One of the really interesting things about being a pastor is seeing how people respond when they find out what you do for a living.

I imagine every profession has its own stories about this.

I had a friend who was once at a party and told someone he had just started med school, and the person he had just met suddenly rolled up his sleeve and said, “Oh, that’s so great because for the last couple of weeks I’ve had this really strange rash all over my arms….”

Well, as you might imagine pastors encounter a little bit of that, too.

There are many who say, “Wow, that’s great!” and others who say, “…Oh, that’s nice…”

But one of the responses that I receive always leaves me curious and rarely satisfied.

Because it would amaze you to know the number of people who say, “Oh, you’re a pastor? Well, I went to Catholic school.”

Sometimes they’ll even shudder as they tell you that before smiling nervously and saying, “The nuns didn’t like me there. I asked too many questions.”

More than once. I’m telling you.

And with that, they often look off over my shoulder for a moment and then mumble something about going to freshen their beverage before beating a hasty retreat.

It’s not just Catholic school alums, either, of course. Not by a long shot.

Many people will talk about a childhood in church as a strange experience of great love, great care, and great limits.

It can be painful to grow up in churches or in faithful families, and become aware of the difference between the way we talk about God as Christians, or about the importance of our faith, and then how we talk about the world, or about particular groups within the world.

It can be painful to grow up in churches or in faithful families, and become aware of the questions we have about those moments in life when the explanations, the answers, the truths that we affirm don’t seem to cover all the issues…and yet to see, or just know without being told, that our questions are not welcome.

Sometimes that grandmother who is so wonderful to us will come out with words that we’ll never forget—words that burn and bewilder us decades later—but which there was no way to ask about then, and for which there is no way to ask about now.

As I said: great love, great care, and great limits.

II.

 Then you add on top of that that each of us knows and recognizes God, or the Holy, or the meaningful, in our own particular ways.

Not only are our questions different, but what feels like a genuine answer may be different, too.

That makes sense, right?

I mean, for those among us who have been married, how did you know—really know—for the first time when your spouse loved you?

Some would say it was when she stopped rooting for Wisconsin and started rooting for Notre Dame.

Maybe it was when he agreed to give up being Methodist and to become Congregationalist instead.

Whatever the specifics of it were, surely, it was some moment when you felt listened to, or seen, or cared about in a way that you never quite had been before.

That’s what love is like.

On the surface of it, why that was the specific thing that made you feel truly loved may seem to make no sense at all. But to you, it makes all the sense in the world.

How it is we know the things we know – how it is that we know what’s true – is something that is probably unique to each of us.

That’s true of our spouses, or about so many parts of our lives that we discover we have fallen in love with.

And it reminds us of the fact that, when it comes to God, we know God’s presence…we recognize God’s character…we feel God’s love for us…each in our own particular ways.

III.

That’s also why the story of “Doubting Thomas” from John’s Gospel is such an important story.

Now let’s admit that John himself might not agree with this reminder that God speaks to us in all our particularity–much less our doubt.

John tells this story because he has some profound concerns about doubt. Some doubts about doubt.

He tells us the story to commend those who come after the disciples, as he did, and as his first audience did.

He wants to commend the faith of those can believe in Jesus without being able to touch him, the way that Thomas did.

He’s saying that at a certain point, you have to trust, and that is absolutely true.

In the King James Version, Jesus tells Thomas, “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing” (20:27).

“Be not faithless, but believing.”

You can almost imagine a million churches with that carved in stone right over the front door.

(Actually, I’m surprised to say that I haven’t actually seen that before.)

But let’s admit that what the churches seem to mean by that may well be different than what Jesus meant.

Because certainly, Jesus understood that to believe is no simple thing.

Certainly, Jesus understood that doubts and questions are part of what it is to be faithful.

Let’s remember that among the very last words of Jesus on the cross were the words we have come to call his “cry of dereliction”—which is when he says, “O God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus understands doubt. He doesn’t just know about doubt. He knows doubt first-hand.

IV.

And so what if…what if…the point of this story is not to somehow condemn the reality of doubt in the life of Thomas or in the life of anyone else?

To me, the story’s deeper significance is in pushing us to think about how it is we know the things we know.

Is Jesus someone that we know about? Or is he someone we know?

How would you and I each tell the story of how it is that we first encountered him? And how would we say that we encounter him now?

What Thomas gets, in a way and perhaps, to a degree that is unique among all the disciples, is that to be a Christian is not simply to believe in an incarnational God.

To be a Christian is to be part of the love of God for God’s world in specifically incarnational ways.

The language he speaks of touching Jesus is not gentle, truth be told.

Our text this morning has Thomas say, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

The original Greek makes it clear that he isn’t talking about gentle caresses, or some other form of loving touch as we would typically imagine it.

The King James is closer when it translates it as “Except I…thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

His language is intense, actually almost violent in character.

But what it means is that Thomas is willing, almost uniquely among the disciples, to get into the blood and guts of what it is to believe.

So say what you want about his questions.

If the way he talks sounds skeptical and scandalous to you, as it has to so many, you are more than welcome to that opinion.

But recognize that those questions lead Thomas into places that nobody else had thought or dared to go.

And that’s what an incarnational faith is all about.

Thomas reminds us that, however it is that we know, we are called as Christians to get into the blood and guts of the world.

If that is where our questions lead us, then they are not simply our questions. They may well be God’s questions.

In a world of great love, great care, and great limits, so often it is our questions–it is the ways that God reaches out particularly to each of us–that bring us back to God and send us back to work.

It is our questions that thrust us into a love without limits. A love that will not let us go.

That is what Thomas encountered in his doubting.

Go thou and do likewise.

Dear Friends of Second Church,

This afternoon I was quicker than the pediatrician’s office and went to pick up a prescription at CVS, only to find myself there (“It’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes, Mr. Grant…”) with a little more time to kill than usual.

I suppose I could have just fallen into my smartphone and left it at that.

But a place like CVS always reminds me that I’ve been meaning to resupply the medicine cabinet, and so I started wandering the store, looking for what I thought I might remember needing if I just saw it one more time.

I was good at recalling the stuff that had dwindled over the winter—cough drops, NyQuil, and whatnot. But the other stuff didn’t come back to me so quickly, and my wandering slowed…Wait, which one is Liz’s toothpaste, again? Did I get a big thing of Q-Tips in my stocking at Christmas this year, or was it last year? Wow, what was it someone told me about “compression socks”? That I should have some or that I shouldn’t?

After a few slow trips up and down the aisles, I was almost ready just to buy one of everything and call it a day.

Fortunately, they called out my prescription and I made it outside with what I had come for, plus a pair of kiddie sunglasses with Elsa from “Frozen” on the frames (no you can’t borrow them).

Yet it also makes me think about all the other things in life we might remember needing if we just saw them one more time.

It might be strange to put it this way, but life, in general, can so easily come to feel like a slow, uncertain trip up and down the aisles of the world.

These days, there are so many people who seem to be searching.

