Pray | Luke 10:25-37

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Welcome again. My name’s still Alex. I’m still one of the pastors here at South, and if you’re watching online, great to have you here today as well. As we enter into a new series. We spent the last year going through this book, John, I used to say John was one of my favorite books in scripture.

Having had to teach it for a year I felt the weight of it, and so it’s gonna take a while before I’m gonna be able to say that again. But it was a. Gift to our community in how it introduced us freshly in different ways to see Jesus to see what he came to do, what he came to gift us. And then John, like the other gospels, the other biographies of Jesus life ends in this moment where Jesus passes on a mission to his first disciples.

It’s phrased in different ways. In Mark’s version. It says this, go into all the world and preach the gospel. But all four have something like this, some kind of mission, some kind of imperative. But Marx is just the most explicit of them all. It lands the most distinctly, and perhaps in a church like South makes us the least.

Comfortable. Jesus didn’t just mean this for his first followers. He meant it for everyone that would follow him over the years as well for people like you and me. Now, depending on the background that you have, depending on how you grew up, where you grew up, maybe this for you is a super positive thing.

We should do more of that. Where’s the street evangelism classes? Where’s the different things where we go and we make it happen and we preach. And then if you come from a different background, maybe for this, for you is more of a triggering thing. Maybe you came from a background where people came out and gave tracks away, or were really heavy hitting with a street preaching.

I grew up in that environment. My uncle was a street preacher, my cousin was a street preacher. I tried doing that kind of stuff and nobody listened to me, but I gave it. My best chart. Maybe you got given a track or found one on the floor that was designed like a hundred dollars bill and you were really excited and you went over and grabbed it and it wasn’t what it seemed like it was going to be.

Maybe you got one of those tracks that were a story. And it always seemed a little over the top, a little unlikely to happen. In England. The famous tracks were the Jack Chick tracks, and there’d always be a story about a, maybe a group of guys that were trying to be a band and they’re getting pretty popular and trying to hit the big time.

And then. One day a guy walks in to watch them play and he says, you’re really good. I really want to help you make something of yourselves. I’m gonna take care of your career and you’re gonna make a fortune. And then you find out his name is Sifa, Mr. Lou Sefer. And somewhere the story gets a little absurd, maybe you grew up with in that environment, or maybe you just talk to someone about following Jesus and it felt like an awkward conversation.

And she started asking questions like, is this what I’m made for? My hope for this series is that it stretches south just a little bit, a good kind of stretching where it maybe asks us to participate in things that we haven’t participated in before. But the truth is based on experiences as Jam Mark Coma says, many of us are emotionally allergic to preaching the gospel.

It’s just been too difficult. We feel too out of our depth, too unsure how to proceed, and we’ve seen so many ways that it’s done badly that we’re not sure that there’s any pathway forward to doing it well. I love some of the qualifications of this command, and I think they actually make sense. I love Francis Versi who said, preach the gospel at all times and when necessary, use words to St.

Francis. It was this message that was preached by a lifestyle as much as it was by standing on a street corner and yelling things. The sharing of the gospel all over the world has given us so much. We’ve seen moves of God happen in places that the gospel had never reached before. And yet it’s also tied to some of the ways people have done it badly tied to some of the colonialism that took the gospel all over the world in the 18th and 19th century.

If. Preach the gospel. Use words if you must. The truth is what we see of Jesus in the New Testament is that Jesus is certainly someone more interested in people and not interested in projects. And maybe that’s some of the tension that you’ve seen as you’ve watched people talk about faith in different environments.

It seems like it’s a task to do and not a relationship to build. That was certainly true for me in the environment I grew up in. I’d take a track with me somewhere ’cause I felt like I had to, and I’d just find somebody to give it to so I could say I’d done my job and they never really experienced Jesus at all.

But here’s the tension that I think is true as we look at statistics. This is Tom Rainer Lifeway research up to 82% of unchurched individuals. People who don’t step foot in church would attend if someone they knew asked them. About 2% of church members actually invite an unchurched person to church in a given year somewhere.

