Luke 17:7-10
As many of you know, I devoted over thirty-five years in the military service. “Duty, Honor, Country” is the motto of West Point, the United States Military Academy. Duty constrains us to do things well; love constrains us to do things beautifully.
About fifteen or so years ago, there was an article in the newspaper about Dr. Diane Komp’s experience with dying children and the wonderful lessons they have taught her. Her experience with these children gave her back her faith. The article said, “She has seen so many of her patients die in peace after having had visions, that she no longer is the skeptic whose religious convictions were derailed in medical school.”
What was so interesting is that she started staying with the dying children out of a morbid sense of duty. “Certainly,” she said, “not from any sense of anticipated joy.” Duty made her do it. Duty drove her to be with the dying children. Duty, dirty duty, made her undergo what she thought would be an unpleasant experience. She was “duty driven.” When you hear a person talk about his or her “oughts,” you are listening to a person who is “duty driven.”
Think of how it would be if a mother or father took care of their children out of duty to them and society. What if a husband or wife kissed each other or gave each other a little squeeze because it was their duty? Wouldn’t those be strange relationships.
What if Jesus were to say, “Look, the only reason I died on the cross was out of a sense of duty. I hated to do it. I could think of a thousancd things I would have rather done. It ws actually a lousy idea, but once I realized I was God’s Son, I was duty bound to do it. So I gritted my teeth and did it, but I hated doing it, and now I hope you are satisfied.”
“Duty driven” people often seem to be people merely going through the motions, acting out a role, doing as little as possible. They don’t behave out of a sense of “anticipated joy.” This is not to denigrate “duty driven” people. They perform well, but miss the real joys of life. They have the words, but lack the music of life.
The parable that our Lord told is a surprising one to me. Here we have a loyal hard working servant tending to his master’s farm and sheep. When he returns from a day’s hard labor, he isn’t greeted with “You’ve had a hard day, sit down while I get you a glass of wine and fix your dinner.” On the contrary, the master sits down and looks at the servant and says, “Well, what’s for dinner? Get with it, fellow. I’m hungry, you know! What’s taking you so long?”
The parable says the master doesn’t have the thank the servant for what he was commanded to do. He was, after all, only doing what servants by definition do: they serve. But Jesus adds meaning to the story when He says to the disciples, and us, “When you have done everything you are told to do, you should say ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty (Luke 17:10, NCV).’” What a field day for psychologists or psychiatrists in this day and age of self-esteem!
The rhetorical question implicit in the parable is whether the servant should receive the gratitude of his master in performing his duty. The answer is “no.” Should a fish be congratulated because it can swim? Should a bird be thanked for flying? Should we be grateful to the grass, the trees and the bushes for growing? They are simply doing what is expected of them.
Are we surprised when a teacher teaches, or a physician heals, or the dentists drills? Certainly not. It is expected of them. So it is expected of servants to serve. They, by definition, are people who meet others’ needs. They are people who, by definition, tend to the necessities of others. It is not strange when they do it. It is strange when they don’t do it, for when they don’t do it they are no longer servants.
Jesus Christ calls us to follow Him and be servants. Jesus in one modern translation said, “If you merely obey me, you should not consider yourselves worthy of praise. For you have simply done you duty!” He is saying, “No big deal! Servants serve.”
The point of this parable is an important one. When we have done our best, when we are through doing good works, we do not have a claim on God. He does not owe us anything. We have no right to say to God, “I’ve always been a good person. Why did this tragic event happen to me?,” for that assumes that doing good somehow puts God in our debt. That implies that God is watching over us and smoothing the way for us. That implies God loves some of His people more than others. This parable says otherwise.
Life itself is a “tour of duty.” Servanthood is a way of life. We like the servant in the parable, are never done with being servants. We are always servants, wherever we are, no matter what we are doing. We are here on earth to serve God and the needs of His people, which includes the whole world.
But the real servant, the most effective servant, does it out of love for the Master. Servanthood is best when love replaces duty. When the physicaian loves to heal, the teacher loves to teach, and a married couple love each other, you have the ideal biblical model of servanthood. Duty constrains us to do things well, loves constrains us to do things beautifully.
In “A Tale of Two Cities,” a story set in London and Paris at the time of the French Revolution, Charles Dickens weaves the plot of a righteous murder and the vicarious sacrifice of Sidney Carton, who is given a chance to make good by taking the place of a friend at the guillotine. Carton does this, not out of any sense of duty or external “oughtness,” but simply from the compulsion fo love. His explanation, as he took his place in the group of those about to be executed, was “It is far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done before.” He went beyond external duty, for the motivation of love. His servanthood became a lifestyle.
