back to that plumb line. Do you measure up? Are you built straight? Are you built on the rock that is Jesus? Many of us have faith in Christ but it is built on sand. You may ask how can that be, if the faith is in Christ how can it be built on sand? I think that a large part of it is that many people’s faith is built on fear, and fear is a sandy foundation, one that will not last. Perhaps we come to faith because we are afraid of some sin we may have committed. Perhaps we come to faith because we are afraid of the unknown. Most likely we come to faith because we are afraid of what will happen to us when we die.

But there is a much better call to faith than fear. Of course, this is God’s love through Jesus. When we realize that God loves us for who we are. When we realize that God loves all people, then our faith is built on the solid rock. Then we will find that we are sturdy and strong and we will find ourselves living out the life that God has called us to. Our response to Jesus, the rock, will be to love others as we love ourselves. We will be able to do this because we will know God’s love for us. And when our faith is built on God’s love then we will live the lives of justice that Amos, the shepherd prophet, calls us to. Amen.