Pentecost 10C - "'Have no Fear.' What!?!?"

Genesis 15:1-6 and Saint Luke 12:32-40

 A running gag in comic strips for almost ever is that of “monsters under the bed” and no one did it better than Bill Watterson in his Calvin and Hobbes creations.

Calvin, as you remember, is an only child with a vivid imagination and Hobbes is his stuffed tiger who comes to life only for Calvin but cannot be heard by anybody else.  Calvin’s imagination leads him and his tiger on many adventures such a Spaceman Spiff, time travel in an old cardboard box, and in another cardboard box which Calvin calls his “Transmogrifer” which is able to turn him into anything or anyone he wants to be.

Sometimes Calvin’s imagination turns on him when he hears, or thinks he hears, a strange sound in the middle of the night and immediately determines that there must be a monster under his bed.  The thought leaves Calvin and Hobbes frozen.  Sometimes the battle the “monster” leaving their bedroom in a shambles and other times they yell for Calvin’s mother. In one of those strips Calvin calls out for water claiming to his mother that he can get it himself because of the monsters. So she appears with a classic case of bed-head hair that looks like she combed it with a balloon, a beyond sleepy face, a hastily thrown on nightgown, and a scowl that could stop a clock.  She turns on the light. Calvin takes one look at her and, as his eyes become as big as his face, screams.  

There is a whole volume devoted to such antics in the Calvin and Hobbes collection called Something Under the Bed is Drooling.

Calvin and Hobbes embody the idea behind the classic prayer “From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, long-leggety Beasties, and Things that go Bump in the Night, Good Lord, deliver us!”

Now, lest you think I read only these kinds of comics one of my other favourites appeared in The New Yorker.

The sketch pictures a man in bed late at night. He's sitting up, scribbling on a note pad, and talking on the phone. In the caption he tells his friend, "When I can't sleep, I find that it sometimes helps to get up and jot down my anxieties." Every square centimetre of the bedroom walls is covered with dozens of scribbled worries — war, recession, killer bees, aging, calories, sex, balding, radon gas, and so on.1

His worries have it all and so do ours as do the things that wake us up into the middle of the night that may not require so much as the slightest bump.

Into this scene comes Jesus who says: “Do not be afraid, little flock...” and before he finishes the sentence we are saying: “What! Are you kidding?”

This is one of those assertions that may or may not be true, but some have claimed that there “are 366 ‘Fear nots’ in the Bible, one for every day of the year, including Leap Year! God doesn’t want us to go a single day without hearing his word of comfort: ‘Fear not!’”2

I fear that summer is washing away far to quickly for me to spend anytime indoors counting but I will grant that “fear not” and “What! Are you kidding?” are reoccurring themes in scripture.

They certainly were for Abram and Sari who are growing older and the offspring that were promised have not yet materialized.  There may be snow on their roof and fire in the old furnace but, as yet, it sure looks like God was kidding because the nursery is still vacant; the baby furniture has years of accumulated dust on it, and Abram is beginning to feel like a bigger fool than he did when God got him into this whole business in the first place.

One day, seemingly out of the blue, the LORD speaks to Abram and says: “‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.’”3  “And then the story continues with four words that are as remarkable as they are few: ‘And so Abraham went.’ No doubt, no questions, no conditions. God promises, and Abraham simply trusts, obeys, and goes.”4

The late Dr. Lewis B. Smedes, leaving his imagination to go wild, invites us to consider that not everybody might have thought this fearless faith in God was such a good idea.      

Well, if he were my neighbour, and he said, “God came to me last night and told me to go out to the Los Angeles airport and that he would tell me which airline and which destination to go to, and I’m never coming back,” I would say to him, “Either you’re crazy, or God is doing something very peculiar.”5

 Monsters are beginning to appear under the old couple’s bed and all the Post-it note on their wall read: “Where is the baby?”

So, the LORD has to calm him down and reassure him that everything is going to be all right. He takes Abram outside and tells him:  “Look as far as you can see in every direction, for I am going to give it all to you and your descendants.” And I am going to give you so many descendants that, like dust, they can’t be counted!”6

So Abram, again, does what he is told. Abram is living, stuck really, between a hint of a dream and its full realization but, even so, he is becoming increasing frustrated.

Dr. Elizabeth Arnold of the Candler School of Theology reminds us at this point.

