Collect
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not our hold on things eternal; grant this, heavenly Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Gracious Father, by the obedience of Jesus you brought salvation to our wayward world: draw us into harmony with your will, that we may find all things restored in him, our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Post Communion
Eternal God, comfort of the afflicted and healer of the broken, you have fed us at the table of life and hope: teach us the ways of gentleness and peace, that all the world may acknowledge the kingdom of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament – Amos 7.7–17
This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb-line, with a plumb-line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb-line.’ Then the Lord said,
‘See, I am setting a plumb-line
in the midst of my people Israel;
I will never again pass them by;
the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’
Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the very centre of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said,
“Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
and Israel must go into exile
away from his land.” ’
And Amaziah said to Amos, ‘O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.’
Then Amos answered Amaziah, ‘I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycomore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”
‘Now therefore hear the word of the Lord.
You say, “Do not prophesy against Israel,
and do not preach against the house of Isaac.”
Therefore, thus says the Lord:
“Your wife shall become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,
and your land shall be parcelled out by line;
you yourself shall die in an unclean land,
and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.” ’
Psalm 82
1 God has taken his stand in the council of heaven; ♦
in the midst of the gods he gives judgement:
2 ‘How long will you judge unjustly ♦
and show such favour to the wicked?
3 ‘You were to judge the weak and the orphan; ♦
defend the right of the humble and needy;
4 ‘Rescue the weak and the poor; ♦
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
5 ‘They have no knowledge or wisdom; they walk on still in darkness: ♦
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
6 ‘Therefore I say that though you are gods ♦
and all of you children of the Most High,
7 ‘Nevertheless, you shall die like mortals ♦
and fall like one of their princes.’
8 Arise, O God and judge the earth, ♦
for it is you that shall take all nations for your possession.
Epistle – Colossians 1.1–14
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother. To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae. Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit.
For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Gospel – Luke 10.25–37
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 neighbour 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 neighbour?’ 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 travelling 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 neighbour 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.’
Sermon on Sunday, Trinity 4
Who has not heard of the Good Samaritan? This parable from the Gospel of Luke is one that is known throughout the world. It raises all those delicate matters of social attitudes and philosophical differences of opinion. It highlights the animosity of groups, one against the other – those “normal” prejudices communities hold towards strangers (whatever that strange is: color, smell, straight, crooked). Samaritans and Jews were at odds with each other – it was deep-seated, nothing trivial, essentially it was at the heart of Judaism. They would have nothing to do with each other. You could say it was a hatred. This attitude sullied any relationship between the two communities, and between individuals.
Don’t we all act with a certain bias? I get upset with my brother and so I may not behave with unfettered affection for him. With others, I may just ignore something which should have called forth an act of kindness. This brings to mind last week’s reading, doesn’t it? I may not have borne my neighbour’s burden as required by the law of Christ. Paul’s exhortation and Jesus’ parable speak to the same point. Our moral compass must point to the care of the other person whoever it may be – and wherever we are.
The other person can be the bogey man of childhood stories, or the criminal from the news, or even politicians on the current affairs programs. That other person may just be someone I don’t know, or some acquaintance the cut of whose jib I may not like. It could be like the big-enders from “Gulliver’s Travels”, those people who eat eggs differently from me and mine. The divergence of behaviours can come from all sorts of sources, but they are at the heart of our fear of the other. I remember a science fiction story where the characters picked out sashes from a sack and had to behave as a pack with all the others who wore the same colour sash. Regularly the sashes were placed into the sack again and everyone delved in to choose their new team. It was completely random whose team you ended up on, but you had to play the part completely – to the death. This prejudice – the colour of the sash – could change each time one dipped his or her hand in the sack. Prejudice and bias does seem to be random.
That science fiction story puts all prejudice into perspective, I think. Our partiality is founded upon the specious. It may not be the colour of my sash, but the length of my beard or the after-shave I wear. – However, when I cannot bear another’s burden, something is wrong. In other words, I do not love as Christ commands. If something stands between me and an act of charity, that something is a prejudice which must be eradicated.
This is where soul-searching begins, when we realise there is something wrong, either in myself or in the world around me. How do we correct mistaken attitudes? I said that love must be the gauge by which we judge something. If something makes me act not out of love, there can be no order in the world in which I dwell. Love begins with compassion and its heat intensifies from the warmth of passion, Christ’s passion, the cross.
Let’s look a little more closely at the parable.
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. … when the Samaritan 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.
Hands play a big part in this story. A man fell into the hands of robbers and then was rescued by the hands-on care of someone that man would normally despise, someone who bathed his wounds and bandaged them, placed this nearly dead man on his beast and then even invested the equivalent of two days’ wages for his care and promised even more. Everything that happened is “at the hands” of people, people who would beat a man to death, a person who would bear that nearly dead man to a place of safety and then into the hands of a paid servant, an innkeeper. So I have to ask, “What do we allow our hand to do for others? What do our hands do for others?”
Whether it is the touch of kindness or the grasping of desire, heat is exchanged. When we clasp hands in the exchange of the peace, we feel it, don’t we? Everyone wonders why my hands are so cool – a warm heart, I say – but hands make us aware of the other’s reality because we feel their presence in the heat of their touch. None more so than when we hold our beloved in our arms – our partners, wives, husbands or children. When I touch my beloved, their warmth awakens me to their actual presence and, I hope, they become aware of me.
What happens when there is no warmth there? What is wrong with me when my touch is so very cold that the other person must remark about my cold hands? Is this a sign that there is something wrong with me? Do I really care for the other when they can shrink away from my cold hands?
These questions are not literal – they are asking something quite different from the words they use. The doctor’s stethoscope – always cold to the touch – does go to something quite different than what is happening on the surface. The doctor is listening for something invisible.
And so are we when we ask about the coldness of hands. We are rooting out something that should not be there – a prejudice of some sort. Something is wrong in our relation with the world because the warmth of love is missing. While I assure you that my heart is warm, you may wonder why my hand is so cold when I offer you the peace of the Lord. It is a painful reality for all of us when we wonder whether those cold hands actually reveal a warm heart. We all want to believe that love lies behind those our hands, don’t we? There is a doubt that must be winkled out and exposed as to what it is prejudice, and so we can recover that innocence which puts us right with the world.
Let’s look at it in another way. We have been experiencing high temperatures lately, when we feel those cool hands, when we shake each other’s hands, we should feel them as offering us respite from the heat. Those cool hands envelop us in a cool shadow on a warm day, like wings which cover us as a hen cares for her brood. We all know those images, don’t we?
I have been exercised lately by the earliest recorded saying in western philosophy, it is called the Anaximander fragment. There are two words which call into question just what philosophy is all about. Anaximander is quoted and ‘he says what he says “with [these] more poetic terms.”’ Since when does a philosopher speak poetically? Perhaps we need to go back to Anaximander and reassess just how we use language – that it encompasses meaning in so many ways. Then if we think about this parable of The Good Samaritan, perhaps we should speak with our hands more often, by offering the hand of friendship or a sign of the peace of the Lord. We need to handle everyone with care. Whether our hands are experienced as hot or cold, we should always extend to bear each other’s burdens.