In my experience, people leave behind the strangest things when they move.  When I moved into my previous apartment, I found in the back of one of the kitchen cupboards a triangle shaped plate made especially for pizza.  At first I got excited and thought, “It’s like the previous tenant knew me so well.”  Then, after thinking about it, I realized the previous tenant didn’t know me at all because, for one, I prefer square pizza, and secondly, let’s be honest, who has time for just one piece of pizza on a plate.  No wonder that plate got left behind. 

In other places, I have found a screwdriver, a doormat, a sock, and the lid to a Tupperware container.  I can only imagine what I, myself, may have left behind.

Now I don’t intend to over romanticize these objects as if there was some grand epiphany or life-changing moment that must have led someone to cast off their pizza shaped plate in some grand gesture of transformation.  Let’s be clear, everything I’ve inherited in my various moves has been junk that was forgotten. 

But as someone who has moved a couple times in the last few years, and most recently in the last two weeks, I often find myself thinking about how moves in my life have coincided with major life changes: starting school, changing jobs, preparing to get married.  And thus, from apartment to apartment, things both material and symbolic have been left behind or discarded to make room for the newness that comes with building a life that continues to ebb and flow. 

Times of actual physical moves, reconstruction, rebuilding, and change are often good times to take stock of what we must leave behind and what we must take with us.  As we find ourselves in this strange setting this morning,…

Text: Luke 10:25:37

A woman was walking out from her house to her car when suddenly two men snatched her purse, pushed her down, and fled the scene.  Several of her neighbors heard the commotion, opened their curtains, but quickly closed them again.  Another saw what happened and called 911.  Several others went out to the woman, helped her up, and stayed with her until the police and medics arrived.

Now the two men who mugged her were convicted felons.  They’d recently received early release from prison for good behavior.  They had every intention of finding a job and leading productive lives, but every place they applied rejected their application because of their status as felons.  Like other felons, they were barred from receiving federal cash assistance, food stamps, and other benefits.  They were also ineligible to live in public housing.  Without any source of income and without shelter, they soon resorted to petty crime to supply their needs.

They were never caught for stealing the woman’s purse.  One day, soon afterwards, they saw a news feature about a local organization with an internship program to help the formerly incarcerated get job placements.  Rather than using the word “felon,” or “ex-felon,” this organization referred to people like them as “returning citizens.”  The men visited the organization, were accepted as a part of the program, and after excelling through the six month internship, began full time jobs.  Once they were settled in an apartment with some extra cash, one of them had an idea that the other quickly agreed to, even though it involved breaking the law.

Late at night they returned to the home of the woman they had mugged.  They ran up to the mailbox, put an envelope inside (which is illegal), and drove off down the street before anyone saw them. …

Text: Luke 10:25-37

Toward the end of last year I saw a political cartoon that used the image printed on the bulletin cover.  This was at the peak of the debate about accepting Syrian refugees into the US.  A little over half of the nation’s governors had declared that their states were off limits.

In the cartoon, text was superimposed at the bottom of this image, which said: “Bible school primer for governors during refugee crisis.”  There were also two dark arrows pointing at the travelers exiting the scene, with the words: “These guys are not the heroes of the story.”  Another arrow pointed to the one who had stopped to give assistance, with the text: “This guy is the hero of the story (you want to be this guy).”

Aside from the political and moral message, a couple things stood out to me with the cartoon.

One was how deeply this parable of the Good Samaritan has made its way into our cultural lexicon.  Of all the stories and parables in the Bible, this is one of the most recognizable.  The political cartoon doesn’t work – or at least not near as well – unless this is the case.  The unwritten assumption is that everybody already knows who the hero is in this story.

The other thing that stood out to me is how much this parable has come to be about the moral agency of these three actors – the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan.  One of the brilliant features of the parable is all the different questions it invites us to ask about why these characters do what they do.  Or don’t do what they don’t do.

The priest and the Levite are both religious figures.  Some commentators have wondered if they were concerned with purity laws, should the half dead…

Text: Luke 10:25-37

The questioner answers his own question, but remains unsatisfied.  “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the lawyer asks Jesus.

It’s a big question.  Like one of the big questions.  Right up there with What is the meaning of life? and What should I be when I grow up? and Where did I leave my phone?

What must I do to inherit eternal life?  Presented with the hypothetical situation of If you could ask Jesus just one question, what would it be? I’m guessing a fair amount of people would choose some version of this question.

Jesus could have taken this one any number of directions.  He could have given a concise answer summarizing his theology of the afterlife.

He could have named specific actions this specific person might take to right their life, like he would soon do with the rich young ruler who would come to him and ask the exact same question: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  “Sell all you own, and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me,” Jesus will say.  But not to this person.  Not in this situation.

He could have pointed out the confused nature of the question, how people who inherit something don’t need to do anything to receive what is theirs on account of being a child of the one passing along the inheritance.  A gift, a grace.

Had Jesus been a certain variety of Christian he could have replied, “Accept me into your heart as your personal lord and savior and you will have eternal life.”

But he selects None of the above.  He doesn’t give an answer at all.

Maybe Jesus knows he’s being tested, as Luke tells us when he introduces the lawyer and his question.  Perhaps…

Text: Luke 8:1-15 

Part 1: Ode to a Seed

For ears that hear: an ode to a seed
That source of life, the Word decreed
You are the forest we have yet to perceive

Precious potential pulsating past our preconceived approximations
Our laughable expectations,
machinations of imaginations
That have never pondered the cathedrals in
hulls
Broken open
Husks that spill oceans
Shells whose birth pangs form choruses
Of bangs, both little and big
Maybe the universe is expanding because something static could never contain
The abundance of the Sower.
Exploding, expanding, abounding

Abounding
Overflowingly resounding,
Bountifully compounding
Uncontainably astounding
Extravagantly confounding
Prodigal sounding
Abounding

Ode to the seed,
That bastion of abounding
Teaching us how to let go and trust the cosmos abiding inside
Instructing us in the arts of abundance
Showing us what it means to get dirt under our nails
As we claw our way upward to that life that is too tightly bound
Like four year old hands that scream “don’t let go” AND
“I’m ready to fly”
Uncontainable, uncontrollable, abounding

Ode to the seed
Bearer of fruit, the seed reborn
A yield without measure, the Sower adorns-
Rocky landscapes and highways and ditches with thorns,
Unconcerned that the methods would garner quick scorn-
From those who know better, from scoffers who warn-
About wasting the effort; their methods they’ve sworn-
Will give greater yield.  It’s these the Sower mourns.

It’s these who know not the way of abundance
It’s these who have trapped themselves inside words like safe, careful, worthy, control
It’s these who concern themselves more with pointing fingers at strange soil than celebrating the fruit bursting forth all around them.
It’s these who forget that abundance is both the means and the end

An ode to a seed
But not just the seed that lands in good soil.
Ode to the seeds on the path, in the rocks, among thorns.
Your worth not diminished by fingers that point
And say “what a waste.”

Ode to the seeds who make a way out of no way.

Ode to the vines who refuse to accept a place…