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? 

Pentecost 4C - "Building and Destroying"

July 4th Celebration in Birch Bay, Washington 2025

Saint Luke 10:1–11 & 26–20

It is a holiday weekend still and that’s fine because Independence Day from its very beginning was never really a settled issue.

John Adams believed that July 2nd was the day when colonial independence should have been celebrated.  He firmly believed that formal separation from England took place when “the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia voted to approve a motion for independence put forth by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia” on July 2nd, 1776.

It was not until July 4 that the “actual Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress.”

Interesting enough the “city of Philadelphia, where the Declaration was signed, waited until July 8 to celebrate, with a parade and the firing of guns. The Continental Army under the leadership of George Washington didn’t learn about it until July 9.”1

The date may have been subject to debate but the way we celebrate clearly is not.  

Writing to his wife Abigail on July 3 John Adams outlined what became the formula for our celebrations.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.2

For a couple of years now I have celebrated Independence Day in a place called Birch Bay, Washington where, even though their fireworks display is not sponsored by any civic, community, or corporate organization they literally light up the night sky in a tradition that would make John Adams and his fellow constitutional framers proud.

Now I don’t expect you to remember what we talked about last week because sometimes I can’t remember what I say from one week to the next or, for that matter, one day to the next but last week the disciples were planning to have a real fireworks show in a Samaritan village that rejected them.  Only they weren’t planning on bottle rockets and sparklers, they were planning to burn the place to the ground. 

Remember, upon being rejected by one Samaritan village, “When the disciples James and John learned of it, they said, ‘Master, do you want us to call a bolt of lightning down out of the sky and incinerate them?’” 3

Jesus rejects their notion as being out of hand but what he does next is totally surprising.

To put it directly, Jesus’ disciples, the first missionaries, were not very good.  A little rejection and their first response, their only response, after following Jesus all that time, is to burn the place down.  You can almost hear him yelling, “Noooooo!” as he hustles them out of town.

Here is the most amazing thing.  Jesus tries it again!  He sends them out again! He expands their number (Which I am not so sure is a good idea lest he increase the number of pyromaniacs from two to seventy.)  but this time with explicit instructions as to how they should behave if they want to build bridges between people.

I love the way Dr. Eugene Peterson paraphrases Jesus’ instructions from today’s Gospel.

“Travel light. Comb and toothbrush and no extra luggage. Don’t loiter and make small talk with everyone you meet along the way. When you enter a home, greet the family, ‘Peace.’ If your greeting is received, then it’s a good place to stay. But if it’s not received, take it back and get out. Don’t impose yourself. Stay at one home, taking your meals there, for a worker deserves three square meals. Don’t move from house to house, looking for the best cook in town. “When you enter a town and are received, eat what they set before you, heal anyone who is sick, and tell them, ‘God’s kingdom is right on your doorstep!’ “When you enter a town and are not received, go out in the street and say, ‘The only thing we got from you is the dirt on our feet, and we’re giving it back. Did you have any idea that God’s kingdom was right on your doorstep?’”4

This time, instead of burning things down they discover that there is a much better way.  If there is any negativity, any toxicity, they are not to let it cling to them but brush it off.

That is easier said than done. For all of us have felt “the rise in our gut when someone rejects our most cherished beliefs.

We recognize the need to justify our views, prove we are right, defend our faith. But we don’t stop there. We also have the impulse to attack — to show how that person is wrong, misguided, even unfaithful. If we have structural or institutional power, we may move to shut them down and “command fire to come down from heaven and consume them” figuratively if not literally. If we have military or political power, we may use it to harm and punish.5

 Jesus wants his disciples to try and see if they can’t put an end to all that.  He wants them to try and see if they can’t bring peace rather than violence wherever they go.  He wants them to, at least, give it a shot and if it doesn’t work congratulate themselves on the effort and then move forward.

And, wonder of wonders, Jesus’ plan works.  They come back, besides themselves with excitement.  I can’t bring myself to believe that they didn’t shake more than a little dust off their feet.  

