PROPER 10, YEAR C

July 10, 2022

Christ Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Deuteronomy 30:9-14

Psalm 25:3-9

Luke 10:25-37

 

The Collect of the Day, which we prayed at the beginning of this Mass, asks God that we “may both perceive and know what things [we] ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same.” And the appointed readings for this Sunday in the three-year lectionary cycle happen to focus this year on the first half of that prayer: exploring how we may best perceive and know what things we ought to do.

 

The Gospel reading from Saint Luke offers an example of Jesus teaching a lawyer how to perceive and know what things he ought to do. Moreover, our Lord employs the tried-and-true pedagogical method of answering the lawyer’s questions with questions of his own.

 

Putting Jesus to the test, the lawyer first asks: “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds by turning the question around: “What is written in the Law? How do you read?” In other words: You’re a lawyer; you must know what the Law says. The lawyer then gives a correct answer: “You shall love the Lord your God … You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 

 

But, desiring to justify himself, the lawyer asks a further question: “And who is my neighbor?” In response, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, concluding with the question back to the lawyer: “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” Again, the lawyer answers correctly: “The one who showed mercy on him.”

 

Notice what’s happened. Rather than just answering the lawyer’s questions, Jesus has got the lawyer to answer his own questions—by drawing on his own deep knowledge of the Law and the Prophets. So often that is how effective education works: not as much by imparting new information and new ideas as by drawing out of us what we already know and enabling us to apply that knowledge to new challenges in creative new ways.

 

Whatever bad motives Luke ascribes to this lawyer, putting Jesus to the test and trying to justify himself, he had at least this much going for him: he was willing to engage in the dialogue, and he was willing to entertain the Lord’s questions—an attitude of openness well expressed in today’s Psalm: “Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths.”

 

So often, that is the pattern in our own prayer lives. We begin by questioning God, only to find that God is questioning us. And it’s precisely our willingness to engage in that dialogue, to entertain those questions, that allows God to lead us deeper into the fulness of his truth. As the psalmist goes on to sing, “Lead me in your truth and teach me; for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long.”

 

In the coming weeks and months, the Discernment Committee, to be commissioned today [at the 10am Mass], and subsequently the Vestry, will need to trust the God of our salvation to lead them in his truth and teach them. For their responsibility is not simply that of choosing the next rector as a hiring committee might choose the best qualified candidate for a job opening in a secular organization. 

 

No, as the word “discernment” implies, the primary task is one of prayer: seeking the Lord’s will for the parish, and discerning whom God has already chosen to be its next rector. It’s a tall order, and both the Discernment Committee and the Vestry will need the support of the whole congregation’s prayers for the duration of the process.

 

But today’s readings offer the comfort of reassurance that God is with us—with this parish, with the Discernment Committee, with the Vestry—as they undertake this awesome responsibility. In my discussions with parishioners over the past month, the one longing that’s been expressed most often is for a return to the flourishing community life that this parish enjoyed before the pandemic. But today’s Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy opens with the promise: “The Lord will again take delight in prospering you … if you obey the voice of the Lord your God.”

 

And then, in answer to the implicit question of how we may expect to hear the Lord’s voice, the reading continues: “This commandment is not too hard for you, neither is it far off … But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”

 

This is really the same point as Jesus was making in the Gospel. The lawyer already knew the answers to his own questions—God’s word was already in his mouth and in his heart—and he just needed a little help from Jesus to understand how this knowledge applied to the questions at hand. In the same way, I’m confident that the members of the Discernment Committee and Vestry will help one another in their deliberations to draw on what they already know in understanding where the Lord is leading them.

 

Jesus concludes his interaction with the lawyer with the admonition, “Go and do likewise.” That is, go and show mercy to those in need just as the Good Samaritan showed mercy to the man fallen among robbers. And so, we come full circle to the Collect of the Day. For it’s one thing to perceive and know what things we ought to do, and another thing entirely to have the grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same.

 

Once the Discernment Committee and Vestry perceive and know whom God is calling to be the next rector, they’ll also need the grace and power to follow through and act on this knowledge—especially if it seems that other candidates are safer choices, or more qualified in a conventional sense. For God does not see as human beings see; and those whom he calls can well be those whom we might deem least likely according to worldly standards.

 

In today’s Gospel, Saint Luke doesn’t tell us what the lawyer went away and did, or whether his subsequent life was any different because of his encounter with Jesus. Some New Testament scholars suggest that these stories are deliberately left open-ended because we, the listeners, are meant to supply the endings ourselves, in the living of our own lives.

 

So, Jesus tells us the story of the Good Samaritan and then bids us go and do likewise. But once he’s shown us what we ought to do, our next move needs always to be that of asking God for grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same. And we do so in the trust that God never asks us to do anything in his name without giving us the means necessary to accomplish everything that he asks.