The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 10C] - July 11, 2010 (Luke 10:25-37)

You can practically hear the pencils being sharpened in the crowd at the beginning of today’s gospel lesson. A lawyer has just stood up in the midst of the crowd to test Jesus, and his aim is to snare this bright young rabbi from Nazareth with a sticky question about Jewish law and, with hope, humiliate him in front of everyone. This lawyer is good. He is a product of the recent rabbinical education reform, “No Pharisee Left Behind.” He learns for the test, can memorize anything set in front of him, and can quote it back to you. If he has a weakness, it is his inability to think creatively, but he hopes that won’t come into play because he wants to catch Jesus on a technicality: who is the neighbor?


The issue at hand is that Jewish Law, the Torah, is actually inconclusive on this question. At one point, “neighbor” is defined as other sons and daughters of your own people; that is, neighbors are other fellow Israelite countrymen and –women. However, at another point in the law, the term “neighbor” is expanded to mean anyone who is found in your land, foreigners and illegal aliens, included, even ones who come seeking economic opportunity. By pinning Jesus down with the question, “Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer is asking Jesus to clarify this distinction. If actions toward my neighbor are what will help me to live in God’s kingdom, then it will be helpful to know exactly how Jesus will interpret this. Pencils are sharpened, and the whole crowd is ready to take notes. You can’t fault them for thinking critically. Perhaps they are even thinking carefully. But I can’t help but believe they might be thinking a little cowardly, too.

And, like a clever Supreme Court nominee before her panel of politicos, Jesus slices and dices the question in a way they can’t initially make heads or tails of. He tells a story. It was actually very common for rabbis to tell stories to respond in debates, but Jesus’ story has a few twists and turns in it. When a fellow Israelite countryman gets beaten by bandits and is left by the side of the road for dead, both a priest and a Levite walk by on the other side, refusing to help him. Perhaps the priest and the Levite do recognize the poor, injured guy as a neighbor, but they are too bound by other restrictions and regulations—“don’t touch blood, don’t be late for obligations”—to help the man. Perhaps these professionally religious types recognize him as neighbor but their response to him is all in their head, as if their faith has made them too heavenly-minded to do any earthly good.

That’s the first twist—the non-response of the two figures representing the best of Israel’s holiness. Then comes the next twist in the plot: the person who actually does stop and take care of the wounded man, going the extra mile to make sure he gets healed, is a person whom no one would ever expect to go out of their way for an Israelite.

Samaritans were despised by the Israelites. They were considered half-breeds, imposters, dirty and mean. You could expect no good to come from Samaritans. In fact, in the previous chapter of Luke, Jesus himself gets rejected by a Samaritan town. But in this parable, which is told maybe even in the same day as that rejection, it is the Samaritan who saves the day. The key phrase in the story is that Jesus says the Samaritan looks on the man and is “moved with pity.” The Samaritan has compassion. He wants to suffer along with this wounded man with the chance he might restore him to health. In doing so, Jesus imbues his filthy main character with the quality that Israel’s own prophets had associated with God’s own heart. A Samaritan’s display of compassion for and Israelite = one enormous plot twist.

The lawyer in the crowd has most likely stopped taking notes at this point. He is either drawn into the unlikely drama of this fictitious story, or it is likely he is repulsed altogether. When Jesus looks at him and says, “Which of these three turned out to be a neighbor to the one who fell into the hands of robbers?” the lawyer is not even able to mention the word “Samaritan” on his lips. He simply replies, “the one who showed mercy.”

And right there is the final twist to the story, and the most remarkable one. The hinge of the parable swings not on discovering who our neighbor is so that we may respond appropriately, but actually being a neighbor to anyone in need. The point of the parable is not that the Samaritan correctly recognizes the wounded man as his neighbor. The point is that the Samaritan lets himself be ruled by compassion and, in doing so, becomes a neighbor to the other. In his reply to the lawyer’s question, Jesus doesn’t simply tweak the definition of who counts as a neighbor, but he gives greater clarity to what it actually means to be a neighbor. The lawyer’s task has been to think critically about these issues, to reason and to act carefully. But in God’s kingdom, the chief task is to think and act compassionately.