Let’s don’t judge Abram harshly. I don’t think he is in the wrong. Abram has consistently obeyed God each time that God issued a promise, while God has not yet delivered. In a relationship of trust, both parties are allowed expectations for promises to be kept.7

 And it is here that God does something lovely that calms Abram’s fears.  I’d like to think that God takes Abram by the hand, leads him out of his tent, shows him the night sky, and simply repeats the promise.   “Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count!”8 And Abram believes again.

I never noticed one aspect to this story before.  All along I thought Abram was just an easy mark. Repeat a long-delayed promise and he’ll fall right into line.  But this time things are different.  Before Abram was looking at what he had, the abundance which he has procured for himself: carpets and cushions, clothes and coffeepots.  He’s looking around and then he is looking down when he is promised that his decendents will be as numerous as “the dust of the earth.”9

Dust of the earth!  Dust is that stuff that gathers under our beds!  Dust is something we try to get rid of and, in my case, fail miserably.  In order to see dust we have to look down.

This time the LORD is inviting Abram to look up.  Counting specks of dust will only remind us what bad housekeepers we are, but looking up at the stars will cause us to marvel at the wonders of creation.

Astronaut James Lovell died this past week at 97. He was the one who took was has come to be known as the “Earthrise” photo that showed the “Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon.”10

On Christmas Eve of 1968, on that same mission Lovell, and fellow astronauts Frank Borman and William Anders with “only the instruction to say something ‘appropriate’ decided to read from the creation account in the Book of Genesis”11 which concludes with the words: “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.”

If I read today’s gospel correctly what Jesus is trying to get us to do is to look up from under our beds and keep awake for when we do we just might be surprised to find not a thief busting in in the middle of the night or even our mom, half-asleep with hair askew but a master with robe adjusted and ready to serve us.

It will be as surprising as if on Downtown Abbey we found Lady Violet Crawley, The Dowager Countess of Grantham, known for her acerbic wit, downstairs in the servant's quarters, serving tea and cakes to her manservants and maidservants.

That where Jesus tells us we find in him if we only look up and trust.

Rummaging around in my very dusty library one day I found a book originally belonging to my Aunt Eve.  It was called A Man Called Peter and is the biography of Peter Marshall – not the host of the “Hollywood Squares” – but the former chaplain of the United States Senate and preacher at the Washington’s New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in the 1940's.

In one of his sermons Dr. Marshall wrote:

When you are weary and sit down in a chair, you do not sit rigid, expecting the chair to collapse beneath you.

When you lay down on your bed, you do not lay like a poker — tense, rigid.  You trust the bed to hold you.  You do not worry about the bed collapsing and depositing you on the floor.

You don’t lie there all tense ... listening for the sound of a burglar at the window ... or the crackle of flames from the basement ... or the trembling of the earth in a possible earthquake.

If you did you would not get much sleep.  You trust your bed. You trust your precautions against burglars. You trust the police force, and the fire brigade, and you trust yourself to sleep, which is another way of saying you trust yourself to God.12

Trust in him, Jesus seems to be saying and maybe, just maybe, there won’t even be any monsters under your bed. 

______________

1. Dan Clendenin, “‘Don’t Worry About Your Life’: Jesus Speaks to Our Fears and Anxieties,” Journey with Jesus, August 8, 2010, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/3637-20100802JJ.

2. Lloyd John Ogilvie, Facing the Future without Fear: Prescriptions for Courageous Living in the New Millennium (Ann Arbor, , MIchigan: Vine Books, 2002).

3. Genesis 12:1–2.  (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

4. David Lose, “‘Previously in Genesis’ ,” A Sermon for Every Sunday (asermonforeverysunday.com, July 29, 2022), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/sermons/c37-ninth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-c-2019/.

5. Bill D. Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation (New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2002), 160.

6. Genesis 13:14-17. (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible {Carol Stream; Tyndale House Publishers, 1971}]

7. Elizabeth Arnold, “Go Outside and Play,” episode, Day 1 (Atlanta, Georgia, August 10, 2025). P. 3

8. Genesis 15:5.  (TLB) 

9. Genesis 13:16. (NRSVUE) [NRSVUE=The New Revised Standard Version Updated edition.]

10. James Lovell, “Apollo 8: Earthrise,” NASA, December 23, 2020, https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/apollo-8-earthrise/.

11. Jonah McKeown, “Jim Lovell, NASA Astronaut Who Read Genesis from Lunar Orbit, Dies at 97,” National Catholic Register August 8, 2025, https://www.ncregister.com/news/astronaut-jim-lovell-dies-at-97-0ezqfaos.