What it is they’re looking for? They can’t quite say. How will they know when they’ve found it? Well, they’re hoping they just will, somehow.

If only they could see “it” again, they’d surely recognize it…whatever it is.

Are they looking for something they truly need, or just, well, restocking the medicine cabinet–replenishing their supplies of whatever it is that helps them get through for now?

It’s easy to enough to see how that happens.

To me, so many of the challenges of our lives are fundamentally spiritual ones, and yet the solutions that come most quickly to us—and the ones that our friends are most likely to offer—so rarely are.

“Just try this,” says one.

“You know, what you need is…” suggests someone else.

Part of my hope for Easter every year is that searching people will find their way to churches like ours, and suddenly remember that, in the end, God is what they have been looking for.

So many important feelings point in God’s direction. A sense of being loved by the Universe. A call to a higher purpose. Gratitude. The feeling of being deeply alive. The power to forgive.

It won’t sell much in the aisles of CVS to say so, but these are the feelings we most dream of having again—the feelings that life’s challenges and disappointments seem to drain out of us, at least for a time.

We need to feel them constantly–to refresh our supplies when they get low.

More to the point, settling for anything else is just treating the symptoms of our maladies, rather than getting to the cause, much less the cure.

Easter is a reminder of what it is to be made whole again.

Think about it. Look around. Maybe you didn’t consider yourself actively in the market for Easter hope, for new life in God, for the wholeness and health represented by the Hebrew word shalom…but isn’t it what you’ve been looking for?

Isn’t that really what you came in search of, after all? Don’t you remember?
See you in church,

I.

I’d like to begin with a story this morning. It’s known as “The Rabbi’s Gift.”

It’s about a Russian monastery that, truth be told, had seen better days.

Although the monastery had once been vast, now, there were only four or five monks left.

The grounds of the monastery had gotten hard to keep up, and had started to grow wild. Many of the buildings were no longer habitable.

The Daily Office of prayers and hymns in the chapel had a distinctly half-hearted feel. There were just too few voices joining in now. You couldn’t cover the gloom.

It was a hard time.

The abbot of the monastery, who was a wise and devoted monk, prayed fervently on all this, but even he could see the handwriting on the wall, and tried to resign himself to what seemed to be the will of God—that the monastery would have to close.

But then one day, an old woman who still occasionally came to visit mentioned the local rabbi, who led a tiny community in the nearby town. She talked about how the rabbi was respected for his great humility and wisdom. The abbot decided to go seek his advice.

He walked into town and knocked on the rabbi’s door. The rabbi was, of course, surprised to see a monk standing there, but he invited him in, and the two men sat down.

The abbot poured out his heart, as the rabbi listened. Then the rabbi poured out his own heart, talking about the challenges of life in his congregation, as the abbot listened.   At the end, the two men realized how much they had in common, and they wept together and embraced.

But as the abbot began to leave, the rabbi said, “Friend, I do not know the answer to your challenges, any more than I know the answer to my own. However, I do know this. Even now, somewhere, the Messiah is among you and your brothers. “

With these words, the two men parted.

As the abbot walked back to the monastery, he thought about what the rabbi had said.

It seemed very clear that the Messiah couldn’t be among the brothers of the monastery. He was the abbot, after all, and he knew his brothers better than anyone.

He thought about his brothers. Well, he thought, it certainly couldn’t be Father Peter.

Peter was so bookish and awkward and looked past you when you tried to talk to him. He couldn’t be the Messiah. But then the abbot thought: well, that’s all true, and yet, even after all these years as a monk, whenever they read the Gospels during the divine service, Father Peter’s eyes still filled with tears.

Maybe he was the Messiah.

Well, in any case, the abbot thought, it couldn’t be Father Vladimir.

Vladimir was a novice master who hadn’t had any novices to train in twenty years. Vladimir kept talking about the old days and was known to wander sadly through the empty dormitory where the monks had once lived, like a man looking for something precious he had lost. He was a sad figure among them. Maybe the saddest of all.

But then the abbot thought: well, there was that day last year when a family with two small children had shown up unannounced, and Vladimir had taken such great delight in the children and made them laugh all afternoon.

Maybe he was the Messiah.

The abbot thought of each of the monks at the monastery, in turn, and while each one had his shortcomings, to his surprise, even so, he could make a case for each one of them as the Messiah.

That night, he told the other monks what the rabbi had said, and they all laughed at once, laughing together for the first time in years.

They knew it wasn’t true.

And yet, in the days that followed, something did change among them.

A new kindness seemed to have crept into their life together. They each seemed to have a new resolve to make their community more worthy of the Messiah, just in case he was there, whichever of them he was.

The monks began to tend the grounds of the monastery more carefully again. They began to repair the old buildings. They prayed more deeply, cared for one another more sincerely—and it was clear that once again, they were truly starting to feel and act like brothers.

And to their surprise, after a period of time, families began to arrive to walk the grounds on a Sunday. Some stayed for services in the chapel and said how moved they were by the singing of the monks. A local woman wrote seeking spiritual guidance for a challenging situation. One day, a young man arrived, asking if they thought he might be suited for the life of a monk.

And slowly, the monastery came alive again.

The monks in the folktale never told anyone what the rabbi had said about the Messiah.

If you ask me, that’s probably just as well. Was one of them the Messiah? Well, probably not.

But in a deeper sense, it’s clear that they did feel the presence of the Messiah among them once again. Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.

This transformed everything.

II.

And you know, it still transforms everything.

To me, that’s what makes this an Easter story.

Because I think we can draw a line from those monks all the way back to those two followers of Jesus who encountered the living reality of God as they walked on the road to Emmaus on the afternoon of that first Easter.

The two disciples didn’t recognize Jesus at first. Actually, they didn’t recognize Jesus for a good long while.

But when they finally did—when Jesus broke the bread and blessed it and their eyes were opened and they recognized him—when that happened, they realized that, of course, of course it was Jesus who had been with them.

They should have known.

It was almost like in the story, when the rabbi said, “Even now, the Messiah is among you.”

He was.

They should have known it by the way their hearts were set aglow…by the way their hearts burned within them as he spoke.

And that’s important.

Because that’s what it is to encounter God as a living reality. That’s what it is to encounter the Christ of Easter.

It is to have your heart set aglow, to have your heart start burning within you.

And the reason that the Church celebrates Easter is not simply because this encounter happened once, miraculous though that was.

The Church celebrates Easter because a line can be drawn from the two men on that dusty road straight to you and me.

We can draw that line from their hearts to ours.

It’s something that happens again and again—it’s the quiet heartbeat of all Creation.

We hear that heartbeat in all kinds of places – places far less likely even than the road to Emmaus.

Given the heartbreak of Good Friday; given the way that evil seemed to triumph over good; given the way that at the foot of the cross, hope seemed to fall short yet again—given all that, it’s understandable—even smart—that the first instinct of the two disciples was to run away from Jerusalem and from the other followers of Jesus as fast as possible.

We all know what it is to look around and feel like we can see the writing on the wall.