Furthermore, we must remember that this parable is set within the context of a question about eternal life. Jesus’ story is told in order to clarify exactly what “loving the neighbor” entails. So, in addition to receiving a lesson about the Law’s expectations, we also hear a story about God’s grace. Maybe, in fact, this is what eternal life looks like. It looks like no one caring anymore about these boundaries of race or class or national identity or ethnic identity, distinctions for which we are far too quick to take up arms to defend. Instead, eternal life is best envisioned as surprising, death-defying occasions of self-sacrifice and compassion, times where we take the side of someone who is hurting enough to take on some of the hurt ourselves. The fullness of God’s kingdom will be borne by compassion that wipes the tear from every eye, compassion that drives us the extra mile and makes short order of the artificial restraints we place around it now—restraints imposed by our own schedules and budgets, our own prejudices, our own agendas. Eternal life resembles this kind of suffering alongside our other brothers and sisters more completely, unafraid of how it will make us look, or whether it will wear out the back of our own animal and deplete our resources. Eternal life, therefore, will look more like the great teacher himself, Jesus, self-sacrifice extraordinaire, who himself stops on his own journey of glory to go to the cross, and in the process, picks us all up from the side of the road and heals us.

Mariam was a teacher on staff with me at the school for refugee children at my internship congregation in Cairo, Egypt. A refugee herself from the war-torn country of Eritrea, Miriam had been eking out a living in Cairo for her family for a few years before I got there. I assume she is still there, either unable to seek refuge in another country, or perhaps she feels that teaching young refugee children is her place. When I was there, Mariam taught the upper-level classes of English and science. She was a trained teacher, qualified to do much more than our little school, with its limited resources, could allow. Nevertheless, she taught with unparalleled love and enthusiasm and integrity. The children absolutely loved her and thrived in her classes, even though they were action-packed with energy and themselves dealing with the effects of many internal wounds.

As is common in refugee work, about every few weeks or so another child would get word that his or her family had been accepted for resettlement in the States or Australia or Canada, the very places Mariam herself might have dreamed that she would take her family someday. Once she brought us both to tears as she explained that three of her former students saved up their allowance so they could call her long distance from Calgary, Alberta, every night for a week in order to tell her they missed her and loved her. Mariam put herself in a position of pain and vulnerability in order to teach those students and make them better people. In fact, I could say that everyone who passes through St. Andrews Church in Cairo, whether a student or teacher (or feckless Lutheran intern) is touched by her mercy and compassion.

And Mariam is Muslim. She is a veil-wearing, peaceful, take-her-Islam-seriously type of Muslim. And, what’s more, almost all of her students and co-workers are Christian. She loves them without question—offers her life to them, you could say. I know that we often see on the TV pictures of turbaned so-called Muslims ramming planes into skyscrapers and inciting suicide violence against Westerners and Israelis, but I can’t get Mariam the Muslima out of my head as the example of the Good Samaritan. In the crazy way God often chooses to get his point across, I learned from Mariam a little more about how his kingdom functions, how we are to stop worrying about what the law requires and figuring out who exactly is our neighbor and instead just be a neighbor, be ruled by compassion, and show mercy. And every tear will be wiped from every eye. This is the stuff of eternal life.

So, at the end of his twisty-turny parable, Jesus simply tells the lawyer “Go and do likewise.” Go and do likewise. Suffering pays no heed to any boundaries. Neither then should compassion. Break your pencils, O Pharisee. This is no test. Christ has claimed everyone for mercy. The same goes for you—you who have been picked up from the side of life’s road and washed clean with this water, whose wounds have felt the salve of this body and blood: you, too, can let loose with his compassion. “It is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. This word is near you…in your mouth and in your heart.” You, too, can stop the studying. Go. Be a neighbor.


Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Second Sunday in Lent [Year C] - February 28, 2010 (Luke 13:31-35)

I never suspected that as a father I would wind up learning how to make so many animal sounds. Our young daughters naturally love to hear the noises different creatures make and, with increasing frequency these days, love to traipse around the house, pretending to be the animals, themselves. I am often drawn in and requested to mimic the roar of a lion or the trumpet of an elephant. When she’s guarding her snack from me, our three-year-old Clare will often fend me off with the fierce growl of a “mean bear,” as she calls it. Laura, our one-year old, can pant just like a dog. We expand our farmyard and jungle onomatopoeia on a monthly basis: we’ve got cats that meow, frogs that ribbit, and giraffes that chew. (Since every picture of a giraffe our daughters have ever seen shows the animal chomping on a mouthful of leaves, our girls have decided that a giraffe says >chew<, an idea that was only reinforced during our visit last summer to the Richmond zoo which affords its visitors with the singular if not slimy opportunity to feed giraffes from the palm of one’s hand.)


I suppose that if Jesus were to show up at our house one day, he’d cluck like a hen. At least, that’s what we could assume from the comments he makes outside Jerusalem, which we hear about in today’s gospel reading. It’s interesting: in all of the New Testament, Jesus compares himself to an animal only once. Although there are several times, specifically in John’s gospel, when he is referred to by others as “the Lamb of God,” and there is a reference to him as the “Lion of Judah” in Revelation, the only time he reaches into the animal kingdom and pulls out a metaphor for himself is this instance in Luke’s gospel, and he chooses a mother hen. We might expect the choice of something more extraordinary or rare, an animal that we would automatically associate with bravery or divinity, yet it is this run-of-the-mill resident of the local farm with which he identifies. It is the maternal, feminine image of a chicken—and a chicken with babies, no less—he chooses to describe his relationship toward Jerusalem, the city toward which he is travelling with his disciples.

Having spent the entirety of my life in the suburbs or the city, I’ve never had the chance to see this barnyard phenomenon. YouTube, which I scoured this week for visual examples, produced nothing satisfying. Apparently a hen, in most cases, will watch over and protect any chick from an egg it incubates. Supposedly at the first sight of danger—a hawk soaring overhead or a fox prowling in the pen—the momma chicken opens her wings and the chicks all come scurrying for shelter underneath. Then she drops her wings again, pulling every one of them in close. And there they remain until the threat has subsided. This survival mechanism serves two purposes: it both protects them from predators and keeps the chicks warm at the same time. According to what I’ve read, the hen is even prepared to offer her own life for the sake of her babies, should it come to that point.

I don’t know at what point the chicks outgrow their mother’s wingspan, or at what point they don’t feel the need to run their for shelter anymore, but this act of seeking shelter and warmth against their mother’s breast is how the each generation of chickens is reared And mother hens never seem to lose the habit. There are even some varieties of hen out there who will welcome into their broods a chick that they haven’t hatched, as if they are the foster moms of the whole coop, poultry parents with such a strong instinct for nurturing that they’re concerned for the preservation of every little baby in the farmyard.

Well, this is how Jesus understands himself in relation to God’s people, which is symbolized by that city that embodies and epitomizes the character and hope of a whole nation, Jerusalem. He stands on some road in Galilee, face firmly set on going there. Speaking from God’s own point of view, he laments the fact that, while he has lifted his wings on occasion, the chicks never come scurrying to him for shelter. He stands in the place many former prophets had stood, looking longingly at a people who had, time and time again, forsaken their role to live as a beacon of justice and compassion for themselves and others. God had given them so much, guided them through so many years, and yet they routinely wanted to go their own way, pursuing others’ ideas of greatness and power.

Considering Jerusalem’s track record for receiving prophets who suggested they repent and turn around from those ideas, it was dangerous for a prophet to enter the city. What’s more, some foxes have been prowling in those parts, and yet the residents of Jerusalem don’t seem to be concerned about their safety. With Pilate in charge, justice has been corrupted and the Roman occupiers have been allowed to tax and enslave. Yet, when Pharisees come to warn Jesus away from Galilee for fear of what Herod might do to him there, Jesus displays that fierce impulse of nurture. He loves God’s people, and despite Herod’s threats, his ministry of healing and casting out demons will not be deterred. He cares for God’s people, and no amount of prowling and snarling from Herod or any other fox will prevent Jesus from responding to their needs of preservation. And so he clucks and raises his wings—on that day, the day after, and all the way into Jerusalem—hoping they’ll recognize the sign and run underneath.

