The Good Samaritan

Good morning. Scott is a great handyman. Barb and I have used him many times, and he is the best. No matter what we need need done, Scott can do it. We give him a call, he comes over, we explain what we want, and he tells us how he can do it. Just like that. He is friendly, he does excellent work, and his prices are very reasonable. We jokingly refer to our home as the house that Scott built, and when we had to completely renovate my mom's house to use it as a rental, Scott was our man. Scott is a consummate professional. 

Albert the electrician, on the other hand, is not a consummate anything. When we inherited my mom's house, everything electrical had to be replaced. I met Albert through my plumber, and I hired him to do all the electrical work. This was a giant mistake. Albert worked very slowly, when he worked at all. He seemed to know what he was doing, and he assured me everything would get done, but sometimes he wouldn't do any work for three or four days in a row. He kept promising that a new power line would be connected to the power pole, but it never happened. It was very frustrating. Scott and Albert were as different as could possibly be, and as you can imagine, they didn't get along at all. Renovating my mom's house became a battleground between Scott's professional glaring, and Albert's lame assurances that there was nothing to worry about. Scott and Albert disliked each other intensely. 

I think it is fair to say that Scott's intense dislike of Albert turned to something close to hate when Albert the electrician "disappeared." He bagged it. Albert went home one day, and never came back. His phone was disconnected, and that was the last we ever saw of good ole Albert.  Walking off a job was something that Scott would never, ever, ever do, and at this point, I believe Scott came to despise Albert. 

The Scott/Albert dynamics were very intense, and I believe some very similar dynamics were happening in Jesus's day that led Jesus to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan. So this morning I want to use Scott and Albert as a guide to help us answer the question, who is my brother?

In our reading from Deuteronomy Moses tells the Jews that if they obey the commands of God, God will make them abundantly prosperous. Scott is a prosperous man. He has a successful business, people like him, and he has worked very hard for everything he has. He has obeyed the rules of what it takes to be successful, and it has payed off. Albert, though, was a betrayal of everything Scott was, and everything Scott worked hard for. Albert didn't work hard, he wasn't successful, and he wasn't prosperous. Albert was the antithesis of everything Scott was. Everything Scott was, Albert was not. 

The relationship between Scott and Albert was very similar to the relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Jews were faithful and obedient to the law. They believed they were the true descendants of Moses. They never inter-married with foreigners.  They never worshipped false gods. The Jews were pure Jews, not half-breeds. They had worked hard to preserve their faith, and they suffered greatly to remain true to God.  Like Scott, they had done it the right way, they worked hard, and they were successful. They were the chosen people of God. 

The Samaritans, however, didn't take their faith seriously. They hadn't worked hard to keep the faith pure. They betrayed God by worshipping false Gods and marrying foreign wives. They hadn't suffered to preserve the faith; when the going got tough, the Samaritans got going. They were half breeds. Like Albert, they bagged it. And like Scott despised Albert, the Jews despised the Samaritans. 

But the issue for the Jews of Jesus's time went even deeper. The Jews didn't despise just the Samaritans. They also despised tax-collectors, sinners, prostitutes, and Romans. Anyone who didn't believe what they believed, and who wasn't part of their group that was successfully following the law, was despised.  Jesus was constantly challenging this attitude. The older brother in the parable of The Prodigal Son despised his younger brother because he, the older brother, had worked hard and never left his father. The Father told him it was okay to love. Those who had worked all day in the parable of the vineyard despised those who came last but were paid the same. Jesus said it was fair for the owner to bless even those who came late. And Jesus spent lots of time with sinners and outcasts, clearly communicating that they, too, were worthy of time and love. 

The problem was that the Jews had developed a faulty view of the law.  They had come to see the law as a ladder, a ladder on which they could climb closer, and closer, to God. They believed that on the ladder of the law, they had climbed higher than anyone else. Because they had ascended to higher rungs, they looked down on all those who were lower on the ladder. They believed they were holy, and faithful, and righteous, but they had no compassion for those who were not. 

But the law was never intended to be a ladder. God gave us the law as a mirror, a mirror that reflects back to us who we really are. The law shows us that we all fall short, we are all sinful, and we all need God. Because the law is a mirror, we have compassion on everyone because we are all in the same boat, we are all brothers and sisters. We are humble, because any success we have comes from the grace of God. 

So when Jesus was asked, who is my brother?, He said, the one you hate the most, and despise the most, the Samaritan. Only he understands compassion, and only he grasps brotherly love and mercy. If you ask, who is my brother?, then you already don't get it, because we are all brothers and sisters. If the despised Samaritan knows what it means to be a brother, why don't you? You thought the law was a ladder, but it isn't. The law is a mirror, but you refuse to look at yourself. 

