[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome to the collective table where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy.
This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation and even the podcast.
So we're glad you're here and thanks for listening.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Good morning, everyone.
My name is Travis Arms. I'm not exactly a longtime listener, first time caller, but it has been a few years, maybe close to four years or so since I've preached here at Oceanside Sanctuary.
Like Mark Weathers, who shared last week, I'm a Navy chaplain serving with Marines at Camp Pendleton for three different tours. The Navy has moved my family and me to Southern California and we are very pleased to call Oceanside Sanctuary our church home both when we are here living and when we are away, wherever we might be. So glad to be here this morning. If you have been here for the past five weeks or so, you know that we are going through a series on the parables of Jesus. If you haven't been here for the last five weeks and you don't know, well, now you know.
And continuing that series in the Parables, when Jason extended the opportunity to preach and gave the list of texts, I have to admit a couple things. First of all, I chose a real easy one, I thought not much easier than last week with the Rich man and Lazarus. That was a tough one. And also the parable of the Good Samaritan. It's a story about being a good neighbor. And I kind of thought, I don't know, that I have much to teach this community about what it means to be aware of our biases, to protest against bigotry, to show compassion and mercy, especially to those in need, because these are the sort of things that I learn from you all. But hopefully you find something that is refreshing this morning.
Speaking about a good neighbor, there's no better neighbor than Mr. Fred Rogers. And if I had a cardigan sweater, I would have worn it today.
Just an homage or maybe to kind of channel that vibe a little bit. If you were born before 2000, you or after 2000, what is this guy talking about? If you were born in the last century, which is weird to say, I just thought of that a moment ago. All of us that weren't born in the 2000s or like last century, that seems old, then you probably grew up watching as a child or as a parent with a child. Fred Rogers enter through the door, put on his cardigan sweater and his sneakers break that fourth wall and speak to children at home watching public television and. And become Mr. Rogers and invited you and me to be his neighbor.
As I was thinking about this passage today on what it means to be a good neighbor, I was thinking about Mr. Rogers, and I jumped online to read a little bit about him. And he was maybe his person, maybe his character. I think there's probably not a big difference between who he was, his personal character, and his television character was described for his radical kindness and his acceptance and his empathy, which created a place that TV Guide described as making us old and young feel safe and cared for and valued.
Wherever Mr. Rogers is, so is sanctuary.
End quote.
I never really heard the word sanctuary used to describe a person before, and I thought that was just tremendous that in this person's purview, that when you meet this individual, you feel a sense of safety, you feel valued and appreciated.
Typically, when we think of sanctuary, we think of a place like this, a building or a room in a building that is designed where worshipers can come together. It's a place where they feel safe. And maybe it's not just the particular room. Maybe it's the greater building.
And it's also, of course, the community that fills the building, creates the safe space. And it is very intentional, very deliberate that this church is called Oceanside Sanctuary.
Because everyone who comes into this place, and including me, I feel a sense of safety and care and value, and I feel appreciated and accepted. And so I believe those who met Jesus with an open heart, maybe not those who tried to test him or persecute him, but all those who met Jesus with an open heart would have found sanctuary in the person of Jesus, the individual, the victim of a pretty bad crime.
In the parable that we'll read in a moment, he was beaten, left for dead, robbed, until one passerby treated him with compassion and mercy. And I believe the Good Samaritan, our parable today showed this individual sanctuary.
So without further ado, let us turn in your Bibles, if you have them. If you don't have your Bible, you want to search on your phone. If you don't want to search on your phone, you can just read the words above. This parable comes from the Gospel according to Luke, the tenth chapter, beginning in verse 25, where we read, just then, a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.
Teacher, he said, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
He said to him, what is written in the law?
What do you read there?
He 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.
And he said to him, you have given the right answer. Do this and you will live.
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor?
Jesus 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.
Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
But a Samaritan, while traveling came near him, and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He 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. The 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.
Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?
He said, the one who showed him mercy.
Jesus said to him, go and do likewise.
Will you pray with me?
Our God, we give you thanks for this day, for the invitation to be called your children, for the opportunity to gather together and with joy in our hearts, express our gratitude to you for your love and compassion and mercy to support one another, to be able to be in a place where we show each other and we show strangers sanctuary.
God, may we do this more and more.
Speak to us through your word and and be glorified in our lives. We pray in your son's name. Amen.
The last few weeks have been pretty special for me. I moved back to Southern California last August after an overseas tour.
But just a few months later I was deployed to Southeast Asia and then came back. I was kind of a migratory bird for a while, living the nomadic lifestyle until April and moved into a rental home here in Oceanside.
But it was only last month that my family began to move to Oceanside in various waves. My son flew from Connecticut in July.
