Traditional Worship

33:05 Let's love one another. The other weekend, my wife Claire texted me. We had been talking about finding a playset for our backyard so that our daughters Ada and Elsie could play together and have fun. And she texted me saying that she had found the perfect playset on Facebook Marketplace. There was just one caveat. There was just one thing. That playset existed in another family's backyard. so all we had to do was go to that backyard and take apart this play set transport it to our house and then put it all back together again now before I could agree or disagree to this she enlisted my my father who quite frankly is much better at working with tools than I am and he agreed to do this. And so suddenly, like I was in, I was a part of this exciting, exciting opportunity. And so we went together and we went to this backyard and started to take apart this play set. And we spent five hours, five or six hours, one afternoon taking this all apart. And, you know, we made one mistake. We took some pictures of the play set. Here's a picture of us taking it apart. And the only problem is that in all the pictures that we took we did not zoom in enough on the nuts and the bolts and the screws that held this thing together and so while we saw the big structure and kind of remembered how it all went together like we really needed to focus in a bit more on how all those nuts and bolts and screws made the structure stand on its own and so we took this back to our house and we started putting it together and because we were struggling, there were multiple points that we just thought we should, you know, give up and maybe throw this thing in the trash. And we learned this the hard way that paying attention, paying attention and

35:14 noticing the small details, sometimes the unnoticed things really make an outsized difference. You might be wondering, like, did they actually finish? Did we get this playset up in our backyard? And we did. And so Ada was able to take her first slide. Take a look. one, two, three.

35:41 Okay, paying attention, right? Noticing the small details, paying attention to the things that so often go unnoticed is really important. They make an outsized difference. And this is true in our lives. This is true in our faith. And so let me ask you, like, what do you notice about yourself, about other people? What do you notice about the situations and the circumstances you find yourself in? What are the things that you notice? Maybe, well, what are the things you don't notice? You don't want to notice. I think about sometimes we don't want to notice or pay attention to the conversations that we don't want to have. We struggle in relationships or finances or there's a job that isn't working out. They're people we may not want to interact with. We'd rather not pay attention to those kind of things, unkind words or acts of injustice. Today, we continue our sermon series, Love One Another. And really, it's our month-long kindness campaign that's meant to help us focus on how we love one another, how we live in the world and live out loving kindness and compassion and a way in which we can close the kindness and justice gap in our city and in our world together and all over. It's been so fun to see our love one another signs out in neighborhoods and t-shirts like this, people wearing t-shirts all over the place. One of you purchased for our partner early learning center these t-shirts. You purchased them generously for the teachers to wear at Woodland Early Learning Preschool. And so these signs and these t-shirts, right there everywhere reminding us to love one another when everything, it seems, in our world just wants to pull us apart, divide us, and send us into opposite corners. And instead, what we're asking in this sermon series, what we're asking is what would our world look like if we loved one another unconditionally, sacrificially loving one another in ways that honored each other, that cared for one another, that invited us into compassion and grace and how different would our

37:52 world look like if we did that? And how might you change if you did that? So I want to turn to the gospel of Luke. In the gospel of Luke, we come across one of the most famous stories in the scriptures. It's the story of the good Samaritan. And there are stories that we read in the Bible that, well, whether you have been a lifelong Christian or maybe you've been skeptical of Christian faith or you're newer to Christian faith, there are these stories that are so ingrained in our Western culture that we tend to jump right to the end. Like we know the moral of the story. We know the ethic and they remind us how we're supposed to live. And we jump quickly to the end. And really, frankly, we all agree that it's a good way to live. And this is one of those stories, the parable of the Good Samaritan. And it's a story that teaches us about ethics and what being a good neighbor looks like.

38:46 But I don't want us to miss the depth of the story that tells us about who God is and tells us, well, what we're called to do with our lives and as people who follow Jesus. So let's turn to chapter 10. Before Luke tells us this story, the story of the Good Samaritan, he wants to be sure that we understand the context of the story. So he tells us about this legal expert, an attorney. He was an expert in the law, something like maybe even a seminary professor, some have said, but he was an expert in the law of Moses, the Torah, and he comes to test Jesus. Now, this often happened as Jesus taught. He was often tested. People would come to ask him questions to see what he had to say. And so he begins with this question. Here's what we read in Luke chapter 10. A legal expert stood up to test Jesus.