When we complete our “tour of duty” here on earth, if we too have surrendered ourselves totally to a greater love and finally realize that our life belongs to God alone, our tour of duty will end with an “honorable discharge.” We will hear the Master say, “Well done good and faithful servant, ... enter into the joy of your Master.”
October 7, 2008
September 28, 2008 + Elizabeth Gibbs Zehnder
Matthew 21:23-32
MP3 File
So basically, Jesus is getting carded by the chief priests and the elders. They want to know how to make sense of him, what to do with him, the want to figure out who exactly he is and what he is calling the community of faith to…
Its human nature to want a reliable way to identify someone. In Stillman Valley, Illinois, where my Dad grew up, back then it had a population 350 – Saaalute! people were known by name, or at least by face or family – you know, that’s Russ, Tom Gibbs’ boy.
But here in LA it’s a different story. I don’t even bristle when I am asked for a form of identification. I automatically dig out my and fish out the requested card – I know that that stack of cards doesn’t really capture the whole of who I am, at best, they are just slices…
The state of California has issued me a driver’s license – photo id
My Financial resources define me to some extent – money, valid credit cards, checks.
I do have more say in my identity around the affiliation cards, – LACMA, VONS, car insurance, - I even have a card issued by the Presbytery that declares that I am a member minister in good standing.
Even though we know it is a shallow, and inherently limited way of identifying someone, we find it comforting. We like to feel like we can “KNOW” who someone is…. find some points of connection and extrapolate an understanding of who they are – Oh, I belong to LAcma too – so you must value making fine art accessible and relevant to the community….
You can hear it played out on the daily news reports of the presidential candidates – It doesn’t matter if it’s an Obama report or McCain report – they leave my head spinning, trying to cast a particularly flattering impression in my mind that is fairly disconnected that what was done. We participate in that dance just as much as the candidates and their speech writing staff – We assume that people are knowable and predictable – we assume that if we could just say, oh, that’s Ann Dunham’s son, Barack or he’s Roberta’s boy, John – then we would be able to identify them, we would be able to know the truth of who they are.
It’s a common pitfall to confuse our experience of someone with the totality of their being – the longer we know them, the more we expect them to remain as we know them, the more we over-estimate our understanding of who they are.
This happened to me with my Granddad. We grew up with him and my grandmother in the same town, then they moved away to Missouri when he retired, I was just finishing 7th grade, after that we saw them twice a year or so, and in those visits, I guess, I so longed for the close connection I had had before, that I carried forward things from the past that weren’t so much present in his life any more – like coin collecting – my granddad is meticulous and he was passionate about coins which rendered boxes and boxes of heavy binders filled with sheets of coins suspended in plastic holders with hand printed labels. He especially liked the wheat-head pennies – which were rare, but still in circulation back then. Every time I got change, I would flip the pennies over, looking for the wheat motif. I’d bundle them up and send them to him.
Of course a lot of life transpired after they moved to Missouri – my Grandmother’s health declined and then she passed away suddenly, he fell and broke his leg, another wonderful woman entered his heart and they married and moved a few times and created a new life together. I’m not sure when he stopped collecting coins, I never stopped sending them, until about 10 years ago, when he gently mentioned that he wasn’t really interested in them any more. I was crushed, I felt like one of the few connections that I still had with him had been severed. It called into question all the things I thought that I knew him to be and I felt at a loss, like I didn’t know him anymore…and yet, why would I expect him to continue a hobby he started in his 50’s now 40 years later????
We do the same thing with God, we assume that God’s identity is fixed and knowable and mapable. We have authentic encounters with God of course! But then we go on to claim these encounters as an exhaustive description of whom God is. We hold on so tightly to who we knew God to be in a seminal mountain top experience and then we don’t let life go on from there. Just like the chief priests in today’s passage, they didn’t have a category for such an unconvential Messiah; therefore, Jesus’ identity was in question.
We confuse our image of God with GOD (that by the way is the definition of idolatry) Its idolatry when we look to the image, when we look to the ID cards in the wallet as the exhaustive definition of the person of God.
The thing is, God is always, always going to be more than the sum of our encounters and experiences with God.
