P.S. I Love You: Vacation Bible School Kickoff
June 9th, 2013: The Third Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 10:25-37
First Baptist Church
I take for
my text, words from the Gospel of Luke. Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.” Will
you pray with me?
Lord of love,
Allow us to
show your love to the loveless so they lovely be. May the words of my
mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh God
our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
P.S. I love
you is a 2007 film that tells the story of Holly and Gerry who are madly,
deeply in love. The story opens with Gerry dying of brain cancer. Deeply
broken, Holly withdraws until one day, on her 30th birthday she
receives a letter from none other than her late husband Gerry. Throughout the
movie we discover that Gerry has written a series of letters to help Holly face
the future without him, and they come from the most unlikely of places. Gerry’s
ultimate goal is for Holly to abandon her fear of falling in love again. But in
a beautiful token of his love for her, he ends every letter with, P.S. I love
you. We’ll get back to that though.
Back in the day… The day being
around the turn of the century something incredible happened. Mind you it was
the 21st century but nonetheless iTunes, a new way of listening to
and buying music was unleashed upon the world. For those of you who may not be
as tech savvy as I think I am, let me explain. iTunes was released by an
up-and-coming company called Apple to coincide with the release of new iPod.
This was a new way of listening to music; this was to be the future. Now well
into the 21st century we not only have iPods, but also iPhones,
iPads and other gadgets but the one constant through it all has been iTunes.
When iTunes
was first released I very vividly remember a situation that occurred when I was
old enough to order my first song. I don’t even remember the song anymore but I
do remember sitting with my dad at the computer and seeing the thousands and
thousands of songs available, all for a mere 99 cents at the time. When you
select a song that you might want to buy you have the option to preview the
song. Back then; you would listen to a minor snippet, a microcosm of the song
in about 15 seconds. After it was over you had the choice to buy the song or
leave it be, based on the preview you just heard.
I remember
loving the song, knowing that this song would define my life and forever more
be synonymous with the journey of life I was embarking on. That was until I
heard the whole song. The 15 seconds made the song sound life-changing and
awe-inspiring, but after listening the 3 minutes it took to get through the
wretched excuse for music, I felt strangely let down, and realized that if
iTunes, much less life was going to be like this I wanted nothing to do with it.
I have a
feeling that the lawyer felt a little of the same way when he stood up like any
lawyer would do to test Jesus. First, let’s note that it’s important not to
condemn the lawyer for testing Jesus, whether we like it or not we’re all
guilty of asking Jesus tough questions to try and trap him into a box we’ve
formed and created to show him who’s boss. “What must I do to inherit the
Kingdom of God?” Jesus, not wanting to go to deep into this gives the answer of
what the law says, “You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart, soul,
mind and strength; And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The lawyer
who was as headstrong as he was stubborn asks Jesus to clarify, “Who is my
neighbor?” I’m sure the lawyer thought he had Jesus pinned down. But Jesus
doesn’t just give a 15 second iTunes preview as to who your neighbor is. Jesus
tells a story, a story that is now iconic with the Christian faith. A preview
of life the lawyer probably didn’t like. The parable of the Good Samaritan goes
like this:
On the
Jericho road a man was robbed, beaten and left for dead on the side of that
highway. Luckily, a priest was passing by. But when the priest saw this mess he
thought it best not to get involved and we should let the Jericho Police handle
it, so he went on his way. Thankfully, however, a Levite was on the same road
around the same time when he noticed the half-dead man. Not wanting to miss his
lunch appointment he went on his way towards wherever he was going. Finally, a
Samaritan of all people came near him and knew something must be done. So in
good faith and devotion the Samaritan took him and bandaged his wounds and took
him to the nearest infirmary and paid for his healthcare.