12. Peter Marshall, “Sin in the Present Tense.” in A  Man Called Peter: The Story of Peter Marshall  by Catherine Marshall. (New York, NY: McGrow Hill, 1951), 305-306.

Pentecost 9C - "The Man Who Mistook His Life for a Barn" {Updated Edition}

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23

Saint Luke 12:13–31

One night, not so long ago when I probably couldn’t find a sporting event or one of the “cozy mysteries” on PBS I was doing what most guys do when they are bored and staring at the television.  I was channel surfing.

I had surfed so long that I was up into the high numbers that the folks at DirecTV have now assigned to the religious broadcasters when I came across some old guy playing the piano. 

Please understand that I use the term “old guy” advisedly because sometimes when I see a person either on TV, in the movies, or on stage I wonder to myself, “Is that person still around.  They must be 1,000 years old!” However, when I Google them, quite often they turn out to be younger than I am now.

While I recognized the old guys face, I more fully recognized him by his piano playing.  It was the mixture of Gospel and honkey-tonk that made him one of the most popular televangelists of the 1980's.  

It was Jimmy Swaggart, whom CBS newsman Dan Rather once called “the country’s greatest speaker.”1

He was something! A real force of nature!  He was an unashamed Pentecostal “whose  preachers excelled at rousing audiences’ ardour, and Swaggart commanded the stage better than most. He paced, pounced and poured forth sweat while begging listeners to turn from sin and accept Jesus.

In 1982, Newsweek magazine noted his musical chops, naming him the “King of Honky Tonk Heaven.” 

Swaggart’s on-stage charisma powered the launch of a television ministry that would reach millions within a decade. Viewers were captivated by his soulful tunes and fire-and-brimstone sermons. At its height, Swaggart’s show was televised in 140 countries, including Peru, the Philippines and South Africa.

His ministry also became the largest mail-order business in Louisiana, selling books, tapes, T-shirts and biblical memorabilia. Thanks to the US$150 million raised annually from donations and sales, Swaggart lived in an opulent mansion, possessed a private jet previously owned by the Rockefellers, sported a yellow gold vintage Rolex and drove a Jaguar.2

 His lifestyle was heavenly while he was sending all sorts of other folk to the fires of hell "as he denounced what he called “‘cults,’ including Catholicism, Judaism and Mormonism ... warning followers about the evils of abortion, homosexuality and godless communism.”3

It all came crashing down when he was caught in a dalliance with another woman who was not his wife.  (Believe me! I worked long and hard to make that last sentence palatable to a church audience.)  Confessing his guilt “Swaggart delivered an histrionic apology before 7,000 parishioners.  Through copious tears, sobbing and shouting, Swaggart abased himself, stirring the crowd into such a frenzy that some began speaking in tongues.”4

Upon his death on the 1st of July at the age of 90 (Gee! He was older than me!) what led off the announcement of his passing was not his preaching or piano playing it was his tear-stained confession.  

“I have sinned against You, my Lord. And I would ask that Your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain, until it is in the seas of God's forgetfulness, never to be remembered against me anymore.”5

“Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity... and a chasing after wind.”6

 

One could certainly say that Swaggart gave into his vanity. Calling out the sins of other’s he thought his would never be found out.  While he could have been remembered as, in Dan Rather’s words, “one of the country’s greatest speakers” upon his death he was remembered in one headline as being “the sobbing preacher who imploded in a scandal.”  His vanity caused him to look more than foolish.

Jesus told a story about a foolish guy once.

Only with the guy in Jesus’ story, Dr. Fred B. Craddock reminds us in his commentary on Luke; there is no hint of scandal. There is nothing here of graft or theft, there is not mistreatment of workers or any criminal act. Sun, soil, and rain join to make him wealthy.  He is careful and conservative. He is not unjust.7

In fact, we “honor these people in our yearly roundup of ‘the most successful’ and the most famous’ in our celebrity magazines. 

Here is a prudent, productive man whom we might call a success. He is not only a success in farming but he is also a wise manager. He builds great secure barns to hold all of his grand harvest. We might give him the “Farmer of the Year" award.8

 With full barns and ample savings, he is well fixed to sail into a prosperous and happy retirement.