My daughter has been doing some school activities this summer, and she just finally got on her summer break. And then my wife Adrienne, who is joining and playing sing with the band this morning, drove. She took the long way from Windsor, Connecticut, driving all the way across the country.
She was serving as a pastor at First Church in Windsor, a Congregational church there in Connecticut. And so I'm pleased to have them.
And it's kind of a parent's prerogative to embarrass their kids. So I have the one rare opportunity. Madeline, my daughter, is about to go back to school. She happens to be here last Sunday before she goes back. So this is my chance to share a story about her.
To be fair, I did ask permission. I also didn't tell her what I was going to say, though.
So there's that.
Just a few weeks ago, Mal was driving in San Diego in a rental car, was involved in an automobile accident.
And it was pretty bad.
And it got worse when the other driver emerged and very quickly let Mallon know that he was a lawyer.
And he steps out and he looks at his car and just really gets very frustrated. And he starts yelling and he says, look at my Maserati. It is ruined. And what is this blood all over my suit? This is my favorite Armani suit. You have ruined my suit. And I'm late for a case.
Where's my phone? So he goes back to his car and he looks for his phone. It's smashed up in the accident. And he comes out and says, that's it. I am suing you for the car. I am suing you for the suit. I'm going to sue you for all that you're worth. Now the joke's on him. She's a college student. I mean, how many college students have a high net worth?
I'm suing you for the phone, and I can't get to this case. And it was going to be a profitable case. I'm suing you for that, too.
Finally, Malin has a chance to speak up.
And she's done with his attitude. She's done with all the threats to sue. And she says, you know what? You lawyers, you are all the same.
All you care about is money. You didn't even notice that your left arm is missing. And he looks down and it's just a bloody stump. And that's why his suit is all messed up. And the first thing he can think to say is, where the hell is my Rolex?
So that did not happen.
Parts of that were true, unfortunately. Madeleine was involved in a little accident a few weeks ago. Not her fault. No injuries, no loss of limb. Even the other driver, I don't think was a lawyer. He was at fault. And he took care of the repairs to the vehicle. But I share that story for a few reasons.
Mostly just to kind of ingratiate myself to you all with a little bit of humor. But there's this connection to the, to the lawyer in our passage today. It is prompted, this parable is prompted by a question of a lawyer. Lawyer in Jesus's time.
Bit different than lawyers in our time. And by the way, I don't think all lawyers are greedy and all they think about is money.
But lawyers in Jesus time, they handled civil and religious law as far as I know. They didn't manage accidents between donkeys on the road that might have happened, I don't know.
But this passage is prompted by this lawyer. And third, I want to bring out the fact that jokes, that it's kind of funny because there's often some truth in jokes. And jokes and parables have a lot in common actually, because a joke is often like a parable, a true made up story.
All of the parables that we read about, we've kind of embodied them and embraced them. But they're not actually true stories in the historical sense. And yet they are very true. If a first century peasant had a first generation smartphone, they couldn't have filmed this good Samaritan taking care of this man on the highway. They couldn't have filmed to this joyous return of the prodigal son or, or any of the other parables that we've discussed because they didn't actually happen.
That's kind of a relief to me. I'll share why in just a moment, but I want to mention something about biblical interpretation. And Janelle did a really great job when she introduced this series on parables. When we think about how we read scripture, it's very easy and maybe tempting to read the Bible and consider, well, I am the audience of this. It was written to me. How do I learn from this? How does it shape me? How does it change me? How does it guide me? How do I understand God through this scripture? This is all important and it's how we should read scripture and it's how we often do read scripture. And there's a reason why we talk about scripture every week because it is living and active. It's inspired and it's inspiring. And so it's important that we don't stray too far from these texts. But they were not written to Americans in the 21st century.
We make that mistake sometimes. If you ever heard a prediction about the end times and the individual was looking at for all these symbols and applying them to contemporary things like was the book of Revelation just written at some point and then just went dormant for 2,000 years until some bright person starts making these connections in America? No I don't think so.
Well, I want to kind of share a bit about how I have often read the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
I read it quite candidly with a guilty conscience because when I read the story about the Good Samaritan, I think, well, I am not that generous, I am not that merciful, I'm not that compassionate. And I think generosity and hospitality and kindness and mercy, all these things are some of the best qualities a person can have. And when I compare myself to the Good Samaritan, I just don't feel like I measure up to that.
And frankly, neither did the Samaritan because he's a character in the story. So I can maybe relieve me a little bit, but maybe there were Samaritans that were absolutely that kind and generous.
But the, the focus that I read when I think about how guilty I am because I'm not that generous, that isn't actually the point of the parable.