The issue is that for chicks, this is an instinctive response. Their response to their momma’s opened wings is, in a certain sense, pre-determined. They can’t help it. The wings go up, the hen clucks or gives some signal, and they are compelled by biological reflex to go underneath.

Those who live in Jerusalem, on the other hand, don’t operate on instinct. Those who have been created in the image of God, and set loose on the planet to roam at large—free-range chickens that we are—have will. We, like the folks of Jerusalem, have reason and knowledge at hand, flawed though those tools may be. We will, given the chance, often bite the hand that feeds us. We will, given the chance, kill the person who could save us. The wings go up, the signal is given, and we will still choose to press our luck right underneath the nose of the foxes and hawks that could eat us alive. We press our luck, living as though we have no need of the comfort of a faith community, living as though we can outgrow God’s nurture that is offered in the common prayer life of a congregation. We run the other way, suspicious that Scripture and the sacraments offer a false comfort and that a truer, better life lies elsewhere.

Worse yet, we will seek shelter under the shadow of any other substitute momma out there but the one who we’re created to. Free of that instinct to see Jesus as the one, true, loving mother hen—his words driven by nothing more than love and desire for our preservation—we are enticed with the temptation to find ultimate protection and warmth in just about any other relationship—with our education, our careers, our wealth, our friends, our passions.
And yet, we do occasionally glimpse signs of something like an instinctive response to Jesus as guardian. The blip in church attendance and involvement after 9/11 suggested, perhaps, that people sensed a need for togetherness and shelter against the the fear of forces that we perceive as deeply harmful. I have also heard some in the church make the prediction that the current economic downturn might, for whatever reason, lead some folks back to God and their faith communities for hope and support.

Yet, as encouraging as these trends may be, and as nice as it would be to have it a little more crowded under the wings, I’m not sure we should put our hope in them. Jerusalem, too, had a on-again, off-again relationship with God. The fact is that as long as we live, God’s desire to gather and nurture, is almost matched by our desire to wander and reject.

It would be easy for me at this point to decry and bemoan the statistics that show a steady, if not steep, decline in church membership and worship attendance not just in our own denomination, but in our nation as a whole. It would be easy for me to lecture about the lack of compassion we often show, the missed opportunities for mission and outreach, the dysfunction of the church, etc. etc., but to do so would really serve no purpose but to make people feel guilty (or self-righteous) and get you to look away from my own reluctance and forgetfulness about running to the eternal care of Jesus when I’m in need, which is constant.

After all, Jesus doesn’t do all that much lecturing anyway. He does preach and teach, but his ministry is built on healing, casting out demons, actions and words of compassion that are tantamount to lifting his wings and doing whatever he needs to get us realize it’s actually safe and warm under there.

It was my turn to lead chapel in Epiphany’s nursery school this week. Outfitted with photos of chickens and hens, I took this image to the three-year-olds and four-year-olds chicks on-site. I showed them the photos and asked them what a mommy chicken would do if a fox broke into the pen and sensed her chicks were in danger. Their responses, as you can imagine, were like a children’s sermon on steroids. One child suggested the hen would run tell the farmer the babies are in trouble. Another one was convinced that the hen would herd her chicks into the chicken coop and lock the door. A lot of them proposed that the hen would peck the fox to death, or, at least peck him away. Fierce chickens!

What I noticed is that every child knew the instinct of motherly protection. They knew the love of a momma. But not one of them ever supposed she’d protect them by actually taking them under her wing, putting her own life in danger, out in the open. And, truth be told, I wouldn’t have either.

So it is, even with Momma Jesus. There’s just know way we could guess that this would be the way he’d save us yet. There’s just know what that we could figure out, to deduce that he will hold back on the lecturing and really just spread those wings, spread those mighty arms, and take us in. Even on that day when we acclaim him as our king and shout hosanna (“God, save us!”), we would never suspect he’d go to this length, that it would come to that point.  From the streets of Jerusalem, and into the wayward avenues of our own lives, this man will raise his own arms—on the cross—and lay down his life…out in the open.

