Us Fools

 

Martha and I recently completed the arduous process of updating our wills. We wanted to make sure that when we shuffle off this mortal coil, our offspring and grandchildren get a fair share of the spoils.

Be that as it may, our potential heirs understand they will not be divvying up a fortune. Our daughter Victoria once watched a bevy of birds twirling over our feeders and said, “Look at them eating up my inheritance.”

For most of us, what we will inherit from our forebears, in money or property, is a big deal.

It was a big deal for some guy in the crowd that was following Jesus around in Luke 12. “Teacher,” he cried out, “tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” (Lk 12:13)

What was this guy thinking? He may have seen Jesus heal lepers, give sight to the blind, and raise the dead, and said to himself, “Jesus would probably be a good financial advisor.”

But Jesus declines.

Instead, he tells a story about a rich man intent on growing his abundance so he will not have to worry about a thing for the rest of his life.

The punch line, of course, is that there will be no rest of his life.

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” (Lk 12:20-21)

One would think the lesson was obvious. We tell ourselves we can’t take our riches with us, and we reassure ourselves that if we are rich toward God we won’t miss our cellphones or our favorite television programs in heaven. Whatever our riches or favorite possessions are, they stay here and we go on.

But is Jesus saying wealth is bad? Luke certainly makes a good case for the idea. The bible offers no comfort to the rich.

Jesus routinely lambasted persons of wealth. Especially unpleasant is the anecdote of the rich man who basks in luxury, scarcely noticing the wretched beggar who dying of psoriatic ulcers and hunger beneath his table. The beggar dies and goes to heaven, while the rich man was consigned to the torments of hell. (Luke 16:19-31). 

Then there the story of the rich young man who abandoned Jesus when he was told to sell all he had and give the proceeds to the poor. (Matthew 19:21)

Too, there is Jesus’ famous clincher that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven. (Mark 10:24).

Bad news for the one-percent. Bad news for Trump. Bad news for the Koch brothers. Bad news for Ken Copeland and Creflo Dollar. And bad news for most of us. Because millions of us who fall far short of the celebrated one percent are nevertheless richer than any first century dives could possibly imagine. Worse, most of us in that category are as indifferent to the 45 million U.S. residents who live below the poverty line as the rich man was to Lazarus.

These are biblical warnings we should keep in mind the next time we wait hopefully in line to buy multi-million dollar lottery tickets. There’s almost no chance we would win, of course, but what if we do? It would ruin our lives. It would to be rich.

Jennifer S. Wyant of the Candler School of Theology in Atlanta writes, “(We) all have the same problem as the rich man on the night of his death and the brother in the crowd fighting over his inheritance: They are focused on the wrong thing. They are worried about what they possess and so have failed to focus on being ‘rich toward God.’ Their hearts are with their earthly treasures, not with God.”

The lesson is clear but the follow-through is hard. Everywhere we look, we are surrounded by the rich and famous. We idolize celebrities who make it big, seek their autographs, beg to stand close to them for selfie photos, bask in an aura of wealth that allows us to look, but not touch.

The epistle writer James understood these temptations.

“For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or, ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? [James 2:2-5]

Even so, it is so hard to resist these temptations. I would  genuflect to Paul McCartney if he crossed my path. 

Martha and I met Steven Rockefeller, professor emeritus of religion at Middlebury College, at the Interchurch Center in Manhattan. 

Steven, son of Nelson, was there to represent his grandfather, the late the late John D. Rockefeller, Junior, without whose generosity the God Box would still be a series of breezy tennis courts on the Hudson. 

Tall and bald, as if he emerged from the Daddy Warbucks school of central casting, Steven's dignified demeanor makes you forget (but I do so enjoy remembering) his youthful escapade in which he ran off with the family's downstairs maids and married her. 