To understand the point of the parable, we have to go back to that. Introductory passages on the Love commandment, Matthew, Mark and Luke all contain what's called the greatest commandment. And Matthew and Mark, a lawyer, a scribe, a teacher of the law, asks Jesus, so what's the greatest commandment? And Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your strength and your mind. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself, and full stop. In Matthew and Mark, Luke shapes it a little bit differently. In Luke, a lawyer asks Jesus, how do I inherit eternal life?
And Jesus does what we would call the Socratic method. He answers the question with a question and says, well, you're the lawyer. What do you read? How do you read it there? And the lawyer gives the response, love God and love others.
And if he had just stopped there and quit while he was ahead, he would have been good. But the lawyer asked this follow on question, who's my neighbor? Again, it's a very obvious transparent reason why the lawyer asked this question.
He doesn't want to have to love everybody. He wants to know who he is required by law to love. And if it's the people that are like me, if it's the people that live close to me, if it's my tribe, if it's the people that are lovable, well, then maybe I can handle loving others the way that I love myself in the same way that I love God.
But that's not really Jesus style to say, oh, you can love some people, but you don't have to love these others. Just forget about those, if you recall, in what we call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is quoting from the law and he says, you've heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemies. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That's the type of love that Jesus teaches.
There's no boundaries in who we love. There's no lines. There's no filter for. For who we are supposed to love. And that's the point of this parable. And this is typical Jesus, breaking down boundaries that we want to build that separate us from others, that help us to not have some guilty conscience. I don't have to worry about those people. I don't have to love those people because they're ineligible. They're not my neighbors or they don't deserve it or something.
This greatest Commandment, it's pretty simple, really. Love God, love others.
But it isn't easy to practice.
Before I joined the Navy, I spent a year back in seminary. And for half of that year, I took a course with one of my favorite Christian ethics professors, Alan Verhey. And we studied the Love commandment. We looked at a lot of different ways we might define and how we might understand what it means to love God and love others.
And Verhey was partial to a book on love and friendship by the author Jules Toner. And Toner's definition of love is. Is effective affirmation that's effective with an A, as in affection.
Effective affirmation is saying yes to another individual, particularly someone who might be in need. It says, I want you in this world. In fact, I want you in my world. And there's this fondness there, and there's this affirmation there, and it's not about, what can this other person do. For me, there's no element of reciprocity. It's not, well, I'll love you because you'll love me back. I'll take you to lunch because you'll take me to lunch. I'll take care of you because it's beneficial somehow to me. That isn't love.
Love is loving the other person for their own sake, as they are.
You may not love everything about them. You may not agree with them on a lot of different things, but there isn't a choice or an option to love or not to love a person based on what they can do for you.
And that's challenging, that's tough. And that's the point of this parable, is that when the lawyer asks, who Jesus do I really have to love Jesus. Answer is, well, everybody, that is the point. That is the challenge.
This parable has been convicting to me as I think about Jesus. Other parable, the sheep and the goats, where like a shepherd separating sheep and goats, he addresses those who have taken care of those who are hungry and thirsty, sick in prison, naked. And Jesus says, you never took care of me and the goat group. Like, wait a second, Jesus, if I saw you, I totally would have done that. Like, when were you hungry? When were you thirsty? I don't remember ever seeing that. I would have, I promise I would have taken care of you. And Jesus says, no, when you didn't do that unto the least of these, you didn't do that unto me.
There was a song years ago, maybe mid-90s, by a group, Cademan's Call Christian Music Band. They had one of the most convicting lines I've ever heard in a song when they spoke about this world and the shiny things, the things that attract the things that we want.
And they sang, the least of these look like criminals to me.
So I leave Christ on the street.
That line has just stuck with me. And it resonates through this passage, through this parable, the way I read it. But as we look at what it means to be a good neighbor, we see three individuals who pass by this victim, this poor man who is beaten up and robbed and left for dead. The first passerby is a priest. He sees the man, acknowledges that he exists, but does not show any sort of effective affirmation. In fact, he kind of denies he exists at all and moves to the other side of the road and just continues to down to Jericho from Jerusalem. The Levite does the same thing until a Samaritan sees the man in need, but does not see him. I mean, he sees the same thing, but not really in the same way.
The priest and the Levite, they see a problem.
They see somebody else's problem, somebody else's business. And there's maybe a whole host of reasons why. They justify to themselves why, why they can't help this man.
Maybe one weak argument was, well, maybe he's dead and we can't touch a corpse. We'd be ceremonially unclean. That, of course, is not a good argument. They're leaving Jerusalem, not heading to Jerusalem, so they're done with their temple duties. And they would have known. You should honor the dead and bury the dead so that one doesn't really hold up. Maybe they think he had it coming.
Maybe they think he's being a baby. And he just needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps.