39:40 Teacher, he said, what must I do to gain eternal life? Other translations read inherit. What must I do to inherit? And I think behind this question, he's asking, what must I do to earn? What can I do to gain eternal life? And he's asking about eternal life. More, he's asking like, who is in, who is out? What are the boundaries? What do I need to be doing to make sure that I am there? What are the rules? And Jesus, he doesn't reply with an answer, but rather a question. He asked this, what is written in the law? And how do you interpret it? This legal expert, he answers well. He quotes from Deuteronomy 6, 5. This is called the Shema. He says, you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind.

40:33 And he must have heard Jesus teach on this before. He must have heard Jesus teach this lesson before because he also adds something that Jesus was known to add to this teaching. He continues, and love your neighbor as yourself. Now, as Jesus would teach, he would summarize the whole of faith by these two commandments, to love God and to love your neighbor, to love others. And Jesus drew from Leviticus. We read this in Leviticus. You must not take revenge nor hold a grudge against any of your people. Instead, you must love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. And what Jesus does is he upends like our way of thinking. And especially for the Jewish listeners in the first century, he would upend what they assumed, what they knew. In ancient Judaism, it was assumed that you would love your neighbor. You were called to love your neighbor.

41:25 And what that often meant was like the people closest to you, your family your friends you were meant to love your Jewish brothers and sisters and that was that was commanded by God but it didn't always extend to neighbors beyond that there was always care for the stranger the foreigner but but really to love your neighbor the neighbor was considered those that were closest to you kind of on the inside the inside group and and so this legal expert. He's wanting to know, like, how far does this go? How far am I supposed to love someone? And I think we want to know this from time to time, too. Like, how far does this go? Who do I really have to love? And Jesus simply concludes, he says, you have answered correctly. Do this, and you will live. I think Jesus is sharing with this legal expert. He's saying, like, you know this already. You've heard me teach this. You know the answer. But the legal expert cannot let it go. Like he's fixated on this question. And so he asks, and who is my neighbor? Like, who is my neighbor? How do I even begin to think about this question? And I want to pause here because do you ever get the sense that there are often questions behind the questions that are asked? Like, you know, there's a question being asked, but really underneath the surface, like there's a bigger question, a deeper question, maybe a gotcha kind of a question. And there's something behind the questions that this legal expert is asking Jesus.

43:04 What do you do when being questioned like this, right? When you're being asked questions, you might recognize the difference between being asked a question and like being questioned. So what do you do in those situations? How do you respond? I don't know about you, but I find myself in a few more political conversations than normal. It's that time of the year and that time of the political cycle where we just find ourselves engaged in more conversations. And I have a buddy that he and I text back and forth and we find ourselves in these conversations. And, you know, we see the world very differently when it comes to politics and religion and faith too. We just have different perspectives and opinions. And when we talk, you know, I find myself wrestling with this. What's the best response to being questioned? I think Jesus, he does this perfectly, right? He's this masterful teacher and what he does is he asks more questions. Why does he do this? Why does Jesus ask more questions? Well, perhaps because the best defense is no defense at all. You cannot control someone else's thinking, but you can control how you respond.

44:15 You can control your thinking and your actions. Questions become powerful tools, right? They become powerful tools that help us notice something we didn't before or to pay attention to something that we didn't notice before, to pay attention to something new in a new way. They ignite imagination, curiosity. They reinforce values and behaviors and create new behaviors. Questions have the power to loosen long held assumptions. Questions like shift the direction of a conversation and often questions arrest us. Like they stop us, they pause, they make us pause and stop and think for a moment. And in this story, the crowd that's watching this interaction between the legal expert and Jesus, they find themselves arrested. They are stopped and they can't help but fixate on these questions being asked. And so Jesus continues on and he tells a story. He tells a parable that's meant to point to deeper meaning and truth. And so we read, continuing in Luke chapter 10, Jesus said, a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He encountered thieves who stripped him naked and beat him up and left him near dead. Now this road that we're talking about here goes from Jerusalem to Jericho and it was notoriously dangerous. Thieves and robbers would hide and attack travelers and this road descended about 3,300 feet, more than 3,000 feet in 17 miles toward the Dead Sea and today you can drive up this road by highway, but you can still see the ancient road, the old road. And here is an image, a view of what that road looks like. It was bad enough that in the fifth century, St. Jerome called it the red or bloody way. And it was this dangerous, dangerous, treacherous route that people took. But there was also, interestingly, another route that people could take. It was even

46:25 a little bit shorter, maybe not quite as dangerous. The thing is that that route took people through Samaria, right in the middle of today, what we call the Holy Land, Galilee to the north and Jerusalem, the center of religious life. People would have to travel through Samaria, but Jews tended to avoid that region. They didn't want to travel through because of the relationship they had or lack of relationship they had with the Samaritans. So Jesus, he continues with this story along this treacherous road. Now it just so happened that a priest was also going down the same road. And when he saw the injured man, he crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. Likewise, a Levite came by that spot, saw the injured man and crossed over to the other side of the road and went on his way. These two men, I mean, they were traveling down this road and a priest and a Levite, they cross the other side. They see this man hurting, beaten up, left for dead on the side of the road, and they cross over and they pass by.