But on the road to Emmaus, the disciples encounter a new reality. They encounter the fact that the rules have changed. That God has changed the rules.

And so it is even now that when we hear—when we see—when we touch the love of God…when we sense the presence of the Jesus…in our own lives…we encounter that new reality for ourselves.

Our priorities shift, our attention focuses.

We begin to see beyond the horizon of our own needs, beyond our inclination to play it safe, beyond the temptation to settle for the obvious answers.

Our own capacity for love becomes intertwined with the living reality of God’s love.

That changes everything.

III.

Many of you know that two weeks ago, Liz and our girls and I went to visit family.

It was also our first opportunity to meet some new relatives.

My cousin P. and her husband K. have begun the adoption process for three siblings, truly lovely, joyful kids but with a wide spread in their ages and very different kinds of needs that flow from that.
It’s never easy to be a new parent, even for one new addition.

Imagine three.

Now imagine being the new parent of a near teen, a second grader, and a preschooler, all with the stroke of a pen and the purchase of a minivan.

Well, there’s actually a little more to the story.

Because two months into life as a new family, my cousin P.’s husband, K., became gravely ill. It came out of nowhere, and it’s been slow to resolve. It is the kind of illness that would have up-ended their old life. But you can imagine what it means now.

For my cousin, it means long days, and a tremendous burden that is hers to carry.

The kind of burden that all the help in the world can only ease but so much.

There are so many days that have been hard for her – harder than she ever thought possible

P. worries that she’s not cut out for this—that she just isn’t able to do everything the way she wants to, which is to say, she is frustrated that she cannot do everything perfectly.

But you know, perfection is not called for.

Because the heart that burns within her is so very clear.

Because seeing her with her new children, in all the chaos, confusion and complexity, you can hear it.

You can hear quiet heartbeat of Creation.

What was so clearly present in our time with our new family was not just the tremendous strength and courage of my cousin.

Somehow in it all, you could feel the love and presence of God.

Something sacred is happening. Jesus is there.

And as a pastor, I can tell you, there are so many people who can tell stories just like that.

IV.

The word “resurrection” comes from the Latin resurgere, from which we also get the word “resurgent.” But at its root the word resurrection means “to rise again.”

And so it is the Christian claim that, because Christ has risen again, his all-seeing faithfulness, his all-powerful love, and his ever-present hope are resurgent, even in the face of death.

And so it is in him that you and I and all Creation can find the power to rise again.

That’s what made those hearts burn on the road to Emmaus, on the late afternoon of that first Easter.

That’s what those monks rediscovered in that Russian monastery.

And I am here to testify that in so many places and so many ways, it’s what makes our hearts burn within us today.

Even within this dark and profoundly unsettled time, there are those who live in the light of a new reality.

Jesus is risen. But that’s not to say he’s far—it is to say that the Messiah is among us, even now.

He’s among us in the breaking of bread, in the breaking of all oppression, in the repair of the world.

Wherever life triumphs over death and diminishment. Jesus is there. Jesus is here.

He died, not so that he might enter heaven, but so that he might enter every human heart.

It’s happening even now. Even here.

Easter reminds us to open our eyes and recognize him.

 

Alleluia.

Has everyone here heard of the current popular singer Adele? Show of hands—have you heard of her?

If you haven’t heard of her, Adele is a mega-star, famous for her incredibly rich and sultry voice, but also for her songwriting, which includes a James Bond theme, but which tends to focus on very, very painful romantic breakups.

In fact, she’s so famous for her songs about lost love and being dumped that people have started rating their own past breakups as being a scale “between 1 and Adele.”

But what you need to know this morning is simply that she is a mega star who performs in big venues all around the world. She is one of those people who actually gets by in life with only having a first name.

So you may be surprised to learn that several months ago, the BBC put Adele up to taking part in a contest—a contest of Adele impersonators.

She was given a fake nose and chin and changed her hair a bit, and told everyone her name was Jenny, that her day job was being a nanny.

The other contestants complimented her on how much she looked like the real Adele—and many of them, of course, also looked like Adele.

She was nervous before going out in front of the judges—who were in on the whole thing.

The other contestants told her she’d be great. Nobody was catty or trying to intimidate anyone. In fact, once each contestant had sung her song, she sat in the audience to cheer on the other contestants.

So the real Adele went last.

Though the other singers only just met this new girl, Jenny, they cheered her on as she walked to the microphone.

The intro starts. She messes up. They pull for her as one of their own.

And within about two measures of Adele’s singing, one of the impersonators snaps back in her chair, as if she’s gotten an electric shock. Her eyes are as wide as saucers.

By the time Adele is halfway through the first verse, all of the other impersonators know that it’s the real Adele who is singing for them.

And they start singing the song right back at her. Many of them are crying.

Because of course, to them, she is so much more than a singer that they like and feel like they can resemble for fun and profit.

She feels like someone that they actually know.   Someone they can actually relate to. Someone who has been there when their own breakups and disappointments were all too real.

And so to meet her, to be with her, to have her singing right to them, was this deeply emotional moment.

II. 

I’m starting with that story this morning because it reminds me that there is such a deep difference between impressing people and inspiring them.

And that’s worth remembering on Palm Sunday because, in so many ways, it is the contrast between impressing people and inspiring them that lies at the heart of this day.

Palm Sunday is the day when Jesus enters Jerusalem, riding a donkey, and the crowds who are on their way up to the city for Passover celebrate him as a conquering hero, cheering him onward and throwing palms and branches before him to make him a highway.

It must have been something.

But it wasn’t impressive—and what can be hard to remember is that it wasn’t supposed to be.

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

What you also need to remember is that literally across the city, coming in one of the other gates that same day, would have been Pontius Pilate and a Roman legion, entering the city as conquerors there to remind the conquered—with all the theater of power that this entailed: gleaming uniforms, handsome horses, precise movements, and impeccable postures.

There arrival was designed to impress—to intimidate—and to remind the onlookers of their place in the world, which was to say, the Romans were there to remind the people that they didn’t have much of a place at all, unless Rome said so.

So when Jesus arrives, on the other side of town, slouched on a donkey, maybe wearing his hood to shield his head from the sun, almost like an invalid, well, there wasn’t much of the air of a conquering hero about him.

Not by Roman standards, anyway.

Yet it was a bold move, just the same, and the people loved him for it.

But more than that, I think Jesus genuinely inspired people.

And so, if some of the crowd on Palm Sunday was there cheering on Jesus because the whole thing seemed like a stunt, and that was fun, well…there were also plenty of others who were there because who Jesus was…the kind of world he talked about…the people he noticed…the people he loved…all mattered to them.

They were there because Jesus had given them language for something, maybe in the way that a song seems to give us language for something that we’d never quite had before.

Jesus inspired them, and that was absolutely real.

I like to think that maybe some of the Rich Man’s brothers had found their way into that crowd. And that the Prodigal Son was there with his older brother. That the Good Samaritan was there with the man he’d helped.

Or in any case, that some of the people who had heard those stories somewhere or other were there, and that they saw one another for the first time, and realized that they had something so important in common.