Here we have the fabled American Dream, work hard, be prudent, save wisely, put things aside today for security in the future.  Then sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.9

As one of my pastors, the always insightful Dr. Lucy Foster-Smith wrote in a devotional:

It is that this dude is living out his life for himself: he talks to himself, he makes all of his plans for himself, he is so proud of himself, he probably would have had a portrait of himself on every door of the barns. His life shrunk inside as his possessions expanded exponentially. Jesus says he was a fool. In amassing it all for himself, he filled his life with things and crowded out his very life.10

In short, this guy mistook his life for a barn.  His life was all about him and his possessions.  

“Jesus takes us inside his head for an intriguing little chat.”11  By my count ten times in three sentences, he uses “I” or “my”.  If you run them together, he sounds rather full of himself.

‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’

“Just as he’s plotting bigger barns, he drops dead. God isn’t punishing him for his plans, or for his productivity. God isn’t punishing him at all. His time simply is up.”12

In the parable God finally gets a word in edgewise with a very important question: “Your barnful of goods—who gets it?”13

He would have done well to heed the warning of the writer of Ecclesiastes. “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me —and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish?”14

The author of this bit of the Good Book is the exact opposite of the self-absorbed landowner.  The one thing the landowner has going for him is that he is, at least, positive. The author of Ecclesiastes  is a bit of a downer.  The New Revised Standard Version uses the word, “vanity.”  In the Hebrew the word means “vapor,” “mist,” or “whisp.” It’s all meaninglessness or triviality.”15

Both these authors are totally self-absorbed.  One has so ignored his mortality that he has forgotten to write a will while the other is worried that his beneficiary might be a bozo.  What is left out of one’s exaltation and the other’s lamentation is God.

Without God life is an unhappy business.  Treasures mean nothing.  Life is meaningless.

What we can be left with this morning is two examples of “precisely the sort of person you should not become, and exactly the foolish behavior you should avoid at all costs.”16

I think we know that.  

I think Jimmy Swaggart knew deep down in his heart of hearts that he was becoming the kind of person he had taught others what they should avoid being at all costs.  I think he knew that when he was “a $30-a-week itinerant Louisiana preacher”17  but fame, and glory, and money, and power caused him to forget. 

It is so easy to forget.  It is so easy to put our faith in what we have and what we have built.  It is so easy to mistake our life for our barns.

That’s why we need this place and places like it.  It is where we go to be reminded that is something more to life than we think there is.

We’re not hearing this kind of thing alone on our Sunday morning run unless you are remembering where you’ve heard it and deciding to pick-up the pace so you can hurry back to the place where you will hear it again.

We’re not hearing this at Lolapaloosa jammed in with thousands of our closest friends to hear music on Chicago’s lakefront. 

But we’ve heard it here so that later in the week when, just when we need it most, it will come to us with all the force of a hint. 

Later on in the book the author of Ecclesiastes will get the hint.  After moved by the spirit to write those couplets made famous by Peter, Paul, and Mary: “a time to be born, a time to die...” The author hints at what I have been trying to tell you when the words appear: “{God} has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity in their hearts.”

Here in this place, we have been reminded that there is something more.  That our life in more than a barn filled with goods.  That it is not all vanity.  That eternity can come into our hearts, and hands, and hearts, and minds.

Its here now in song, and word, and in the bread and wine all of which is Christ’s own gifts to us.

  

Here we receive a barn full of grace.  Its grace that is worth more than a barn-full of goods.  It “grace-a-paloza”! 

Embracing this grace, living out this grace, when our time comes maybe just maybe we’ll be remembered as someone who was “rich toward God” and in that way as someone who was rich indeed.

________________

1. Diane Winston, “Jimmy Swaggart’s Rise and Fall Shaped the Landscape of American Televangelism,” The Conversation, July 11, 2025, https://theconversation.com/jimmy-swaggarts-rise-and-fall-shaped-the-landscape-of-american-televangelism-260377.

2. https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/jimmy-swaggarts-rise-and-fall-shaped-the-landscape-of-american-televangelism/

3. Winston,. loc.cit. 

4. “The Televangelist Who Imploded in a Sex Scandal,” The Week, July 18, 2025, 35.

5. Michael E. Eidenmuller, “Jimmy Swaggart - Apology Sermon (21 Feb 1988),” American Rhetoric, February 21, 1988, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jswaggartapologysermon.html.

6. Ecclesiastes 1:2 & 14.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version updated edition]

7. Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary  (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 163.