Jesus says that somewhere you and I get to play a part in this story by inviting people into it, and yet if we’re honest, for all sorts of preps, good reasons, different reasons, we very rarely do. We very rarely end up getting there. I suspect this. A Jesus’ command to preach is deeply tied to his command to love our neighbor, and that at its heart is what this series is about.

It’s not about preaching, it’s about caring for those around us. But that too is harder than we think at times. When we said, love thy neighbor, I love the old fashioned language. It demonstrates that this has been something that’s been asked of people for a couple of thousand years. It’s always been hard, and I think maybe it’s never been harder than it is today.

Loving those around us is just a complex thing, especially when they don’t do what we hope they do or live as we hope they’d live. And yet Jesus invited us into this process. I’ve always dreamed about South as becoming a community, a city and world would miss if we were gone. Not just ’cause we feed 150 people a week in the food bank, which is a privilege to be able to participate in, not ’cause we support missionaries all over the world.

Those things as well, but not just those things. I always hoped it would be a place where this was like a hub. And we all were outposts of the kingdom of God at South Dotted, all over the South Denver metro, living like Jesus in the particular places that God had given us to live, sharing the gospel, not just with words.

But with the way we lived, like Jesus, that seems to be what we’re called to do, and yet it’s complex. And so what I wanna do is this, over the next five weeks is short series. We’re gonna look at five practices that can help us enter into this process. I’ll say this, the first one is the easiest one of all of them.

It’s within reach of every single person in the room. And if at some point in the series you feel like, oh man, this is stretching me just a little bit, I’d encourage you to have a conversation with Jesus about it. Admit the fact that it feels hard. Admit the fact that you feel out of your depth, but accept that this is something he’s nudging you, journey, helping you journey towards.

Our passage today is in Luke chapter 10, verse 25, and so I’m gonna invite you to stand as I read the text for us.

Luke 10 verse 25. 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.

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, who is my neighbor? In reply, Jesus said a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. When he was attacked by rubbers, 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, and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side, so to a Levite where he came to the place and saw him passed by on the other side. But as 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.

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 Ari 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 rubbers?

The expert in the law replied the one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, go and do likewise. Jesus. Thank you for this text. It’s challenge to us. It nudges us towards living in your way with your heart. It asks us to take seriously the value you had on caring for those around us. Help us to love our neighbor even when it’s difficult.

It helps us to love them when they’re like us, and perhaps especially when they’re not. Amen. You may be seated. So some background with me in this text. I’ve taught this text multiple times over my times as a pastor in different churches. The first time I ever taught it, I prepared something to say and I arrived at church a little bit early, maybe an hour and a half early for the service. Still had a little few things to do, some things to change, maybe a run through to do and Isaiah arrived at the church. I was walking towards the building and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy walking down the driveway towards me. Now at South, that wouldn’t be unusual at all.

Tours, people doll it all around. It’s a big urban neighborhood. But at the church I was at the time in Michigan. In this rural area, we never saw anybody on foot. And as he walked down the driveway, he carried in his hand a gas can. He walked down towards me to intersect with me, and then he asked me if there were any gas stations around and I said, there’s one about five miles that way.

And he said, okay. I left my car about two miles the other direction you’re saying if I walk five miles this way that I can get some gas and walk seven miles back and everything will be fine. And I looked at him and said, okay. I’ll give you a lift. Everything inside of me wanted to say, yep, off you go and walk in the other direction.

But I was teaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan and I thought, how can I possibly stand in front of a community and teach that with integrity? If I leave this sky on the side of the road, I shudder to think what might have happened if I was teaching something else. I’m sure he’d still have been walking to this day ’cause it was a considerable distance.

This passage always makes me a little nervous. The week before preaching. I always wonder what will happen to help me live out this passage. So I haven’t left the house all week. It’s a challenge to enter into this text. It acts, asks a lot of us. And our choices. Do we obey the words of Jesus or we decide that we know better?