That they were almost family, even though they’d never met before then.

Because, of course, that’s what happens when we are inspired. We see connections that we hadn’t seen before. We feel drawn in.

There is a world of difference between finally finding your people and, once again, being put in your place.

And I think that’s why Jesus was so incredibly important to people even if they encountered him only briefly.

He represented the notion that our people—whoever it is, and whatever that means—is out there to be found. That, in God, who we really are will be revealed at last. And that God is searching for us even now.

It wasn’t about being impressive. It was about being authentic.

And that inspired people to change their lives. To drop everything and follow him. It inspired them to believe.

III.

Now, when you put it that way, it makes it sound as if Rome never had a chance.

That in the battle between impressing people and inspiring them, inspiration must always win.

Maybe in the end—at the very end—it must.

Maybe all those signs on water towers and billboards in the rural South that say “Jesus Saves” should get repainted to say “Jesus Wins.”

I believe he will.

And yet, maybe you agree with me that sometimes in our world, we Christians can start to sound as if we are more interested in impressing people than inspiring them, and that all too often, this does not help the cause.

We like to think that the choice is always clear.

The fact is, the choice is not clear at every moment in our lives.

As much as we may hunger for inspiration and hope to live in the light of what’s inspired us, we still have that side of us that longs to be impressed, and to impress.

The Romans paraded that way because it worked—and it still works.

Power and control speak to us in any number of ways, and in any number of contexts.

Part of us always longs to know our place in the scheme, and is willing to jockey for a better one, and that is not unimportant (although you’ll notice that I’m phrasing that carefully).

But the power of Jesus…what was so important about who he was…what he taught, was that he told us that the scheme was so much bigger than the Romans could ever understand.

The scheme was more than big enough for each and every one of us to have a place within it—and it was the kind of place that was worth having.

Sad to say, there were many in the crowd on that first Palm Sunday who would quickly forget that.

There were some who cheered Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, who a few short days later would cheer his death upon a cross just outside the city walls on the other side of town, not far from where the Romans had marched in.

But we can choose to remember.

We can choose to live our lives as people who were and are inspired. We can choose the path of Jesus.

That’s what Palm Sunday offers us. It’s a reminder of that choice—and a challenge to make it for Jesus again each day.

You and I may not be able to sing like Adele. (O.k., so Lisbeth can.)

But how we wear the graces we’ve been given makes just as big a difference.

How it is we live makes just as big a difference.

The choice is just as much before us.

What will be? The helmet or the palm?

May we seek the grace always to choose the palm.

 

Amen.

A few years ago, just after I came to Greenwich, I was called by a New York City wedding planner and told that I was being invited to interview for a celebrity wedding. The wedding was going to be out in the Hamptons the following August.

Now, truth be told, the wedding planner did not come out and say, “celebrity.” Instead, she said something more along the lines of, “a prominent couple,” or “a couple in the public eye,” or some other euphemism.

But however it was that she said it, I caught her drift.

Unfortunately, I was so curious about the “celebrity” part—however it was she put it—that I did not give much thought to the whole “you’ve been invited to interview” part.

That’s kind of a strange way to talk to a pastor.  We pastors like to think of ourselves as the ones doing the interviewing—trying to get a sense of a couple’s readiness for marriage, looking for signs that indeed, God has joined their lives.

But I was intrigued, and probably a little flattered, and so, off I went into New York for the day, wondering who the mystery couple might be.

So I’ll tell you the punch line now. I never did find out. In terms of the interview, I didn’t make it any further than the lobby of the wedding planner’s apartment building.

The whole interview was there in the lobby, and took less than ten minutes. She came with a list of questions.

Was I o.k. with wearing a suit instead of a robe? Did I have a double breasted suit?

Was I familiar with how to work with a videography team?

Was I o.k. with making the Apache Wedding Prayer a big part of the service?

I thought she was gearing up to confirm that I would sign a non-disclosure agreement, which would have been fine, but it never got to that, because I sank my whole adventure by asking my own question.

I was not trying to prove a point, but since we were talking logistics, then I thought it was important to ask when the couple and I would be able to meet for pre-marital counseling.

This stopped everything.

“I’m sorry, what?” asked the wedding planner.

I tried to explain. I wasn’t fishing for secrets. I was trying to help them come to terms with what it was to be joining lives.

Now, it should have seemed funny, of course, needing to explain pre-marital counseling to a wedding planner—to someone who plans weddings for a living, but these are strange times we live in, so I pressed ahead.

“Well, you know, in the Church, we see love as a holy mystery,” I began.

She cut me off.

“I can assure you that they are both highly spiritual people,” she replied, looking at me pointedly.

I could see that we were pretty much done.

Still, I kept at it.

But after another moment, the wedding planner cut me off again.

“Well, Mr. Grant,” she said, “I can see you’re very attached to your way of doing things. Thanks so much for your time.”

And that was that.

I probably should have seen it coming.

But what stayed with me was the window I had been given onto  a whole world I’d scarcely known existed—a world of handlers and assistants and multiple layers of insulation between people in the public eye and other people—those multiple layers that are put in place for their protection, for their best shot at privacy…or for maintaining a certain tone in their daily lives.

My glimpse into that world, brief as it was, made me feel like that could be a hard and very isolated way to live.

II.

On the other hand, this morning’s parable reminds us not to be too sympathetic.

It reminds us that, when push comes to shove, such a life wouldn’t be that hard.

After all, the way Jesus tells it, the Rich Man lives quite, quite well.

Indeed, he is leading a fairly contented life as a bold-faced name, living his days in a party-hearty kind of way, insulated by any number of layers from the rest of us, and from what we can tell, unrepentantly so.

What’s more, Jesus makes clear that this is especially insulated in the case of this rich man, because, at his very gates, underneath his very nose, we’re told there is a poor man, named Lazarus, who is suffering any number of indignities.

The fact that Lazarus is named in the parable, while the Rich Man is not, should tell us where Jesus’ own loyalties lie.

Lazarus’ sufferings are spelled out in aching detail. The only specifics we get about the Rich Man are about his fancy clothes, big meals, and front gate.

But then Lazarus and the Rich Man both die, and now the Rich Man is the one condemned to suffer. He looks up and sees Lazarus being comforted in heaven by Father Abraham.

The Rich Man hopes for mercy, just one finger dipped in cool water to ease the scorching heat of Hell for even a second, and yet, it probably comes as no surprise to us when he is told that a great chasm separates heaven and hell, and that any help from heaven is now impossible.

In life, you see, the Rich Man enjoyed the many layers of separation between him and the rest of the world—but it turns out that, in the process, he’s been digging his own eternal chasm, and now there is no way back.

And so part of what this morning’s parable wants us to ask ourselves is this: are we building bridges or digging chasms?

These are important questions for us.

III.

 

I can’t imagine anyone digs chasms on purpose.

But we do put layers between us and other people.

Sometimes, it’s important that we do.

For example, who hasn’t made the mistake of taking a cell phone call in the middle of a much-needed vacation, only to get pulled into something that could easily have waited?

