St. James Lutheran Church
St. James Lutheran Church
1380 North Waukegan Road (847)234-4859
Lake Forest, Illinois 60045
"My house shall be a house of prayer for all people"

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Sermon Archive - July 8, 2001
Pentecost VI
Pastor Gazzolo
Luke l0:25-37

Now I know God has a sense of humor and certainly a sense of timing.  One Bible verse short enough for me to remember says simply: “And God laughed.”


About 2pm Thursday I was just finishing this sermon on the Good Samaritan for the evening service when a man walked into the church.  Pastor Holmer had stepped out, and Donna Jarvi and I were in the office.

“Where’s the pastor?” he asked, and I knew without much scrutiny that this man needed money.

“There’s the pastor,” Donna said helpfully, though I am not that sure I would have volunteered that information.  From the beginning of my ministry I have been a soft touch for every visiting indigent with a good story.  In time stories shared among pastors about scams have made me more careful, even a little cynical.

“Where’s the pastor?” he asked.

“There she is,” Donna answered.

I stepped forward and asked, “What can I do for you?” Maybe that was a foolish way to start, but inside my head, even as I looked him over, rang today’s text on the Good Samaritan and his word to us: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Here was this man with the baseball cap, a yellow shirt hanging out and a broad scraggly smile saying he had just been released after twelve years in Stateville…imprisoned on a gangbanging attempted murder charge.  He had tried to find a job at Jewel and at Dominick’s, but they were not impressed with his resume.  He had applied for a transition-from-prison program at St. Leonard’s House in the city, but they were full until the fall. He had slept the night in an abandoned Lake Bluff home with no windows or door. The following morning the alarmed neighbor saw the stranger next door and called the police. When the police came, he gave
our man Dave five dollars for breakfast.

It struck me forcibly how almost impossible it is to re-enter society after doing time in prison.  And so it was that, discouraged with any prospects around here, David told me had called his sister in Mississippi and she told him to come home.  He had learned he could buy a bus ticket anywhere in this country for $69.99, and asked me for the money. What else could he do but ask?  He hoped to get to Chicago Thursday afternoon in time to get the ticket and head for home.

And there I was with this Good Samaritan sermon sitting almost finished in the typewriter and with no church kitty to fund such requests.  Had God brought a new neighbor to Donna and me?  About the time things are going smoothly in life God has a way of interrupting, getting your attention, making you rethink and perhaps take unexpected action.

All I could do was make the best character assessment possible, then act on it. Donna in the meanwhile went to the kitchen to get him a cold glass of Coca Cola. As David rode out of the driveway on an old bike, heading for the Lake Forest train station, I promised to pray for him. He’s going to need prayer. 

Maybe David rode off to enjoy the money that had come his way.  Maybe by now he is in Jackson, Mississippi, with his sister looking for work. I’ve been duped before, but I would rather be duped than fail to help someone trying to get a foothold in life.
Jesus said: “Love God first and your neighbor as yourself.”

To illustrate his point, Jesus told a story. He always did. It was
shocking that Jesus should use the Samaritan as the hero and the Levite and Priest as the bad guys.  For the practicing Jew, the Samaritan would represent both racial impurity and religious heresy.  Even so, Jesus chose the Samaritan as his hero.

Without any fear of contamination from the injured stranger, or concern for his own safety from the robbers, the passing Samaritan stopped.  With tenderness, he treated the injured stranger’s wounds, took him to a nearby inn and paid for his care there.  “Who was neighbor to the injured traveler?”  Jesus asked. The Jewish religious leaders or the despised Samaritan?

This was no idle question on Jesus part.  He was reminding his listeners not to judge a book by its cover, nor judge a person’s worth by his/her position or national origin or looks.

After all, the priest and the Levite were the esteemed leaders of the religious community, but they flunked Jesus test as decent human beings. They had been totally outclassed by the compassionate outsider from Samaria..

Jesus challenges his listeners then as now by teaching that our neighbor, our real neighbor, no matter where he or she lives or who he or she maybe, our neighbor may be any person…not necessarily someone who lives next door, belongs to the same church or golf club or drives the same kind of car.  By Jesus standards, our neighborhood is as large as we choose to
make it.  And certainly modern media has made the face of the Palestinian or the Indonesian familiar…modern media has called us to think in terms of larger human neighborhood.

For many of us our neighborhood goes to the end of the block, end of the lane. We confine neighbor to people most like us and feel comfortable and safe with that.  Our community here in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff, Libertyville…our community is unusually homogenous.  It is too easy to assume our neighbor, the one for whom we are called to feel concern, is someone like us and our family…middle class, educated, children play soccer, parents play golf. Wake up….Jesus says. You have other neighbors.

Actually enlarging your neighborhood is closely related to spiritual and moral maturity. There is a direct relationship between one’s moral and spiritual development and the size of one’s sense of human neighborhood.

We begin life as infants, our initial concern our bodily comfort.  Our interest in our mother as supplier of good things.  Actually some people never grow much beyond this infantile self-absorption.  But given a loving home and some life experience most of us begin to look around us and care about others and their well-being.

Nevertheless it must be said that in the last forty years there has been a very real wave of narcissism and self-absorption.  Even as my rearing dictated love of neighbor, recent cultural messages clearly emphasize love of self.  People are encouraged to buy luxuries with the message that says: You Deserve It.  How often have you heard someone say in regard  to a newly acquired luxury: “I deserve it”?

Today’s scripture asks why.  Why do I deserve every imaginable comfort when neighbors starve and go without medical care, their children without decent day care?  Watching the story of the two little sisters lost in Chicago, little girls who should have been safe in day care while their mother worked, makes me furious with society and its skewed priorities.

Last week while police and neighbors searched for two little sisters, Congress was busily debating whether desecration of the flag is a form of freedom of speech…debating whether the Salvation Army is obliged to hire homosexuals or not…debating while children go untended and lost and most probably killed. Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

For more than half of my lifetime, America has been a culture of
Narcissism…Privileged and unchallenged by adversity or war, we have come to think we deserve the best…that we are special. It’s been about twenty years now since Christopher Lasch wrote his classic on the Culture of Narcissism.  And while long long ago I was reared to believe love of neighbor came first, the pendulum has swung to the priority of loving self.

Both extremes of loving neighbor or loving self are unscriptural, as we see in today’s text.  Jesus called us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves…and it must be said that unless we love ourselves, we can’t understand what it means to love our neighbor.

Jesus rule came into play today when the stranger came to St. James. Love of self carefully assessed David’s story. Love of self took safety precautions for Donna and me.  Love of neighbor sent a new neighbor on what I pray will be the road to hope, a life begun again.

Today’s text as familiar as it may be continues to challenge us.  Go out into the world in peace; have courage; hold to what is good; return  no one evil for evil; strengthen the faint-hearted; support the weak; help the suffering; honor all people; love and serve the Lord. Amen.


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