47:33 They miss what was right in front of them. They miss this powerful moment. And, you know, when we read this, like we know what should happen. We know that they should stop and care for this man. We know that when we're in situations like this, we should help somebody. We know this. But their passing by may not be as unreasonable as it seems for a couple of reasons. The first reason, priests. Priests usually didn't live in Jerusalem. Often they lived outside of the city of Jerusalem. They would travel to their village after spending time in the temple. They would go to the temple and take care of their priestly duties and then they would travel back. That often happened once a year, maybe twice a year. And then they would travel back to their home. And so this priest is traveling back to his home and he sees this man. And what he knows is that when he gets home, like he's had this place of honor and glory because he was serving in the temple. It was a place of privilege. And when he gets home, he's going to be congratulated. But if he were to stop and take care of this man who might even be dead, he doesn't know yet. He would be ceremonially unclean and like he'd have to be away from his village for seven days. And he wouldn't get the congratulations and the adoration of this moment. And so he continues by and the Levite might've known something similar. The Levite would have known that on this route, that thieves and robbers would sometimes play that they were hurting. They would have one man there along the side of the road hurting and asking for help.

49:13 And then an unsuspecting person might come along the way and they would help them. But then a band of thieves and robbers would jump out from hiding and they would ambush this unsuspecting traveler. This was the context. This was a dangerous road. And so it wasn't unreasonable that they continued on by. I mean, I think about the times when I see somebody on the side of the road, perhaps their car pulled over. And I usually think, well, they probably have a cell phone that they're going to call somebody, a tow truck or somebody can help them. It's not unreasonable to think that. Jesus continues though. He invites his listeners to lean in just a bit. We might lean in too to this moment. He continues, but a Samaritan, but a Samaritan, the common English Bible translation that I'm using today, it doesn't include the but. I added that in because the New International Version and the New Revised Standard Version, they include that one little word, but. Because it's meant to signify to the listener that Jesus was doing something really intentional here, really profound. It was shocking when Jesus said this to the crowd that was listening. But a Samaritan, and you already know this, you likely know this, the Samaritans and the Jews, they didn't get along, but it was worse than that. They were enemies, really. Samaritans were considered second-class citizens to Jews. They were the racial other.

50:44 Samaritans had disdain for Jews as well. They did not get along. And so Jesus tells them,

51:31 In this story, Jesus, he just keeps adding on and adding on. He keeps piling on the care and compassion that this man had for the hurt and broken man along the side of the road. The Samaritan becomes the hero of the story. He doesn't just pass by. He doesn't just continue on. He stops. He probably had places to go. He had places to be, people to see, but he stops and he pays attention to this man right in front of him. I'm left wrestling with this question. Why didn't they stop? Why didn't they stop like the Samaritan? And what about you? Would you have stopped in similar circumstances? There was a study published in 1973. It's a really fascinating study, a well-known study by psychologists, John Darley and Daniel Batson. they asked Princeton students who were training to become pastors they were in school to become pastors they asked them to to develop a talk a short sermon on the parable of the good Samaritan and so they developed their talk and and then they were instructed that that they were to go deliver that talk on another part of the campus and so so they get to work and then they're told to leave and on their way, they staged someone, a man to appear in distress, beaten up, alone.

52:59 They literally had to like walk over this man as they were being set to deliver this short talk that they were prepared to give. And these researchers, they varied how urgently these pastors in training needed to get to their destination. It's really interesting. So 63% of the students told not to hurry stopped. They could take their time, 63% of them, they stopped to help this man. 45% of students were told to moderately hurry, they stopped. But get this, only 10% of students told to urgently hurry stopped. Those who were given the most amount of hurry and were told to rush to go deliver that talk, only 10% of them stopped. And what's so interesting about this study is that even preparing to teach on the Good Samaritan, like knowing this story, preparing a sermon, a small sermon on this story, like it didn't make a difference for them. Most people did not stop. The biggest difference made was the hurry that people were in.