It seems that looking down on others with anger, instead of compassion, is hard-wired into our DNA. We may, like Scott, have worked harder, and been more successful, and even been a better person than someone else. That may all be very true. But that doesn't mean we should not be compassionate and merciful. Every time we don't let go of our disgust, we are walking to the other side of the road, and we are not involving ourselves in someone's life who might need our help. When we feel that temptation to pass to the other side, we must look into the mirror of God's law, and remember that sometimes we are all Albert. When we do that, then we are free to be the Good Samaritan that God hopes we will be. 

We all despise something. We might despise Trump, or Clinton. The Republicans, or the Democrats. Corporations, or welfare recipients. And yes, I think we all despise Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. But I pray that God will give us His grace to respond in love and mercy to those who are not like us, and may our compassion and mercy be a light to those who are living in darkness.  Amen. 

Orthodoxy

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when I was in my 20's and 30's, I worshiped in an evangelical church. In my early 40's I became an Episcopalian, but for a few years in-between I thought about becoming an Orthodox Christian. I had always been curious about Orthodoxy, and one Sunday I went to an Orthodox service in Lafayette with a few friends. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Fragrant incense burned the entire time. The service lasted two hours, you sat down very little, and most of the liturgy was chanted. The church was filled with icons, and though icons are beautiful, for me they were a little strange. In my evangelical world, people were suspicious of images and the imagination, and so the walls of my church were bare white walls. Visiting an Orthodox Church was very strange for me, and I have to be honest, as I was thinking about the service that Sunday night, with the smell of incense lingering on my clothes, I felt like I had been to a pagan ritual. 

But as I attended more Orthodox services, and studied the history of Orthodoxy, I became much more comfortable with Orthodox worship. In fact, I grew to love it. I came to see that Orthodox worship strives to be very trinitarian. In the mystery of the trinity, the three in one, western churches tend to focus of the oneness of the three. But Orthodoxy has always emphasized the threeness of the one, and because of this, the Orthodox go out of their way to craft their worship so that all three persons of the Trinity are honored, and experienced. When I came to understand this, Orthodoxy made sense. It no longer felt like a pagan ritual. Instead it felt like a multi-sensory experience of the triune God. 

A few weeks ago at our liturgy meeting Paul asked us to think about what worship is, and why we do it. These are important questions, and on this Trinity Sunday I'd like to use what I learned about worship in the Orthodox Church to help us think about how and why we worship, and to think about what the Trinity means in our lives. 

When I began exploring Orthodoxy, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the all-encompassing liturgy. We Episcopalians have a liturgy, but the Orthodox liturgy is liturgy on steroids. The Orthodox use the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which was written in the mid three hundreds A.D., and this liturgy is the absolute bedrock of Orthodox worship. This liturgy is long, and the Eucharistic section is elaborate. Many many saints are remembered, and there is a lot of repetition. Coming from an evangelical context, where worship was contemporary and often improvised, I didn't get it.  Why this heavy emphasis on an ancient liturgy? But I began to see the light when I remembered a scene from the movie Field of Dreams. In the movie Ray Cansela builds a baseball field in his cornfield, and baseball players from the past start showing up to play. But Ray is tempted to sell his farm, and his baseball field, to pay his bills. Thomas Mann, an author, reminds Ray about what is really going on. He says, "People will come, Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. Its been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past Ray. It reminds us of all that was once good, and could be again. Oh, people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.” 

This is what liturgy is all about. Liturgy is a deep river flowing down through the generations. Like baseball the liturgy remembers its stars, and  it is a constant though the world around it is ever changing. Clergy come and go. Churches come and go. We have come, and someday we will go. But the liturgy remains. Like baseball the liturgy reminds us of our history, and it gives us hope for the future. Liturgy is an ancient, deep, and unchanging river  of wisdom. In our reading from Proverbs this morning, wisdom is portrayed as being at the very beginning with God. Before the mountains were made and the sea was formed, wisdom was present with God. And through the ancient and deep waters of the liturgy, wisdom flows down to us. In all cultures the symbol of wisdom is the sage, the wise old man or  wise old woman. In Orthodox worship, the ancient deep wisdom from before the dawn of time that we experience in the flowing of the liturgy is an experience of the ancient and wise one, the first person of the Trinity, God the Father. 

Do we experience our liturgy this way? In our worship do we feel the presence of the god the Father?  Do we understand that as episcopalian Christians the liturgy is our DNA? Do we understand that the liturgy is not something we do, but that the liturgy is who we are?  Worship is not just something that we do in here. Are we taking our liturgical wisdom out there? Are we bringing our liturgical experience of God to a world that is full of doubt and confusion? 

The second thing I learned from the Orthodox about worship and the Trinity is the meaning of icons. At first I didn't know what to make of the icons that filled the walls. They were beautiful, but as I mentioned, for me they were kind of eerie. They were very spiritual, and they seemed to be pointing to something outside this world. They were pulling me, and I wasn't sure I wanted to be pulled. At the front of the church is a wall of icons, called the iconostasis, and this wall stands between the people and the altar, with a door in the middle. The priest performs the Eucharistic ceremony at the altar, behind the wall. Weird. I knew from my church history that the Orthodox use of icons has been controversial at times, and I was beginning to understand why. I didn't know what to make of it. 