Still, when they returned, they had more than their fair share of victories to celebrate.   Even the “demons”, the worst of the worst, listened to them!  The irredeemables listened! The low life’s listened!  The boys who once were too proud, listened. They all listened!  And they were following because of what the followers of Jesus said and did as bridge builders.

Jesus sent his friends out and warns them that they are going like “lambs among wolves.”  That is where we come into the story. 

The crowds we face are just as tough, if not tougher, than the crowds those first followers faced.

The crowds we face seem to like, if not gravitate to, political parties that tear one another down rather than build their communities up.  The bad news is that this negative stuff sometimes work!  It is easier to trumpet what’s wrong with the other guy than to say what’s right about yourself.

The crowds we face idolize, to the point of idolatry, leaders so much that they would risk the Republic on their behalf. 

Clearly from the events of last week here in Chicago. The crowds we face worship their guns more than God. 

And the worse news of all, the crowds we face may be indifferent to Jesus' message entirely. Preferring fireworks to deeds of love and mercy. 

The good news is we can still tap into the God’s power to transform the painful brokenness and into the hopeful promise of what ought to and can be.

Life can be different and our common life repaired when brave men and women stand up to the powers of this world that hurt, and disparage, and destroy and say, “that is not the way of Jesus, and we will have none of it.”

Life can be different when we stop thinking that the way things are so shall they ever be and come together to make the world a better place.

Historian Jon Meacham said the other night on The Daily Show. “Democracy is the fullest expression of all of us.” And then, quoting Winston Churchill he said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing once they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”

Reminding us that the disciples original, and really quite crazy idea, to burn down a village that rejected them is never the way to go for individuals, movements, or nations, Meacham said “Fear may be a really great starter but it is not a great finisher. But, to fight fear you need courage and courage is one of the most contagious things you can imagine.”6

When Jesus gave the disciples the courage to try again good things began to happen so much so that even the powers of darkness began to give way.

So, my friends, be of good courage, hold fast to the good, render no one evil for evil and maybe through us the world, or at least in our little corner of it, something like the Kingdom Christ intended will be right at our doorstep.

________________

1. Valerie Strauss, “Why July 2nd Is Really America’s Independence Day,” The Independent, July 7, 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/john-adams-was-right-2-july-is-really-america-s-independence-day-10361356.html.

2. Jim Worsham, “John Adams’s Vision of July 4 Was July 2,” National Archives and Records Administration, July 2, 2014, https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2014/07/02/john-adams-vision-of-july-4-was-july-2

3. St. Luke 9:51–54. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).]

4. St. Luke 10:4–9. (MESSAGE) 

5. Amy G. Oden, “Commentary on Luke 9:51-62,” Working Preacher (Luther Seminary, November 11, 2020), https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-13-3/commentary-on-luke-951-62-6.

6. Jon A. Meacham, episode, The Daily Show (New York, NY, NY: Comedy Central, April 30, 2025).

 

Pentecost 3C - "Don't Let the Parade Pass You By"

Saint Luke 9:51–62

It may because of what is about to happen not more than a mile from here but I just love a parade.  

The Chicago Pride parade brings out the best in people for whom diversity and inclusion are not dirty words.  Even though one can almost count on it being held on a day when my former pastor who hailed from the south used to say “was hotter than the tip of a burning match” people come and come by the thousands.

Parades are great and I say that as someone who has marched in more than a few myself.

  

As a below average clarinetist I boarded buses with my fellow Luther North band member to be forced marched in Chicago’s annual Christmas parade where the weather was always the exact opposite of the kind of weather we are experiencing today.  

In spite of what some of you may be thinking to yourselves it wasn’t cold because my high school years were so long ago that the glaciers had just began their retreat northward.  It was cold because it was December, and it was Chicago.

We also proudly marched in the Chicago Saint Patrick’s Day parade, too. This was probably because they needed some band that wasn’t from Mount Carmel, Leo Academy, Saint Patrick’s, or Notre Dame and we became the token non-Catholic religious school representative.  I always thought we were chosen because Luther North, came before Luther South in the alphabet and parade organizers were never quite sure what a Walther Lutheran was or if they could be trusted.