Verse 25 begins on one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Jesus periodically has these people that come to engage with him. Some come with the best of intentions to learn from the master of teacher. That is Jesus. Others come believing that they can poke holes in the teachings of Jesus.

Show him to be incorrect about different things. We don’t know why this guy comes, but he seems to be somewhat genuine and he comes with a key, a question teacher. What? What a teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? It’s not quite the same question we might ask. We might think this means something like, how do I go to heaven one day or something like that?

But to this group of people in the first century, what he probably means is this, Jesus. One day we believe that God is going to do something. He’s gonna free the Jewish people from the oppression they’re under. He’s gonna give us a new role in the world. How do I get to be part of that? When God changes the world, what do I do to make sure that I am included and Jesus gives him an answer.

What is written in the law? How do you read it? Jesus asked him, how do you interpret the law? The people of the day, the first century accepted that the law needed interpretation and people putting thousands of hours trying to figure out what do these old rules, some of them 2000 years old what do they mean?

And we do that just the same today. If I were to ask you, how many of you decided this week, you are gonna go into a bank, perhaps with a weapon, and you are gonna hold up the bank manager and demand cash from him? Just raise a hand for me for a second. I’m always a little bit nervous ’cause I’m like, I just don’t know about some of you guys.

Yes, I did that. The answer’s no. Thank goodness. But then if I were to ask you, how many of you were late this morning and there was a sign like this on the side of the road and you said, I’m choosing not to interpret that literally, but as the spirit of the law, and you found that your foot nudged on the pedal and the speed increased and you maybe got a read out on one of these beautiful signs that just remind you that you’re breaking the law of the land without any conscience whatsoever.

You interpret. The law. I interpret the law, and Jesus says to this man, how do you interpret the laws across scripture? What do you think they mean? And the man gives an answer. The man says, 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 one more, love your neighbor as yourself. It’s a good answer. Jesus says so himself. In fact, it’s the same answer that Jesus gives when he’s asked this question as well. These two things seem to hold up all the law. In fact, Jesus says the whole law rests on these things. If you could only. Love God with all your heart and love your neighbors yourself.

You wouldn’t even need the rest of the laws. You’d obey them all just because you did those two things. Jesus says to him, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. Do these two incredibly, perhaps impossible things and you will live, and the conversation could end there. That could be the end of it.

He could just take Jesus at his word and he could leave. Right now with the answer that he needed to get, but he has another question to ask Jesus’ Take on the law is familiar to most of his listeners. There’s a couple of places where these laws are referenced. Back in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy chapter six, first four and five, a prayer prayed every day.

By Jewish people, the Shamar Israel hero, Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind. Part was added later that was well known. And then Leviticus 19 18, 1 of the first passages a young Jewish man would memorize, do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the law Lord. The first one was always important, but the second one became more and more important. As the time of Jesus teaching started to come closer, the generation before it really became central to so many people in how they interpreted the law. This is Halal the elder, a teacher, a generation before Jesus.

What is hateful to you did not do to your fellow. Whatever you don’t want anyone to do to you, you don’t do that to other people and everything. Everyone will get on. That teaching, that second one suddenly became a bigger deal about the time Jesus began to teach the question that follows, but he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor?

Why do you think he asks this question? Does he suspect that Jesus has a different interpretation? That maybe people have had a cross history. Has he heard about the way that Jesus treats people? Has he started to wonder whether Jesus thinks neighbor means the same thing he does? Have you ever heard people use a word that you use regular and you’re like, I don’t think we’re using that word the same way.

I wonder if that’s what’s going on here. He wonders if when Jesus says, love your neighbor, he means the same thing as He means when he thinks about loving his neighbor. And notice what we missed. We just breezed across in Leviticus 19 verse 18. This is the old take, the Old Testament take on this passage.

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone amongst your people, but love your neighbor as yourself to the people of the first century, the Jewish people that took this law to be important for them. It was very much limited. In terms of who they had to care for, who they had to love for them.