54:11 Being in a hurry mattered. How often does hurry keep us from seeing what's right in front of us? How often are we hurried and distracted from the things that are right in front of us, the people right in front of us? And I was thinking a little bit about hurry and seeing people. And last month, I joined one of our Resurrection Men's retreats. It's an annual fishing retreat that some of the guys at Resurrection take to Rockbridge, Missouri. And I'd been asked to go join them before as their guest speaker. And every time I was asked, I declined the invitation, mostly because I'm not really much of a fisherman. And so I said no, but this time I said yes. And so I drove down to go meet them and I showed up. I showed up without any fishing gear. I brought no fishing gear, nothing really. And while I was there, I met a guy named Gary.

55:08 Here's a photo of the two of us. He looks like a fisherman. I do not look like a fisherman. In fact, they kind of made fun of me for looking like a 14-year-old kid here. They thought I looked like a 14-year-old kid. Well, Gary, he took me under his wing this entire weekend while fishing. He shared his equipment and patiently taught me how to fly fish. And even after I lost about 10 of his flies, like he still had patience and helped me. In fact, I think I still owe him for some of those flies, but he showed me this patient kind of love, a simple act of love. He slowed down to notice me, to notice that, well, I didn't really know how to fish, at least fly fish. And instead of asking, what's wrong with this guy, me? Like, what's wrong with him?

56:00 he asked the question who is my neighbor like who can I help today who can I show love to today and so it was a great weekend and I learned a little bit about fly fishing but what I love more about this group a bunch of these guys that go fly fishing every year they they also spend the year connecting with other men in Kansas City and they've spent many years now developing a friendship and partnership with St. James United Methodist Church we partner with St. James United Methodist Church with our group, Allies for Racial Justice. And together, these men who come from different backgrounds, different perspectives on life and different experiences, they talked about, well, they talk about life together. You can see a couple of photos of this fish fry that they had the other weekend. They share meals and they listen and they learn from each other, from experiences other than their own. And, you know, I was just thinking about what love looks like.

56:56 And sometimes loving one another looks like teaching someone to fish. Sometimes it looks like sitting across the table from another person, eating together, getting to know someone. In perhaps the best known sermon on the Good Samaritan, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrestled with this story. Pastor Adam has shared this anecdote before, and I thought it was helpful and would be helpful for us as we read this story. Dr. King he shared his very last sermon on this scripture passage and and he was preaching to sanitation workers in Memphis he had traveled to Memphis to to stand with them and encourage them and to protest against a city that that was unwilling to negotiate for their safety two sanitation workers had died due to a faulty truck and so Dr. King he he preached that justice and compassion and mercy couldn't happen unless people saw each other as a neighbor. And Dr. King, he reasoned that the two men didn't stop because they asked this question, if I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But then the good Samaritan came by and he reversed the question, if I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?

58:17 the Samaritan in this story is good because he pays attention to the person who's right in front of him and we see an image of the kingdom of God an image of what it looks like to love and care for others to love one another in a way that it will changes that other person and and changes us too Jesus Jesus asked the legal expert what do you think which one of these three was a neighbor to the man who encountered thieves. Then the legal expert said, the one who demonstrated mercy toward him, that one. Jesus told him, go and do likewise. It's interesting that the legal scholar, he couldn't quite come to say the name of this man. He couldn't quite come to say the Samaritan.

59:10 He still harbored that resentment, but he couldn't acknowledge the act of mercy and compassion that he saw, Jesus upends our assumptions of who is our neighbor and what it means to be a neighbor. Jesus takes these things and flips them upside down and helps us understand what it looks like to show mercy and compassion. And sometimes we are the one who's left alone on the road, beaten up, bruised and wounded, needing someone, just hoping that someone might stop long enough to care for us, to help us up, to bandage us. And we're just waiting to experience that same kind of love. And sometimes we are the one, the Samaritan, who comes along to lift someone up, to help someone along the way. Like our neighbor is the person in front of us who needs compassion and mercy and grace.

