Good morning, friends. How are you doing? Good, good. Welcome. It is so glad, I’m so glad to see each and every one of you here. And for those of you watching online, for those of you who may not know me, my name is Sean. I’m the director of our student ministries here. And I have the privilege and the honor and the blessing to work with this amazing group over here.

That was pretty quiet. You want to try again? And student ministry.

There we go. There we go. For those of you who were here last week, you may recall Alex’s compelling message that he tacked on at the end of his announcements. Where he let us or reminded us that it is inescapable for us to read the scriptures and the words and teachings of Jesus and not take care of the vulnerable that are before us.

Central to the story of the Good Samaritan, he reminded us, and I know that many of us in here agreed with that message. Maybe some of us were wrestling with or challenged with that message. I sat over here with my face in my hands thinking to myself, Oh no, because Alex had just in 90 seconds, beautifully and succinctly delivered the message that I had been preparing for the last two weeks.

I caught a glimpse of my wife. out of my peripheral vision and she looked at me and I looked at her and she’s I guess you could expand upon it. And I have to admit, I went home and that Monday or this Monday I wrestled with it. I wondered if I needed to change direction, if I needed to toss out everything that I had prepared.

I looked at other passages, I took notes, and I kept coming back to this passage of the Good Samaritan again, and again. And so I prayerfully surrendered it, and I finally came to have peace around it. And so we are going to go through this passage of the Good Samaritan. We’re going to dive deeper and see what it has for us this morning as we look at living in the ways of Jesus.

Sound good? All right. If you guys could stand with me as we read this passage. It’s in Luke 10, starting in verse chapter, or in chapter 10, starting in verse 25. It says, on one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law, he replied, how do you read it?

He answered, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. You have answered correctly. Jesus replied, do this and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor?

In reply, Jesus said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes and beat him and went away leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road and when he saw the man he passed on the other side. So too a Levite went when he came.

So too a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and then he put the man on his own donkey. Brought him to an inn and took care of him.

The next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him.

Jesus told him, go and do likewise. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Father, we thank you for your presence here today, and I pray that you would open our hearts to receive exactly what you have for each one of us. That you would challenge us where we need to be challenged. That you would comfort us where we need to be comforted. That we would put down these old flames and carry forth your new fire.

In your ways, Jesus. Let us be good hearers of your word and even better doers as we leave this place. We love you. Amen.

During my sophomore year at Azusa Pacific University, I joined this program called Alpha. I was an Alpha leader. If any of you guys have been to Azusa, you might remember it. We were in charge of freshman orientation. We also taught a class for the entire first semester of freshman year called beginnings where we helped Freshmen acclimate to this new way of life away from home where we could build a strong Foundation for the growth that they were going to be experiencing and the work that God wanted to be doing in their lives We met with a group of freshmen weekly for a semester mentoring them and leading Bible studies And it was an incredible time and season of my life.

As a part of that program, we had our own training, our own orientation, leading up to the beginning of school, where we went to San Francisco, and we spent time in this neighborhood called the Tenderloin. Or the TL as they refer to it there. And the reason why this neighborhood was called the Tenderloin is because it was so notoriously rough and riddled with crime that the police officers who patrolled this area were able to afford Tenderloin because of their higher wages.

Or perhaps the bribes that they were soliciting while they walked the streets. Both stories are out there, I’ll let you decide which one is true. But we’re in this rough neighborhood, we’re living there for a week. And we had this opportunity to serve the community. We were serving in food banks. We were serving in shelters.

We were repainting graffitied walls. We were just walking the streets and praying over the homeless and listening to their stories. And as this week concluded, this week was called Bridges because we would walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. One by one, we would go on our own and contemplate and reflect on the things that God was doing in our lives and through that work.

We would think about the people that we encountered, where God challenged us, where he helped us to grow. And then we all gathered there and we debriefed at the other end of the bridge once everyone was collected together. And I remember being struck by the central passage, this manifestation that had been going on in our lives of John 13, 34 through 35, a new command.