Today he’s a respected theologian and academician, with the minor caveat that when you're a Rockefeller, people tend to think every mumble and belch that comes out of your mouth is deep. When I shook Steven's hand, Jesus' admonishment to the rich young ruler crossed my mind. I might have asked him if he had plans to give all his money to the poor, but I'm not as dim as I look. I smiled and thanked him for his brilliant - brilliant - speech.

The other-worldly fate of the rich – almost certain hellfire – is sobering, but perhaps it is too finely drawn. Also dubious is the blissful eternity assigned to the poor. It’s too easy to take these verses and design a dialectic that all rich people are hell bound. And it is equally wrong to anesthetize desperately poor people with a promise of pie in the sky when they die.

Martin Luther, who systematically excised biblical books he didn’t like (declaring them “Apocrypha”), didn’t care for James’ smug missive, which he called “an epistle of straw.” 

Luther objected to the church’s habit of extorting “good works” from its beleaguered congregations for its own profit, and he declared a gospel of works was a tool of the devil.

Given the corruption of the church in Luther’s day, it’s hard to disagree with him.

In our day, however, James seems to be raising urgently legitimate questions:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. James 2:14-17.

That’s another way of saying that if one truly has faith, good works must follow automatically. There can be no good works in the absence of faith. And if faith is present, good works cannot be stifled.

That’s a sobering thought for any faithful Christian who has stepped over a sleeping homeless person or brushed off a hungry pan-handler, as most of us do.

But most of us ignore human needs far greater than that and assuage our guilt in precisely the fashion James warns us about: by praying for the desperate, as if to invite them to “keep warm and eat your fill.”

“In Luke 11, Jesus taught the disciples to ask God for what they need, trusting that God gives good gifts to his children,” writes Jennifer Wyant. “And here in Luke 12, Jesus is telling them not to worry about the wrong things. We have no control over the future. Stock markets rise and fall. Jobs come and go. We live and we die. We cannot change it by worrying. 

“But in all of that, Luke stresses that Jesus invites us to trust, not in what we can build or save, but in the God who sees and provides. We cannot change the future, but we can follow God. We can seek after God’s Kingdom. We can turn our hearts and minds toward Jesus. Our possessions will not save us. 

“But God can.”

Hey Abba!

July 27, 2025, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

One has to be chronologically gifted to remember this so I won’t ask you if you were watching the Ed Sullivan Show on June 6, 1954. Ezio Flagello, the magnificent bass singer for the Metropolitan Opera, sang “The Lord’s Prayer” live on Ed’s stage. 

Ezio wasn’t exactly Buddy Holly and the Crickets, but the audience was deeply moved by his commanding performance. Even the famously restrained Sullivan seemed carried away by the performance. Raising one arm, he shouted, “Let’s hear it for the Lord’s Prayer!”

I was eight years old, sitting with my parents watching Sullivan on our 12-inch black-and-white Admiral TV, and I saw nothing wrong with Ed’s reaction. Over the years I began reading critics who were bemused – and amused – by the showman’s ability to take a sacred moment and urge the audience’s applause as if they’d just watched Topo Gigio.

But I think we can give Ed a little leeway here. The usually taciturn Sullivan was deeply moved and his response was wonderfully human. Let’s hear it for the Lord’s prayer!

How old were you when you first learned the “Our Father” – the Lord’s Prayer?

I had not yet entered kindergarten when my parents thought it good to teach me the prayer Jesus taught his disciples.

Before that – and this was in the late 1940s – my parents had me kneeling beside my bed each night in my pajamas to pray a nursery rhyme:

“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

Die?

Before I wake?

That was a confusing and frightening idea for a four-year-old.  My thoughtful parents diluted the prayer to make it less scary.

“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. May angels spread protecting wings above my bed.”

Too late.

My parents would have been appalled to realize my pre-K contemporaries had already updated the prayer.

“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, Alka-Seltzer’s what to take.”