This story
is challenging to us on so many levels, for a man to offer another person free
healthcare in our day and time is to suggest that you want to start a political
brawl. Complicated by this, the man offering the free healthcare would be the
equivalent in our culture to a turban-wearing, terrorist that we’ve picked out
as the demise of our nation. Tensions were at an all time high when this story
was told. Jews and Samaritans were readying for conflict. You see, Samaritans
were descendants of a mixed population occupying what the Jews perceived to be
their land following the conquest by Assyria in 722 B.C.E. They opposed the
building of the temple, they worshipped at their own sight on a mountain. These
people were socially outcast, religiously and ethnically unclean, and heretics
in the eyes of the Jews. I dare say that if you don’t believe history repeats
itself one would need to look no further than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
that is going on today to realize that history has a way of bringing things
back for round two.
So what
does this story have to do with people living in North America in the 21st
century? The text that sticks out to me as the most is the challenging is the
commission gives at the end of the parable. As almost a postscript after Jesus
has told the story and the lawyer has given his recourse Jesus says, “P.S. Go
and do likewise.” Go and do likewise, probably some of the most troubling and
terrifying words in the whole of the Gospel.
You see for
Jesus to tell us to go and do likewise is an example of love. We all have our
conceptions of love, don’t we? Whether you have been influenced by culture, by
a partner, or a friendship you know what love is. We’ve made it into a hallmark
card best kept for when Valentine’s Day or an anniversary comes around. However
any practitioner of such love would tell you that love is dirty, messy and most
of the time challenging. To love someone the way the Samaritan and ultimately
Jesus did would be to suggest that you are willing to go to the ends of the
earth for someone in pain, someone in trouble, someone who is being oppressed.
A few
months back, Stephanie and I were hiking the Fire Tower trail on the Parkway.
It’s my favorite trail, and with the company I had it couldn’t get much better
than that. On our way back on that five-mile hike we saw a dog running towards
us. We’d seen this dog with his owner on our way up and the owner was nowhere
to be found. I think we both thought about if our dogs had run away us we would
someone to wait with our dog. So, forsaking our meetings and events coming up
we proceeded to wait with this sweet dog. A person past by, stopped for a
moment and then in typical fashion kept on going. Finally when the owner was
reunited with his lost friend, you could tell that both of them were relieved,
thankful and happy.
I tell you
this story because in our lives we have opportunities to be the Good Samaritan.
It may happen on a trail, in the store, at the office or even such a place as
Vacation Bible School. But I must warn you, there is a tendency for all of us
to idolize ourselves in the Good Samaritan in the story, we all want to be like
him and rightfully so. But I would be remiss if I didn’t remind us all of the times
that we have been less than good, and more like the Levite or the Priest.
I remember
when I was in middle school I was at a private Christian school. I was supposed
to write a paper for my English class on a real life hero. I decided to write
it on my associate pastor at the time, Jason. I was supposed to interview him
and write a paper on his thoughts and actions. Now I consider myself a pretty
decent writer and I knew this paper was a testament to Jason’s heroicness in my
own life and the lives of others. I was excited to get it back until I saw all
the red ink on the page. My paper hadn’t received high marks. It wasn’t due to
my writing, or grammar or punctuation. It was due to the fact that Jason
believed in a theology much different than that of my super-evangelical
teacher. Jason believed in justice, reconciliation and a love that triumphed
everything. My teacher inked my page with red so that I might never follow in
that radical man’s footsteps.
However
that red ink on that page in middle school was a challenge to go and do
likewise. To this day, that man stands as my hero in ministry and a colleague
and friend who I adore. Sometimes even in our failures God brings about clarity
and sometimes even a reality check.
Another
such reality check came in Statesville where I grew up. During the 1950’s
segregated South some activists were ready to make a statement on integration
and the Jim Crow laws. The white Presbyterian Church and the Baptist Church
were the targets, and black activists were about to test the Samaritan in all
of the men and women who sat in those pews. When the activists arrived at the
Baptist Church the doors were locked and the service had been conveniently
canceled. The priests and the Levites in 1950’s Statesville were found exactly
where they should have been, in the church, but when it came time for someone
oppressed, marginalized, and beaten by the bonds of segregation to be cared for
the community walked away on the other side.
