PENTECOST 7C

 

July 15,  2007       

 

 SCRIPTURES

• Amos 7:7-17. Amos declares that God has placed a plumb line in the midst of the institutions of Israel and found them wanting. Its religious and political institutions will be destroyed, and the people enter exile.
   
• Psalm 82
   
• Colossians 1:1-14. Paul greets the Colossians and offers prayers for their deepening growth in faith and understanding.
   
• -Scholars are divided on whether the author is Paul or one of his followers. In the days long before copyright, a writer who thought he really understood how a great writer thought might write in his name: an honor to the great man. If Paul did write Colossians, he probably wrote it from prison (with “Timothy”): there he had time to reflect, and possibly to read. The church in Colossae was probably founded by “Epaphras” (v. 7). Colossians was written to counter deviant teaching, including the need to practice Jewish rituals, and Greek theosophical speculation.  Clippings

 

• Luke 10:25-37. The story of the compassionate Samaritan is Jesus' response to a lawyer's question, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus concludes the story with a different question: "Who was neighbor to the injured man?"

-Love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable.

-The distance from Jerusalem to Jericho is about 17 miles. It led through rugged, bleak, rocky terrain which was notoriously dangerous to travel in Jesus' time. People would normally not travel the Jericho road alone.

-Can see ourselves in every character of this scripture

-The lawyer's agenda was clearly to entice Jesus into a public error with respect to the Law of Moses

-Lawyer is "no-mi-kos, " an expert in the Mosaic Law. For our folk, this might simply be, "An expert Bible teacher"  John Jewell

-We could talk about the church and how it can abandon people when it loses its focus, as demonstrated by the priest and the Levite.

- Is human nature enough to allow us to be good Samaritans? We must transcend human nature to spiritual nature.-Lindy 

-Who is not my neighbor?

-the sine qua non (something indispensable) of religious life is compassion. W.S. Coffin

-In short, the Good Samaritan is a multi-faith story that sees love/compassion as the core value of religion

- But now let us recognize that beyond just individuals, whole communities, even nations, have been stripped, beaten and left lying in the ditch. And what these communities and nations need is not piecemeal charity but wholesale justice.

-Most recently, religious leaders like Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King have seen once again that compassion frequently demands confrontation.

- Will the real good Samaritan please stand up

-For some, eternal life is after death.  For Jesus, eternal like means NOW.  (Help the victim, NOW)

-This is not a sermon about doing more.  It is about not confusing the knowing, understanding, feeling, thinking or saying of love with the doing of love. BB Taylor

-How big is the neighborhood you live in?

-Parables generally tell us about God.  God-"The Good Samaritan"

-"Sermon from a Modern Day Samaritan,"  A very interesting sermon spoken from the "mouth of a Samaritan".  Explains the history of the Samaritans and gives some interesting questions and points besides. 

-"What is essential for Christians is that we see the face of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It is not essential to believe that no one else has seen God and experienced redemption in another time and place."  Hough

-The world is our neighbor

- Division not only between Jews and Samaritans.  Also between  Black and whites, Christians and Muslims, gays and straights, within ourselves, between God and us!

-It has been said that all six characters of this parable must be found in our church if our church is a good church.

-Not kinds of love only degrees of love.

- Better to ask, Who is not my neighbor!  BB Taylor

- We are more free when we love

-Old outline:      What is yours is mine, I'll take it

                     What is mine is mine, I'll keep it

                     What is mine is yours, I'll share it.

-Another old outline:  Beat them up; pass them up,  lift them up.

 

- When does God send a Good Samaritan into our lives whom we would rather  not be helped by because of our cultural biases or prejudices? Robert Flaherty

-  A seminary professor faked a car brake down on the road leading to his classroom.  The next day he confronted his students, many of whom did not stop to see if they could help. The class was on the parable of the good Samaritan.