My parents moved quickly to discard the whole now-I-lay-me theme. They figured that if I was old enough to memorize dialogue from the Howdy Doody Show I was old enough to memorize seven or eight lines taught by Jesus.

My mother would kneel beside my siblings and me and have us quietly repeat each line until we knew the whole prayer by heart. She taught us the Matthew 6 version of the prayer that is slightly longer than the Luke 11 version that is before us today. And she taught the Protestant version that adds a modified doxology after “deliver us from evil; for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

By the time my siblings and I were in primary school we were reciting the Lord’s prayer along with the whole congregation of the United Church of Morrisville, N.Y. This church had Baptist roots so we said “forgive us our debts.” Just up the street the Methodist congregation said “forgive us our trespasses,” which could be confusing because I had been taught that trespassing was climbing over our neighbor’s fence to retrieve an errant baseball. But it was also reassuring to know God forgives trespassing because our neighbor certainly did not.

Probably Jesus taught the prayer in Aramaic, an ancient language that is rarely heard today except in the Syrian Orthodox Church. I love to hear Syrian congregations recite the prayer in Aramaic, not because I understand it but because I’m hearing the same sounds and rhythms that Jesus used two millennia ago. 

As we know, the Gospels were written many years after Jesus walked the earth. The Gospel writers never heard Jesus say the words of the prayer and no one wrote them down as he said them. If Jesus used the rabbinic style of rote teaching, that is, having his students repeat and repeat lessons until they memorized them, it’s not unreasonable to assume we have a pretty good summary of what he actually said. Scholars will continue to examine this and offer opinions as to which words of Jesus actually came out of his mouth and which were reconstructed best guesses.

Back in my Baptist days I occasionally visited a liberal congregation that had its own way of interpreting the Lord’s Prayer. In an effort to degenderize the Creator of the Universe they changed the opening of the prayer to read, “Our Mother and our Father …”

Perhaps their hearts were in the right place, but of all the words in the Lord’s Prayer, the ones deemed most authentic are “Abba,” Our Father. I had a colleague who was greatly amused that this well-meaning congregation had blithely discarded the only words of the prayer that are universally accepted as the true words of Jesus: “Our Father …”

This, of course, was the main point Jesus wanted his disciples to hear: the loving Fatherhood of God who, like a loving parent, desires to meet all our needs and offers us models of behavior in our human relationships.

When the New Revised Standard Version of the bible was being prepared in the 1980s the editors were challenged to publish the most accurate possible translation of scripture. In doing so they took care to note when Jesus was addressing only men (as was often the case with his disciples) and to note when Jesus was addressing women and men together (as when he preached to the crowds). As the editors were wrestling with these issues they heard from many women and not a few men who said they had much difficulty with the loving father metaphor of the Creator of the Universe. Many of these women had been abused by their fathers and husbands and, for them, the concept of God as Father was off-putting and frightening.

Pastor Niveen Sarras of the Lutheran Church of Wausau, Wisconsin, writes that many of Jesus’ contemporaries also had unpleasant views of fatherhood.

As we know, Luke is primarily addressing a non-Christian audience.

“Luke’s Gentile Christian audience’s experience with their fathers differs from their Jewish counterparts,” Pastor Sarras notes.

“The fathers in the Greco-Roman culture enjoyed complete control over their children and grandchildren. For example, a father decides whether his newborn child will be raised in the family, sold, or killed. Luke introduces the Gentiles to God, who is generous, loving, and attentive to God’s children’s needs. Luke changes his audience’s perspective on fatherhood by presenting God as 'the Father who cares for his children and acts redemptively on their behalf.' The father-child relationship is based on the confidence of the child. This relationship is centered on love, not fear. God the Father in the New Testament is a personal, intimate, sacred, and trusted authority.”

God the Father – Abba – is a parent full of unconditional love for us. It’s sad when our human fathers become bad examples of this love, even to the extent of making a mockery of it through cruelty and abuse. If the idea of “father” makes some people cringe, it’s our duty to listen to them, understand their pain, and pray that God’s true love will break through the emotional scar tissue to reveal what Jesus means when he says “Our Father.”