8. William H. Willimon, “Wise Up,” Pulpit Resource, Year C, 35, no. 3 (July 1, 2025): 25–28.

9. William H. Willimon, “Wise Up,” Pulpit Resouce 21, no. 3 (2022): pp. 15-17.

10. Lucy Foster-Smith, “Luke 12:13-21,” Devotion for Saturday, July 30, 2022. Fourth Presbyterian Church (Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 2022), https://www.fourthchurch.org/devotions/2022/073022.html.

11. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say August 3? 8th after Pentecost,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, 1AD, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

12.     ibid.

13. St. Luke 12. 20. (MSG) {MSG=The Message. Eugene H. Peterson, “St. Luke 12:20.,” in The Message: The New Testament in Contemporary English (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1995).

14. Ecclesiastes 2:17. (NRSV)

15.    Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg and Nicholas Schaser, “Is Everything Vanity the Hebrew Meaning of Hevel,” Is Everything Vanity The Hebrew Meaning of Hevel (Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality!  December 8, 2021), https://www.patheos.com/articles/is-everything-vanity-the-hebrew-meaning-of-hevel

16. Richard Lischer, Reading the Parables (Louisville, , KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 36.

17.    The Week, loc.cit.

Pentecost 6C - "Dinner Party Does and Don'ts"

Saint Luke 10:38-42

 I‘ve always had two recurring nightmares when it comes to dinner parties.

The first is one that I am hosting where the guests more than make themselves at home.

The moment they walk in the head directly for the liquor cabinet where they help themselves to the “top shelf” items that I have been saving for more special occasions than this one.

Well satiated they sit down to dinner where they eat everything but the drapes.

Dessert is consumed so quickly that if one took the time later to ask them what it was, they wouldn’t be able to remember.

When they have had their fill, it is time for after dinner drinks which, of course, they consume with great gusto.

Spotting a pool in my backyard and feeling a little flushed from all the alcohol running through their systems they ask if they can go for a swim.  Gracious, but now oppressed host that I am, I say yes.  

Much, much later the guests emerge from the water only to announce that they are too tipsy and too tired to drive home and ask if they can stay the night.

They spot the spare bedroom – which now I know I should have turned into a walk-in closet – and retire for the night.

They wake the next morning looking for breakfast...then lunch ... then another round of drinks, dinner, swimming and sleep and before I know it, in my nightmare, they are petitioning the aldermen on my behalf to build one of those granny-flats over my garage.

I usually wake at this point and check the house to make sure that Aayu and I are alone.

My second reoccurring nightmare includes being invited over to the home of Mary and Martha for dinner.  

These two sister’s personalities are polar opposites.  They are a family feud ready to happen. They are as far apart emotionally as two people can be.  They shouldn’t be sharing the house let alone a table with each other. In fact, they are so different that one can wonder if they belong together on the same planet.

Yet, here is Jesus with them in one of his many encounters, accepting their invitation and finding himself in the midst of a confrontation he unwittingly and unwillingly participated in.

I‘ve always felt funny preaching about Mary and Martha because, in case you haven’t noticed, I a guy, and I don’t think guys have any business opining about what was like to be a woman in the first century or in the twenty-first century.  

One of the life-commandments my Uncle Herb gave me as a child was: “It’s one thing to have an opinion and it is quite another thing to have an informed opinion.”

So, let me start with a Sally, a character from Amor Towles wonderful best seller The Lincoln Highway.

I am a good Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ… But I am not willing to believe that Jesus would turn his back on a woman who was taking care of a household. From a man’s point of view, the one thing needful is that you sit at his feet and listen to what he has to say, no matter how long it takes, or how often he’s said it before. By his figuring, you have plenty of time for sitting and listening because a meal is something that makes itself. Like manna, it falls from heaven. Any woman who’s gone to the trouble of baking an apple pie can tell you that’s how a man sees.1

 And that seems to be the difficulty.  I don’t know what Mary’s life was like and I don’t know what Martha’s life was like.

So, I take very seriously the warning issued by Dr. Fred B. Craddock in his commentary on Luke’s Gospel.  He says:

We must not cartoon the scene: Martha to her eyeballs in soapsuds, Mary pensively on a stool in the den and Jesus giving scriptural warrant for letting dishes pile high in the sink. If we censure Martha too harshly, she may abandon serving altogether, and if we commend Mary too profusely, she may sit there forever.2

 “If we’re not careful, we’ll get a picture of Martha who always sits at the dinner table sideways, ready to leap into action every time somebody needs something from the stove. And Mary will be so lazy she doesn’t even stoop over to tie her shoes.”3

 But there we are with Mary sitting and Martha steaming. 