What has
been your Jericho Road moment? Where has been your moment where you have been a
Levite or a priest? I tell you these not to depress you to a point of boredom, I
tell you because there is good news in being a priest and a Levite. Sam Wells
puts it this way, “Maybe you’ll know
God’s presence every hour, every breath, every touch. But even if not, know that God is with you and God is for
you in every moment of the universe’s existence. You may believe and trust in
the living God. But even if
not, the living God lives for
you.” Friends throughout the course of our own existences we have been a part
of the story of God’s redemptive love. Even when we know we’ve fallen strangely
short in the light of the Gospel, even when the going gets tough and we are
faced with the reality that we have been the priest and the Levite all along,
God is redeeming God’s creation to God’s self. Even if the redemption means
that it’s your heart God is changing, not someone else’s.
Go and do
likewise. Do we know what that means? If I were any good at math I could tell
you that Jesus’ commission to go and do likewise is a commission equal to a
cross. The listeners of this story that were closer to Jesus all met their end
because of this messy, dirty love for a Savior. They all were about to realize
whether they wanted to or not that the Jericho road led not only to a Good
Samaritan, but a martyr’s death.
The year was 1862, the battle of
Fredericksburg had just ended between General Robert Edward Lee and General
Ambrose Burnside. The story goes that General Lee was surveying the carnage of
war when down in the gutter he saw a soldier wearing Union colors bloodied from
the battle. It is said that General Lee got down off his horse and into the
gutter to console a dying man. One of his lieutenants remarked that he didn’t
know where God was amidst the war, General Lee is said to have replied that God
was right there in the gutter with a dying man. This moment in 1862 was a
turning point that Lee later wrote about when he knew that any solution to the
conflict needed to be done as peacefully as possible.
Friends we’ve come to the
realization that love is of the Jericho Road. Love is something that we cannot
explain and we dare not try to. Love requires of us more than we’d ever want to
give so the choice becomes, will you give such love willingly? Will you be the
person that gets down in the gutter with someone so different than you that you
are at war with them? Will you get down and play with a kid who comes to our
Vacation Bible School whose clothes are tattered and they look nothing like the
children here today? Will you be obedient to that love to the point where you
offer a helping hand to someone who has despised you? Will Willimon tells the
story of one Sunday after preaching at Duke Chapel on forgiveness a middle-aged
lady walked up to him and pointed her finger in his face and challenged him,
“You mean to tell me I’m supposed to forgive my no-good, lying, stealing,
cheating husband?” Willimon replied in the crass way he often does, “Ma’am I’m
not telling you that, but Jesus is.”
We have been told to go and do
likewise, even when it hurts, even when it’s challenging. That is the reality
of the Gospel text today, but wait there’s more. The story doesn’t end like the
text suggests. Let’s use our holy imagination and look into a day not too long
after this 1st century Rabbi we now worship told the story of the
Good Samaritan.
Jerusalem in the 1st
century on a dark day, at least that’s how all of us picture Good Friday in our
mind’s eye. We see the dark sky matched only by the darkness of three crosses
on a hill. In an amazing act of ‘Go and Do likewise love’ the God incarnate
stretched out his arms to embrace the world and the world nailed those arms to
a cross. In those final moments of life I’m sure Christ borrowed words from
that 1960’s song, “Some things are meant to be, take my hand, take my whole
life too, for I can’t help falling in love with you.” And the savior of the
nations dies, the finite end to a mortal life.
But just in the distance, three days
later, early on the first day of the week we here the ultimate P.S. I love you
as a stone is rolled away and a king walks out. Like the letters Gerry wrote in
the movie, Jesus doesn’t let death have the final say. This embrace is a
reminder that neither height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation
(including the challenges and joys of Vacation Bible School) can separate us
from the love of God. That love that just won’t go away. So on our darkest
days, on the days when we end up being more Levite than Samaritan, hear those
life-altering words, go and do likewise. But Jesus offers us a parallel phrase,
P.S. I love you. We don’t have to go and do likewise alone. Friends, go and do
likewise, P.S. I love you. Amen.
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