When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them to pray, his first lesson was this:

Remember God loves you. Never be afraid to approach God in Prayer. And be persistent about it.

These are the footnotes to Jesus’ teaching:

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:9-13)

 Because God is love.

 And when we pray, pray like this.

Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.” (Luke 11:2-4)

God is the father – Abba – we need not fear. God is only love.

Sister Sister

July 20, 2025, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

Today’s Gospel (Luke 10) features two of the best known women in the New Testament: Mary and Martha.

I find it difficult to be indifferent to these women, in part because their personalities are so vividly described by the Gospel writer.

And I have personal reasons for perking up when I hear their names. My mother was named Mary. And my wife, of course, is Martha. I sometimes feel I’ve lived my life between two Jungian archetypes of virtuous womanhood. 

It’s hard to put my feelings into words, so I will turn to Sir Paul McCartney who puts these feelings – mine and his – to music.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Also:

Martha my dear,

Though I spend my days in conversation,

Please remember me.

Martha my love,

Don't forget me,

Martha my dear.

Take a good look around you,

Take a good look, you're bound to see

That you and me

Were meant to be

For each other, silly girl.

It should be noted that the Mary of Sir Paul’s song was his mother, although he has said that if people want to think he’s singing about Jesus’ mother, that’s fine with him.

And the Martha he sings to, of course, was his beloved sheepdog. But that doesn’t alter the sentiments.

What do we know about the biblical Mary and Martha, these sisters of Bethany who were both devoted to Jesus? We know that Mary sat at Jesus’ feet while Martha scurried to host the party, which probably meant prepaering the meal. And we know that Jesus told Martha she was being distracted by too many things, and “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” (Lk 10:41-42)

Jennifer S. Wyant of Candler School of Theology reports a strange medieval legend about the sisters which suggests how their roles differed.

After Jesus’ resurrection, the story goes, Martha of Bethany became an itinerate missionary who went to France. She visited one hamlet that was plagued by a dragon and promptly slayed the beast. In gratitude, the village became Christians.

Mary, on the other hand, founded a monastery.

Thus, the legend declares metaphorically, Martha and Mary live into the traditional roles the church has given them. “Martha acts,” writes Wyant, “and Mary studies. Martha represents an active faith, while Mary represents a contemplative faith.”

Which is better? Action? Or Contemplation?

Years ago I was a member of a small African American Baptist Church in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. The founding pastor, in his 90s, still presided over the congregation with humor and authority. He had two daughters in their 70s. One was the organist, the other was the head deaconess.

The deaconess was the church mom and organizer and every Sunday she would rise to explain everything the church needed to do. Sunday School literature had to be ordered. Parents had to make sure their children came to Sunday School. Teachers had to be prepared to teach. Coffee needed to be ordered. The kitchen needed napkins. The deacons needed to repair the roof. The deaconesses needed to plan for Ladies Sunday dinner …

One Sunday a young man visited the church, the type of youth whose frontal cortex was not fully developed but who never doubted he knew more than anyone else.

The young man listened to the deaconess and rose to challenge her.

“You’re being a Martha,” he scolded with brash self-assurance. “Busy, busy, busy. Take time to pray. Don’t be a Martha.”

The deaconess stared at him silently until the young man sat down. I can’t remember, 45 years on, when I have been so offended in church. How dare he? How dare he presume to instruct the venerable saints who had been doing Christ’s work decades before he was born?

And what did he mean, “don’t be a Martha”? Was that a bad thing?

God knows where the church would be without the worker bees who keep it running. Prayer and contemplation are good things, but can the church – can any institution – survive on meditation alone?

