Erl Purnell Sermon

c10Pentecost7 ~ Homily notes ~ July 15, 2007

· Grace: elegance, beauty, smoothness of form or movement

· Grace. Dignified, polite, and decent behavior

· Capacity to tolerate, accommodate, or forgive

· Grace. Something spoken before eating a meal

· Grace: infinite love, compassion, favor and goodwill shown to humankind by God

· Grace: God’s unremitting gift, regardless of our own thoughts, actions, or worthiness

· Tuesday’s child is full of grace

· Grace, a most lovely woman’s name

· Grace College, Winona Lake, Indiana

· Grace, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment

· W.R. Grace, a chemical company

· Grace, the plotting tool for the X Window system

· Grace silk bridal shoes

· Elvis’ Graceland. Graceland by Paul Simon

· Amazing grace

· There but for the grace of God go I

Quest & question ~ Latin to seek? Questioner = seeker … to find something unknown or new

What are you seeking? What are you looking for? Is it grace?

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”

Imagine Jesus in conversation

· Remarkable ability to distill and inflate an idea into simplicity and complexity at the same time

· Aphorisms, stories, and parables were stock in trade ... hundreds, many times

Good Samaritain among the top

· Story, detailed and complex, in just eleven sentences?

· Listener personally drawn in … becomes participant—as traveler, fleetingly as robbers, priest, Levite, Samaritain … innkeeper … finally again, traveler

Might unpack Good Samaritan, but whole books do that. Today, seeking grace.

Me: kind & compassionate, but mugged traveler a real bone-head.

· Jesus sets up listener to ask, “What was traveler thinking going from Jerusalem to Jericho alone?” Dangerous road … kind of our equivalent of walking from Hartford to Foxwoods

· Priest, Levite, and Samaritain also traveling alone … three more bone-heads (What was Jesus thinking?) May never discover.

· Wonder if robbers took out priest & Levite around bend

You know story

· Unlucky traveler mugged

· Becomes lucky traveler … bandaged, taken to inn, cared for ... close call

Parable focus on compassion (compassion of the Samaritain)

· Jesus calls us to be compassionate

· Luke’s Gospel (6.36), “Be compassionate as God is compassionate”

· Parable explicates message ... Compassion not a theory … a call to action ... not compassionate unless we do something

Connection to grace?

· Yes, Samaritain compassionate

· Compassion offered & received in setting of grace ... Wind of grace … God’s infinite love, compassion, favor and goodwill … one human being to another … on behalf of God

· There but for the grace of God go I

· Priest and Levite neglect to act w/ God’s compassion in spirit of grace

· Samaritain, open & willing (bleeding wretch in the ditch)

Traveler received grace w/out lifting a finger

· Compassion & grace in form of Samaritan … given freely and generously

· Samaritain, God’s instrument of grace

Man on roof in middle of flood ... Prays … Canoe, boat, helicopter … Man drowns ... Encounters God in heaven & complains not saved ... “What do you mean? I sent a canoe, a boat, and a helicopter”

Don’t believe in puppeteer God or capricious God … saves some, let’s others perish. Parable meant to paint image of God

Samaritan is hero … Samaritan acts through God’s grace. Many lessons. Important one:

· Jesus recasts old, vengeful, angry, judgmental God of Scripture in new light

· Jesus insists on God of grace and compassion

· God doesn’t look like what God’s supposed to look like

· God doesn’t act as God’s supposed to act

· God shows up as outcast & is compassionate & wastefully generous

· … and that is Jesus’ image of God & God’s grace

Amen.

Definitions of grace from MSWord Dictionary.