Who hasn’t been at a party, seen someone in particular across the room, and felt like you just weren’t up for it on that particular night, and so made a particular point of steering clear?

Who doesn’t regret having been pushed to say yes to something, knowing we should have said no in the first place?

So let’s not suggest that layers between others and us are bad in all circumstances.

The problem is that if we’re not careful, those layers can start to seem all too good.

Returning to the parable, it isn’t that the Rich Man is cruel. It’s that he has become insensitive…or at least, desensitized. Maybe he always was. Maybe he has become so. The story does not specify.

However, much as the Rich Man enjoys his comfort in life, it is clear that ultimately, he pays for having removed himself from life, in general, and even as close as the life on his own doorstep.

He pays for having chosen to live in a kind of contentment that Jesus ultimately finds false.

The Rich Man pays for having placed so many layers of insulation between his life and the life of Lazarus…between his life and life in general.

And the great tragedy of it, of course, is that it did not have to be that way.

It was not supposed to be that way.

God wants something better for us.

What if, instead of digging chasms, we committed our lives to building bridges instead?

What if, instead of screening things out, we commit ourselves to being people who notice?

The story of the Rich Man is the story of someone who is literally hell-bent on preserving a very sad, superficial, and frankly, temporary way of living.

But a deeper, more joyous, and more enduring way is open to us.

So this week, the Gospel challenges us to notice. To reach out. To make time. To hear someone’s story. To start building a bridge.

The Gospel challenges us to pull away some of the layers we have put in place between our lives and the rest of the world, or at the very least, to notice them, and ask ourselves what it is we might be screening out, and missing out on.

The Gospel challenges us to remember that, throughout his ministry, Jesus us pointed us toward a day when all the gates would be thrown open—not simply the gates of every great house, but the gates of every human heart.

Jesus imagined a day when the great banquet would not be some gluttonous exercise in self-indulgence, but a feast that welcomed all people, where the greatest honor was not being the first one served, but the first to serve.

That was his way of doing things.

The question before us is if it will be ours, too.

Amen.

 

 

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the ones that people love.

Even outside Christian circles, even among people who have never picked up a Bible or heard it read out loud, plenty of folks can tell you the story.

Whether they themselves are prodigals, or not, it’s just a story that people know and love.

There are a million and one stories like it, in a general way.

There are a million and one stories of a young man leaving home and encountering challenges along the road, culminating in some sort of struggle with good and evil itself, and even a journey into some kind of netherworld, only to emerge with a new awareness of himself—and to return home, changed.

Whew.

That’s also the plot of “Star Wars,” after all. And Huckleberry Finn. And, for that matter, “Jack and the Beanstalk.”

You can rattle it off like that because it’s also the hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell in his wonderful book on world mythology, called The Hero With A Thousand Faces.

But what makes the Prodigal a different kind of hero is that his struggles are entirely of his own making—the circumstances of his leaving home, the circumstances of his own suffering and struggle, the netherworld he enters of poverty and starvation and being less important than the pigs he’s put in charge of—all that is absolutely his own fault.

It’s also true that he doesn’t encounter a magical helper along the way–Campbell’s book tells us always to keep a lookout for the magical helper. But there isn’t one here.

Maybe there doesn’t need to be. The struggle between good and evil in this hero’s journey is confined to what’s going on in the heart and the head of the Prodigal himself.

The fact is, magic can’t really help you with that.

But however it is, then, that the Prodigal son has his moment of clarity, whatever it is that says to him, “Wow, this is just rock bottom. This is just not going to work. I need to change my life”…however it is that he comes to that moment, the key thing is simply that he has that moment…that he finds that clarity.

And to me there is as much grace in that simple, unexplained moment with nobody else around, as there is in all the moments of encounter that follow.

The Prodigal’s return to life begins at that moment.

But the reason people love the story is not because of the moment of clarity. It’s not the first grace that amazes everyone, but the second one.

The reason people love the story is because of the father—the man that the Prodigal has treated so selfishly and impertinently.

As the Prodigal begins his journey home, he knows what he has coming to him.

But when he arrives, it turns out that he doesn’t have to do any convincing, any pleading, or any currying of either favor or pity.

He’s greeted not according to what he deserves, but according to the love of the father, who it turns out, hasn’t really been angry so much as worried sick.

The father is relieved beyond measure, and so greets the Prodigal Son with love and generosity and gratitude for his deliverance.

More grace. Grace overflowing.

And of course, the deeper point there is that we’re being told about a God who never gives up on us. A God who is prepared to love us even when we make mistakes, and even when some of those mistakes are doozies, and even when they are directed somehow at Him.

The father in this morning’s parable is generous, almost to a fault. He rejoices in the son who once was lost and now is found, was blind but now can see.

More grace.

That’s why people love this parable, even if they’re not Christian. Even if they don’t believe in God. It’s that second kind of grace that people seem to talk about.

We love the story because we’d like so much to believe that the Universe works that way…or at the very least, that there are people like that out there.

II.

So it’s no wonder that if you asked the average person to tell you the story of the Prodigal Son, their version would probably build toward that second grace.

It would end up with that image of father and son embracing out there where the road meets the driveway, happily ever after.

But the story doesn’t end there, with the hero returning home a chastened and changed man.

The story doesn’t end there, because it turns out that not all of the Prodigal’s accounts are squared that quickly.

It turns out that there’s another chapter to tell.

Because the father is not the only one living under that roof.   There is also the older brother, and he is not so easily swayed by the sheer joy and relief of the Prodigal’s return.

On the contrary.

The older brother comes home from another long day in the fields, and hears the music and sees what’s up, and his reaction is not joy and relief, but rather shock, and rage, and deep, deep resentment, which is still just sort of hanging there at the end.

And I would submit to you that this is where some of the parable’s most important wisdom is to be found.

The real wisdom of this parable is in how it puts those two moments of grace in tension with one another.

God’s love is comforting and welcoming and forgiving…and real beyond all measure. At the same time, God’s love is pushing us to do the long, lonely, and painstaking work of fixing what is broken in this world, and especially, God calls us to acknowledge what it is that we have broken and to do our best to fix it.

In the Prodigal’s first moment of clarity, when he “comes to himself,” I think what we may be seeing is the very first inkling of that God-given push in the heart of the Prodigal to fix what he has broken.

And actually, that may be the bigger story.

Because to me, at least, the story of how that resentment will resolve is not answered in the parable as Jesus tells it. And that’s because it can’t be.

Because the older brother’s resentment can’t be answered in a hug, or in a single night—in one dramatic gesture.

It’s not because he’s petty or cruel or spiritually immature.   It’s because his hurt is real.

The brokenness of the relationship of the two brothers is real.

And so if the older brother’s forgiveness is to be real, something more patient will be required.

The Prodigal needs to show that he’s committed to that.

That is part of the emotional debt that the Prodigal must repay.

And that why I’d say it was that first moment back in the distant country—the moment when the Prodigal came to himself and began the journey back home, uncertain of what would happen when he arrived—it was that first moment of grace that needs to come full circle, not the second.