Actually, it’s a little awkward to find ourselves judging the two women, and I wonder what church folks have decided about them over the centuries. The Patriarchy would have seen immediately that Mary was assuming the more unacceptable role. The role of women in Jesus’ day, in addition to being invisible, was to run the house, cook the meals, sew the clothing, nurse and change the babies. If anything, it’s Martha who is working well within society’s expectations. Mary, sitting dreamily at a man’s feet while her sister toils at traditional women’s work, is being presumptuous at best, perhaps even arrogant.

But Jesus defends Mary and we have tended to look at Martha in the same way we look at the Prodigal Son’s older brother: hurt, jealous, resentful.

But “If we are overly critical of Martha,” says New Testament Professor Brian Peterson, “we may end up with an image of faith that never actually does anything for anyone else.”

As Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, we remember that only a week ago we were reading Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. 

“The Samaritan embodies love for the neighbor; Mary embodies love for God, Peterson writes. “Both the Samaritan and Mary are socially disqualified from being models of anything good according to the norms of their culture, and yet they are both images of the kingdom which Jesus brings. Both are needed to complete the discipleship Jesus calls for: to hear God’s word and to do it (Luke 8:21). We need the ‘go and do likewise’ of Luke 10:37, and we need to remember that sitting as a disciple to hear the word of Jesus is a gift not to be neglected or taken away.”

Pastor Elizabeth Johnson of the Twin Cities, is quick to defend both sisters as doing the right and good thing. 

“The problem with Martha is not her serving, but rather that she is worried and distracted,” Johnson writes.

“Martha’s worry and distraction prevent her from being truly present with Jesus, and cause her to drive a wedge between her sister and herself, and between Jesus and herself. She has missed out on the ‘one thing needed’ for true hospitality. There is no greater hospitality than listening to your guest. How much more so when the guest is Jesus! So Jesus says that Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

It seems inappropriate for us to take sides or exalt one sister over the other. Both Martha and Mary are following their best instincts. Both love Jesus and Jesus loves them both.

Jennifer Wyant writes that the story of these two sisters serves as a powerful example for disciples today. 

“It turns out that maybe Luke isn’t attempting to prioritize one act of Christian discipleship over another. Maybe instead he is presenting the idea that we can do right and good things but still be distracted by the wrong things. We can focus more on the perceived shortcomings of those around us than on our own relationship with Jesus.

“So yes, in Luke, disciples both serve and listen to the word, just as disciples today navigate both the contemplative and the active practices of faith. Sometimes we slay dragons, and sometimes we start monasteries. But Luke’s deeper concern is that our orientation be in the right place: that we focus on Jesus, and let the main thing be the main thing.”

Lord Jesus, help us focus on you and grow in your grace. Amen.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

July 13, 2025, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

We’ve all known “good Samaritans.” By that, I mean people who understand that everyone is their neighbor.

When I was in college in the early seventies, my philosophy professor was an extraordinary man named Peter Genco. Peter had a neatly trimmed black beard, perhaps so he would look more philosophical, and he was known for penetrating lectures that forced us students to think a little deeper. There was a rumor that his dissertation was accepted by his Ph.D committee as proof of the existence of God which, if so, you’d think would have attracted more attention in church circles.

But I remember Peter more for his neighborliness than his intellect. If anyone needed help, Peter was there for them. He showed up to help people pack to move, usually uninvited because no one dared ask the great man for help. I mentioned once that I needed to rent a U-Haul van to pick up a large table and he gave me the keys to his VW bus. If Peter was late for class, it was probably because he had stopped to help some poor motorist change a tire. (NOTE: This was 1970. Don’t try this today. The motorist will not assume your intentions are honorable.)

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is the Grant’s Tomb of canonical scripture. The General’s Napoleonic memorial on Riverside Drive is thought to be New York’s best known and least visited landmark. So, too, the Parable of the Good Samaritan may be Jesus’ best known and least followed lesson.

The parable is not for Christian minimalists who want to limit their Jesus experience to Facebook memes and simpleminded hymns. It is comforting to croon,

Every day with Jesus ... Is sweeter than the day before ... Every day with Jesus ... I love Him more and more ...

