Eureka Presbyterian Church | 8-21-2016
Saturday mornings are a great time to catch up on projects. A man’s peaceful Saturday morning ended abruptly when his 12-year-old son, Michael, and one of his friends burst through the door.
“Hey Dad, “have you met the new neighbors?”
“No.”
“Come on Dad, you have to meet them.”
“May be some other time, I’m busy.”
“Dad, you have to meet them now.”
From the urgency in Michael’s voice, he figured the neighbours were waiting outside. He put his project to the side and walked to the front door, but no one was there.
“Where are they?” He asked.
“Well, Dad,” Michael explained, “we haven’t met them yet either, but our baseball is inside their living room!”
Good morning, welcome to Eureka Presbyterian Church on this wonderful Sunday morning.
The message today is “Love your Neighbor”, the type of love, describing compassion, care for others, but also forgiveness.
This week I was in Toronto to visit our farm. Local radio was full of the 50 year anniversary of the Beatles, performing their last concert in Canada on August 17 1966.
A year later in 1967 they released the song “All you need is love”, it became a hit, number one in countries around the world. The message was simple: all you need is Love, Love is all you need.
Watching the news lately tells a different story, the complete opposite of love. It is downright troubling to witness the hate that is penetrating the fabric of our great Nation. Polarization and hard divisions on political views, on social issues, on race, immigration, and the list goes on. But there is a way, which is better, as we will soon find out.
Let’s go back for a moment to our childhood, and we probably can still remember our favorite teacher, that teacher with these great anecdotes, and we hung on every word rolling of their tongue.
What great teachers have in common, is an amazing ability to tell stories that make a message stick. A website called: “reach every child.com”, lists storytelling as an important trait of great teachers.
Jesus, was a master at storytelling; He painted vivid pictures with stories to dramatize his teachings. He told them in such a way that they were easy to visualize, and therefore to remember.The stories he told were simple, but yet with a deep meaning. In the bible they are called parables.
The word parable comes from the Greek word “parabolee” para, meaning to come along side and ballo literally translates to throw or see with. There are 39 parables recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke and Mark, 28 in the gospel of Luke alone.
This brings us to today’s reading of Luke 10:25-37 which can be found on page…….in pew bible
25Just then, a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” 28And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” 29But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan while traveling, came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them.
Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
The parable of the Good Samaritan is well known. “America magazine” ranks it number 3 of the top twelve parables.
What is the core message? Jesus uses this parable to vividly illustrate to love your neighbor as yourself. Isn’t this interesting the priest and the Levite passed on the other site of the road?
Both were religious types, intellectuals, members of the upper-class, and they left that poor fellow, untouched, but the Samaritan was moved with pity and it was the Samaritan who rescued the man lying along the road, half dead…
Today, when we hear the term “Samaritan” it instantly invokes images of a goodhearted, caring person, likely because of this very story, having been told for nearly 2000 years.
But imagine the folks listening to Jesus around 30AD. At the time they thought of Samaritans with disgust, and to Jewish people, Samaritans were considered second class citizens.
You may ask why?
Samaria was the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Foreigners had intermarried with the Israelite population in and around Samaria. These “Samaritans” worshipped the idols of their previous heritage.
Samaria was also a place of refuge for all the outlaws of the kingdom of Judea. These violators of the Jewish laws found safety in Samaria.
The division between the Jews and Samaritans was stark, like, it was wrong to have any contact with the opposite group. Samaritans were generally considered “half-breeds” and were universally despised by the Jews.
Jesus couldn’t have used a better example to drive the point to love neighbor as self. If a Samaritan could help out a Jew in need, than there truly were no limitations to the meaning of this command.
Although the bible doesn’t mention it verbatim, the command is commonly referred to as “The Golden Rule”
The Golden rule is universally applied through our society.
For instance, of the ten guiding principles of our company two of them find their origin in the Golden rule: treat neighbors like you want to be treated and treat team members with respect.
Renditions of this core principal are found throughout history: Confucius said: never impose on others, what you would not choose for yourself.
Socrates wrote: do not do to others, that which angers you, when they do it, to you.
Buddha said: Hurt not others, with that, which pains yourself.
These writings date back between 400 and 500BC, but the root of the “Golden Rule” goes back 3500 years to the days of Moses, receiving the 10 commandments. Moses wrote in Leviticus 19:18 do not seek revenge or bear grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.
What is fascinating is that all these earlier writings instruct to not do something. In an interesting twist of the “Golden Rule Jesus’ emphasizes on a positive command, to be proactive, and to do, to love your Neighbor.
Who is our neighbor? The folks living here in Eureka, they are certainly neighbors.
But so people around the world who are in great need.
On January 12, 2012 a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, an estimated 3 million were affected by the quake. Death estimates range around 200,000 people.250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial building had collapsed or severely damaged.