So, practice your animal noises, if you must. Trumpet, oink, bark, growl, and ribbit. But, above all, listen for those words of love and practice running for shelter. Practice snuggling in tight. His wings are still open.



Thanks be to God!



The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 11B] - July 19, 2009 (Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)

As you are no doubt aware by now, a group of our youth will travel this week to the city of New Orleans in order to attend the ELCA Youth Gathering, an event so large that it can only be held every three years. This year an estimated 37,000 Lutheran youth and adult volunteers will stream into this humid, flood-damaged, but beautiful city in order to worship together, learn together, and serve together. During the Gathering, every youth group from across the nation will be volunteering in New Orleans in some way through a community-building environmental program. Some will be helping to rebuild from Hurricane Katrina.

No matter what we all will be doing, I’m sure that coordinating service projects for 37,000 youth volunteers within the span of three days must be an enormously complicated undertaking. In fact, although it would be difficult to verify this, it is highly probable that the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans will be the largest service community in the history of the United States, and maybe the world. Some are suggesting, that is, that never before have that many people come together at one time for the express purpose of doing volunteer service work. We will be a mob with a mission.

There is a mob with a mission in today’s gospel text: get to Jesus at all costs. He gathers with his disciples; the mob finds him, ignoring even their hunger. The disciples whisk him away to the other side of the lake; the mob sees where they’re going and beats him there. They are relentless in their pursuit. Later, once Jesus crosses the lake again and lands at Gennesaret, the crowd recognizes him at once and rush at him and press in on him wherever they get wind of his presence. In village, town, or marketplaces, Jesus is the target. It’s a little bit like celebrity-status for him, and I imagine that if the camera had already been invented back then, some paparazzi would have been involved, their mopeds buzzing around and flashbulbs flashing. Overwhelmingly, though, this mob wants to get to Jesus because he can heal, he can feed. He can give hope. He can make a difference. “If we just get close enough to touch the fringe of his cloak,” some even think, “we’ll get a piece of the action.”

And this is how it continues for awhile. Their presence has been growing steadily for quite some time, but now it’s out of control, and the adoring mob will continue to grow, essentially pushing him up to and through the gates of Jerusalem.

One of the issues with this crowd in Mark’s gospel is that there is really nothing organize them or coordinate them in their mission. They are one giant, disorganized multitude. Mark describes them as “sheep without a shepherd,” an image which would have resonated strongly with Mark’s early readers. Here are likely thousands of people wandering around in the hills and towns of northern Israel, a place not only home to hundreds of flocks of real sheep, but also the historic home to God’s own flock of people. Many of these folks are, in fact, God’s chosen, and yet they are vulnerable and strewn about all over the place, haphazardly brought together by nothing but their own feverish desires. They had suffered at the hands of too many abusive and unfaithful shepherd-kings throughout their history, and here they are again, coarsing over the hills and through the streets to get to someone who can lead and guide and love.

And yet, for all its impressive size and energy, there is still something pitiful in this scene, something all-too descriptive of our own circumstances. The image of mad crowds straining and falling all over themselves to get to Jesus is reminiscent of our own desperate searches for meaning and healing. We may not understand ourselves as a part of a definable crowd with a mission, but there is something hectic and frantic and disorganized about so much of the human existence. So often, like sheep without a shepherd, we wander about aimlessly, following the flock in a loose-like fashion, drinking from any number of water sources and grazing in any type of pasture until something threatening scatters us apart from each other. And even in our more passionate moments we throw ourselves wantonly at whatever new-fangled remedy promises us fulfillment, happiness. Oh, at times, to have a mission! To sense that we have a life purpose or a goal that would never fail and then to have the stamina to follow it! Yes, this crowd that Mark describes with such vividness is really us. And we are altogether pitiful, pathetic, in our need for togetherness, in our need for guidance and loving care. Altogether pitiful, and it’s almost gut-wrenching.