But the parable of the Good Samaritan is anything but comforting. It’s like having cold water splashed in our faces as we try to sleep in on Sunday morning. It forces us to encounter a more demanding Savior than the understanding sweetheart who dotingly rocks our cradle and never asks us to get up to do something.

The lawyer who first posed the question to Jesus was jolted awake by the answer. He was probably expecting a more technical analysis of the theoretical question, “Who is my neighbor?”

Frederick Buechner, the Presbyterian pastor, theologian, and writer, put it this way:

When Jesus said love your neighbor, a lawyer who was present asked him to clarify what he meant by neighbor. He wanted a legal definition he could refer to in case the question of loving one ever happened to come up. He presumably wanted something of the order of “A neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one’s own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as the neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort of kind whatsoever.” 

As everyone knows, Jesus deliberately made a Samaritan the good guy because Samaritans represented everything his listeners feared and despised. The enmity between Judeans and Samaritans can be traced back to two of Jacob’s sons who sold their brother Joseph into slavery (Genesis 37:3-4) but hostilities intensified over the years because of racial, ethnic, and political animosities. 

When Jesus used a Samaritan as an avatar of neighborliness, it must have driven his audience crazy. It was also fair warning that the Christian life could make some distasteful demands on the faithful. 

Father David Kirk, founder of Emmaus House, collected dozens of parables, sermons and declarations of Jesus and put them together in a wonderful but now nearly out of print book called, Quotations from Chairman Jesus. 

Strung together in the style of Quotations from Chairman Mao, the little red book of the Chinese revolution, the words of Jesus looked as radical as they sounded when they were first uttered. In 1969, Kirk contextualized the Good Samaritan by making him a figure feared and hated by many: The Good Black Panther.

It was a brilliant conceit fifty years ago, but there aren’t many people who hate and fear Black Panthers now. Many of us remember the Panthers as social justice heroes.

Today, it takes a little more imagination to contextualize the Samaritan. Today, it could be the Good Tort Attorney, the Good Used Car Salesman, the Good Mafia Don. 

Good Samaritans come from many walks of life.

Some reach out to their neighbors because they see their need – and because they can.

Bruce Springsteen has stepped in to pay for the funeral expenses and compensation for the families of victims of the devastating Texas flash floods. 

MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow donated $3 million and hand wrote letters to the parents of 27 missing girls to see if there were other ways she can help.

Chef José Andres and World Central Kitchens are preparing thousands of meals for Texas flood victims.

And we can help, too, by supporting Lutheran World Relief, Church World Service, and other service organizations that are active in Texas and around the world.

Some reach out because they have the means to do it and the divine empathy to see the need.

Others reach out at the risk of their lives and livelihoods. 

Hermine “Miep” Gies was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family, and four other Dutch Jews from the Nazis in an annex above Otto Frank’s business premises during World War II. 

Thousands of courageous Catholic priests risked their lives to sign baptismal certificates for Jews to obscure their identities from the Gestapo.

Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer left a safe position at Union Theological Seminary to return to his native Germany to stand against the Nazis, and paid with his life.

In our present time in which empathy is considered by some to be a “woke” weakness, thousands are reaching out to neighbors protect them from ICE arrests. Bishop Alberto Rojas of the San Bernardino Diocese has issued a dispensation from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass for Catholics fearing immigration raids. Pope Leo XIV has condemned the byzantine and often cruel immigration laws in Europe and the U.S. and has asked diocesan priests to accompany immigrants who are going before immigration courts to seek legal permission to resume a path to residency and citizenship.

For many, the parable of the Good Samaritan is an unpleasant reminder that every day with Jesus has many challenges. Every day with Jesus may also include a sour aftertaste if we have to mingle our human weaknesses and prejudices with the purity of God’s unconditional love for all God’s creatures. Whenever someone we don’t even know is in need, it can be damned inconvenient to stop to see if we can help. If the person in need turns out to be someone we will never see again, it becomes all too easy to walk on by.