-The Samaritans were presumably descended from Israelites who had remained behind when the Assyrians deported the leading families of the region following their conquest in 722 B.C.E. The Israelites remaining behind intermarried with foreign settlers brought in by the Assyrians in the years that followed, although the Samaritans—the new ethnic group—continued to regard the Torah as their law. They erected their own temple on Mount Gerizim, just outside Shechem (modern Nablus), at a time when there was no temple in Jerusalem.

-come near--near enough to see, near enough to feel, near enough to recognize a neighbor in someone who needs a neighbor bad.

-“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s the lawyer’s question. It’s a “do” question not a “be” question, nor even a “believe” question  BB Taylor

-Barbara Johnson wrote a little parable that is a perfect commentary on this issue of living out our faith in light of the Parable of the Helpful Samaritan:

               A man fell into a pit and couldn't get himself out. 
               A subjective person came along and said, "I feel for you down there."
               An objective person came along and said, "It's logical that someone would fall down there."
               A Pharisee said, "Only bad people fall into a pit."
               A mathematician calculated how he fell into the pit.
               A news reporter wanted an exclusive story on his pit.
               A fundamentalist said, "You deserve your pit."
               An IRS agent asked if he was paying taxes on the pit.
               A self-pitying person said, "You haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit."
               A charismatic said, "Just confess that you're not in a pit."
               An optimist said, "Things could be worse."
               A pessimist said, "Things will get worse."
               Jesus, seeing the man, took him by the hand and lifted him out of the pit!

 

QUOTES 

-"You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole soul, your whole strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." Deuteronomy 6,

- Christianity is a “Neighborhood Watch” relationship which goes beyond the neighbor, to God. Larry Gillick

- -Christ is both the Good Samaritan and the wounded Jew  Howard Taylor

--  Define neighbor by function not by location Robert Flaherty

-Ambroise Pare, the father of modern French surgery, once said, “Je le pansais, Dieu le guerit” - “I dressed his wounds, God healed him.”

-"that in everything God may be glorified."   Bible

 

 

 

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. War time Good Samaritans: Quakers freed their own slaves and helped establish the Underground Railroad. In Europe, Oskar Schindler, a Nazi, spent his own fortune to save 1,200 Jews from Auschwitz gas chambers. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved more than 100,000 Jews by giving them false passports. Corrie Ten Boom and her family in the Dutch Underground Resistance Movement hid Jews in a counterfeit room in their house.

-It seems to be that all of us Christians are called to be healers. It’s so

easy to hurt, to do harm. How much better to heal. No, we do not have to go

to medical school. We can just go to the clinic Christ sets up, learn about

love, about caring for everyone, even the most lowly, learn to put our fears

aside and reach out to touch even the worst untouchables. But we can be

healers too in our own relationships, in our homes, in our places of

employment, in our community. If we look, we will find wounds everywhere for

which we can bring some healing balm, some word of hope, some act of love and

caring, some prayer of intercession.

 

 

HUMOR

- "The trouble with you is that every time someone asks you a question, instead of answering the question, you ask another question." To which the response is, "Why not?" (Jesus answers the lawyer's question with another question.) ILLUSTRATIONS

-The only thing you find in the middle of the road," says Jim Hightower, "is a yellow stripe and a dead armadillo."

-Jay Leno from time to time sends people out to ask questions about the bible of people on the street. One question was, "Do you know who the Good Samaritan is?" The answer was, "He was some guy who did a good deed." "Oh", the reporter says, "I see. Do you know anything else about him?" "Yea," the man answers, "I think they named a hospital after him." The reporter continues, "Did you know he was also a character in the bible?" "No," the man says, "I wouldn't know about that."

CHILDREN

-A Neighbor's a Neighbor!      Both good chidren' sermons using well known T.V. and literature.
Won't You Be My Neighbor?

-"The Five-Finger Prayer,"   (Colossians scripture)

PRAYER PHRASES

-Prayer of St. Francis: Lord make me an instrument of your peace ...

 

 

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