It’s like my friend driving with 2005 Pilot with GPS. In LA it works great, she lives and works near the city center, nothing much changes with the street layout – its logical to rely on the driving directions the car gives. – But she took the car down to Irvine and the GPS went crazy – warning her she was “_____off road” when she was driving down a paved street lined with Targets, Applebee’s and Starbucks. The GPS wasn’t able to recognize the new reality, so it rejected it and shouted out a misplaced warning. Well obviously she knew that she wasn’t off roading it, but how do we know when we are dealing with an imposter when it comes to our God? How do we know the real McCoy when it comes to our faith community?
We can try and “map” God, but God’s very nature is mystery – what do we do with that? Do we push back and try even harder to make our experience of God manageable? Over the years, the church has employed the strategy of creating lists of core attributes of God and then see who measures up in terms of religious leaders and faith communities. Do we attempt to minimize the chaos by creating a matrix of rules about who is “in” with God and who is “out”?
No, that is not so helpful. We need to open ourselves up to the possibility that the identity of God will continue to unfold
– that God will be true to our encounter with the holy that we had in Mrs. Johnson’s 3rd grade Sunday School class
– AND God is still in that moment in college when our heart broke with God’s when we learned how many “good” people looked the other way during the holocaust
– AND that God is probably going to surprise us with something new next week….
In today’s text Jesus throws out a scenario – The dad asks his kids to do something, one kids says no, I won’t, then does it. The other kid says yes, yes, of course and then doesn’t do it.
Obviously that plays against the backdrop of the ideal when the child would say yes and then do it, but we all know that is rare in real life and Jesus is a real life kind of guy so he goes for the murkiness of real life…
He asks the religious leaders, which of these two kids is just carrying their God card in their wallet? And which of these kids is living out what God desires?
It’s a deceptively easy answer – a slam dunk, really
The one who said no at first and then got up and did what was asked – There’s the kid who is doing what his father asked of him.
Exactly, says Jesus. And then he pulls two rugs out from under their self-righteous feet.
The first rug has to do with God’s People: Jesus pushes them hard –
The people who you have labeled as living out of bounds, the people who you have identified as being beyond redemption – these are the people who are in. Not because they carry a magic id card, not because they are passing them selves off as saints but they are in because of what they do – they are responding with action to God’s call on their life!
And you, you who thought you had Platinum Gold Medallion status, free upgrades to first class and priority boarding for life, put your card back in your wallet and step aside, these other folks are boarding ahead of you. Your ID cards mean nothing if they aren’t validated by your action.
This makes me uncomfortable, because as I translate myself into this passage – I find myself loosing my balance like the rest of the religious leaders. I had thought I was in – Have you seen my religious resume? I have that card from the stated clerk of the presbytery?
Jesus is pointed out the difference between faith affiliation and faith community.
This is the edge that we must continue to seek no matter how extensive our church resume is.
The best of knives get dull and require sharpening, so too does our understanding of how we gather as God’s people.
Words come so easily – Especially once we learn the politically correct vocabulary – we have our own lexicon here at Immanuel – struggling for justice, marginalized, inclusive, diversity, peace, Our Father-Mother God who art in heaven….
So if we can say the prayer that Jesus taught without stumbling over the 1st phrase does that mean we are truly a member of the faith community? NOPE
Jesus is teaching here that we must live out those words, we must act out those words…are we doing that? Are we just saying “oh yes, I am committed to caring for the environment – but we power through bottled water as if there is no tomorrow – do we declare our concern for violence against women – but we don’t make sure the near by domestic violence shelter has enough funding…. Are we doing what God is asking us?
We are a political people, and when faced with that question, we know how to spin our response, we know how to build our case – but this isn’t about convincing a jaded electorate, Jesus reminds us…the question comes from God – God in whom all is known, nothing is hidden. God in who love and grace abound. God who like a loving parent asks of us these things that will transform us, experiences that will call forth the fullness of who we are.
In this context we are free to be fully honest with God and ourselves.
We can ask God to open our eyes so that we can see our actions more clearly.
We can ask God to animate our desire, to ruffle our complacency.
Maybe we tumble to the floor with the rest of the religious establishment when Jesus pulls the rug out, but in God’s grace we can get up and open ourselves to the possibility that God is more than what we have experienced before….
So that takes us to Rug number 2.