But good neighbors do not walk on by, and in many cases these good neighbors may be people we despise.

The Christian life is sometimes too complicated to face when we wander from our feel-good hymns and cocoonish happy places.

So who is my neighbor anyway?

As Professor Franz Leenhardt of the University of Geneva has argued: “One cannot define one’s neighbor; one can only be a neighbor.”

According to Jennifer S Wyant of the Candler School of Theology, the lawyer’s question should not have been, “Who is my neighbor,” but, “How do I love my neighbor?”

Some interpreters have felt that in doing this, Jesus does not actually answer the man’s question, but I would argue that he intentionally subverts the question. In his answer, he tells the lawyer that his question was the wrong one. The question should not have been “Who is my neighbor?” The question should have been “How do I love my neighbor?” And in his answer, Jesus teaches that one is a neighbor by going above and beyond in caring for those in need. The act of neighboring, like love, does not have a limit.

But Jesus pushes even further, Wyant writes. “This parable dismantles the very notion of boundaries, exposing the false divisions we draw between “us” and “them.” The Samaritan and the Jew were divided by history, culture, and theology, yet Jesus declares that their obligation to love supersedes all of it. In doing so, this story confronts the sin of racism for what it is: an attempt to carve out exceptions to God’s command to love, to create boundaries where none should be. The Kingdom of God allows no such divisions, and neither do the scriptures, which call us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

“And so, like the lawyer, we are left not with the question ‘Who is my neighbor?’ but with the much harder one: 

‘Will I choose to be a neighbor?’”

Jesus Sends

July 6, 2025, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

This Sunday the Gospel reading offered by the Revised Common Lectionary is Luke 10:1-11. At the close of his earthly ministry, Jesus sends 72 of his followers, two by two, into villages to preach the Kingdom of God.

There is so much to glean out of these eleven verses, so much going on.

We have known since our earliest days in Sunday School that Jesus had twelve disciples and many of us memorized their names. We think of these men as a merry band, trudging the hot, dusty roads of Palestine, sometimes arguing among themselves, sometimes raptly tuned in to the words of Jesus, sometimes understanding his parables but more often not. The twelve are fixed in our minds as the basic unit of Jesus’ ministry.

In fact, the number twelve has special significance in bible stories.

There were twelve tribes of Israel.

Solomon had twelve administrators.

In Hebrew, twelve signifies God’s divine order.

Twelve can refer to completeness of the people of God.

Twelve is the number of lunar months in the year.

And, a bit more obscurely, in numerology the number twelve represents growth from the physical to the spiritual realm, and vice-versa.

We’ve become so accustomed to the twelve that we’ve got to wonder: where did 72 others come from? 

We numbers crunchers should pause, of course, to note that 72 is divisible by 12. Six times 12 is 72.

But apart from that, who are these 72? It’s obvious that large crowds of people were following Jesus around during his three years of ministry. And they were doing more than auditing his sermons. They were taking them to heart, accepting them as God’s truth from God’s messiah, turning their backs on their past lives, and being born again into the life to which Jesus is calling them.

Even more than that, these 72 missionaries have been elevated to complete partnership with Jesus and the twelve. Jesus has commissioned them to cure the sick, to speak with authority about the coming of the Kingdom of God. “Whoever listens to you listens to me,” Jesus tells them, “and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” (Lk 10:16)

The only resource Jesus is sending them with is their faith. “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals … eat and drink what is set before you.” These are 72 bold, courageous people of faith, sent on a great adventure.

I can never read this passage without remembering being sent to Baptist churches throughout the country with a compelling message, not necessarily the imminence of the Kingdom of God but the need for churches to support the programs and salaries of their national staff.