I give you love one another as I have loved you. So you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, my apprentices, if you love one another. This was a physical manifestation across the week of just this verse. We had been going and loving other people. We had rolled up our sleeves.

We had prayed over the homeless. We had served those in need and that is how they would know that we were Jesus’s disciples by the way that we were loving. them during that time.

For the past several weeks, we’ve been studying spiritual practices that can help us intentionally develop a rule of life rather than that rule of life accidentally happening to us as Alex has previously pointed out. And these spiritual practices are tools on the pathway to ultimately spiritual And I love this this framework given to us by Dr.

Robert Mulholland. He says, a working definition of spiritual formation is fourfold. One, it’s a process, so it’s not just something that clicks on or that we can decide on a whim that we are going to do. Of being formed. It will take time in the image of Christ for the sake of others.

And with, and he goes on to say, spiritual formation is in the image of Christ will also be seen to move against the grain of our self actualization culture and prevailing perspectives which tend to create God in our own image. It will move against our culture. It will move against our own perspectives, which we tend to create God in our own image.

This image of Christ will be seen as the ultimate reality of human wholeness, the consummation in which each heart longs. It will also be seen to be the cruciform and the essence of its nature. A dying is involved in our own growth towards wholeness. A cross on which we lose our old self with its bondages and its brokenness.

With this framework in mind, this week we are going to be looking at the practice of hospitality. And before we dive in, I think it’s important for us to define hospitality so that we’re all on the same page as we look at this from a biblical perspective. Because oftentimes when we hear the word hospitality, we might think about inviting people into our homes.

Hosting, bringing guests into our table. Or maybe you would recall a picture of me vacuuming the last time I was up on this stage. And while that is a component of hospitality, what I just defined is really just entertaining. And while that is good, that is a part of community. That is what we get to do as we live life together.

As we spur each other on, as we encourage each other. And all of that is good. But when we look at hospitality, it’s also about caring and loving others with the heart of Jesus. If we look at the origin of the word hospitality, it shares the same origin as the word hospital or hospice. Caring for other people, loving other people, opening a space to allow those people to enter in and to experience the love of Jesus.

It’s a caring, healing refuge. It’s a radical welcome that brings restoration. And we see this not only in that definition, but also in the Hebrew and the Greek texts that are associated with hospitality and that call us to hospitality. The Greek and Hebrew words for hospitality, not only refer to guests, but much more frequently, they actually refer to foreigners and to strangers.

I have an entire spreadsheet, three spreadsheets, in fact, on my computer going through every single place that hospitality or the concept of hospitality is mentioned in scripture. And most of them refer to the foreigners and to the strangers, not just the guests or people that we love welcoming them into our home.

And now that we’ve established and rooted ourselves in the biblical definition of hospitality as a welcoming and loving and caring place that is inclusive of not just guests but foreigners and strangers, we’re going to look again at this story that Jesus beautifully weaves these together as he tells us about the parable of the Good Samaritan.

And in doing so,

we have a bunch of texts that I just skipped over. Let me go through them. So here in Leviticus looking at the Hebrew and the Greek, all those texts that I just mentioned in my spreadsheet, I did pick out some of them to help guide our time. When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.

The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native born. Love them as yourself. For you were also foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. This word ger associated with hospitality, really is defined by foreigner or sojourner. We see the exact same word here in Deuteronomy. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and he loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing, and you are to love those who are foreigners.

For you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. Again, reminding us of that. Paul uses the word phyloxenia, which in true definition is the love of strangers or hospitality. He says, be devoted to one another, honor one another, above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor. Serving the Lord, be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer.

Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. When he talks about hospitality, he talks about sharing with the people who are in need. Not welcoming the guest into our house. We see this again in Hebrews. Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters and do not forget to show hospitality to strangers.

For by doing so some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. This is a call back to Genesis. The story in Genesis where Abraham invites and welcomes the strangers into his home only to come to realize that he was entertaining angels. Some say even entertaining God at his table. That is what we are doing when we care for the strangers and for those who need.

Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Look at those who are being mistreated as if that mistreatment was happening to us. That is the call and the heart of hospitality. And above all, love each other deeply because love covers over a multitude of sins.

Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. This is a common theme, having a cheerful heart in the way that we offer hospitality or our generosity. That we aren’t doing any of this out of obligation, but that we’re doing it because Jesus is working and moving and changing us. That we’re seeing other people and loving Him in the exact same way that He sees and loves them.

Calling that each of us should use whatever gifts we have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. This is 1 Peter 4, 8 through 10. And Henry Nouwen takes all of these verses that we just looked at. And he does a great job distilling down the message for us when he says hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.

Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them a space where change can take place. I think that we forget this sometimes. We find it our duty and our role to change people. That if we just talk at them and share the information and point to the scriptures that they do not know and cannot understand, that we will change them.

But that is not what we are called to do. Instead, it’s to offer people that space where they can encounter Jesus, where the Holy Spirit can go to work. And where that change then can start to take place, it is of His doing, not mine, not yours. All we are called to do is to provide the space and to love.

So now, we’re gonna get to the story of the Good Samaritan, that Jesus beautifully weaves all of this together, in what I would consider a pretty profound directive.

But as, but before we do that, A quick note, because I think that oftentimes when you hear a story again and again, which I would imagine many of us in this room have heard the story of the Good Samaritan, that familiar familiarity that we have with the story can dilute its profoundness. And I don’t want that to happen today.

So I would just invite all of us to just take a moment. If you’re comfortable with it, I would close your eyes and just invite the Holy Spirit. into this space and say that he, and ask him to give us willing hearts to receive what it is that Christ has for us. That we would be able to contemplate this.

That we might be able to receive something that we haven’t received or be reminded of something that we have forgotten.

Holy Spirit, give us ears to hear what it is that you have for us in this message.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is only found in the Gospel of Luke. And this isn’t really surprising as Luke is characterized by more stories and a greater concern for the vulnerable and the marginalized and the oppressed. In the Gospel of Luke we see Jesus having more conversations and more direct interactions and compassion for women and for foreigners and for, and with the poor.

And the passage opens with an expert in the law. Asking Jesus a question, saying, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? Jesus replies, how do you read it? This is just Jesus. He doesn’t always answer questions. In fact, very rarely does he directly answer a question. Over 300 times in the New Testament, he asks questions.

But very rarely does he actually answer them directly. We’ll get to one of them in just a second. But he asks, the expert in the law, this teacher of the law, a teacher of the Mosaic law. What does he think about it? How does he read it? And he answered, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.

Love your neighbor as yourself. To which Jesus responds, you have answered correctly. And again, this is no surprise to us because we actually see this exact from Jesus and Matthew. This is when he did directly answer the question, which of the commandments is the greatest? And Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. You didn’t ask me. for that second one, but I’m going to throw it in for free because it is just like it. And it is just well, and it is also very important. In fact, all of the law and the prophets hang.

on these two commandments. If you distill everything down, Mr. Lawyer, of everything that you have learned in the law and all of the commandments and all of the teachings and the pleadings and the promptings of the prophets, all of it hangs on these two things, love God and love others. So if we needed a summary or a cliff notes version, Jesus just gave it to us.

But then the lawyer wanting to justify himself asks another question. And who is my neighbor?

This is a question of limits. This is a question of limits. When it said that he was trying to justify himself, he was doing just that. There was a defense mechanism that rose in the lawyer that maybe we have experienced ourselves. He wanted to justify, he wanted to validate the limits that he had already drawn in place.

as it pertained to who he considered his neighbor, who he considered worth caring for, or loving, or welcoming. And he was asking this question in hopes that Jesus was going to affirm it. He was asking this question in hopes that the limits that he was already drawing in place around this were going to be validated.

It makes me think of this quote that I’m pretty certain at some point Alex or some other pastor has put on this screen before from Timothy Keller says, Now what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God?

Who can contradict you, you won’t. Instead, you’re gonna have a God essentially of your own making and not a God with whom you can have a relationship with and a genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle as in a real friendship or a marriage, then you will know that you have gotten a hold of a real God and not a figment of your own imagination.