I love the community parade that the Edgebrook/Wildwood Chamber of Commerce organizes every year.  If you close your eyes you could be in any small town in America except that this small town had railroad tracks serving Metra, Amtrak, and Soo Line freight trains running right through the middle.  So, without fail, even though the organizers tried to make sure to consult the train schedules for passenger service, a freight train with a couple of hundred cars, would blast its way through town leaving some of the parade on the west side of the tracks while the participants on the east side of the track were left to wonder where everybody was.

I even have a strange affinity for those parade extravaganzas that were put on by the old Soviet Union, (now mother Russia) and those massive spectacles put on by and for the dear leader of North Korea.  Where do they find all these people who are willing to march in lockstep to show their loyalty?  How much time does it take not only to teach these people how to march but how to whirl like dervishes in such perfect synchronization that it would put the Radio City Rockets to shame?  How much do these spectacles cost?  

These “show of force” parade always struck me as sadly humorous. 

No, give me a community parade with children scrambling for candy thrown from the back of a truck, or the parades with the band I was in that hard a hard time keeping in step and marching in a straight line while at the same time playing something that resembled music, or a Pride parade like today’s that, knowingly or not, celebrates the message that all of God’s people are equal.

Loose site of this for one single second and there is going to trouble and that is what almost happens in today’s gospel

The disciples and Jesus are on their way to Jerusalem and, as luck would have it, they journey requires them to pass through a Samaritan village.  Jesus’ advance team receives anything but a warm welcome because, to put it directly, they were Jews and the history of bad blood between the two peoples dated back for centuries.

Why these disciples would have expected a warm welcome is beyond me.  The Samaritans were not going to jump on the Jesus bandwagon and join in his parade in an instant but the disciple's reaction to being told they were not welcome is more than troubling.

“When the disciples James and John learned of it, they said, ‘Master, do you want us to call a bolt of lightning down out of the sky and incinerate them?’”1

Luke never records what, or if, Jesus said anything to the two bomb throwers. Something like “Are you nuts!” would have been appropriate, I think.

You don’t have to be the Son of God but simply a child of God to know this kind of stuff doesn’t work.  Blowing up the entire parade route because some people don’t want to join in is not the answer. It is the stuff of people who have seen one too many Superhero movies.  One act of violence doesn’t put an end to violence.  One act of violence only leads to another, and another, and another until you find yourself wondering if anybody on either side knows what they are doing.  And so, wars start and rage on.

James and John have just proposed a recipe for disaster that nations seem to be following to this day but Jesus is not going to let their abject stupidity rain on his parade.

Neither is he going to let those who just aren’t sure if they want to join him or not put a damper on his mission.

At this point, as Debie Thomas points out, “Jesus is perfectly indifferent to the rules of good salesmanship.”

He doesn’t wrap his product in slick packaging.  He doesn’t minimize costs to attract more customers.  He doesn’t hide the hard stuff in fine print.  He never rushes his pitch to close a deal.  If anything, he does the bizarre opposite: he takes pains to push potential buyers away.  “I’ll follow you!” an eager customer gushes.  “Oh, good grief, no you won’t,” Jesus groans in response. “You have no clue what you’re talking about.”2

 If we join his parade, you better know what you are getting ourselves into.  If we join his parade we’d better be in it for the long haul.  If we join his parade we better understand that life will not be all seashells and balloons.

There will be days that feel as emotionally cold as a City of Chicago Christmas parade.  If we join Jesus’ parade life may feel like life is about to overcome us like the heat of a Pride Parade.  There will be days when we feel like we want to bail out of the band and just quit. 

However, those of us who have joined the parade and stayed in it for the long haul understand that following Jesus will lead us to a life that is more ambitious, more demanding, more risky, and more rewarding than anything we could come up with on our own.