Rug number 2 is definitely a subtext in this discourse between Jesus and the chief priests. They are going back and forth about who God sends – John the Baptist, Jesus and who God welcomes into the kingdom – prostitutes and tax collectors ahead of the chief priests and elders…. clarity on who God sends and who God welcomes bring clarity to who exactly God is.
What Jesus laid out in his story about the two sons is as unsettling to us as it was to the chief priests because we thought we knew who God is. But come to find out, God isn’t setting up a bouncer to check for Presbyterian id’s in the narthex. God’s going around to the alley, inviting the woman who’s slept in the doorway to come get a good seat upfront.
Jesus is challenging us to take another look at who we assume God to be – maybe God has given up coin collecting. Maybe the terrain has changed and our GPS is out of date.
I’m not saying that the character of God is inconsistent. I am not saying that God’s waffling on the issues – voting for the war, now against the war….
We need to keep a hold of our experiences with God – AND we need to cultivate openness to new experiences with God.
MP3 File
So basically, Jesus is getting carded by the chief priests and the elders. They want to know how to make sense of him, what to do with him, the want to figure out who exactly he is and what he is calling the community of faith to…
Its human nature to want a reliable way to identify someone. In Stillman Valley, Illinois, where my Dad grew up, back then it had a population 350 – Saaalute! people were known by name, or at least by face or family – you know, that’s Russ, Tom Gibbs’ boy.
But here in LA it’s a different story. I don’t even bristle when I am asked for a form of identification. I automatically dig out my and fish out the requested card – I know that that stack of cards doesn’t really capture the whole of who I am, at best, they are just slices…
The state of California has issued me a driver’s license – photo id
My Financial resources define me to some extent – money, valid credit cards, checks.
I do have more say in my identity around the affiliation cards, – LACMA, VONS, car insurance, - I even have a card issued by the Presbytery that declares that I am a member minister in good standing.
Even though we know it is a shallow, and inherently limited way of identifying someone, we find it comforting. We like to feel like we can “KNOW” who someone is…. find some points of connection and extrapolate an understanding of who they are – Oh, I belong to LAcma too – so you must value making fine art accessible and relevant to the community….
You can hear it played out on the daily news reports of the presidential candidates – It doesn’t matter if it’s an Obama report or McCain report – they leave my head spinning, trying to cast a particularly flattering impression in my mind that is fairly disconnected that what was done. We participate in that dance just as much as the candidates and their speech writing staff – We assume that people are knowable and predictable – we assume that if we could just say, oh, that’s Ann Dunham’s son, Barack or he’s Roberta’s boy, John – then we would be able to identify them, we would be able to know the truth of who they are.
It’s a common pitfall to confuse our experience of someone with the totality of their being – the longer we know them, the more we expect them to remain as we know them, the more we over-estimate our understanding of who they are.
This happened to me with my Granddad. We grew up with him and my grandmother in the same town, then they moved away to Missouri when he retired, I was just finishing 7th grade, after that we saw them twice a year or so, and in those visits, I guess, I so longed for the close connection I had had before, that I carried forward things from the past that weren’t so much present in his life any more – like coin collecting – my granddad is meticulous and he was passionate about coins which rendered boxes and boxes of heavy binders filled with sheets of coins suspended in plastic holders with hand printed labels. He especially liked the wheat-head pennies – which were rare, but still in circulation back then. Every time I got change, I would flip the pennies over, looking for the wheat motif. I’d bundle them up and send them to him.
Of course a lot of life transpired after they moved to Missouri – my Grandmother’s health declined and then she passed away suddenly, he fell and broke his leg, another wonderful woman entered his heart and they married and moved a few times and created a new life together. I’m not sure when he stopped collecting coins, I never stopped sending them, until about 10 years ago, when he gently mentioned that he wasn’t really interested in them any more. I was crushed, I felt like one of the few connections that I still had with him had been severed. It called into question all the things I thought that I knew him to be and I felt at a loss, like I didn’t know him anymore…and yet, why would I expect him to continue a hobby he started in his 50’s now 40 years later????
We do the same thing with God, we assume that God’s identity is fixed and knowable and mapable. We have authentic encounters with God of course! But then we go on to claim these encounters as an exhaustive description of whom God is. We hold on so tightly to who we knew God to be in a seminal mountain top experience and then we don’t let life go on from there. Just like the chief priests in today’s passage, they didn’t have a category for such an unconvential Messiah; therefore, Jesus’ identity was in question.