Loving a neighbors, loving a people group, loving a clan, perhaps loving a family. Perhaps he expects, I think, perhaps even hopes that Jesus gives a response based on similarity. Oh, you only have to love those in your group. You only have to love those that are like you, that look like you, that sound like you, that are part of your socioeconomic class.

Perhaps he hopes Jesus gives that answer, and Jesus doesn’t give him a direct answer. He does what Jesus does. So often, Jesus as a response tells a story and it begins this way. In reply, Jesus said, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. In the culture of the day when someone said, going from Jerusalem to Jericho, everyone would turn around and go, oh.

While that road, it was known as the Road of Blood, it regularly ended with people having their things stolen, perhaps beaten. All sorts of terrible things happened on this road. So when Jesus says someone was going from Jerusalem to Jericho, people go, oh, I know about this road. I know of what you speak.

This road was a terrifying road. It went down from Jerusalem, that’s about 14, 1500 feet above sea level, all the way down to Jericho, about 800 feet below sea level. It was barren, wild, and nobody knew what would happen. And Jesus says a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho. And I think what he invites us to do, hopes I would suggest we do is this.

He helps you imagine what it is to be that man. You imagine maybe that you woke up early in the morning before it’s even light. You pack your things, you say goodbye to your family, and you begin this journey nervous about what will happen next. Maybe imagine the part of the journey that’s done in almost darkness as the road begins to descend.

Imagine the feeling of every little movement, every animal that scurries across the path, every rock that tumbles down the cliff side, you imagine the feeling of that man as he makes this journey. And then you imagine what it is to finally hear the pattern of footsteps behind you, the sharp pain in the back of the head, and that’s the last thing you remember before you hope deeply that someone will come to your aid, someone will come to your rescue.

Jesus invites us to put ourselves in the place of the man in this story and imagine what that is that need for someone to come to our aid. Jesus said a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho. When he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes and left him naked and half dead. This is the picture of that road, the barrenness of it, the awkwardness of the journey that you were called to make.

Good news comes next in verse 31. A priest happened to be going down the same road and perhaps our immediate reaction is good. A priest will be saved, someone to come and help him. Like we like pastors, right? That good guys. And he’ll come and he’ll rescue him. The first person to enter Jesus’ story, he’s a priest, but the priest easily bypasses the situation.

The priest happened to be going down the same road and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side of the road so to a Levite, a temple worker, another religious figure, he also passes by on the other side of the road. It’s really easy to judge these guys and assume that they were just bad guys.

It’s maybe possible to read a better motive into it. There was a rule back in numbers 31. Anyone who has killed someone or touched someone who was killed must stay outside the camp seven days. Maybe they’re going to do their work in the temple. And don’t feel like they can become unclean. Maybe they’re worried about being attacked themselves.

Maybe they’re worried about all sorts of things that might happen, but for whatever reason, we give them these two religious workers, these spiritual figures walk past and leave the man there. A priest walks past a Levite, walks past on the end and move on. A priest, a Levite. What comes next? Maybe you’ve mo noticed in stories, lots of times things happen.

In threes, and this is no exception, this is a well-known Jewish format that reflects some of the ways that we either tell jokes or tell stories. We tell things in threes. A good example is this. There is, there, there’s a famous triad of jokes that people in Great Britain, in England, Scotland, and Ireland tell, it goes something like this.

There was an Englishman, a Scottish man, and an Irishman, and depending on where you are, different people are the butt of the joke. Someone comes last, if it’s the Englishman, and it’s been told in Scotland or island. The Englishman is always stuck up, always just a little bit reserved, always a little bit too distant.

If it’s told about the Scottish man is always tight, always holds on to his money. And if it’s told about the Irishman is a little daft, no assault insult to Irishman. Best example I can maybe give of this joke is this, an Englishman and a Scottish man and an Irishman, a running away from the German soldiers in World War ii, they see a barn and flee into it to hide.