In fact, that is exactly what our predicament is: gut-wrenching. Our clear need for rescue from all our isolating circumstances turns out to be truly gut-wrenching for Jesus. He stands there, looking out over this sea of humanity and instinctively feels compassion for us. In both the Greek and Hebrew understanding of the human body, compassion was rooted in the gut, in the innermost part of the body. In fact, the Greek words for “compassion” and “intestines” are almost the same. So often we attempt to stifle or deny those unpredictable deep feelings of compassion and empathy, but Jesus doesn’t. Like our hymn says, “his heart has never known recoil” ("Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life," words by Frank North) His response when he continually meets this crowd that presses in on him at every twist and turn is to reach out in teaching and in healing, to stand up as their shepherd as selflessly as possible.

And just as we may understand compassion as being rooted in the gut, in the dark center of the human body, we realize that Jesus, himself, is placed in the the dark center of the whole human experience. He is there, pressed in among the sick and downtrodden, offering healing and wholeness. He is there, pressed alongside the sorrowful and guilt-laden, offering hope and forgiveness. And he is there, pressed up against the cross, offering love and salvation with all those who trod the ways of death and abandonment. As Jesus responds to the crowd that has gathered, we see that his compassion may be his most defining characteristic, the emotion that guides him away from solitude and further into the people he loves.

This is how he will respond to us: knowing what we need even before we do, his gut-reaction is to love us and teach us and guide us in the midst of the dark valley of the shadow of death. That is true compassion, my friends, and we learn it only by pressing in among him as often as we can.

The crowd we had at church this week wasn’t quite of the same character as the crowd in today’s gospel lesson, but Vacation Bible School can come close to it at points. Amidst all the merriment, there are hurt feelings, skinned knees, snotty noses, and several cases of homesickness. Even as early as Wednesday, there are adult volunteers who are starting to show signs of exhaustion, who begin to understand why, as fun as it is, Vacation Bible School is only attempted once a year. It is always amazing to me how much gets undertaken in a week of VBS: the elaborate set designs, the music, the incessant hand-motions that go with the songs, the games, the Bible storytelling, the snacks, the coordinated outfits, the skits.

Yet I would venture to say, from experience, that the main thing the children take away from this experience is not a particular song or a specific craft or even a favorite Bible story. It is, rather, the compassion and attention of the volunteers they receive. They will remember the youth group members, pressed in among the kids, who selflessly allowed themselves to become human bean bags and jungle gyms for the week. They will be formed by the adult who, pressing themselves down to floor level, gave them extra attention as they struggled with the science lesson. They will, on some subconscious level if nowhere else, never forget the loving way they were brought into line after breaking the rules. These, more than anything else, are the things that they will take with them from this week. A congregation who knows that Christ has pressed himself into the center encourages these types of compassionate interactions, not only with children, but with all of God’s people. His compassion for us leads us to display the same urgent compassion for others, right up close.

I used to hear a song on the radio years ago called, “God is Watching us from a Distance.” The intention of that song, I believe, was to preach peace, to speak out against conflict and war and have us recognize our common humanity. Those are noble objectives, I suppose, but, as a friend of mine once pointed out, I’m not sure that telling us God is at a distance will ever achieve those aims, for a shepherding God could never lead from a distance. The God I have come to know—the God you have taught me more about—is the one who looks upon the scary, swarming mass of humanity and yet presses himself in among them, nonetheless. It is the God who continues to press in among his needy, hungry people in the form of bread and wine. God is watching us from a distance? Someone tell that to the children this week who learned about Jesus. Someone tell that to the people sitting in the hospital room, waiting for treatment. Someone tell that to the mob of 37,000 who will be led into the streets of New Orleans later this week. A God who dies on a cross is not a distant God.

Each time I used to hear that song come on the radio, I wanted someone to replace it with a recording of the 23rd Psalm, because I have come to understand that our God is in the crowd, close-up and with compassion. Tired, worn, and weary, but still reaching out and leading us to salvation. He’s holding high a rod and staff, pouring your cup so that it is running over. Goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of our life, and you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.


Thanks be to God!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.