Countries from around the World came forward to help those in need. According to numbers provided by United Nations, aid totaled 13.3 billion dollars, led by the USA with 4 billion of which a quarter, or a billion dollars came from private charity and individuals
Chuck Swindoll is his book “Caring in a careless world”, asks: what is our mission as the people of God? He wrote: I believe it’s to show people Christ, through our love and compassion, to display care, in a careless world.
Christianity doesn’t get any more basic than that. It is caring for, reaching out to, and spending time, with those whom Jesus called “the least of these”.
A good example is Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian organization founded in 1970 by Franklin Graham providing aid to hurting people around the world. Samaritan’s Purse has helped people who are victims of war, poverty, natural disasters, and disease.
A few weeks ago the Times Standard had a great story on Betty Chin, leading a group of 20 teens from as far south as Santa Rosa, helping serve the poor. Betty has been tirelessly serving the homeless in our community for the last 20 years.
Last month I was talking to a friend who has taken a church group to Mexico for 6 out of the last 7 years, during spring break, they build houses for Mexican families in need. Nobody asks him to do this; he does it from the bottom of his heart providing the love of Christ.
Can we also love our neighbor, when their son’s baseball broke our window? Or when they inflict pain on others and their families? Are we able to forgive them?
Last year on June17, Charleston SC was hit, by an incredible act of brutality when 9 members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were massacred while attending bible study. The news was shocking, and what grabbed the hearts of the Nation was the next day, in a court hearing family members of the slain, stood up and publicly forgave the shooter Dylann Roof, of his cold blooded actions.
One by one, those who chose to speak, did not turn to anger. Instead, they offered the killer forgiveness, and said they were praying for his soul,
What an amazing manifestation of courage and strength and love to be able to forgive, after what had happened.
Earlier this month we went to Holland for a few days, visit some bulbs suppliers and attend a wedding for one of my nieces.
We also took a little time to visit the Corrie ten Boom House in Haarlem, it is now a museum that was established in memory of the Ten Boom family who during the Second World War provided shelter to numerous Jews and members of the Dutch resistance.
In 1944 the Gestapo raided this house and the entire family was imprisoned. Corie and her sister Betsy eventually were transported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. Betsy died in the concentration camp, and by the grace of God, Corie survived.
In the years following the War she spread the message of forgiveness and the Love and Grace of Jesus Christ in speeches in over 60 countries. She wrote the book “The hiding place”, it became a movie in 1973.
A few years after the war, on one of her speaking tours in Munich Germany, she encountered a former guard from the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. He walked up to her after her speech, the minute she saw him images of the horrors of the concentration camp started coming back, including the death of her sister.
And there he was standing in front of her, he said nice message fräulein!
In her presentation she had spoken of forgiveness, here she was standing face to face, for the first time since her release with one of her captors and suddenly her blood seemed to freeze.
Then he said, you mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk, I was a guard in there. But since that time I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things that I did there, but Fräulein– as he reached out his hand, he asked–“will you forgive me?”
And Corie just stood there wrestling with her emotions and contemplating the most difficult thing she had ever done.
She wrote in her memoirs: I just stood there with the coldness seizing my heart. I silently prayed. “Jesus, help me!” “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. But can you please help with the rest.
And so awkwardly, involuntarily, I shook the hand he had reached out, and as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.
“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”
For a long moment we stood there, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known, God’s love, as intensely as I did at that moment………..
In the Lord’s Prayer we ask for our sins to be forgiven but we also make a promise that we will forgive those who sinned against us.
Jesus said in Matthew 6: 14. If you forgive others for their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t, your Father in heaven will not forgive you.
God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. It is Jesus Christ that came down to be among the people and provide the message of love.
In his parable, Jesus commanded to love our neighbor; the illustrations I used today show that loving one another takes effort and commitment.
Helping victims in earthquake ravaged countries.
Providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the World
Feeding the homeless in our own community,
Building homes for families in Mexico
And forgiving those inflicting pain and sorrow,
The lawyer had asked what do I need to do, to inherit eternal life, the answer was clear: love your Neighbor.
The road to eternal life is found, if we follow the lead of our Lord Jesus Christ, and love others.
Don’t wait, start today. Deliberately and genuinely love your neighbor, just as the Samaritan.
After Jesus finished the parable, he told that lawyer “go and do likewise”
Earlier you heard: Fairest Lord Jesus, Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor, My soul’s Glory, Joy and Crown.
Ladies and Gentlemen, as we leave here today, carry the love of Jesus Christ in our hearts, like a crown of Joy and Glory
Jesus said: let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Martin Luther King said: darkness cannot drive darkness only light can do that; hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
When we walk out of the doors of this Eureka church this morning, go out and make a difference; let his light shine in this dark and broken world.
Be a vessel to the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, and let his love overflow like a fresh spring, quenching thirsty souls.
The pathway to eternal life, is paved, with the good deeds, of those, who went before us.
Amen
Podcast: Play in new window | Download