We confuse our image of God with GOD (that by the way is the definition of idolatry) Its idolatry when we look to the image, when we look to the ID cards in the wallet as the exhaustive definition of the person of God.
The thing is, God is always, always going to be more than the sum of our encounters and experiences with God.
It’s like my friend driving with 2005 Pilot with GPS. In LA it works great, she lives and works near the city center, nothing much changes with the street layout – its logical to rely on the driving directions the car gives. – But she took the car down to Irvine and the GPS went crazy – warning her she was “_____off road” when she was driving down a paved street lined with Targets, Applebee’s and Starbucks. The GPS wasn’t able to recognize the new reality, so it rejected it and shouted out a misplaced warning. Well obviously she knew that she wasn’t off roading it, but how do we know when we are dealing with an imposter when it comes to our God? How do we know the real McCoy when it comes to our faith community?
We can try and “map” God, but God’s very nature is mystery – what do we do with that? Do we push back and try even harder to make our experience of God manageable? Over the years, the church has employed the strategy of creating lists of core attributes of God and then see who measures up in terms of religious leaders and faith communities. Do we attempt to minimize the chaos by creating a matrix of rules about who is “in” with God and who is “out”?
No, that is not so helpful. We need to open ourselves up to the possibility that the identity of God will continue to unfold
– that God will be true to our encounter with the holy that we had in Mrs. Johnson’s 3rd grade Sunday School class
– AND God is still in that moment in college when our heart broke with God’s when we learned how many “good” people looked the other way during the holocaust
– AND that God is probably going to surprise us with something new next week….
In today’s text Jesus throws out a scenario – The dad asks his kids to do something, one kids says no, I won’t, then does it. The other kid says yes, yes, of course and then doesn’t do it.
Obviously that plays against the backdrop of the ideal when the child would say yes and then do it, but we all know that is rare in real life and Jesus is a real life kind of guy so he goes for the murkiness of real life…
He asks the religious leaders, which of these two kids is just carrying their God card in their wallet? And which of these kids is living out what God desires?
It’s a deceptively easy answer – a slam dunk, really
The one who said no at first and then got up and did what was asked – There’s the kid who is doing what his father asked of him.
Exactly, says Jesus. And then he pulls two rugs out from under their self-righteous feet.
The first rug has to do with God’s People: Jesus pushes them hard –
The people who you have labeled as living out of bounds, the people who you have identified as being beyond redemption – these are the people who are in. Not because they carry a magic id card, not because they are passing them selves off as saints but they are in because of what they do – they are responding with action to God’s call on their life!
And you, you who thought you had Platinum Gold Medallion status, free upgrades to first class and priority boarding for life, put your card back in your wallet and step aside, these other folks are boarding ahead of you. Your ID cards mean nothing if they aren’t validated by your action.
This makes me uncomfortable, because as I translate myself into this passage – I find myself loosing my balance like the rest of the religious leaders. I had thought I was in – Have you seen my religious resume? I have that card from the stated clerk of the presbytery?
Jesus is pointed out the difference between faith affiliation and faith community.
This is the edge that we must continue to seek no matter how extensive our church resume is.
The best of knives get dull and require sharpening, so too does our understanding of how we gather as God’s people.
Words come so easily – Especially once we learn the politically correct vocabulary – we have our own lexicon here at Immanuel – struggling for justice, marginalized, inclusive, diversity, peace, Our Father-Mother God who art in heaven….
So if we can say the prayer that Jesus taught without stumbling over the 1st phrase does that mean we are truly a member of the faith community? NOPE
Jesus is teaching here that we must live out those words, we must act out those words…are we doing that? Are we just saying “oh yes, I am committed to caring for the environment – but we power through bottled water as if there is no tomorrow – do we declare our concern for violence against women – but we don’t make sure the near by domestic violence shelter has enough funding…. Are we doing what God is asking us?
We are a political people, and when faced with that question, we know how to spin our response, we know how to build our case – but this isn’t about convincing a jaded electorate, Jesus reminds us…the question comes from God – God in whom all is known, nothing is hidden. God in who love and grace abound. God who like a loving parent asks of us these things that will transform us, experiences that will call forth the fullness of who we are.
In this context we are free to be fully honest with God and ourselves.
We can ask God to open our eyes so that we can see our actions more clearly.
We can ask God to animate our desire, to ruffle our complacency.
Maybe we tumble to the floor with the rest of the religious establishment when Jesus pulls the rug out, but in God’s grace we can get up and open ourselves to the possibility that God is more than what we have experienced before….