Neither Jesus nor Mary have picked up on the commotion coming from the kitchen until the moment when Martha blasts into the room and, at this point, won’t even speak directly to her sister but goes to Jesus and says “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”4

To which Jesus replies: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”5

Oh, yes!  That was helpful!  I’m sure that calmed everything down immediately.  But, as I said, I’m a guy, and a Ben Dunholm, another guy, wisely wrote in a Christian Century article.  “I have yet to meet an overworked male who felt implicated in this story...”6

But for women scholars this little confrontation over dinner could have, should have, gone in a whole different direction.

Joy Douglas Stome, retired Pastor of Lakeview Presbyterian, wished that “Jesus had said something different: ‘You’re absolutely right, Martha. What was I thinking? Why don’t we all come into the kitchen and help with the dishes and talk while we work?’ One twist of phrase and the Mary-Martha struggle could easily have been sidelined while Jesus’ main point was still made.”7

But Debbi Thomas was in full Martha mode when she wrote:

I wish Jesus had done more.  I wish he’d rounded up his (male) disciples, ushered them into the kitchen, and directed them to bake the bread, fry the fish, and chop the vegetables — all while Martha took a much-needed nap.  I wish he’d said, “Peter, you wash the dishes.  James and John, you put away the leftovers. Judas, get the beds made.  Andrew, you’re on sweeping and mopping duty, and the rest of you: go ask the women what else they need done.  Oh, and in case you boys are wondering: this “girlie” stuff isn’t a prelude to the sacred.  This stuff is the sacred.”8

And that is a point well made.

Painfully, through the years, Martha has been made out to be the one who has not chosen wisely – preferring kitchen duty to sitting at Jesus feet.  And Mary, she’s been our example of the life of a good Christian.  Just sitting and listening to Jesus, listening to Jesus, listening to Jesus. 

As someone who sees themself as being neither particularly pious and certainly not profound, if I had to choose, I would rather be a Martha than a Mary.  And it should come as no surprise that I gravitate toward people who are neither pious or profound. 

I rather be serving up a burger and a beer rather than trying to wow people with my knowledge of the bible and theology and the good news of this story is “that if study is your thing, by all means sit at the young rabbi's feet. If caring through cooking is your thing or cleaning up or serving the poor or getting things done—do the same”9 because I think if we asked Jesus if we should be a Mary or a Martha his answer, surprisingly, would be, “Yes. But, without all the carping.” 

______________

1.  Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2023).

2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary  (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 152.

3. Randy L. Hyde, "Sermon, Luke 10:38-42, It's All in the Timing," Sermon Writer, July 08, 2019, , accessed July 20, 2019, https://www.sermonwriter.com/sermons/new-testament-luke-1038-42-its-all-in-the-timing-hyde/.

4. St. Luke 10:40. (NIV) [NIV=The New Internation Version]

5.  St. Luke 10:41. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standand Version Updated Edition]

6. Benjamin J. Dueholm, “Marthas Without Gender,” The Christian Century, July 15, 2013, https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2013-07/marthas-without-gender? 

7. Joy Douglas Strome, “Kitchen Relief: Luke 10:38-42,” The Christian Century, July 10, 2007, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2007-07/kitchen-relief-0.

8. Debie Thomas, “Only One Thing,” Journey with Jesus, July 14, 2019, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2282-only-one-thing.

9. Elizabeth Myer Bolton, “Martha’s Problem: What Is the ‘Better Part’?” The Christian Century, March 8, 2011, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-02/martha-s-problem?=0_-31c915c0b7-86361464.

Pentecost 5C - "Which One Am I?"

"The Good Samaritan" - Vincent van Gogh

Saint Luke 10:25–37

It was the timing and the location.

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

Most of us had friends who we were planning to spend the day with.  There was potato salad to make, barbeques to plan, and in general just whiling the hours, drinking beer, watching fireworks, and taking a well-deserved day off from the news. We may not have found out until the next morning that somewhere in Texas, flood waters had risen so fast that, it is said, at it’s peak the waters of the Guadalupe River at Kerrville, Texas were flowing so fast that they could have filled an Olympic size swimming pool in under a second.

