Go and do likewise. That’s what Jesus tells the lawyer after sharing the parable of the Good Samaritan.. It is a simple commandment, but it comes with a twist: How can Samaritan’s be good? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?
 
In our day, when we typically use the term “Good Samaritan,” we use it to describe anyone who puts time and effort into helping another person in need. And that is certainly commendable. But let’s go deeper: A truly Good Samaritan is not only someone who does good, but someone of a different cultural or political or religious caste who helps a person outside of that caste. In our current climate, it would be like a Republican helping a Democrat, depending on where you live. Or a Democrat helping a Republican. Or a liberal helping a conservative, or a conservative helping a liberal. Or a Muslim helping a Jew, or a Jew helping a Muslim. Name the different tribes in our society.
 
Simply helping or loving people of our own kind is not what Jesus is teaching here. Instead, he is saying that truly good love is about acting in ways that cross the lines of difference, of boundaries. Hence, the shock of the parable.
 
My question is, how does such love, such kindness, such compassion rub off? How does it spread?
 
Perhaps the mission of the church is just that: to act in ways that build up and offer the kind of good love the Samaritan showed, to spread it to others.
 
Pastor Andy Kinsey

Our lives are full of stories.  They mold and shape who we are. Even before we are born we are a part of them.  Some have the power to define us. Some can nearly destroy us. Some inspire us to new heights.  Some are loud, rambunctious and full of chaos, crisis, and conflict, while others are quiet, tender and more subtle and calm.  Some of them we can control while others are an animal all their own. Stories that remind us of what matters most and to make the most of what matters.  Stories that become the threads that make up, as the commercial says, “the fabric of our lives.”

Stories help us understand and give us context and vocabulary to make meaning out of what we experience in life.  That is why stories are so powerful and captivate our attention. Because they help us make sense out of all kinds of emotions, situations, and circumstances.  How we relate, connect and find ourselves in a story helps explain how and why we feel what we feel, do what we do, and react the way we react. For this reason, stories are one of if not the most powerful way of learning, connecting, and understanding.  

Jesus knew this and used the power of story to preach, teach, challenge, encourage, and transform the lives of all those who would have ears to hear.  

In Luke 14, we read a fascinating text because in part one, the scene is a wedding party and in Jesus’ day that was the kind of occasion people would vie for a place of honor.  It was their chance to be seen by the who's who of the day. And so we find ourselves either as the one throwing the party or the one attending the party. If we are the host of the party, we are challenged to seek out and recognize those who come with humility and graciousness and give them a place of honor rather than the ones who come with hidden agendas and are only there to rub elbows with the elite. If we are the guest attending the party we are challenged to set aside our desire for personal gain and recognition of our status and put other guests before ourselves.   The lesson being that honor comes through humility and blessing through service.

Luke 14 is an invitation to participate in the very kingdom of God.  This is the moment the Jewish people had been waiting for - the moment God says to them, “I am here, you waiting is over, come and join me, your God, and feast in the long awaited kingdom of God.”

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this story is not about food!  It is a metaphor of what Jesus was and is inviting us to participate in.  The party to which the original guests were invited was Jesus’ kingdom movement, the living breathing Kingdom of God.  It is his remarkable welcome to all people. It is not about food and festivities. It is not about rules and long standing boundaries.  It is not about being at the right table with the right people at the right time or on the right side of the issue.

The great banquet is about a kingdom movement that God, through Jesus was and is leading and calling all people to be a part of.  The point of such an elaborate story, I believe, is to describe, illustrate and make tangible what Jesus was about; what God was offering to all people, and the idea that If people wanted to be included in Jesus’ movement, this is the sort of thing they were joining - a movement in which ALL are welcome to feast on the goodness, mercy, and grace of God through Jesus.

There are a lot of people in churches, denominations and religious organizations struggling to understand who is invited and who is not to the kingdom table of Jesus.  There are a lot of good people on both sides of multiple issues being challenged, ridiculed, ostracized, targeted, pitted against each other, and emotionally torn up over who gets to participate in the kingdom banquet / kingdom movement that Jesus has set in motion and who does not.  

Nowhere in this parable does Jesus say to weed out the guest list; prioritize by gender, financial status, ethnicity, and educational level; measure their value by what they drive, where they live, and who they know; weight their worth by who they love, what party lines they vote, or where they work, if they work.

Jesus tells this story to help us understand that if we want to follow Jesus - if we want to be the believer and church Jesus calls us to be - if we accept his invitation to this great banquet, this kingdom movement, than we better be prepared to dine, to serve, live and learn alongside people who are different than what we expect.  We better recognize God is a God of surprises and the unexpected.

What gives this banquet life are the lives of all those who come - those who respond and have the courage to say, “we may not agree, we may not fully understand, we may have different ideas and explanations BUT Jesus is at the center of all that we are.   

So what would it mean to celebrate God’s kingdom so that the people at the bottom of the pile, at the end of the line, or on the other side of the wall, would find it to be a story of good news and NOT a harsh word of judgement or divisive criticism?  A story of loving our neighbor and not hating or destroying them before ever knowing them?

Can such a story be told?  Will our lives be the ones to tell it?  Will our story here at Grace church be the kind of banquet giving kingdom moving story that Jesus wants us to tell?