For that lawyer, that outrage and that struggle is about to become real. As he looks to who God is and what God thinks because Jesus replies with a story. And I’m gonna go ahead and reread it for us here in reply, Jesus said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. When he was attacked by robbers.

They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road when he saw the man and he passed on the other side. So too a Levi. When he came to a place, came to the place and saw him, he passed on the other side. Now, a priest and a Levite are passing by.

Two of the most privileged identities that one could hold in this community are passing by their brethren. Two of the people that we would expect most likely to stop and to care for this man. Just pass right on by. I think that Jesus has a pretty explicit reason for this. He could have chosen any type of profession or person to walk by this man in the telling of this story.

But I think that this is a pretty significant indictment on the religious leaders of the community at that time. And it was done with purpose.

But then a Samaritan, as he traveled, came to where the man was. And when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine, and then put the man on his donkey and brought him to an inn and took care of him. This is loving care. This is hospitality. The next day he took out two Ari and gave them to the end keeper.

Looked after him, he said, and when I return, I will re reimburse you for any extra expense you might have. A Samaritan? A Samaritan. Now this is where I’m talking about where I don’t want us to lose familiarity with the story. Because the Samaritan matters in this moment. There was no other person more despised by the original hearers of the story than a Samaritan man.

They had a whole host of reasons that they felt were justified in excluding this individual from what they would consider The Samaritans were people born out of the Israelite descendants who had co mingled with the Assyrians after they had been taken over and with that came a different way of life and beliefs and standards.

They felt like they had diluted their religions and beliefs in ways and so they wanted nothing to do with them. They wouldn’t communicate with them, they wouldn’t hang out with them, they wouldn’t even pass through the region that they Lived in, there was this tension that existed and one that was understood and accepted.

It was divi, it was division. That what, that everyone was okay with. Does it sound familiar? Familiar. Do we have some of those things that happen in this time, in this period in our world? Do we divide and have those tensions where we’re completely unwilling to engage with people? But let’s notice that the Samaritan never takes note of that man’s identity.

He never asks the question, Is he my neighbor? He never asks the question of limits. So then, Jesus asks another question. He says, Which of these three men do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of Roberts? And the expert in the law replied, The one who had mercy on him. Do you see what’s going on there?

Jesus flips the question. The object becomes the subject. He’s no longer answering the question, Who is my neighbor? The answer is implicit from the way that he asked the question. Everyone is your neighbor. The lawyer must have seen this. He must have heard this. He must have known this right from the get go.

Everyone is your neighbor. Everyone you encounter. Because if the Samaritan is taking care of this individual who despised him, then everyone must be the neighbor. And so then the question becomes, are you worthy to be called a good neighbor? Are you actually doing the things that a good neighbor would do?

And the criteria for that is mercy. Which of these do you think, was the neighbor, the expert in the law replied The one who had mercy on him? Mur. And what we see here is that mercy and love have no qualifiers. We don’t need to justify it. We don’t need to ask the questions. God’s mercy and His love have no qualifiers.

It extends to everyone. Even those that we can’t even understand how it would pertain to them or we can’t feel it on our own. That is where the transformation comes of Jesus and the Holy Spirit working in our lives to have that. And then Jesus goes on and says, go.

This is a wildly different answer than the expert in the law was hoping for when he asked the question. This is a mic drop moment, if you will. That Jesus is giving him this direction. Go and do likewise,

but let’s again, not forget the familiarity of the story and allow it to cloud its profoundness for each and every one of us here. And now, as I was sitting here writing this, I was reflecting on what questions of limits have I asked? Where have I drawn those lines? What questions of limits have you asked?

Let’s not forget to ask ourself. To reflect on those things in this moment. Let’s not forget the profoundness of what Jesus was communicating to the expert in the law in the same way that he is communicating it to us. Would we dare to do that? I think that’s the question for us today.

The morning that I was walking across the Golden State Bridge, It looked a lot like this. I remember the fog. We were completely socked in. You can only see 10 or 15 feet in front of you. That typical San Francisco Bay fog that we see in all the pictures. But as we were walking back across after a time of being together in debrief, that fog started to lift.

