Sunday, July 14, 2019 – Pentecost 5

Pentecost 5 2019

Our Savior’s La Crosse

Luke 10:25-37

“We might be startled to realize during the course of a day how often we feel more rage at our fellow humans than love” (Berkey-Abbot, Kristin, “Living By The Word” in “The Christian Century” July 3, 2019, p. 18).

I was reading a commentary on this morning’s text and I read those words and they’ve stuck with me all week:

“We might be startled to realize during the course of a day how often we feel more rage at our fellow humans than love.”

Rage.

I stopped at Festival to buy chicken wings because I wanted to cook them for the Dorcas potluck. When I came out of the store a truck had been parked behind mine, its front bumper only inches from my back bumper. From a distance, it looks like the two bumpers were touching. I felt something resembling rage as I walked toward my truck.

I stopped at Kwik Trip to buy coffee (which is something I do every day when I come to work). There was no place to park. Don’t tell me there is no place to park when I need my decaf coffee. I was something that might resemble being angry.

I parked my truck in the church lot and noticed a woman walking her dog. The two of them stopped and the dog went to the bathroom. Then they walked on. I thought the dog had pooped in the church yard and that the poop wasn’t picked up and I stormed angrily across the street to examine the remains. The dog had peed.

That’s within a time frame of 15 minutes this past Wednesday morning.

I am startled to realize during the course of a day how often I feel more “rage” at our fellow humans than love. I might prefer to call it anger or even just frustration, but the point is still the same.

Where’s the love?

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:25-27).

Samaritans were the enemies of the Hebrew people. As I studied the history of the conflict between the Hebrews and the Samaritans, I was surprised to discover a suggestion that Samaritan religious practices might have been influenced by Islamic belief. I read that there are “parallels between technical expressions used by Samaritan writers and those found in the Quran” (aka the Muslim Holy Book)(“Samaritans” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 4, p. 195). This tells me that the conflicts we see in the Middle East, some of which are between Arabs and Jews, are as ancient as they are deep.

The people listening to Jesus respond to the lawyer’s question with a parable never would have expected the hero of his story to be a Samaritan. Just as many Christians would never expect the hero of the same story told in the year 2019 to be Muslim.

“…the story of the good Samaritan shows what the Great Commandments mean. And here we see the size of the task that God gives us” (Berkey-Abbot, ibid).

“Love is action, not emotion. We show our love by what we do for those who need us” (Berkey-Abbot, ibid).

“We have to go through life behaving as if we love each other. We can behave ourselves into love” (Berkey-Abbot, ibid).

Those are quotes from a Director of Education at a college in Florida. She’s the one who wrote the quote I began my sermon with. She also wrote:

“It’s not enough to love the people who are easy to love. It’s much harder to love those who have behaved in horrible ways. But we must love them too.”

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

 Anger is easy.

All it takes is one person parking a truck. All it takes is a full parking lot. All it takes is a woman walking her dog (at least for me…).

Love is the more difficult task.

“Love is action, not emotion… we can behave ourselves into love” (Berkey-Abbot).

My young person’s message was prompted by these thoughts from the commentary I read:

“We can start where we are… We can stop keeping track of who has done what to wrong us or who is taking advantage of the system. Instead of keeping track of our losses, we can keep track of gratitude” Berkey-Abbot, ibid).

Keeping track of gratitude.

I have a friend who is celebrating 100 Days of Gratitude. Each day for 100 days she posts an image on Facebook of something for which she is grateful.

One image of one thing one day at a time.

It’s a first step into a journey toward loving our neighbors as ourselves. It is a first step toward “behave[ing] ourselves into love” (Berkey-Abbot).

Amen.