The 6^th Sunday after Pentecost

July 11, 2004

“He that is down needs fear no fall,

He that is low, no pride;

He that is humble ever shall

Have God to be his guide.”

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

From the lesson from Deuteronomy: “Moses said to the people of Israel, . . . for the Lord will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments which are written in this book of the law, if you turn to the Lord your God, with all your heart and with all your soul. For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.”

From the Gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all of your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” . . . But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

I find the juxtaposition of these lessons to be fascinating. I often wonder if a devil was guiding those who put the lectionary together. Did they say, now let us hear them preach on that! It is fairly easy if we ignore the Old Testament lesson and preach only from the Gospel. If we put the Gospel in the context of the lesson from Deuteronomy, it becomes more complicated. The reason is that the commandment “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all of your mind” is from that book of law which Moses has said is not too hard for you, neither is it too far off. Somehow, I find the commandment to love God with all of my heart, soul, strength and mind to be difficult and to be far enough away that I wonder if I will ever achieve it in this life.

Yet it is this very tension that I want to explore for I find in it a guide to moving closer to loving God, self and neighbor.

In preaching before, I have commented that it is important to take seriously all of the scripture for words that can seem rather unimportant can be very telling in understanding fully a passage. The words “But he, desiring to justify himself” are just such words.

He needed to justify himself. He needed to prove that he was smart, that he was good at what he did, that he mattered. I am amazed as to how often we all do that. I walk away from many conversations with people wondering what I was doing. Where was I coming from, for I realize that a lot of what I said was about trying to justify myself, to say I am important – love me, respect me. On occasion, I have noticed similar traits in others.

I do not think that the man was an evil man. I will not set him up as a straw man to batter. Yes, he came to test Jesus, but when Jesus turned the question back to him, he got the answer right. There was nothing about ritual purity or the thousands of detailed laws. He went to the heart of the manner. When, after the parable, Jesus asked him who had been neighbor, he did not try to squirm out of it. He gave the right answer immediately.

But he needed to justify himself and that need points to a serious problem in the relationship between God, self and neighbor. If we believe the Bible, from God’s perspective, the relationship is love. To God, that means that he, that you and I are precious. You are beloved. He is beloved. But we miss that point. God cannot possibly really love me. I must prove myself. I must satisfy the great parent in the sky. I must satisfy my own ego and its demands on me. And if I must, so must the neighbor.

I find it a problem for me that none of our confessions in the Prayer Book include the confession that we have not loved ourselves. If we truly know God and God’s love for us, we will love ourselves and not need to justify ourselves. As I observe people, I often think that one of the world’s greatest problems is that we do love our neighbors as ourselves. The results are truly tragic and often evil. To love ourselves apart from the love of God is to need to justify ourselves, to build up ourselves, our roles, our jobs our skills, our gifts. It demands that we put our selves above others. But it is a fragile love. In fact, it is not love at all, but it is fear, insecurity, and self hate masquerading as love. If I must justify myself, I can never be truly open either to myself, my neighbor or God.

The world worships this kind of love. The media sell it. Bosses, organizations, corporations, families, schools all sell it This kind of love makes us so vulnerable, so easy to manipulate, so controllable.

I could go on in this vane about self justification and self justifying love, but I would soon be totally away from our texts.

But he, desiring to justify himself asked “who is my neighbor?”

If he can carefully define the neighbor, he has also defined himself and stayed in control (or so he hopes and thinks). If God defines neighbor and self, neither he nor we are any longer in control.

This story is about both the victim and the helper. To whom will we give help? By what criteria do we define the other? Race, beauty, political position, wealth, poverty, intelligence, athletic skill, religious belief, nationality and many, many other criteria have been used to exclude the other as neighbor and to deny them help and love.

Likewise, I am amazed as to the criteria used to exclude those from whom we do not want to receive help. He is a low down, scum-sucking, crooked Samaritan. I do not want him coming close to me. I have seen people willing to lose health, wreck marriages, bankrupt businesses, etc. rather than accept help from some people. In many cases, the criteria used to exclude the help had nothing to do with the ability to help but with prejudices that were a means of justifying themselves.

The Kingdom of God calls us to open ourselves to God and God’s love. It calls us to truly love ourselves and our neighbor because both we and they are precious, beloved of God – so much so that God gave his only Son that we might know that love.

This brings us back to the quote from John Bunyan. True love comes not from building oneself up and justifying oneself. True love comes from a humility that lets us rest at peace in God’s love and to know the sweetness of it. When this happens, the one in need and the one in joy becomes our neighbor.

I apologize for going back to Francis again. I know you are probably getting tired of hearing about him, but he is the one I have been occupied with for most of the last thirty years. He is the saint that I know best.

The story comes from the long period of his conversion, and as he saw it, was hinge of that conversion.

Prior to the time of this incident, Francis, like nearly everyone in Europe was terrified of lepers and, to a great extent, held them in contempt. They were diseased and disfigured. They were forced to beg, were generally clothed in rags (not like the beautiful clothes he wore), and they were forced out the towns into awful living places. They disgusted him. When he was out riding in the fields below Assisi, if he saw one coming, he not only would go by them, but he often rode clear around the field so as not to have to encounter them. Then one day, as he was beginning to open to God, the wealthy, well dressed, social elite of Assisi did something different when he saw a leper coming toward him and begging. He did not ride around the field, he did not continue on by the man. Instead, he got off of his horse, gave the man alms and then he embraced him and kissed him. When Francis was riding off, he looked back and saw no one. He was convinced that he had kissed Christ. For the first time, he witnessed, that he was truly filled with the sweetness and fullness of God’s love.

The Rev. William O. Breedlove II

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Monmouth Junction, NJ