And I was delighted because it was turning into one of those prototypical, story esque stock photos that you see here. The fog was lifting and I was like, this is amazing. I love the sky. And I always am fascinated by the sky. Just look at my Instagram from before I had kids. I was constantly taking pictures of it.

It’s where I found God’s beauty. And I would see nature singing his praises. I had a friend call me out on this. She’s I love going to your Instagram so I can just see whatever cool sunrise or sunset you most recently had an opportunity to see. And so this is my excitement that’s coming up as the fog is lifting.

And I’m looking over the bay and I’m looking at the mountain side that the bridge extends from. I’m just marveling in God’s beauty and thinking about his power and creation. When all of a sudden, I had this compelling force redirect my gaze. The Holy Spirit had me bring my gaze off the mountain and down into traffic as I was looking at the faces of everyone whizzing by.

Because now I was walking into traffic rather than with it. And so I could see every single person crossing this bridge. I felt the Holy Spirit say, I know this is my creation. This is my masterpiece. These people look into their faces, look into their eyes. That construction worker who is going to his next job.

That guy that you just saw singing at the top of his lungs thinking that no one would notice. That mom with tears in her eyes as she’s contemplating how in the world she’s gonna get everything done today as she goes on to her next task. This is my Imago Dei. This is my creation. Imago Dei.

See them. That is my masterpiece. That is my creation. That is what I want you to focus on. Because I love them. I want you to love them well, too. I’ll never forget that time, that moment when the Holy Spirit prompted me and brought my gaze off of the thing that I so frequently had it on and on to the faces of the people who are driving by.

I’ll never forget it. But I need to be reminded of it. And I’m thankful that I get to be reminded of it. So consistently, I’m reminded of it every morning when we’re driving home or driving to school and I hear my son pray for his family and his friends and that God would help him to be kind that morning.

I’m reminded of it when I am at a local store and there’s an employee, a friend, who I know just lost her son. And I can see the tears in her eyes and I know that God loves her and that he is hurting with her. I’m reminded of it every week when I see our students serve in the food bank. And they play with the children and they serve dry goods.

And they begin to know and build relationships with the people in our community that we serve. Hey he really likes soft food. Do we have any ground beef? Let’s make sure that we get him what he needs. She really enjoys fish. Do we have any salmon left? Let’s make sure that there’s some when she comes up.

He’s kitchenless. Let’s make sure that we give him soup with a tap so we can open it easily. This is the students demonstrating hospitality. This is the food bank and everything that we get to do, serving others, loving them, building relationship with them, knowing them, so that they can feel seen and cared for.

And the way that Jesus does when they encounter him as they enter this space.

Hospitality is a visible expression of Christ’s love in a broken, and yes, sometimes divided world.

And the commandment is pretty straightforward for us today. To love as Christ has loved us. He said this, I command to love one another. And by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, that you are my apprentices, if you love one another. And in doing so, they will encounter me, and you will create a space that they will enter into to encounter me, and I will go to work, and I will do the change.

But I command this of you to go and to love them and to love them well. Go and do likewise. Go and love your neighbor.

This week we had a staff transformation, or staff formation meeting, and Kathy, who leads our children’s ministry, brought before us this incredible paraphrased children’s book. And as we were reading it, It jumped out at me that this is a great representation of everything that I was just talking about.

It’s a paraphrase of Deuteronomy 132, or 1 through 32, and it says, Love God with every part of you, and remember to choose leaders who love God too. Moses reminded them, leaders should let their love flow out of the people who need it most. Don’t forget about them. Don’t forget about the foreigners, or the children without parents, and the widows.

Nobody should be without belonging. Don’t push them to the outside of the group, but put them right in the middle like they’re covered in a hug, a paraphrase of Deuteronomy words written to a children. But that I think hold profound meaning for every single one of us here today because Jesus says that when you do this to the least of these, you do it unto me.

So let us go and do likewise. Let us go and love our neighbor likewise.