I did this dozens of times over my twenty years as a denominational communicator and it was always an adventure. We were dispatched into the hustings via creaking prop planes or - as the number crunchers preferred - Greyhound bus. I remember one late night in Iowa when the bus driver and I (the only persons on the bus) pointed a dim flash light at a hand-drawn map hoping to find a small church hidden amid the cornfields. Accommodations at the churches were often in the homes of ministers and on more than one occasion I displaced one of the pastor’s kids to sleep on a rubber-sheeted lower bunk.

Surely the 72 were sent on a mission that required more faith than I was able to muster

And there are many more tidbits of fascinating information to mine from these passages.

We can’t read this story without realizing Jesus has more abilities, more expertise, more aplomb than we have noticed. He is demonstrating an astonishing aptitude as an executive level manager, as an organizer of a complicated plan.

“This is an enormous operation,” writes Richard W. Swanson, professor of religion emeritus at Augustana College. “The storyteller seems to imply that these messengers go out, one pair per village. That is a lot of villages. And that is a lot of messengers. The storyteller does not imagine that Jesus is traveling incognito, appearing in a town, creating a scene, and moving on. Jesus in Luke’s story does not say, “I think our work is done here, Peter,” and then ride mysteriously off into the sunset. 

“Jesus in Luke’s story sends a mob of messengers ahead of him and tells them, no matter how they are received, to say that the “kingdom of God” (whatever that is, exactly) has come so near.”

What does it mean to you that the Kingdom of God has come near?

Perhaps it will become clearer to us if we look at the instructions Jesus is giving the intrepid 72. And what he is saying is important for us modern Christians as well.

“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’”

Jesus doesn’t ask them to first determine the religious pedigree of the household.

He doesn’t ask them to determine whether this house follows the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or whether this house has kept the law or whether this house is likely to receive the good news Jesus brings,” says Amy G. Oden, a professor and spiritual director. “Jesus doesn’t ask them to do a risk assessment or pre-judge whether this house will be worth their time.”

Regardless of who lives in the house, Jesus urges the 72 – just as he urges us – to wish peace to all who live there. 

“As we engage others, we must first be well-grounded in God’s peace, the peace that passes understanding.” Writes Ogden. “God’s shalom is more than being calm. It is confidence in God’s abiding presence so that we also share that presence with others. Engaging others means not treating them as objects upon which we act, but as sacred others with whom we are called to be fully and peacefully present. If they do not share this peace, Jesus does not advise reactivity, scorn or polemics. Instead, he reassures his followers that their peace is not diminished and cannot be taken away from them: “it will return to you” (verse 6).

These are words worth reflecting on and praying about in the divisive, contentious environment in which we live. 

On occasion I’ve used these words – “Peace on this house” – in various settings. I’ve used them in village offices where we’ve been asked to pay a fine. I’ve used them in my podiatrist’s office. I’ve used them in Tim Horton’s when I buy my coffee. I’ve used them in gas stations and body shops and Home Depot and Costco.

Usually I get a nice response, often in the stimulates a feeling of peace to those who hear it, perhaps not. But it does instill a feeling of peace in my own heart, and it reminds me what it means to say God’s kingdom is near.

Jesus does not ask us to check one another out before we express God’s peace. God’s shalom is for all God’s creatures:

For the neighbor who complains to police because your trees are too tall.

For the chronically nasty people you can’t seem to avoid.

For your boss who works you overtime but hates to pay you for it.

For the aggressive person who cuts in front of you at the DMV.

For the thoughtless person who plays heavy metal at a deafening volume in the adjoining apartment.

For Democrats.

For MAGA.

We are going to have to live with all these people.

But when we do have to interact with them, our first reaction should not be how we feel about them, whether we like them, or whether we agree with them.

Our first thought should be to wish them God’s shalom. And if there is peace within their hearts it will be returned to you. And you will know that God’s Kingdom is near.

Peace on this house, and God’s peace be with you always.