While they’re there, they hear the soldiers coming to look for them, and so they hide in some sacks that they see in a corner, but the soldiers are thorough and want to do their job well. So they walk into the barn and they see the three sacks and decide it will at least look like we put in an effort.

So the first soldier walks up to one of the sacks and he kicks the sack with the Englishman name. And the Englishman goes no. And the soldier say, oh, it’s just some cats in a bag. We’ll just leave them there. Second soldier goes up to the second bag and kicks it, has the Scottish man inside it, and the Scottish man goes, woof woof.

And so they say we’ll just leave it, just some dogs in that bag. And then the third soldier goes up to the third bag with the Irishman, and he kicks that bag, and the Irishman goes potato. Everyone from a certain culture knows that this joke, this ending is coming and it’s told over and over again.

And for this group of people 2000 years ago, this story is no different. It has an intended ending to highlight a specific thing. ’cause in their stories there’s always a priest and there’s always a Levi. But the hero comes last. And the hero is always the true Israelite. And everyday Israelite man who’s doing what God called him to do.

The story functions as a way of promoting the ordinary person in the society and talking about how good they are, how valuable they are to the kingdom of God. And this story is supposed to end there, a priest, a Levite, and a true Israelite should come next. So imagine Jesus’ first audience as they listen to what will undoubtedly be the end of the parable, a priest, a Levite, a true Israelite, and imagine their anger, their frustration, when the hero of the story isn’t the Israelite, but it’s the Samaritan.

Jewish people hated Samaritans. In fact, there’s a power the paragraph in Luke chapter nine that demonstrates just that. We’ll read it in a moron. Luke 33, A Samaritan enters the story. You imagine the feeling, the anger in the introduction of the priest. And the Levi, there’s a few words that lead into the sentence and the expectation that follows, but in this one, the first word in the Greek language is just Samaritan.

And you can imagine the language, imagine the reaction, A priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. This is Luke chapter nine. Little Story that Luke intentionally, I think, throws in just before Luke chapter 10, as the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. He sent messengers on her head who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him, but the people there did not welcome him because he was heading for Jerusalem.

Jesus is rejected by a whole Samaritan town and his disciples, who no doubt hate Samaritans as much as their contemporaries have a solution to the problem. When the disciples, James and John saw this, they asked, Lord, do you want us to core fire down from heaven to destroy them? Let’s just get rid of them all.

Let’s just deal with them now. And Jesus, of course, is the one that rebukes them and says, no, that’s not how we’re going to respond. And he is deci and his disciples move to another village. Jesus tells a story in which a priest and a Levite walk by and a Samaritan will step in and become the hero. In Britain, we have a former theater that I don’t think made it over here perhaps for good reasons.

It’s called Pantomime, and it’s a type of theater that involves the audience directly. The fourth wall is regularly broken, and the audience are invited to respond. There’s usually a hero or a heroine king or a queen, a prince, a princess, a fairy of some kind and they’re cheered every time they walk onto the stage.

And then there’s usually a villain, and the villain is booed every time they walk onto the stage. And because it’s a play on the audience, it’s involves them. What usually happens is this, the hero will be on stage completely unaware of the villains presence. The villain will sneak up behind the hero, and the whole audience will come together in one voice and yell.

He’s behind you. Everyone knows what to do because it’s shared amongst the audience. It’s a common cry. He’s behind you. Usually in that moment, the heroine or hero will turn around and the villain will miraculously disappear and reappear behind them again and again. The audience will cry out.

He’s behind you. Everyone knows what to do ’cause they know what to expect from the hero, and they know what to expect from the villa. And Jesus’ story is supposed to be that way. But what happens in a pantomime when everyone knows what to expect, when suddenly the villain starts asking like a hi, like acting like a hero.

The whole audience has to pause and reassess. They have to figure out a new way to address this switch in the character’s nature. That’s what’s going on here. Jesus’ original audience has to pause and reassess the role of the Samaritan who walks into this role as a hero. Verse 33. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where a man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him.