The river height surged from less than 12 inches to more than 34 feet and considering that only “six inches of rapidly moving water can knock you off your feet”1 a disaster was in the making. We know now that right in the path of those rapidly rising waters was a place called Camp Mystic with about 700 children eagerly awaiting the beginning of a summer session.

The camp has a storied history in Texas. Former first lady Laura Bush was a counsellor at that camp that her daughter Jenna Bush Hager described on the Today Show as being “almost like a spiritual, beautiful place.” And she continued, “"I think as parents, we think about the horror of sending our kids to a place that's supposed to be — and is — healing and fun and joyful and all the things that kids deserve to have, and then something like this {happens}."2

That’s what made the news of this week so devastating. We’ve been to places like Camp Mystic. While the timing could not have been worse and the location could not have been worse because it happened at a place that all of us can relate to.

We know those places which is why when we realized the magnitude of what was happening we remembered that, for many of us in our lives, there were places like Camp Mystic.  For some of us there was a Walcamp, or a Lutherdale, or a Lutheran Outdoor Ministry Centre, or the Twin Lakes Bible Camp,  where we went or, in my case, sent against my will to eat somewhat questionable food, drink drinks that were affectionately referred to as “bug juice” for the protein content that was often floating around in them, and fight off mosquitoes the size of B-52s.  Perhaps the only redeeming quality to the “outward bound” experiences where that is was the place where boys and girls who had the hots for each other learned how to sneak away from their camp counsellors to play “huggy-bear” and “smash mouth.”

Dr. Fred B. Craddock once wrote in a commentary on today’s Gospel, “Great care should be given in our culture to analogies to the Samaritan”3 and he is right but this week right along with the sadness is the hope that rescue workers, first responders, meal servers, were other good Samaritans who could only offer themselves and their hugs brought to the scene.

I don’t know but I can’t help but think that we owe a lot to the lawyer who approached Jesus out of the blue on that fine day and asked his question about who is or who isn’t my neighbour for he set Jesus up to “singlehandedly reshape the reputation of Samaritans, to now be associated with care and compassion for strangers.”4  

Without this lawyer and his question, we wouldn’t have Good Samaritan Hospitals, Good Samaritan laws, and the idea that Samaritans are people we see every day who make it their business to... well ... do good.

And the really strange thing is that the lawyer didn’t start off talking about this life at all.  His question pertained to the next.  “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”5

The lawyer knew the answer to this question.  Every good Jew did. It was the great Shema that was memorized with the same gusto that we memorized Luther’s Small Catechism.  “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.”6

“Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”7

Fortunately for us, the lawyer asks a question he doesn’t know the answer to and sets Jesus up to tell him and us a really great story.

It’s another one of those stories that we know by heart.  We think we know it, but do we?  We think we know who we are in it, but do we?

Of course, we are the Samaritan!  We would help!  We would be there!  We have been there for friends who needed a hand!  We’ll lend a hand even a neighbour whose name we’re not sure of.  Was it Fred? Buddy? Olive? Mabel? Anyway, who knows!  They needed help and I was there we say with our chest all puffed up.

But hey!  We also live in a big city, and we know that most times to stop and help can be as benign as reaching into your pocket for a couple of bucks but there are other times – late at night on a dark and scary street – that maybe discretion is the better part of valour.

That’s the secret to understanding the two guys that pass by.

Don’t worry about all the other stuff you’ve heard about them in other sermons.  Those were characterizations of Jewish life, and rules, and regulations designed by others to explain the priest and the Levites actions but have no basis in reality.  In the words of the incredible Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of Jewish Studies and New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School we can come away from some interpretations we have heard with “the impression that the Jewish audience would find the eating of a ham sandwich damning, but would not care about a violent physical attack.”8

Dr. Martin Luther King got to the heart of the matter when he said in a sermon once:

I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that these men were afraid...And so the first question that the priest {and} the Levite asked was, “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?”9

That’s the question that I believe is driving the searchers in Texas who even now are who risking life and limb in their recovery efforts.  Not, what will happen to me in muddy, debris filled waters but what will happen to those families if their loved ones are never found?  So, they search. 

A bearded guy named Erik Muncy (who my totally uniformed, stereotyped guess is that he  probably did not vote in the last presidential election the way I did) shakes his head while he searches.  

The Christian Science Monitor told his story. 