With all my heart, I pray it so.  Amen.
Pastor Jenothy Irvine

​

Why is that you can hear the words someone says and yet have no idea what they are telling you?  There are times I feel as if I need a vocabulary lesson from our youth director to understand what my teenage boys are saying.  Other times it is as if I am the one talking but by the expressions on their faces, nothing is computing. Does that happen in anyone else's house?  Have you had that experience? Every week when you hear a sermon? Someone shared with me what he calls the, “Do as I mean not as I say” syndrome. Communication is tough.  Even when you know the words it can be difficult to understand. But what if you don’t speak the same language?

Long before any gadget, app, translator's guide, or device was available, something  happened with the small gathering of believers as recorded in Acts 2:1-21. The apostles of Jesus and a gathering of believers had a most amazing experience and encounter, which came to be known as the birthday of the church.  How did those gathered understand what was being said? What did they have in their ears?

It wasn’t so much what was in their ears, as it was what was in their hearts and infused throughout their souls.   It was the apostles filled with the Holy Spirit who on that day launched what is now known as Pentecost. Happy birthday church!

Interesting however that the word church isn’t used in this passage that becomes the mark for the beginning of the church? The word used is ekklesia.  In the Greek the word for church is ekklesia but at the time it had no religious connotation. It only meant an assembly of people. The word did not refer to an institution.  It did not denote an organization. It was not descriptive of a building dedicated to religious ceremonies. An ekklesia was simply a gathering of people. The church then is simply that, people.

Our text says that they were “gathered together.”  This was the first meeting of the ekklesia, the church.  Notice there was no pastor, no elder board, no trustees or finance committee, no board of ordained ministry, no building, no pew, no book of discipline, no hymnals.  Just 120 (if you go back and read chapter one of Acts) people filled with the Spirit.

This is where it gets good!  Ordinary people gathered together.  The founding members of this ekklesia - this gathering - this church - were not the best and the brightest.  They were not high-powered tech wizards or tenured professors at leading universities, or big time power players at roundtable discussions in conference rooms of multinational, multi-billion dollar corporations.
It is imperative for all believers to remember the church is people.  I know we know this and you may be thinking, “ok Pastor, tell me something we don’t know.”  We know it, we pray it, we sing about it, and every week we gather as it, AND YET, so often when we get outside these walls we forget we are still the church!  We are still a gathering of people following the teachings of Jesus. So I say again, the church is people - It is not liturgy or sacraments or great sermons. It is not doctrine of sanctification or theology of holy atonement.  It is not institutions of higher education or even mainline denominations. That all has its place, and it all helps us define who we are, what we do, and what we believe. Those are all ways we practice, grow, remember, organize, keep track of and celebrate being church, but it is not church.  When we forget that, we forget what Jesus was all about in the first place...people.

Today I say to you, let’s do this church.  Let’s accept the mission that sometimes seems impossible in our world today with all its conflict, division, and cynicism, and watch as God makes it possible.  Let’s invite the Spirit to teach us a new language like the day of Pentecost - a new way to speak (and listen) to one another AND to those that others want to silence or ignore.  Let’s take prayerful risks and find new ways to grow and care together even when our fracturing culture and power hungry society tells us to take care of only ourselves. Let’s invite the Spirit to translate the needs of those inside and outside these walls, within and without our denomination and show us what our next steps to be the people God wants us to be.  Let’s do this.

Let’s ask the hard questions and have the tough conversations and live into the answers with love, respect, and kindness.  Let’s trust God with our money, our skills, our relationships, our future as individuals and families, let’s trust God not just with what we know, but what we don’t know.  Let’s be brave AND vulnerable. Let’s be courageous AND compassionate. Let’s be convicted AND kind. Let’s be a gathering of ordinary people and see what extraordinary things God will do with what we give and when we follow.  

Let’s do this Church!  This is our mission, should we choose to accept it. Amen.

Pastor Jenothy Irvine

At the end of John’s First Letter, we see how all the parts come together, focusing more intensely on what the whole Letter is about, or focusing, if you will, on the one color that stands out the brightest, or on the one color that brings clarity to the whole: the color red.

The reason the color red is so important is because it reveals the price of God’s love in conquering sin and death on the cross. (1 John 5:4-5). Jesus’ crucifixion brings victory, but at a cost, the shedding of blood (1 John 5:4). Indeed, at Jesus’ crucifixion, this very victory comes by water, blood, and Spirit: when Jesus dies on the cross, both water and blood come from Jesus’ side (1 John 5:7, John 19:34). But the Spirit also bears witness to these facts. The Spirit testifies to God’s great love for us, and not only for us, but for the whole world (1 John 4:16, John 3:16).

In short, God’s great love is written in red, but it is also drenched in water and soaked in the Spirit (1 John 5:9). The victory we have in Christ is the victory we have received by the One who overcomes sin through death. If we take this piece out of the picture, then the picture doesn’t make sense.

Jesus’ death defeats death. This is the testimony we share. Hopefully, this is the testimony on our hearts (1 John 5:10). God’s love-blood for the world is written in red. Not as show, not as a spectacle, but as a witness, as a reminder, of our own sinfulness and God’s power to forgive it. It comes as way to identify with others, especially those who suffer. It is a love that will not let go.
​
Pastor Andy Kinsey