So that takes us to Rug number 2.
Rug number 2 is definitely a subtext in this discourse between Jesus and the chief priests. They are going back and forth about who God sends – John the Baptist, Jesus and who God welcomes into the kingdom – prostitutes and tax collectors ahead of the chief priests and elders…. clarity on who God sends and who God welcomes bring clarity to who exactly God is.
What Jesus laid out in his story about the two sons is as unsettling to us as it was to the chief priests because we thought we knew who God is. But come to find out, God isn’t setting up a bouncer to check for Presbyterian id’s in the narthex. God’s going around to the alley, inviting the woman who’s slept in the doorway to come get a good seat upfront.
Jesus is challenging us to take another look at who we assume God to be – maybe God has given up coin collecting. Maybe the terrain has changed and our GPS is out of date.
I’m not saying that the character of God is inconsistent. I am not saying that God’s waffling on the issues – voting for the war, now against the war….
We need to keep a hold of our experiences with God – AND we need to cultivate openness to new experiences with God.
September 21, 2008 + You did it to me! + Hayward Fong
Matthew 25:31-46
It is interesting to note that it was an Italian Jewish humanitarian, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885), who paid this parable the greatest compliment. He called it “the noblest passage in the gospel.” He went on to ask, “How many deeds of charity and love, how many acts of sacrifice and devotion have been accomplished in the last 1,800 years by the remembrance of these words.”
This parable has become so woven into our religious thought that it has become the very center of Christian faith and practice. To us it lays down a principle of judgment that has become commonplace; but to the Jews who heard it for the first time, it must have been a surprising eye-opener.
The Jew expected to be judged on two standards. First, had he or had he not kept the law? If he had carried out all the regulations of the law and had observed the Ten Commandments he felt completely safe. Second, he expected preferential treatment because he was a Jew. He was quite sure that God would judge other nations with one standard and the Jews with another; and that a man, just because he was a Jew, would be to all intents and purposes exempt from judgment altogether. And now the listening crowds were presented with this completely new standard of judgment – that everything depended on our reaction to the needs of others.
This parable is packed with truth for life and living. We should note that in every case cited the help given is in simple things. So often, we ask ourselves, “What can I do for others?” and because we cannot do big things, we end up doing nothing. But one of the points of this parable lies in the fact that in every case quoted the help given is the kind of help any person can give.
This was nothing new in the teaching of Jesus. He had said the same before. “Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward” (Mark 9:41). “Whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42).
Mabel Shaw, a missionary to Africa of an earlier generation, told this story to the little Bantu children about giving a cup of water in the name of the Chief, as they had learned to call Jesus. In a hot country, a cup of water can be beyond price. Not long after she told the children this story, a string of porters came up the village road, obviously exhausted by the heat. These men were of another tribe and there had been a history of hostility between the two tribes. All of a sudden a parade of her little children with water pots on their heads approached these men. The children were a little apprehensive, but were determined to carry out what they had learned. They came up to the porters and knelt down holding up the water pots, saying, “We are the Chief’s children and we offer you a drink.” The astonished porters knelt in return, accepted and drank the water. The little children ran back to Mabel Shaw, saying, “We have given a thirsty man a drink in the name of the Chief.” In any other circumstances, the porters would have been ignored, but Christianity bridged the gulf. The simple act of the Bantu babies did more to make Christianity real than any number of sermons.
Long ago, the prophet Mohammed asked rhetorically, “What is charity?” and then answered, “Giving a thirsty man a drink, setting a lost one on the right road, smiling in your brother’s face – these things are charity.”
These are the kind of things that anyone can do if he will. So often because we can do nothing great we do nothing at all, but there are kindnesses which anyone can do. To do them is to walk the Christian way and in the end to win the approval of the Master.
It should be noted that the people praised in the parable never realized what they were doing. Their goodness was unconscious; their kindness, sympathy, generosity were quite spontaneous. This is so in accord with Jesus’ principle. He was critical of those who every time they did a good deed made sure everyone heard about it. He said that, when you give something, even your left hand should not know what your right hand is doing.
The Jews knew this. They had a saying that in the best kind of giving, the giver does not know to whom he is giving and the receiver does not know from whom he is receiving. There is a lovely story of an old saint who was offered a reward for all the good deeds he had done. His one request was that he might be given the power to do good things without knowing that he was doing them. And so it happened that his shadow which fell behind him brought help and healing to all.
