A Sin With Your Name On It

"A Sin With Your Name On It!"
What is the "SIN WITH YOUR NAME ON IT?" We'll get
to that momentarily, but first I want to ask you why you think the Samaritan
stopped to help the wounded man. It's a fictional story, but patterned by
Jesus after incident after incident that happened on the rock road between
Jerusalem at 2,300 feet above sea level to Jericho which stood 1,300 feet
BELOW sea-level. In a little more than 20 miles, this road dropped
#,600 feet. Its circumstuitous descent with sudden turnings and
outcroppings made it the perfect place from which robbers could attack
anyone foolish enough to travel alone. It was called The Red Way and
The Bloody Way as the travel in Jesus story found out.
The wounded man was Jewish. The Samaritan was Jewish plus.
The Samaritans were those Jews who mingled their ethnicity with the
ethnicity of their occupiers through intermarriage. No one was hated more
by the full-blooded Jews than the mixed-blooded Jews - the Samaritans.
The term "Good Samaritan" was the perfect oxy-moron of their time!
They were not ready to hear from Jesus that the persons they hated most
were the neighbors God was calling them to love. We shouldn't be
surprised at them. Many of us are the same way.
The Samaritan man however, who regularly was a victim of hatred
and prejudice - who was used to being rejected and scorned just because
he WAS a Samaritan, could readily identify with the man - a Jewish man -
who had become the victim of hatred and violence.
Perhaps he had seen the priest and the Levite passing the victim
by because they had to scurry on to temple. If they stopped and touched
the him and it turned out that he was dead, they would be rendered
ceremonially unclean for seven days and not be able to serve in the temple
during that time. They were willing to put the claims of the ceremonial
above those of charity. The Temple and its liturgy meant more to them
than the pain and dire situation of the man struck down by bandits.
So why did the Samaritan man stop. Let's ask him: "I stopped
because I knew the man in the ditch could have been me. I come
down this road frequently. I know it's a dangerous way from
Jerusalem to Jericho. I looked at him in the ditch, bleeding, and I
knew, that could have been me if I had been here just 30 minutes
earlier.
I was outraged that somebody would do this to another
person. Somebody has got to show that this was not the way the
world was intended to be. This was my chance to stand up and be
counted. All the 'important" things that I had to do that day didn't
seem that important once I saw a man in such dire need. God has
blessed me with lots of material resources. I had a wallet full of
money on me. It was what God wanted me to do. Every person is
a beloved child of God - even this man who if conscious and
unharmed would probably be calling me names - but he bleeds the
same color I do and I had to help him. He's my neighbor!
Ironically, in one confrontation with the self-righteous "religious"
people of his time, Jesus was called a name - they called him a "Samaritan."
(John 8:48) The name was sometimes used to describe a man who was a
heretic and a breaker of ceremonial law."
But it was the "Samaritan" who refused to commit the sin that has
your name on it - the sin of omission! We omit doing the things we know
God wants us to do because we are not willing to make the sacrifice. Let
me illustrate as I like to do.
Clarence Jordan, the founder of Koinonia Farm, the interracial
community outside Americus, Georgia grew up in a prosperous family,
received a traditional theological education (a Ph.D. in Greek New
Testament from Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky)., and
known for his brilliance as a writer, was en route to becoming a professor.
Instead, he left seminary to establish an interracial community in
segregated Georgia in the mid 1950's. Opposition was not unexpected,
but it was led by his own people, the Southern Baptist congregation that
eventually excommunicated the whole Koinonia Community. The charges
leveled against them read: "Said members...have persisted in holding
services where both white and colored attend together."
The excommunication was followed by vandalism, cross-burning,
legal pressures, beatings, bombings, a comprehensive economic boycott,
and shootings by snipers who aimed at any available target on the complex.
Clarence turned to his brother, attorney Robert Jordan, for legal
counsel and asked him to become legal representative of the Koinonia
Community. Robert, who later served as a Georgia a state senator and a
Justice of the Georgia State Supreme Court, declined. "Clarence, I
can't do that. You know my political aspirations. Why if I
represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I've
got."
"We might lose everything too, Bob."
"It's different for you."
"Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you
and I joined the church the same Sunday as boys. I expect when
we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question
he did you. He asked me, 'Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and
Savior?" "And I said, 'Yes'. What did you say?"
"I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point." "Could that point
by any chance be - the cross?" "That's right. I follow him to the
cross, but not on the cross. I'm not getting myself crucified."
"Then I don't believe you're a disciple. You're and admirer
of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to
the church you belong to, and tell them you're an admirer not a
disciple." "Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did,
then we wouldn't have a church would we?" \
"The question," Clarence said, "is do you have a church?!"
Do WE have a church? Are you a disciple or an admirer of
Jesus? Have you been lead TO the cross only - or at times ONTO the
cross?