“These are people’s entire lives,” he says, resting a tattooed hand on the steering wheel. “People are literally throwing their whole homes away.”

He’s talking about the people now, not the possessions. He’s talking about the two friends who are helping him deliver supplies to flood victims, about the friends and relatives helping gut the flooded-out homes, about the emergency responders still picking their way through miles of mud, debris, and flattened cypress trees." 

But, he adds, “All of this is Texas.”10

Somewhere along side of him, we are told by The Guardian.

A contingent of firefighters and first responders from Mexico arrived in Texas over the weekend to aid in search and rescue efforts.

“When it comes to firefighters, there’s no borders,” Ismael Aldaba, founder of Fundación 911, in Acuña, Mexico, told CNN on Tuesday. “There’s nothing that’ll avoid us from helping ... another family. It doesn’t matter where we’re at in the world. That’s the whole point of ... what we do.”11

 They could have said, “They don’t want us in their country. “They are trying to deport some of our innocent people left and right. Why should we help them?”  They could have said that, but they didn’t.

That’s what makes Jesus story and the stories I just told you so surprising.  Dr. Amy-Jill Levine tells us:

{As} soon as the story mentions a priest and a Levite, everybody knows the third person will be an Israelite. It’s like going from Larry to Moe to Curly. The shock is that the third one is a Samaritan, and Samaritans were the enemy.”12

She points out that Jesus’ original audience might have thought, “I’d rather die than acknowledge that one from that group saved me.”13

Imagine a staunch MAGA member being pulled out of ditch by a Mexican firefighter.  Imagine a good, solid, liberal being finding herself being rescued by some guy in a “Make America Great Again” hat. That’s the kind of stuff Jesus is talking about here.

And there is only one way to understand it. 

It’s only if we see ourselves not as the uncaring ones, or even the Samaritan, but rather as the guy being beaten up by the side of the road.

Someday we might be that person. 

He needed help and he accepted it from whoever it was offered because when your broken and bloodied and scared out of your wits you really don’t care who’s by your side. This is not a time for pop quizzes or theological purity tests.  This is a time to accept the grace that is coming to you in whatever form it comes.

Those folks in Texas aren’t asking if you are a believer or a non-believer. They aren’t asking about marital status or care if you were gay or straight.  They aren’t even asking if you were a Republican or a Democrat.  If you need help, they’re giving it.

“‘Love your neighbor’ is not a metaphor. It’s a commandment to love the next person we encounter as much as, and as well as, we happen to love ourselves.”14

And who is my neighbour? That is, who is worthy of love and dignity? Who deserves compassion?  Jesus says, “Everyone who needs it.”

________________

1. Stephen J. Beard et al., “See How the Texas Floods Unfolded and Why Camp Mystic Was in a Hazardous Location,” USA Today, July 11, 2025, https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2025/07/11/texas-floods-guadalupe-river-camp-mystic/84509122007/.

2. KiMi Robinson, “Jenna Bush Hager Reveals Ties to Camp Mystic,” USA Today, July 9, 2025, https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2025/07/08/jenna-bush-hager-camp-mystic-texas-floods/84513787007/.

3. Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation Bible Commentary.  (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990). 151.

4. Jennifer S. Wyant, “Commentary on Luke 10:25-37,” Working Preacher, June 8, 2025, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-3/commentary-on-luke-1025-37-6.

5. St. Luke 10:25. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

6. St. Luke 10:27. (NRSV)

7. St. Luke 10:28. (NLT) [NLT= The New Living Translation. (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 2015)

8. Amy-Jill Levine and Maria Mayo, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2018),  p. 77-115.

9.     ibid.

10. Henry Gass, “‘this Is Texas.’ Amid Flood Despair, Locals Mobilize to Help.,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 8, 2025, https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2025/0708/texas-flash-flood-disaster-recovery

 11. Cecelia Nowell, “Firefighters from Mexico Aid Texas Flood Search and Rescue: ‘There Are No Borders,’” The Guardian, July 8, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/08/mexico-firefighters-texas-flooding-search-rescue.

12. Amy Jill Levine, “Knowing and Preaching the Jewish Jesus,” The Christian Century, March 27, 2019, https://www.christiancentury.org/interviews/knowing-and-preaching-jewish-jesus? 

13.     Levine, Short Stories by Jesus. p. 104

14. Peter Marty, “Need Thy Neighbor,” The Christian Century, August 31, 2016, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2016-08/need-thy-neighbor?