1:00:07 And Jesus, he connects these two things, mercy and action. He connects them together. The way Jesus uses it here is to feel something deep inside you, to feel it deep into the core of who you are, to see something in the world that is unfair, unequitable, unjust, that needs attention and love. This is what Jesus is inviting us into. To be a neighbor means to go across the barriers and the boundaries we place between ourselves and others. And we're meant to pay attention. We're meant to ask, Lord, how can you use me today? I got to meet Jen and her daughter Abby this week and they shared with me a little bit about how they love one another and Jen shared that it comes from like her family and what she learned in her family and what she also wants to pass on to her daughters. I thought you might enjoy hearing from them. Take a listen. I'm Jen, a mom to Abby who's 11, she's in sixth grade and Irene who's my senior at Paseo. How we've been inspired to serve others is just kind of an organic part of our family. I can think specifically about my father and growing up he instilled it into my brother and I that we need to leave every place and every person better than we found it.

1:01:27 I can see that in my oldest. She has learned how to help classmates at Paseo who are hearing impaired learn how to dance and do the routines when they can't hear the music. And she just really feels it's important to create access for others. And I see it in Abby. Like, she's always looking at people and wondering how she can help make their day better. And she doesn't wait to be invited. She goes up to people and asks, how can I help? The thing we did was we helped the mothers and the children who were abused in their original homes. And we made a day where the kids could just not worry about everything else and just have fun. And that was probably one of my favorite things I did. Abby's been doing a lot of really loving things for people.

1:02:21 From a young age, she would save her allowance or money from gifts and buy items to put in what she called her blessing bags and would hand write notes. It just makes me happy that I can let people know that they are blessed even if they don't feel like it and that there is hope that you can spread joy. I think being a good neighbor is more than who's in your proximity. really about who you're being not what you're doing and showing up as somebody who could be trusted and who can be loving even if it's just you know a friendly smile or a wink This is the story of the Good Samaritan lived out, serving others, loving one another, neighboring each other in a way that draws us closer to the heart of Christ.

1:03:17 And what is so meaningful about the story of the Good Samaritan is that it's the nuts and the bolts of our Christian faith. Like it's the essentials of our Christian faith that when we focus in on those details, you realize that this story tells us about the whole of our faith and how we're meant to live when we follow Jesus. And so how do you do this? How do you pay attention to the people around you? It's this, you simply do for one what you wish you could do for many. Paying attention to the one person who's right in front of you that you can tend to and love and care for. and asking not what will happen to me if I do that, but rather what would happen to them if I do. You know, I get to lead our adult discipleship ministries and our kids and family ministries.

1:04:11 And this whole month, we're inviting our kids to practice these kinds of things. And we gave our kids this bingo card, all kinds of opportunities to go and practice loving kindness in their week and in the month. And, you know, they're simple things. They're like smiling at three people in one day or doing a kind thing that nobody knows about, donating food, praying for someone who's sick or hurting, leaving a treat for the mail carrier, all kinds of opportunities to simply love one another. And alongside our kids, I'd invite you to consider ways in which you might do those kinds of things to love one another. This week, we're hosting two unique opportunities to put faith into action. Midweek at every one of our locations on Wednesday, we're hosting a conversation about faith and how we can live our faith in the world and to be inspired to go and do that.

1:05:05 And then on Saturday with our hunger symposium and this amazing Serve Saturday opportunity, gathering people together, not just to learn about how we can make a difference in the world, but also to go and do likewise. Here's where I'm gonna end. I'm gonna end with this. Do for one person what you wish you could do for many. Notice the person in front of you. don't ask what will happen to you if you do that, but rather what will happen to them and the difference that you might make. Anybody can do this, but we're not just anybody. We are the church. We are the living embodiment of Jesus. We are the hands and the feet of Christ. When we live in this way, the kingdom of God becomes real and tangible here on earth as it is in heaven. As we long for it to be, this is what it means to follow Jesus and Jesus in a way is like the good Samaritan for us. Jesus sees us, binds us up, tends to our wounds, loves us, calls us his own.

1:06:08 And because we experienced that love of Jesus, he says, go and do likewise. Would you bow in prayer with me? Let's pray. Oh God, we pause simply to acknowledge that there are times when we find ourselves more like the person on the side of the road, beat up and left alone and forgotten, wondering where our hope is and God, if there might be somebody that could help us. And other times we're meant to stop and pay attention, to notice the people around us that we might be like the Good Samaritan, and to help others to offer love and mercy and compassion, to be the hands and the feet of Jesus. I pray that, oh God, you might use us to be people who offer healing and hope, who offer the light and the love of Christ, who live in such a way that, God, we might point to you, that we might point to your kingdom that is here on earth, present and real, that everyone might experience your life-changing love.

1:07:25 We pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.