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Message from Pastor Bill – August 2009
Love Invites Us Into Community
Dear Saints:
As we continue to embark on meeting our neighbors in the community, we must realize that the posture of Love is the greatest weapon for social change. In the biblical story recorded by Luke, Jesus emphasizes a parable of a Samaritan that picks a Jew up into his own arms, puts him on his own donkey and brings him into the community of the inn and the care of the innkeeper. By telling this parable, Jesus is calling Jews to have community with Samaritans. Surely we as Christians today should embrace a community of persons that are from diverse cultures.
Like the theme of this parable our challenge must be an invitation to exhibit freedom in our community. The Samaritan contrasts with the priest and Levite, who stand for the political-social religious establishment that ostracizes lepers, prostitutes, publicans, sinners, rebels, women, foreigners, the poor and especially Samaritans. To affirm community with Samaritans, the Jew had to displace stereotypes with the freedom to live their lives according to their consciences. Like the Samaritan, we must learn not to judge, in the sense of condemning. Hence community requires that we live by forgiveness and grace rather than self-righteousness and condemnation.
The parable of the compassionate Samaritan confronts its hearers with their rejection of others by illustrating the love-ethic designed for human consciousness and demands the overturn of prior values, closed options, set judgments, and established conclusions. The parable of the Good Samaritan is a surprising reversal similar to our Lutheran understanding of the paradoxical nature of the cross of Christ that in our Lord and savior’s weakness reveals God’s majestic glory. St. Matthew like Jesus, I urge all of you to an eschatological challenge of creating a kingdom populated with persons from different cultures who are recipients to God’s love.
By demonstrating this radical love to our neighbors we will create a just community. The new community for which I speak will be characterized by justice for the poor, the powerless and the outcast. My conviction is grounded in Lutheran theology that humanity cannot be morally perfect, but we can be all-embracing by doing loving deeds. The kingdom of God is like the compassionate Samaritan, practicing delivering love. If I am to inherit eternal life, I must go and do as the Samaritan did which is found in the grace that God has given all of us. Our response to this grace is our participation in practicing justice, as God’s children through the power of love.
Peace and Power,
Pastor Bill
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