Many people will do good if they know they are going to get something out of it, otherwise they will leave it undone. There are those who go about doing some kind of good in the hope that some day in heaven they will get it back with interest. That something may be for prestige, or some measure of thanks and fuss over them. These people are not doing good for the sake of others, but for their own sakes. According to Jesus the really good are those who do good unconsciously.
There is told the story that Oberlin, a Swiss geologist-cleric (1712-1777), was caught in a terrible snowstorm when crossing the Alps. He was rescued by another traveler; when taken to safety, he asked to know his rescuer’s name, so that even if he would not accept a reward he might still pray for him. The rescuer would not tell him. He said, “Do you know the name of the good Samaritan in the parable?” “No,” Oberlin replied, “scripture does not tell us that.” “Well,” said the rescuer, “there is no need for you to know mine.” Real goodness does not want its name mentioned. Its thrill is the thrill of seeing someone go happily on his way. They are the unnamed heroes, the unnamed good Samaritans of the world.
Looking at the condemned in this parable, we see the excuse, “If we had known…” Many people will give to some well known person in need but ignore a lesser person in similar circumstances. I have a personal problem, being a selective giver. Does it mean that it is wrong to discriminate? I believe that the parable says that within limits of common sense, it is wrong to discriminate. From the Christian viewpoint, we must risk being swindled in order to help one who deserves. Having said that, I find myself wrestling with this problem on a daily basis. Who am I to determine who is deserving of my help? God did not measure his love according to our merits; Christ died for the sinner even more than He died for the good man.
In this parable, Jesus introduced a new principle of judgment, our reaction to the needs of others. He is not so much concerned with what we did not do in following His Commandments, but rather “What did we do to ease the burdens of others?” We will be measured not as reported in the newspaper or TV or in the history books, but rather by our actions and interactions with people we meet in our daily walks of life.” Might this be said of our life when our journey here on earth ends, “He or she made life easier.”
Jesus’ principle is summed up in the sentence, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” In human life, a parent gets more pleasure when something is done for his children than something done for himself. It is the same with God. In one sense we can do nothing for God and give nothing to God, for God being God has everything but He wants our love as expressed in doing something for His sons and daughters. When we do something for a fellow human being we are doing something for God.
There is an old legend of Martin of Tours, the soldier saint. One cold winter day as he was entering a city a beggar asked him for alms. He had nothing to give him, but the beggar was blue with cold. Martin took the old soldier’s cloak he wore, cut it in two, and gave half to the beggar. That night, Martin had a dream. In it, he saw heaven and all the hosts and Jesus. Jesus was wearing the half of the soldier’s cloak. One of the angels asked, “Master, why are you wearing that old cloak?” And Jesus answered, “My servant Martin gave it to me.”
It is interesting to note that it was an Italian Jewish humanitarian, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885), who paid this parable the greatest compliment. He called it “the noblest passage in the gospel.” He went on to ask, “How many deeds of charity and love, how many acts of sacrifice and devotion have been accomplished in the last 1,800 years by the remembrance of these words.”
This parable has become so woven into our religious thought that it has become the very center of Christian faith and practice. To us it lays down a principle of judgment that has become commonplace; but to the Jews who heard it for the first time, it must have been a surprising eye-opener.
The Jew expected to be judged on two standards. First, had he or had he not kept the law? If he had carried out all the regulations of the law and had observed the Ten Commandments he felt completely safe. Second, he expected preferential treatment because he was a Jew. He was quite sure that God would judge other nations with one standard and the Jews with another; and that a man, just because he was a Jew, would be to all intents and purposes exempt from judgment altogether. And now the listening crowds were presented with this completely new standard of judgment – that everything depended on our reaction to the needs of others.
This parable is packed with truth for life and living. We should note that in every case cited the help given is in simple things. So often, we ask ourselves, “What can I do for others?” and because we cannot do big things, we end up doing nothing. But one of the points of this parable lies in the fact that in every case quoted the help given is the kind of help any person can give.
This was nothing new in the teaching of Jesus. He had said the same before. “Whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward” (Mark 9:41). “Whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he shall not lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42).