The Samaritan had a full billfold. So did you until your taxes went
up! Then your insurance bill exploded! And, if you're like myself, your
latest electric bill made you understand that the utility thinks you're made
of money and should pay for their losses from the hurricanes. On the
other hand, the insurance companies have forced us into such high
deductibles with their high rates that when we have damage it isn't covered
unless our damage is catastrophic. For the church this has meant that
unless our damage was 30 some thousand dollars, we could collect nothing,
yet our premiums were 44 thousand a year. Now we're self insured for
windstorm, and praying a lot harder. I would guess your story is not all
that dissimilar, but you're still paying your pledges to the operating of the
church and to the restoration of the sanctuary. You have gone to the
cross.AND you are on the cross. You are a disciple of Jesus, not just an
admirer. You have not committed the sin of omission - the sin with your
name on it - as far as your giving is concerned.
I would guess that the sin of omission that we most often are guilty
of, is that we are not as conscious and contributive as we should be about
things that are not near at hand - that are across the world away from us.
Sunday night, Dr. Baratta shared with us the plight of
undernourished and diseased children in the Philippines from when he
was there - I believe in the eighties - and took it upon himself to do everything
he could while in school there to save their lives and better their
circumstances. One person made a big difference.
But the country has not changed all that much. According to
member, Paul Brassington who goes to the Philippines several times a
year, he condition of the children i has not appreciatively changed. When
you consider what's happening to children and families in Darfur, and in
East Africa as well as here at home, you don't know where to begin.
That's how the sin of omission can creep up on us.
One of the reasons I have been such a loyal Rotarian is that its
helpfulness reaches around the world to the far-off places - helping people
who have no future unless Rotary helps them and helping talented, capable
young people who have a future to accomplish great things due to Rotary's
financial backing. Through Rotary you can send your money to inoculate
children against polio and other crippling childhood diseases, or to restore
sight to a blind person. Many people in the world are blind simply because
they have cataracts that preclude them from seeing. With just $75 a
Rotarian was able to pay for a cataract removel - to give sight to someone.
"What did you do today?" "Oh, I made a blind man see!" That's
a miracle!
When you give your money to this church, a portion of it goes to
our churches wider mission that foes to work minor miracles for people
worldwide. Some of that money goes to Church World Service which is
immediately on the scene at disasters and which has ongoing program -
one of the best of them is to provide clean, accessible water - a miracle to
them - but something we barely think about here.
To show you how insensitive and far removed we are from the
rest of the world's reality, Joe Moran, Regional Director of Church World
Service in the Carolinas tells this sotry of a faux pas of his when CWS
was being thanked for having brought water to a village. Joe asked the
logical question: "How far did you have to walk to get water before
our well was installed? " "We had to walk to the river, about 1 1/
4 kilometers from here" a woman answered. Joe said quietly to he
whispered to a colleague seated near him: "That's not too bad." The
translator heard it an translated it. The woman replied: "You're right,
that's not that bad at least not for us grown women. We're used to
it, but it's very hard for the little ones. You see, water's very heavy,
not to mention the fact that a lot of our children are sick - not to
mention that the river is downhill from here and the children had to
carry the water back up the hill - not to mention the fact that the
river water is polluted with schistosomiasis, guinea worm, and other
waterborne bacteria, so that once we'd hauled it back here to the
village, we had to do more walking to find firewood in order to boil
the water to make it safe to drink - not to mention the fact that
getting water from the river was dangerous for the children - the
river is crocodile infested. Joe says that even after 10 years have
passed - when he turns on the water in his kitchen sink, he thinks
of the villagers of Maziyaya, Malawi.
You can send money to Church World Service specifically
earmarked for CWS Water for Life/Water for All (Church
World Service, 28606 Phillips Street. P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515-
9962)
I received an e-mail yesterday from Commander Angie Keith who
has arrived at Camp Eggers in Kabul, Afghanistan which is a joint base -
all four of our military services as well as other coalition partners from
Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Romania and Germany.
Her command's mission is to train the Afghan National Army and Afghan
National Police, and to assist with provincial reconstruction projects such
as school construction and road repair. Her first act was to go on a
humanitarian mission, dropping off food at a refugee camp for displaced
Afghanistan citizens - IDP's - Internally Displaced Persons. There are
pictures of her doing this on our bulletin board on the back wall of Hice
Hall.
But what am I doing to avoid the sin that has my name on it -
omission. What are YOU doing to avoid THE SIN THAT HAS YOUR
NAME ON IT? The world is just not as God intended it to be. There
are so many wrongs that need to be righted. It is time for you to stand up
and be counted - to head for the cross and to jump onto the cross and into
sacrfice and suffering as necessary. Only time will tell if you do.
Meanimte, may God bless you as you give it thought - and espoecailly
as, in the Name of Christ, you give it action.
AMEN!
Sermon Notes(Not edited nor proofed)The Rev. Dr. Garth R. Thompson Pastor, M.B. Community ChurchA sermon is a simple truth told by someone whobelieves it to people he knows and loves (Phillips Brooks)July 15, 2007 10:30 a, m. Luke 10:25-37
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our heartsbe acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.