Well, wait a second, this man doesn't have any boots. Like how is he going to pull himself up by his bootstraps?
It's the Samaritan who does not see a problem.
He sees a person in need. He sees an opportunity to show mercy and kindness. And he does. And he goes over and beyond in caring for this individual.
What frustrates me a lot about the actions of the priest.
Well for one, it's a bit convicting to be chosen as a profession, being clergy, to see a member of the clergy who should have known better just go right past this man. But I think the priest missed a tremendous opportunity with this individual.
If you think about what the function of a priest is, the priest is a conduit.
It's a bridge between the people and God. And in Old Testament times, in Jesus times, the priests received the animals, turned them into sacrifices and offered them up to God. And so that was how the people worshiped. They came to the temple, they offered their animal to the priests, the priests sacrificed them. And it was this kind of one way street of how the people worshiped God through the priests.
But then if we think other ways about priests, even like today in Roman Catholic and other traditions, the priest is an intermediary like that.
But it's more two way.
A person might confess their sins to a priest, a priest may absolve them. The priest is the one who administers the sacraments. I won't name all seven in the Roman Catholic tradition because I'll leave a few out, I'll forget them. But we know too, because we practice the in this church and we just did communion and baptism. These are ways that a priest is like an intermediary for God, a conduit for God and bringing the grace of God right tangibly to the people.
This priest sees a man in need and had the opportunity to be sanctuary, had the opportunity to be like God to this man, to show God's mercy, to show God's compassion, to show God's care, all of these things. And he just blew the opportunity.
Interestingly enough, we have that opportunity maybe not in quite the same way as in this story, but we will meet individuals who need God, who need God's mercy, who need acceptance, who need compassion, who need hope, who need support, who need love.
And in showing these individuals love, it's almost like, and this is a very Protestant thing of me to say, but it's almost like we can all be priests to another individual insofar as we can bring the presence of God into another person's life.
And so, you know, I'm not just making some stuff up that I can corroborate this in the Epistles of John. In First John, he writes a lot about love.
One John, in chapter three, little children, let us love not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
And then in First John, chapter four, beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God. For God is love.
God is love. And those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
So when you show love to another person, God is there.
God abides in you. God abides in that moment.
And we have that opportunity to be like that priest, to bring more of God into this world.
Not that God needs our help necessarily, but we have that rare opportunity to be the hands and the feet of God, to continue the ministry of Jesus and bringing more mercy and compassion and peace into this world.
Sure, not everyone is very lovable.
It's very intentional that Jesus names this third passerby a Samaritan. The Samaritans were kind of icky. The Jews didn't really associate with them so much. The Assyrians came in and their bloodlines got mixed and they just don't have a whole lot of respect. They don't really talk to the Samaritans, they don't really deal with the Samaritans so much.
But it's a Samaritan who shows love, who fills the role of a priest, in whom I would argue God abides.
I believe that our country, our nation is unique amongst other nations. It's all bound into the fabric of who we are, that we value freedom, we value individuals, rights. And of course we don't always see that from day to day, not in policies, not in practice. But at our core, our nation is a nation that is not all about boundaries. And it's hard to believe that these days that America isn't all about boundaries, because that's what we hear a lot about. But if we go back to the Declaration of Independence, we read that we're all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. These are God given rights, not governments given rights, but God given rights that everyone, not just Americans, but that everyone from God has been given the right to life, the right to liberty and the right to the pursuit of, of happiness.
And it's a shame that we don't see this every day.
Maybe we don't see it in our neighborhood or in our state or in the news, but again, one thing I love about this community is that we can protest against that. We can embrace the best parts about who we are as a nation and as a body of believers.
I work with individuals who have fought for freedoms physically in combat, fought against terrorism.
And I worship with a number of individuals who fight for justice that might be holding up a sign that might be holding up a brother or sister who can't hold themselves up right now.
Now, the point of the passage, again, isn't to guilt everybody into giving more and doing more for other individuals. But if you feel a little bit of that guilt, if you feel you could be more compassionate, more merciful, you probably could. We probably all could.
The point of this passage is that there are no boundaries.
There are no some people who are lovable and some people we don't have to worry about. I think you all know this.
I don't suppose that is very new.
But when we seize those opportunities, when we take that initiative to show effective affirmation, to say yes to someone, not to see a need and turn away and pretend that it's not there, but turn towards that individual and show love, there is God, there is sanctuary.
Let us pray.
Our God, we give you thanks for your love for us, the kind of love that is not exceeded the type of love that you would lay down your life for us.
Oh God, we pray that you lead and guide us.
We pray that others, when they see us and encounter us, that they may get a little glimpse of what your kingdom, your reign is like.
God, use us for your will and not our own. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching. No matter when or where you're tuning in.
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