Mabel Shaw, a missionary to Africa of an earlier generation, told this story to the little Bantu children about giving a cup of water in the name of the Chief, as they had learned to call Jesus. In a hot country, a cup of water can be beyond price. Not long after she told the children this story, a string of porters came up the village road, obviously exhausted by the heat. These men were of another tribe and there had been a history of hostility between the two tribes. All of a sudden a parade of her little children with water pots on their heads approached these men. The children were a little apprehensive, but were determined to carry out what they had learned. They came up to the porters and knelt down holding up the water pots, saying, “We are the Chief’s children and we offer you a drink.” The astonished porters knelt in return, accepted and drank the water. The little children ran back to Mabel Shaw, saying, “We have given a thirsty man a drink in the name of the Chief.” In any other circumstances, the porters would have been ignored, but Christianity bridged the gulf. The simple act of the Bantu babies did more to make Christianity real than any number of sermons.
Long ago, the prophet Mohammed asked rhetorically, “What is charity?” and then answered, “Giving a thirsty man a drink, setting a lost one on the right road, smiling in your brother’s face – these things are charity.”
These are the kind of things that anyone can do if he will. So often because we can do nothing great we do nothing at all, but there are kindnesses which anyone can do. To do them is to walk the Christian way and in the end to win the approval of the Master.
It should be noted that the people praised in the parable never realized what they were doing. Their goodness was unconscious; their kindness, sympathy, generosity were quite spontaneous. This is so in accord with Jesus’ principle. He was critical of those who every time they did a good deed made sure everyone heard about it. He said that, when you give something, even your left hand should not know what your right hand is doing.
The Jews knew this. They had a saying that in the best kind of giving, the giver does not know to whom he is giving and the receiver does not know from whom he is receiving. There is a lovely story of an old saint who was offered a reward for all the good deeds he had done. His one request was that he might be given the power to do good things without knowing that he was doing them. And so it happened that his shadow which fell behind him brought help and healing to all.
Many people will do good if they know they are going to get something out of it, otherwise they will leave it undone. There are those who go about doing some kind of good in the hope that some day in heaven they will get it back with interest. That something may be for prestige, or some measure of thanks and fuss over them. These people are not doing good for the sake of others, but for their own sakes. According to Jesus the really good are those who do good unconsciously.
There is told the story that Oberlin, a Swiss geologist-cleric (1712-1777), was caught in a terrible snowstorm when crossing the Alps. He was rescued by another traveler; when taken to safety, he asked to know his rescuer’s name, so that even if he would not accept a reward he might still pray for him. The rescuer would not tell him. He said, “Do you know the name of the good Samaritan in the parable?” “No,” Oberlin replied, “scripture does not tell us that.” “Well,” said the rescuer, “there is no need for you to know mine.” Real goodness does not want its name mentioned. Its thrill is the thrill of seeing someone go happily on his way. They are the unnamed heroes, the unnamed good Samaritans of the world.
Looking at the condemned in this parable, we see the excuse, “If we had known…” Many people will give to some well known person in need but ignore a lesser person in similar circumstances. I have a personal problem, being a selective giver. Does it mean that it is wrong to discriminate? I believe that the parable says that within limits of common sense, it is wrong to discriminate. From the Christian viewpoint, we must risk being swindled in order to help one who deserves. Having said that, I find myself wrestling with this problem on a daily basis. Who am I to determine who is deserving of my help? God did not measure his love according to our merits; Christ died for the sinner even more than He died for the good man.
In this parable, Jesus introduced a new principle of judgment, our reaction to the needs of others. He is not so much concerned with what we did not do in following His Commandments, but rather “What did we do to ease the burdens of others?” We will be measured not as reported in the newspaper or TV or in the history books, but rather by our actions and interactions with people we meet in our daily walks of life.” Might this be said of our life when our journey here on earth ends, “He or she made life easier.”
Jesus’ principle is summed up in the sentence, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” In human life, a parent gets more pleasure when something is done for his children than something done for himself. It is the same with God. In one sense we can do nothing for God and give nothing to God, for God being God has everything but He wants our love as expressed in doing something for His sons and daughters. When we do something for a fellow human being we are doing something for God.
There is an old legend of Martin of Tours, the soldier saint. One cold winter day as he was entering a city a beggar asked him for alms. He had nothing to give him, but the beggar was blue with cold. Martin took the old soldier’s cloak he wore, cut it in two, and gave half to the beggar. That night, Martin had a dream. In it, he saw heaven and all the hosts and Jesus. Jesus was wearing the half of the soldier’s cloak. One of the angels asked, “Master, why are you wearing that old cloak?” And Jesus answered, “My servant Martin gave it to me.”
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