In fact, I’d say that the return to life that began with that moment of clarity will not be complete without it.

III. 

Scripture tells us that forgiveness is not so much about some kind of cathartic emotional crescendo.

Forgiveness is about the restoration of communion, about fixing what is broken, about reestablishing relationship with one another.[1]

It is about being able to move forward together, however slowly, even as so much remains painful, or embarrassing, or not yet healed.

When Jesus tells us to forgive, he’s calling us to reconciliation, in all our complexity, and not just to letting bygones be bygones.

Jesus is certainly not calling us to let bygones be bygones in the name of God.

So what I think Jesus is saying to the prodigals out there is that, even as the Father forgives us, important work remains to be done.

Even as the Father loves us, the road to renewal remains a long journey, and it is not enough to make things right only with Him. That’s only the first step.

Because we need to live a different kind of life in the light of that forgiveness. We need to show that we are changed people, and to show it every day, and not just to him, but even more so, to the people who won’t believe it for a second, at least at first. We can’t write them off, even when their first instinct is to write us off.

You see, the Prodigal can’t simply hug the Father and then wander over to the buffet to help himself to the fatted calf.

No, if you ask me, the real story begins the next morning at dawn, when the party’s over, and the guests have all gone back home, and the men in the house are wandering into the kitchen, looking sleepy and maybe even a little hungover, just trying to grab a cup of coffee before it’s time to get out to the fields for the day, same as always…when a new day dawns, and it’s just another day.

Will the Prodigal be there, ready to do his part?

Will he be out on the porch, putting his old workboots back on?

Just what is he willing to do to make things right? And for how long?

Scripture tells us time and time again that humble faithfulness to day’s task is a lot more impressive than the one-time gesture, no matter how grand.

So to me, the real question is not whether the older brother can find it in his heart to forgive.

The real question is whether the Prodigal can find it in his heart to be loving, to be dependable, to be hard-working—to be everything that he once was not—in order to restore communion between him and his family.

Because that’s what forgiveness really requires.

It requires answering the call of that first kind of grace.

It is easy enough, in principle, to love the God who always forgives.

But the love that interests God is the love we show in practice, and especially the love we show in practice for those who are not currently inclined to love us back.

God does not ask us to root for Him. God asks us to follow Him.

So this week, I wonder whom you and I might seek out, not so that we have a worthy audience for some particular grand gesture of ours, but so that we can humbly and patiently begin to seek healing and a restored sense of communion with one another.

I don’t know if figuring that out will mark the beginning of a return to life for you.

But I know that it is the beginning of life abundant.

It is the beginning of truly being found, and of finally coming to see.

 

Amen.

[1] This is from L. Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis.

Dear Friends of Second Church,

During my years as a teacher, I often had the chance to watch school teams compete. I enjoyed rooting for the kids I knew, especially the ones I had in class. I was moved by their physical grace, and by those moments when their character —their generosity, their dignity, their sense of fairness, and that something deeper that is “sportsmanship” shone through.

What I couldn’t abide was that awful moment at the end of any game when the two teams lined up and woodenly slapped hands, robotically repeating “good game…good game…good game” to one another, one after one.

It was an empty ritual that seemed to mock any moments of true spirit and mutual respect that had come during the game itself.

All I could do was shake my head and wonder who it was who had taught these young people to do this in such a way.

Presumably, it was the same person who had taught them how to apologize after doing something wrong:

“Say you’re sorry, Timmy.”

“Jane, I won’t move this car until you apologize to your sister.”

I get the intention. I agree with it.  But be honest: could the contrition elicited by such prompting sound any less genuine? I doubt it.

Not that I blame the kids.

To my ear, that flat, toneless, teenage “sorry,” is like the flat, toneless teenage “good game” — words that reflect adult life and adult social expectation at their shallowest.

What we teach, and what we are prepared to enforce, are not how to express genuine feelings. Instead, we model how to make the merest of nods toward the generic politeness we expect.

Most kids know that tone drives adults crazy—we know all too well what it means.

Yet if we’re honest, how often are we truly sorry for anything we do? How often are we truly prepared to stop the car and reconcile with someone we have wronged? Forget what we make our children do—what do we demand of ourselves?

“I’m sorry that you were offended” has become a famous and all too common non-apology form of apology. If that’s all we’re good for, no wonder the young people who take their cues from us are so seemingly uninvested in reconciliation.

Lent offers us the chance to think more honestly about what we regret, but also how. It’s not about recommitting to a deeper veneer of politeness, but to the genuine feelings within us that politeness sometimes serves to help us deflect instead of express.

Lent challenges us to consider our own ways, our own easy rationalizations and excuses, our strategies for keeping our regrets shallow and our relationships shallower still.

That’s not the life that God imagines for us, or Scripture describes, or for which our hearts so clearly long.

Our faith is about seeking something much deeper for our lives and our relationships. It’s an invitation to be imperfect, but authentic, remembering how deeply loved we are by God, and that God calls us to love one another. It doesn’t mean we won’t step on each other’s toes now and again. It means that when we do, we move forward quickly, and in the end may find ourselves closer, not further apart.

Lent doesn’t ask us to be sorry. It asks us to consider what our “sorry” really means. It’s a time to make it mean more, not less.

May we seek to make it so.
See you in church,

Most of us have probably had a time or two when the phone has rung after midnight.

It’s an ominous feeling.

At least, it always used to be.

I remember as a kid, we had our phone—and it was only one for the whole family—and we had it in the hallway on a little table, and there was no chair there because phone calls weren’t supposed to take very long…and the hours it was considered “open” were from about 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The morning we got the call that my mother’s mother had died, when I was eight years old, we all knew it had to be bad news, because when the phone rang, it was not quite 7:30 yet, and that was unheard of…and I remember that I was closest to the phone and so I was the one answered it, but in point of fact, my parents were already halfway toward the phone with hands outstretched when I turned to say it was Aunt Susan calling for mom…because a ringing phone outside of normal hours could only mean bad news.

It’s been a while now, but maybe some of you remember the wonderful movie “Moonstruck,” where Olympia Dukakis plays a no-nonsense Italian grandmother, and when the phone by her bed rings after midnight, she doesn’t even say hello. She picks it up and says impatiently, “Who died?”

That’s how it used to be with phones, remember?

Of course, times have changed somewhat since then, and a lot of people feel free to call later than they used to, and for less urgent reasons.

Even so, I think it’s safe to say that when our friends or family call us late at night, if it’s serious or important, we don’t give it a second thought that they called.

Because of course they called. We’re glad that they called. We might even be hurt if something happens and we realize that they didn’t call.

The minor inconveniences don’t matter. What matters is what they have to say. What matters is them. What matters is that they need us, and that’s that.

II.

So with that in mind, I have to admit that I kind of smell a rat in this morning’s Gospel.

This story of the friend who knocks on the door at midnight doesn’t entirely add up for me, or at least, it doesn’t at first.