All this talk of parades on a hot summer’s day has reminded me of the closing number of Act I of the musical Hello Dolly.

Cut me some slack here!  It’s a musical, okay.  

But after the loss of her beloved husband Horice, with the required musical comedy adventure and misadventures along the way, Dolly realizes that she is still mourning him, still missing him.  In spite of all the clamour and excitement in her life, most of which has been caused by her, she and some friends go off to watch the 14th Street Association parade together.

The inclusiveness, the unbridled joy,

 is like Christmas, and Pride, and Candy being throw from the back of cars. All the merriment, causes her to sing about how “she wants to feel her heart coming alive again.”  

So, she resolves to “raise the roof, carry on” and not let the parade pass her by.

So, with that earworm floating around in your head go forth, follow Jesus no matter what, and “don’t let the parade,” his parade, Jesus’ parade “pass you by.”

________________

1. St. Luke 9:51–54. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).]

2. Debie Thomas, “Truth in Advertising,” Journey with Jesus, June 23, 2019, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2265-truth-in-advertising.

 

Pentecost 2C - "Who Was Freed?

Saint Luke 8:26-39

On June 19, 1865 Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galviston, Texas with news.  It wasn’t new news but it was news.  “Despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued more than two years earlier, on January 1, 1863, a lack of Union troops in the rebel state of Texas made the order difficult to enforce.

Some historians blame the lapse in time on "poor communication in that era, while others believe Texan slave-owners purposely withheld the information.”1

It doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that for more than two years men, women, and children lived as slaves “unaware of their freedom until Union troops arrived to control the territory.”2

Imagine that!  Living as slaves even though you have been proclaimed to be free.  Imagine waiting for more than two years to receive the news.  

It’s hard for us with our computers and smart phones to think of waiting more than two minutes to get any kind of news.  There is a ping, the automatic response of reaching into your pocket to fetch your phone, and before your very eyes every event in the world is chronicled.  Those of us who had to wait until Huntley and Brinkey came on at 5:30 PM to find out was going on or who had to wait for the ten o’clock news or even Ray Rayner in the morning to find out the scores of games than ran past our bed times now can watch the news “on-demand or receive a notice on your phone that tells you immediately whether your favourite team has won or lost.  

It also amazes me how long it took me to find out.  According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the first Juneteenth celebration took place in Texas in 1866 and featured prayer meetings and the singing of spirituals. As Black Texans migrated across the country, they brought Juneteenth traditions with them, leading to its wider observance. Texas designated it a state holiday in 1980, (I didn’t know that!) and Juneteenth became a U.S. federal holiday in 2021.”3

Maybe I didn’t know because it was a holiday predominately celebrated by our African American brothers and sisters?  Maybe I didn’t know because, in most states, it was only celebrated, if it was celebrated at all, by proclamation.  But, maybe I didn’t know because in the midst of all the bad news, it was a celebration of freedom.  Freedom, the ideal for all of God’s children.

Today’s gospel is about that same freedom that came to one of God’s most precious children and the resistance it brought.

We know, from the beginning, that Jesus has clearly strayed out of Jewish territory because this town has a pig farm and quite a large pig farm at that.

The town also has a really hard to pronounce name whose origins are not clear.  Hebrew scholar Amy Jill Levine has suggested that the root word of the town’s name “means to “expel,” the place could be dubbed ‘Expelledville’ or ‘Exorcismburg.’”4

The reason that can really be the place’s name is that the story does not begin with Jesus interacting with any of the other residents of this town but goes directly for this troubled man.  

The regular folk in the town had become accustomed to the naked guy running around in the cemetery.  While it may not have been a safe place for him it made their community a safer place for them.  If they chained him up in there at least they wouldn’t have to deal with him on a day to day basis.  They could handle his occasional outbursts and occasionally he would break out but sooner or later they would have him chained up in the cemetery once again.

Jesus looks at the guy, maybe for the first time in the poor soul's life, with pity, compassion.  And I literally think it scares the devil out of the guy.  He is not used to people approaching him with kindness, only harm, seeking to put him back in chains once again.

