This sermon was preached on Sunday, July 10, 2022 for the baptism of Olivia Marie. The texts for this sermon were: Psalm 82, Colossians 1:1-14, and Luke 10:25-37.
As you may know in the Episcopal Church, the readings for each Sunday are predetermined by our lectionary. That said, today's Gospel Passage is pretty perfect for a baptism celebration. You can't get a better encapsulation of the essence of the faith we are inviting little Olivia into today than this: "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." Or as our Presiding Bishop puts it, "Love God, love your neighbor, and while you're at it, love yourself.”
It's such a great summary, in fact, that it can be easy to overlook that the lawyer was actually trying to test and challenge Jesus. Jesus's response to the lawyer's second question is likewise intended to test and challenge the lawyer and us, the listeners. Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself is not as easy as it sounds. That's why we spend years cultivating these values and what they mean in our children and in ourselves. And why we do so in community and in conversation with scripture and the wisdom of past generations.
This week, I turned to the powerful witness and words of the Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's as I approached Jesus’ parable. In his sermon that's often referred to as the “I have been to the Mountaintop” sermon, King reminds us that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho the four men traveled is a dangerous one. Its curves and terrain make it ideal for exactly the kind of ambush the victim of our story had fallen prey to. King suggests that it's perfectly possible that the priest and the Levite didn't stop to help the man because they were afraid of getting ambushed, too. Or they suspected that the man was faking his injuries and actually part of a trap himself. In other words, King preached that the first question that came to the mind of the priest and the Levite when they saw this suffering man was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But the Samaritan, the foreigner, the one who decided to be a neighbor, the first question he thought when he saw this man’s suffering was, “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” For King, it is this question that lies at the heart of love of neighbor. “If I do not stop to help this fellow suffering person, what will happen to them?” This question guides what it means to follow Jesus in the way of the cross.
What do we do in a world where every road seems dangerous?
On Monday, my little family and I gathered with our neighbors and hundreds of other East Longmeadow folks to enjoy our town's famous fourth of July parade. We had great weather and so much fun celebrating a bit of patriotic and hometown pride. At the same time, just under a thousand miles away in Illinois, other families gathered in another suburban town just like our to watch their local parade, to celebrate their neighbors and our nation. But as we now know and grieve, their sunny day was ripped apart by violence and tragedy when a gunman opened fire on parade spectators. That should have been a safe and happy road for families to park their lawn chairs and wave their flags; every road in every town and city should be. But the threat of gun violence lingers, over our schools, our public gatherings, and our churches. How can we live, how can we gather, without this terror paralyzing or overwhelming us?
In videos from the Highland Park shooting, a police officer runs toward the sound of gunfire. A father places his kids in a dumpster and turns back to the pain. Strangers rescue and pull an orphaned two year old close.
King’s answer is that we are still called to ask the Samaritan’s question first, in the face of all that danger. Like Jesus, he did not just preach this message. Like Jesus, he lived by it and died by it. Martin Luther King ended his Good Samaritan sermon reflecting on his recent near fatal stabbing and constant death threats he received throughout his ministry. In his last few sentences, King made peace with the risks he was taking because of his clear sense of purpose and his faith that God would bring us, all of us, to a time of true justice and freedom for all. The next day after giving this exact sermon, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a gunman’s bullet. His words and example live on, challenging us to ask ourselves, “If I do not stop to help my fellow suffering human being, what will happen to them?”
Professor Matthew Skinner of Lutheran University adds one more question to King’s. He asks the question, “If I do not stop to help my fellow suffering human being, what will happen to me?” What are the spiritual consequences of teaching ourselves to ignore the plight of the poor, the outcast, and the alone? What does it do to our souls when we only consider protecting our own wealth or reputation or time? When we draw lines around who is worthy of compassion? What is the spiritual harm of miserliness, shutting ourselves off from others, leaning into distrust and apathy?
Or to put it in a more positive light, what growth is possible when we open ourselves to generosity, in spite of risk? What potential do we unlock in ourselves when we reach out a hand, even when it means interrupting our all-important journeys along the road to Jericho? How are we transformed by our own acts of compassion? Who do we become when we make kindness our primary way of being in the world? Loving ourselves means not allowing selfishness or fear to lead us away from our calling to be a beacon for Christ’s love and hope to the world.
We are not all called to martyrdom, thank God. We do not often face circumstances that demand extraordinary heroism. But I do know that each and every day each of us has the power to make small choices of faith over fear, generosity over avarice, neighbor over self. We give a bit more than we planned, we push past judgmental thoughts, we make time for a stranger, we demand courage from our representatives, we carry our children to the font. We take the brave steps, large and small, needed to make this world a safer, more loving place. And each of those prepare us for the unexpected moments that require greatness.
In a moment, Andrew and Mariana, Kaylin and Edward will be asked to renounce evil on behalf of their child and godchild. Our faith names and recognizes the dangers of the roads ahead of us. We reject their power over us. We say an even more powerful yes to following Jesus’ example of love in the face of all of that would tear it down.
Let us join with Olivia and the Gettis family and affirm the covenant that binds us to love, God and one another.
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