The parable we heard today is about just that – realizing, perhaps too late, what’s important about life. And it’s about money, yet another story Jesus told that has to do with how we think about our material possessions.
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Just because people have been part of church all their lives doesn’t mean they pray, or know how to pray. And that seems to be the case with Jesus’ disciples, who ask him in today’s gospel, Teach us to pray. They’ve been watching him pray, but they don’t know what he’s doing, and they want to know more.
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There’s an awful lot of hubbub and activity in our Old Testament and gospel readings today, a lot of bustling about in the kitchen. Abraham, in the story from Genesis, and Martha, in the story from Luke, both find themselves entertaining the Lord in their homes, and they hasten to do the right thing by him. But somehow, only one of them really seems to get it right.
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The Good Samaritan is a parable that tells of a time someone helped. And the obvious moral of the story is, we should help too. But it’s also a parable of two people who didn’t help. And when you hear a parable, you know there’s always something more in it we’re meant to hear. So what exactly does this story have to tell us today?
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Any of us who have been parents have had to utter those sad but familiar words to our kids: Life isn’t fair, honey. Live long enough and it becomes clear that fortune is capricious and we’re never really in control of the outcomes. And yet we still cling to the idea that God will do it differently – it’s like we revert to being children in our hopes of assurance in a risky world.
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Wherever Jesus goes, he heals people. Sometimes without even intending to, he heals people. God is healing, and Jesus is so transparent to God that healing flows out of him all the time. But that healing isn’t always welcome. People want the beggar to stay the beggar, for the dead to stay in the tomb, for clear rules about whose fault it is that sickness happens in the first place. But God’s order doesn’t look like our order. God has a better way for us to live. Yet sometimes we get so settled in dysfunction that we don’t really welcome that healing when it comes.
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Really, the Spirit comes blowing along to us in our lives all the time, in all kinds of ways. Maybe you feel it when you’re outside under trees. Or maybe when you hear a stirring piece of music, or when a conversation gets really good, when you’re really connecting. Maybe as you come here to worship you feel it, or in our Bible studies together when suddenly it all seems to spark. These are times when the Spirit comes to feed and nourish us, when we can drink deeply from the Spirit – to be followers of Jesus, disciples, students, learners at Jesus’ feet.
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