Freaked out the guy screams out a plea that is combined with a confession of faith. “When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!’”5

He had endured a lot of torture in his enslavement as so he has reason to be wary but Jesus does something so radically different from everybody else that it cuts through his defensiveness.  Jesus simply asks “what is your name” and the man’s response tell Jesus and us, everything.

“Legion.” the man replies. “Legion” which is a good name because a legion of soldiers would be about 5,000 in number and it must seem that he has at least that many things wrong with him. Jesus may not torment the man, but he is about the upset an entire community by restoring the man to health.  

He does so by sending the demons within him into a herd of pigs who plunge themselves into the lake and drown.

Note that it is not the healing ... to which the community’s attention is drawn but the destruction.  Upon finding the one whom they had devoted themselves to excluding they don’t throw a welcome home party for the man nor a thank you party for Jesus, but they become fearful. 

Fearful of what?  Fearful that the man will relapse, perhaps?  But I think more fearful for the new possibility of life and freedom that Jesus had placed before them.

The man sees Jesus as his escape route.  Go with Jesus and he can get away from the people who enslaved him.  Go with Jesus and he’ll never have to endure the sideways glances and the pointed fingers of those who when they saw him on the street didn’t see a perfectly presentable citizen but rather said to themselves, “Isn’t this the guy?”

“The townsfolk have the same reaction to Jesus as the demons who tormented the enslaved man.”6  

As one paraphrase of scripture puts it “too much change, too fast, and they were scared.”7

No wonder the guy wants to leave town with Jesus!  Maybe it is loyalty to Jesus?  Maybe he doesn’t know what to do with his new found freedom and hopes Jesus will show him?  Maybe he doesn’t think he will be accepted as a new man by his neighbours, friends or even his family? 

Jesus tells him he can’t come with but must stay as a sign and symbol of what Jesus had done for him.  That was to be the man’s witness, and it is our witness too only sometimes, like the townspeople we choose to remain in bondage to our fears. 

All of us here know this truth.  When you get into a relationship with someone, for better or worse, you inherit all their relatives.  Some of whom you may fall in love with immediately and others, not so much.

I have inherited one who is deathly afraid of all immigrants.  She says they are all “bad hombres” who murder, pillage, and eat family pets.  The problem is that she doesn’t know any!

Well, actually she does because at St. Luke we have a model of a sailing ship with a banner underneath that reminds every single one of us who come through the doors that, “We are all immigrants!”  She knows immigrants just not any who are as white as members of the House of Windsor. She lives in far, far, far, northwest Iowa where – and I am not making this up – at the Mexican restaurant the burritos come with a white sauce.

In a fit of pique, I told her once that the reason she is so afraid is that she doesn’t know any non-white immigrants.  “I’ve showered,” I told her once “with more Hispanic Americans than you have ever met in your life.”  Attend a state college, belong to a health club in Chicago, and it's bound to happen!  Also, what will happen is that one will discover what my “relative” will never know — that they are really nice people.

The people of “Expelledville” never gave the guy or Jesus a chance. And in the end the enslavers became the enslaved.

Luke is very subtle here.  His writing about the newly healed man is so sophisticated that on first, second, or even third reading we might miss it, but he says: “So the man went away and told the marvelous story of what Jesus had done for him, all over the town.”8

He was free.

When the Union soldiers rolled into Galvaston Texas on June 19, 1865 they brought freedom not just to the slaves but to everyone.  

When Jesus rolled into “Exorcismburg” he brought freedom not to the enslaved man but to everyone.

Isn’t it odd that the man who Jesus healed became the freest one in his community while the other seemed caught up in their fear of the new life Jesus offered.

So, to the choice seems to be ours in this story.  Live like the man who followed Jesus or live like the townsfolk who didn’t.

I think I’m going to go with the man.

________________

1. “Abolition of Slavery Announced in Texas on ‘Juneteenth’ | June 19, 1865,” History.com, May 28, 2025, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-19/abolition-of-slavery-announced-in-texas-juneteenth.