Jesus describes a scene in which we can see ourselves, with everyone finally in bed, and the dishwasher running, and the locks all checked, and the dogs curled up, and nothing on but the nightlight in the upstairs hall…and then….(MG: knocking on the pulpit).

It is our friend, who comes in desperate need of three loaves of bread because late as it is, he has a guest coming, and hospitality was expected, and so…(MG: knock again)…”Friend, I’m sorry, but I need you to help me out.”

And this is where I smell the rat.

Because I think most of us might groan a little…we might roll our eyes as we unlock the door…we might raise our fists to bop them one as we say, “Really? You woke me up for bread? Really?”

And yet, while it’s kind of a weird request, I don’t think that we’d actually be all that put out by it.

After all, asking our friends to help out with our weird requests is part of what it means to be friends. That’s what it is to be close to someone. It’s about knowing them below the surface level, and knowing them at the level of their imperfections and mistakes and what they forgot at the grocery store.

These are the stories that make friendships come alive…the stories we tell about each other for years.

“Do you remember the time you woke everyone up because you needed bread for that guy?”

I just don’t think it would be that big a deal.

Unless.

I don’t think we would be that put out by something like that…unless…unless the person who was knocking on our door was someone we didn’t really consider much of a friend.

Because….That. Changes. Everything.

If the person who is banging on our door…if the person who’s calling on phone after midnight isn’t really a friend…if the emergency that brings them to our door isn’t really much of an emergency, well, then the full force of their imposition hits home.

Because if the person knocking after midnight isn’t really a friend, then it’s hard to accept that he’s willing to bother us, he’s willing to disrupt our rest and our lives so that he can go celebrate someone else. He’s bothering us so that he can show respect for someone else…someone he actually cares about.

It’s bad enough when the telemarketers call during dinner. Can you imagine if they called after midnight?

That’s something most of us would find it much harder to take in stride.

So if, as the story says, it is after midnight, and there is a knock at the door, and the householder is irritated beyond belief at the disruption, I think we have to ask if the person doing the knocking is actually a friend or not.

III.

And so here’s the thing.

Jesus isn’t actually talking about friendship.

What he’s really trying to talk about is prayer.

In today’s Gospel, he offers one of his most important affirmations of love of God and the power of prayer, saying, “…ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, those who seek find, and to those who knock, the door will be opened” (Luke 11: 9-10).

They are dangerous words in certain hands because they seem to suggest that if all we do is ask often enough, or sincerely enough…desperately enough…then God can be counted on to grant our prayers.

The wisest among us know that it is not quite so simple—that at the very least, while it is true that God answers every prayer, the fact is, the answer God gives to many prayers is often “no,” and is for reasons that at the time, are known only to God.

There are times when that “no” does not feel good enough, and this is a real challenge even for the very strongest believers. When someone we love is very sick. When something we’ve worked hard for suddenly falls through. When bad things happen to good people.

This passage seems to teeter on the brink of saying that God will not say no to our prayers if we just keep asking, and that this is what faith is.

To be honest, if that’s the point, then I’m troubled about what that implies about God. About the games such a God would seem be into playing. About the loyalty and fear such a God would seem to be commanding.

That’s not my God.

To me, God is the one who is with us no matter what, the one whose tears are the first to fall and whose heart is the first to break.

To me, God is the one who sees the secret courage we must gather to do the things that are hard for us to do, who is proud of us when we stand on principle for the greater good, especially when there is a price to pay.

God rejoices in our compassion and our commitment to the truth.

That’s who God is. That’s what matters to God.

And so to me, the point of this morning’s Gospel is actually much simpler.

Because in this morning’s Gospel, God is the guy being woken up at midnight. And you and I are the other guy, the one who is knocking on the door so persistently.

But where you and I see a world of difference between helping out friends and being worn down into helping anyone else, I’m not so sure God does.

God is not as into categories as we are. God sees only friends. God sees only His children.

God sees only the people whose hearts and desires he knows from top to bottom.

God opens the door at midnight, and He is only too glad to see us standing there.

What matters to God is what we have to say. What matters is us. What matters is that we need God, and that’s that.

You see, the answer to prayer is simply not God’s “yes” to what we request…or even God’s “no” if that’s what God decrees.

The answer to prayer is God Himself. The answer to prayer is being in His presence, and knowing that He is with us, loving us, strengthening us, journeying beside us, regardless of any “yes” or “no” that may emerge in time for what we ask.

It isn’t that God answers prayer, but that for those who come before Him, God is the answer to prayer.

So ask. That’s the point Jesus is making. Ask. Don’t be afraid.

You may not receive exactly what you asked. You may not find exactly what you were seeking.

But ask.

Because for those who knock, the door will always be opened.   For those who step forward, a path will always emerge.

And so this week, I wonder if you and I might take the time to knock on God’s door.

If you’re not sure what to pray for, start with naming the things you know you should pray for…and then as you do, see if it doesn’t quickly get a whole lot more real and whole lot more personal. If you like, you can just name things, or just let pictures rise up in your mind. Just knock for a while.   And keep knocking.

And see if you can’t tell when it is that God opens the door.

Amen.

Dear Friends of Second Church,

My friend M. grew up, not just Roman Catholic, but to hear her tell it, “supercatholic.”

“I was the only girl in my third grade class who wasn’t named Mary or Mary-Something,” she says by way of proving it.

“How did that make you feel?” I asked.

“Guilty,” she said. “Really, really guilty.”

M. has been in the UCC for over twenty years now–head of Religious Education (twice), head of the Strawberry Festival planning committee, Senior Deacon.

But old habits die hard.

She still keeps the sculpture of the Virgin’s praying hands on the mantle–her grandmother gave it to her as a wedding present (“with a speech about obeying my husband,” she adds). She still says the occasional novena for someone in dire straits.

And every year, when Lent comes, she gives something up.

The hardest was the year she gave up Mountain Dew, which turned out to be a real marathon, complete with being trapped at one point in rush hour traffic, creeping along with nowhere else to go…behind a Mountain Dew truck.

She is convinced that the discipline is still good for her, even if she still doesn’t see exactly how to “offer up” her discomfort, which is what she was told early on to do with suffering.

And she finds solidarity among others who are giving up things of their own–in the vulnerability and challenge of it, in the camaraderie of staying strong in the face of temptation.

Listening to her has taught me that she has a different relationship to temptation than other people I know.

For starters, I’ve noticed that many of us still tend too quickly to see temptation as weakness–with that underlying weakness being the “real issue.” Some seem to think that they should be above all that, no matter what, that the self is something we can control in all ways at all times.

M. is more forgiving. She sees temptation in its own terms, as a fact of life, as something that comes but also goes, that can never really be banished, but can be managed.

For M., it’s not the temptation, but the giving in that is the issue. And there is the family of the other faithful giver-uppers to help make sure that she doesn’t give in. The waves that come and go are a very public thing for her, not something to hide or cause for shame.

Amid the challenge of deprivation and discipline, she finds strength in the grace of community.

