Hello everyone,
This Sunday, we will be reflecting on Jesus' most basic teaching about loving our neighbor (using the parable of the Good Samaritan), and it may be simple, but it sure is not easy! It seems harder these days than ever to love across the lines of division that have been built so tall everywhere in our society.
And in preparing for Sunday, I learned that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke about this exact parable on the night before he was assassinated in Memphis. He was also explaining in this sermon about how he had come to be involved in their local strike of sanitation workers. What, after all, could an illustrious Nobel Prize winner have to do with the plight of garbagemen in another state? Why Memphis? Why was he there? His answer was the Good Samaritan.
In his speech, says that even the most honorable people ask "what will happen to me if I stop?" Yet, he says the real question is "what will happen to them if I do not?" Some of the very real hurting in our world that we are tempted to change the channel away from or protest and judge and explore no further....maybe we are called instead to not pass by, but to linger and listen; maybe even bandage wounds and find that we are ourselves are a little more healed and whole from doing so.
Join me these next couple weeks as we explore more about loving our neighbor....
Blessings and Peace,
Pastor Jessie