2. “Why Do We Celebrate Juneteenth?,” Encyclopædia Britannica, June 6, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Why-Do-We-Celebrate-Juneteenth.

3.    ibid.

4. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say June 22? 2nd after Pentecost,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, June 1, 2025, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

5. St. John 8:28. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

6. William H. Willimon, “Jesus Christ Is Lord,” Pulpit Resource, Year C, 53, no. 2 (April 1, 2025): 37–38.

7. St. Luke 8:37–37. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).

8.     St. Luke 8:39b.  (PHILLIPS)

 

Trinity C - "The Lost and Found Chord"

 Psalm 8 and Romans 5:1–5

There is a wonderfully campy song by Sir Arthur Sullivan that is particularly appropriate for this day.

It's about an organist who, according to the lyrics, is “weary and ill at ease” With “fingers wandering idly” the poor soul “knew not what they were playing” but, says the musician then, quite out of the blue “I struck one chord of music, Like the sound of a great Amen.”

This one chord is so wonderful, so marvelous, that the rest of the piece is given over to the search to find it again which is why this high camp number is called “The Lost Chord” and it is classic Sullivan even though its words were not written by his operetta partner Sir William Gilbert with everything we have come to expect from his compositions.

I’ve heard some famous organists include it their programs just for fun but I think the song may have a deeper meaning. I think this finding “a lost chord” and then searching every key on the keyboard to try and recreate it is about the wonder of an awe that comes into our lives at unexpected moments to leave us surprised, delighted, and longing for more.

Awe is a fleeting thing that comes into our lives when we least expect it.

In Saint Luke’s ongoing search to find a new pastor which is now into its fifth year burning through two interims with mine well into its third year (And you folks think you had problems!) one of my suggestions has been that the call committee should ask every candidate two things.

The first is that any person who is candidating for the position of pastor be asked to tell the committee their favorite joke.  

If he or she blushes, or hems and haws, the committee might guess that the joke was unseemly at which point I would strongly suggest hiring him or her on the spot because the church can use a little relief from priggish silliness and just get back to pure, unadulterated silliness. As an institution the church as a whole takes itself far too seriously.

The second question is courtesy of Dr. Scott Black Johnston, the Senior Minister of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. He has asked it of candidates who wanted to become ordained or join his staff.  In order to discover whether a person regularly experienced any sense of wonder he would ask: “When was the last time you experienced awe?”  Awe, is like the sensation that came over the organist who stumbled upon a chord that was never thought to be heard this side of heaven.

It is a good question for all of us to ponder.  “When was the last time we experienced awe?”

Awe and wonder are hard to define but we know when we are experiencing them.

Someone who appreciates art may experience awe and wonder in a Degas’ dancer, a water lilly by Monet, Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” a Georgia O’Keefe landscape, or even a creation by one of the second graders at Saint Luke Academy.

A music lover may experience awe and wonder when a performance all comes together with a grand chord on the end, smiles on the face of the performers, and the silence of an audience that has to catch its breath before bursting into applause.

Someone who loves the outdoors may experience awe and wonder when seeing The Grand Canyon, or the Rockies, or the ocean, or a mighty river, or a wide field of wheat glistening in the sun.

For those who love language it may be that well-turned phrase that makes us roar with laughter, or put down the book, stare off into space for a moment in awe of what we have just read.

You know what I am talking about.  As Dr. Johnston explains it. “Awe is an open mouth, a sudden gasp of air, wide eyes, a twisted smile.  Awe is something that makes our hearts leap. Experiencing awe and wonder seem to be a central part of what it means to be human.”1

It is also a central part of our experiences of the Divine which seems to come to us in many ways.

The psalmist described awe this way: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth! Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted..."2

In his book Where the Rivers Flow, Scott Walker describes the awe he felt late at night walking home after an evening of cruising around his small Georgia town looking for, in his words, “beautiful damsels awaiting us, longing to be spirited away from the dragons of boredom.”