It makes me wonder what it could be like if, instead of giving up Mountain Dew or chocolate or caffeine for Lent, we gave up perfectionism, or finger-pointing, or our nervous tendency to orchestrate everything for everyone.

What if we found community in struggling with our imperfections, our deepest and most reactive instincts, our most abiding shortcomings?

What if we learned to manage these temptations together?

To me, that wouldn’t be Lent. It would be nothing short of the kingdom.

All the more reason to practice now.

 

See you in church,

 

 

Have you ever been in a relationship that felt as if it was slowly dragging you down?

(Oh…I’m sorry…Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!)

Actually, I don’t really mean that kind of relationship.

I’m thinking more about other kinds of relationships—I’m talking about those shifts in some friendships when they come to seem more like an ongoing drain on our energy than the source of strength or joy that they once were.

Has that ever happened to you?

Have you ever had a co-worker who starts out as a real comrade…one of those relationships where you have each other’s backs…where you feel like veterans of the great battles, or co-sufferers under some sort of epically terrible boss, except then, somehow, over time one thing leads to another, and you get out of step with each other, and there comes to be this unspoken, terrible knowledge that you’ve started to leave them behind?

Ever happened to you?

Or maybe this: Do you have a sibling or cousin who was a close companion when you were younger, but who ended up pointing in a very different direction, somehow…the kind of person who asks you a lot of suspicious questions about how close Greenwich is to New York City…and whose kids you don’t really know, but hear tell about, and it seems not great, somehow, but….But…Well…

If you’ve ever been in a relationship or made a commitment that started to feel as if it was dragging you down, then you know why it is that we are so afraid of having that happen.

If you have, then you know all too well its particular strange brew of frustration and guilt, impatience and sadness, the sense that you’re being challenged to show your loyalty rather than actually solve a problem, if the problem is even something that can be solved, or that you specifically, can somehow make a difference with. And so on.

What we owe one another and why we do are not simple things to answer.

II.

It’s important to remember that as we consider this morning’s parable from Luke, this story of the man on the road to Jericho who falls among thieves, and is only saved by a person who at the time, would have sounded like the most unlikely of rescuers—a good Samaritan.

The story does not tell us much about the man thrown in the ditch. We don’t know if he was a particularly obvious target, or if the thieves were particularly vicious in that stretch of country.

It is true that along the steep, relatively short road from Jerusalem to Jericho, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, there were a series of natural caves where bandits used to hide, waiting for the odd, solitary traveler who was moving too slowly, and who offered the prospect of a quick shakedown.

The man is robbed, beaten within an inch of his life, and thrown in a ditch, and that’s when the story gets interesting…because he is not helped by the first people who find him…who hear him groaning softly over on the side of the road.

We’re told that first a priest—which is to say, a religious professional—and then a Levite—which is to say, a lay assistant—not only do not help the man in the ditch; they explicitly see the man and yet cross to the other side of the road.

That is, the very people we might most expect to help—the typical do-gooders, the pitcher-in-ers, the people who always get called in a crisis, the people who know people… consciously decide not to help. We’re never told exactly why.

And so the help, when it comes, comes from what would have been an unlikely source. A rich Samaritan. Someone who would have been detested—considered a heretic, an ethnically unclean person…someone who would have been seen as not simply different, but distasteful. Someone that nice people wouldn’t even touch, or share a water-fountain with.

And yet he is the one who helps. He’s the one who acts in the name of the common good. He’s the one who rises above, and who does the good thing that we hope anyone would do.

If there is one simple moral to the story, then of course, it is that we should be like the Samaritan, that helping those in need shouldn’t stand on any other principle, that—well, Jesus says it: “Go thou and do likewise.” That’s all there is to it.

We should. We absolutely, absolutely should.

III.

The question that remains, however, is why we don’t.

And that’s why it is important to remember that what we owe one another and why we do are not simple things to answer.

I find it hard to imagine that the priest and the Levite had no concept of the common good, or any sense that we have obligations to one another as members of the human family.

I can’t imagine that if they saw a child break free of his mother’s hand and start running straight toward a busy road that they wouldn’t have jumped up and grabbed him in order to keep him out of harm’s way.

I can’t imagine that they didn’t give to charity.

I can’t imagine that they didn’t dream of how the world might become a better place, and of how they could be a part of that.

As religious people, they would have been crystal clear about the obligations we have to one another—this is not a case of lacking the right information about what God expects.

In some sense, it doesn’t even matter, of course, if you’re religious or not: pretty much everyone believes in helping other people in some way, shape or form.

But what’s harder to see is that helping other people is never a general kind of thing. It’s never abstract. It’s never hypothetical.

And because helping is relentlessly particular, what may be even harder to see is when the moment to help someone else is now…when this is the moment to go all in and risk reaching out to help another….when this is the situation in which God imagines we could be the solution, or part of the solution.

When do we know that we’re in some dare-to-be-great moment?

When is it the right thing to do to send a check to your niece in Texas who’s trying to get back on her feet?

When is it the right thing to do to speak up in the face of an intolerant or an insensitive remark by a supervisor? Or for that matter, a son-in-law?

When do you hear shouting next door and decide to go over and see…or to call for someone to go over and see?

When do you see something, and maybe you’re not quite sure what, by the side of the road…in a dangerous part of town…and decide to risk leaving the safety of your own vehicle?

There is no simple answer. There are no promises that getting involved will prove tidy and temporary or that it will come out just fine.

Life teaches us to be wary, and to avoid the kind of commitments that can only drag us down, and indeed, some do.

And yet the questions remain: what if we don’t act? What if nobody else does? What if nobody else cares? What if everyone else plays it safe, too?

IV.

So Jesus teaches us a different way.

Jesus challenges us to recognize that any moment might be a dare-to-be-great moment.

He challenges us not guard ourselves against the messiness of helping, and invites to live not only as neighbors, but toward a day when we will see one another as sisters and brothers, as members of the human family.

It is not simple.

There is no easy, new boundary to draw that makes whom to help and when become unambiguous.

There is just this challenge to wade into the messiness of helping–the challenge of learning not to shy away.

There is no focus on whether we’re being dragged down, but rather a desire to reach the safety of the shore together. It is a way of living that honors both loyalty and truth.

The common good depends on countless individual acts of uncommon courage, uncommon generosity, and uncommon vision.

To the first hearers of the parable, it was remarkable to imagine that someone like a Samaritan could show such uncommon virtue.

To us, it seems remarkable to imagine that we could show such uncommon faith.

So that’s our challenge.

I wonder if this week, we can push ourselves to recognize every moment as an opportunity to make some gesture, to do some work of peace or healing, to risk the messiness of relationship in some new way.

On Valentine’s Day, as we celebrate love, let’s remember also that to love someone is not romantic only, but is more deeply to desire their good, and to be willing to act in order for that good to be secured.

So what good is it in your power to do?

Will you do it, or will you pass by the side of the road?

“Who was the one who was a neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?” Jesus asks.

“The one who showed him compassion,” answers the scribe.

Jesus said, “Go thou and do likewise.”

Amen.