Fortunately, I was very lucky to meet the woman who created the icons for this church. We got together several times, and she explained to me the Orthodox theology regarding icons. The key point in Orthodox iconography is incarnation. The Orthodox strongly believe that because Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, was incarnated into this world, now everything physical can incarnate heaven. Icons are a physical window into the realm of spirit. The Orthodox icons of Jesus, Mary, and the saints remind us that because of Jesus' incarnation, we can use the physical to approach heaven, AND, heaven can be revealed to us through the physical. 

The point of this Orthodox emphasis on incarnation is that each of us are an incarnation of Jesus, each of us is an icon of Christ. Icons are a constant reminder that heaven is being incarnated in us that and that each of us are icons of Christ. In Romans Paul tells us that because we are icons of Christ, we can boast even in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint. We are being transformed into the image of the incarnate Christ, from one degree of glory to another.  And because worship is not just what we do in here, but also what we do out there, we can proclaim to the world that Christ incarnate in us changes everything. Christ incarnate in us helps us to endure the pain in this world. And Christians, as the icons of Christ, can provide hope for a world that so often lives in despair. As the bread and wine, in here, are the literal incarnation of Jesus, so too we can approach the entire world, out there, eucharistically, recognizing the body of Christ in the least of our brothers and sisters. 

The third thing I learned from the Orthodox about worship and the Trinity is that music is the foundation of unity. When I went to the church in Lafayette, people were chanting something called the Orthros, even before the service began. Then behind the iconostasis someone started ringing something like bells, but which also had the feel of a tambourine. Then the priest started chanting, and when he came out from behind the iconostasis the entire church started chanting. This kind of worship was completely different than anything I had ever experienced. 

Music in Orthodox churches is beautiful, and they use music differently from how we use music in worship in the west. There are no hymns as such, and music isn't tacked on or ornamental. If you take music out of Orthodox liturgical worship, then you no longer have Orthodox liturgical worship The entire Orthodox service is chanted, sometimes everyone singing, sometimes just the priest singing, and most of the chanting is a back and forth, repetitive, joint chorus. The Orthodox Easter service, the Pascha service, is a three hour chant of triumph and praise to God.  And as we've all experienced, Orthodox music is heavenly. Even if we don't know what the words mean, the music transports us into spiritual realms. 

This unity in worship that the Orthodox are working toward is a reflection of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. In our Gospel reading 

John emphasizes that the Spirit is one with the Father and Jesus. All that the Father has he has given to Jesus, and the Spirit, who is with the Father and the Son, bears witness to this truth. The Spirit is not a separate authority, but he glorifies Jesus, and He communicates to us the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This unity in the Spirit is what the Orthodox are trying to reflect and replicate in their music and worship. 

In our worship, how are we reflecting and replicating the ministry of the Holy Spirit? If the movement of the Spirit is among us, and together with us, Do we feel his presence among us?  Are we participating in the Spirit's unity? Are we feeling the melody and harmony, and sometimes even the dissonance, of the joint music we create with one another in the Spirit?

Because worship is not just in here, but also out there, are we music to the world? When people see us, do they hear the sound of the Spirit's music?  Are we bringing them a new song? Are our melodies and harmonies and dissonances healing?  Are we bringing unity to a broken world? 

I am very thankful for my brief sojourn with Orthodoxy. But I can't finish without mentioning one more aspect of Orthodox worship that is very important. If the movement of the Father is a river flowing through our worship, and the movement of the Son is heaven incarnating in our worship, and the movement of the Spirit is melody, harmony, and dissonance throughout our worship, then our part of the dance, where we honor that which is holy, and return our worship and praise back to God, is incense. The always burning incense in Orthodox worship acknowledges the holy presence of the triune God, and then rises up and returns to heaven. Incense is the movement of our worship and praise returning to God. 

 

We always have to remember that our experience of the Trinity in worship precedes our doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity is less about doctrine than it is about movement. The Trinity is less about creeds than it is about dance. The liturgy reveals the father as he moves like a river with us and through us. The icons reveals Jesus and heaven as they incarnate in us. Music reveals the Spirit as he moves among us, and incense is our movement back to God, completing the circle, and then starting the dance all over again. The Trinity is all about energy, and movement, and dance, and song. The Trinity isn't something we believe. It is in The Trinity that we live, and move, and have our being. 

On this Trinity Sunday, may each of us deepen our experience of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. May our worship always take us deeper into this holy mystery, and having been touched by the triune God, may we spread God's wisdom, incarnating power, and unifying presence to all the world. Amen.