At the close of the evening when he and his friends returned home alone probably because of their lame pick up line –  “Are you a damsel I can spirit away from boredom?” – Walker would walk alone down his driveway into his back yard were there were “huge pecan trees, and behind our rear hedge grew acres and acres of peach trees.

Inevitably, I would look up into the night sky, for it has always held my deepest fascination.  It has been my cathedral, my high-vaulted place of worship, my dark blanket that brought me the warmth of God.  Conversely, it has also been the eternal stage on which I have been brought into interplay with the stark fear and awe of the Holy. 3

Like the song the rest of the book is given over to Walker’s search for the same awe and wonder he felt in his backyard as a teenage boy.

It’s a search that all of us are on.  We are all looking for that “lost chord” but here is the secret, its not something we can create. 

Believe me, the wise preacher does not get up on Sunday morning and say, “I’m going to preach the most awe-inspiring sermon in the history of Christendom.” Allow yourself to think that and if the congregation is still awake when you finish, you’ll be lucky to be met at the door with a wet fish handshake and, as they used to say in Mayberry, a “fine Sabaoth Reverend” greeting.

Start by thinking you're going to create the most beautiful piece of music, or most beautiful painting, and you’ll come away disappointed because “awe” is an act of the spirit.

You’ll never know when it will sneak up on you, but you’ll know it when it does. Awe is something that must surprise. 

It is an act of the spirit.  Not the fall on the floor and speak in unknown languages spirit but a spirit that you feel, experience, that seems to come out of the blue.

That’s the kind of Spirit Saint Paul was talking about.

Dr. Bruce Larson wrote in his book Wind and Fire.  “Anybody can discern whether or not the Spirit is present in a gathering. You feel loved, cared for, and accepted.”

You may be impressed by the grandeur of the architecture.  You may fall in loved by the art collection on the walls.  But if you walk away, unloved, uncared for, unaccepted, in spite of everything else you’ll feel something is missing. Because it is “the Spirit ...who communicates His presences and produces life and hope.”4

Saint Paul invited his congregation then and our congregations now to “cling to that hope, even if things don't look exactly the way that they thought they would look, that didn't go exactly the way they thought they would go - that God's hope is the common thread that is woven through the experience of not just us individually as followers of Jesus, but as the entire collection of those in the way of Jesus."5

Hope comes to us in the awe we experience in creation, the warmth of the Spirit, and the love of Jesus.  

That surprisingly enough is what Trinity Sunday is all about.

And I am going to show you what Trinity is all about with the help of our esteemed director of Music.  Andy on his final day is going to also become a preacher this morning. 

First, Andy is just going to play a “G” for us on the organ.  Think of that note as the creator.  A perfectly wonderful note, but just a single note.

Now Andy is going to play a “G” and then add it to an “E”.  Still good but not quite fulfilling as a piece of music.

Finally, Andy is going to add a “C” to the “E” and the “G”.  What do we have? A chord.  Each note is not complete without the others but what we have is a Trinity of notes from which much music can be made.

So, there you have it.  It may not be the “lost chord” nor may it have left you with a sense of awe but it is an example of what we mean when we say Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  

And a pretty good example at that. Don’t you think?

________________

1. Scott Black Johnson, “Wired for Wonder.” Sermon preached at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York City.  September 10, 2023.

2. Psalm 8.  (RSV) [RSV=The Revised Standard Version]

3. Scott Walker, Where the Rivers Flow: Exploring the Sources of Faith Development (Macon, , Ga: Smyth & Helwys, 2002), 37-38.

4. Bruce Larson, Wind and Fire (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1985), 38.

5. Danny Lybarger, “Hope That Doesn’t Quit” - Episode #4186: Day 1,” Episode #4184. Day 1, June 10, 2025, https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/6835acc06615fbab5100b23f/hope-that-doesnt-quit-4186-rev-danny-lybarger-romans-5-1-5-june-15-2025.

Sermon Preached at Our Savior Lutheran Church Aurora

To experience the conclusion:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X19VSzJ5tBo