Pastor's Letter for June / July
Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 8:16PM Dear Friends,
Our Bible invites us into a bigger world than the one we so often see around us. The Apostle Paul in the thirteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians writes: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (To add just a little clarity to this passage, in Paul’s day a mirror was usually a flat piece of burnished copper, which would give you a reflection, but it was not all that clear.) How true this passage is. I know that I never do or ever will fully (in this lifetime) understand the world around me. More often than not it seems like a total muddle. Paul acknowledges that reality of life, but then he goes on to promise that the time will come when God will give us a much greater and deeper understanding of what this life is about.
Paul then adds what almost seems like a throw away statement, “even as I have been fully known.” How easy it is to miss that quick addition at the end of an extremely powerful sentence. How often don’t we feel badly misunderstood by the world around us, our friends, and even at times our very closest loved ones? And I have to admit; I often don’t even understand myself. Paul assures us that as fully as we will come to understand what our lives have been about, God understands us that fully right now!
These are powerful statements and invite us into a new way of understanding our lives. God understands the world that we live in. God has a plan for the world that we live in and that plan is being worked out. God fully understands us, who we are, what good we are able to do, and how much bad we can do as well. And finally God invites us to be a part of God’s kingdom, which is coming to be in the world around us.
Perhaps a good analogy is getting caught in a forest and losing sight of the forest for the trees. How easy it is to get so caught up in the day-to-day events of our lives that we lose sight of the fact that there is a bigger picture. Life brings with it so many pressures, so many frustrations, and so many annoying and at times downright terrifying situations. I am not saying that we should not pay attention to the events that are happening right in front of our noses, but that we need to see them all in a larger context.
A few months ago we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. It is a powerful passage about seeing the larger picture of life. It starts with a man who is beaten and robbed and left for dead on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho. Three people go by him. The first two are leaders in the faith community, a priest and a Levite. To touch a dead body would have made them ritually unclean and they would have been unable to lead worship and do their jobs until they had been through the long and arduous task of being made ritually clean. Since they could not tell if the beaten man was dead or alive they quickly went around him.
The next to come along was a Samaritan. The Samaritans had themselves been made victims when they had been left behind in Israel during the Assyrian captivity of 722 BC. (To greatly weaken the country of Israel the Assyrians took their political and religious leadership, skilled laborers, and wealthier members of society back to Assyria.) The faith of those left behind evolved in a different direction than those who were in captivity and when the leaders and wealthy members returned, the group left behind were treated as outsiders and denigrated.
With that knowledge, the question becomes what will the Samaritan do? Will he get lost in his resentment, his pain of being treated as an outsider, and his anger for all that had happened to him personally and to his Samaritan community, or would he act out of compassion? The answer comes swiftly as he rushes to the beaten man’s aid and does everything within his physical and financial ability to help heal and repair this man’s torn life.
The Samaritan saw beyond the events of his life that so directly impacted him to something much greater. He saw and understood the depth of God’s love for each and every one of us. He saw the “path of life” that leads through the veritable jungle of events, good and bad, that constantly impact our lives and can so negatively affect us.
Jesus invites us to walk the path of compassion and love. We can join that path, because God does love each of us, and fully understands who we are, and will always be there to guide us. Paul lets us know that we will never fully understand the world around us or even the events that directly affect us, yet with the assurance that God does fully understand our world and each of us, we can choose to be part of God’s Kingdom coming into our world and walk the path of compassion and love. And finally we can walk that path because Jesus walked the path to the cross, placing his faith totally in God, laying his life down for each of us out of a trust in God’s knowledge and out of an unfathomable love for each and every one of us. And God raised Christ from the dead giving each of us eternal life!
The choice is always before us. How will you choose to live your life? Like the priest and the Levite who walked by the one in need or like the Samaritan that looked beyond the pain of his own life to the infinite nature of God’s love and reached out to the one in need? As Moses tells the Hebrew people as they are about to enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 30:19b-20): “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”
Faithfully yours,
Pastor Markman