The whole parable turns on this one verse 33. He took pity on him. It’s hard to describe in English. The Greek word sparkling nun is like this interior gut movement, this deep care that rises up out of nowhere. It’s the same kinda language used for a mother’s reaction to a child. The deep feeling in the midst of their suffering, their longing for something more.

And that’s what happens, surprisingly, perhaps to him, to this Samaritan. He suddenly deeply cares about the man wounded on the side of the road. His compassion takes hold of him and watch these next couple of verses because the language is distinctly centered around the Samaritan. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and water.

Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to the inn and took care of him. The next day, he took out two Ari two days wages and gave them to the inah. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have. This man takes every bit of the cost of care on himself and says no one else needs to do anything ’cause I am moved to care for this particular person.

The Samaritan uneducated. He might be seize the person in front of him as an image bearer of God and cares for him like he’s one. Jesus takes an enemy of the people and turns him into the hero of the story, and then asks the most obvious question. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?

Who cared for him? Was it the person that was similar to him? Was it somebody else? And the expert in the law replied of course, the one who had mercy on him. Who had mercy on him regardless of his difference, regardless of whether they worshiped the same God or agreed on the same things, it was the man who cared for him, that was the neighbor.

And Jesus says to him, go and do likewise. Go copy the Samaritan in my story. Go copy the one that you hate. Who acts. Like I would act in a situation. That’s what Jesus asks him. What is he trying to teach him? People have written all sorts of thesis on this. They’ve tried to think to make the passage about something that it isn’t.

They’ve said it’s really Jesus talking about how to get to heaven. Perhaps they’ve said it’s Jesus talking about how to value one law over the other, but really what it seems like at its heart is it’s Jesus saying, these are my values. For those around you, take those values as your own values. This is Carl Snug Grass writes a lot on parables.

The kingdom breaks abruptly into one’s consciousness and demands an overturn of our values. If we value those that are most similar to us, the kingdom says that’s not how this kingdom story works. I think the man expects, I think he hopes that Jesus will answer his question about neighbor. Based on similarity, and he gets an answer, a response just based on proximity.

The whole of their law for years, thousand years, 1500 years had said a neighbor is somebody like you. The law said Keep neighbors. Were people like you. And Jesus, in this revolutionary statement says, neighbors are just people near you. The whoever you come across, regardless of what they’re like, that’s what Jesus seems to think neighboring is.

So Jesus taught this 2000 years ago, and the church has been looking at this for a couple of thousand years. Why is it that this is so difficult? Why is it that it’s so hard to actually be interested in our neighbors to actually care for them to enter into their worlds? And I have a story that I think.

It gives an answer even though it takes a different context to get us there. This is Mount Everest, one of the most climbed mountains in the world. At least when people can, it’s become just like a line of people, often going up. So much so that people have got stuck in different places, and many people have died.

In 19 97, 2 Expeditions tried to climb Everest. They went up different sides of the mountain to get to the summit. The first expedition was hit by an incredible storm. Multiple people died and a couple of people were left dehydrated and wounded. The other expedition went up the other side of the mountain, and as they got near the summit, they came across a couple of members of the first expedition near to death.

That second expedition walked past. The wounded climbers reached the summit of the mountain and came back down to try and help them by which time the first expedition climbers had died. They were asking an interview afterwards, why did you walk past? Why didn’t you stop? What was the reason that you went and did something that you thought was important before reaching out to these people?

Desperately in need of help wounded on the side of the road, and this was their answer. We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters, 27,000 feet is not a place where people can afford morality. It was too dangerous. It was too hard. Who knows what would’ve happened if we’d stopped? That was their excuse.

Not too tired to not summit the mountain. Not so tired. They had to go back home, but they had a better task, a more important task to finish before they could stop to help 27,000 feet. It’s too high in the air. The air is too thin for us to care for those around us. I think that’s what life feels like at times.

Feels like a life where we’re doing something big, something important. There’s so much going on. The kids are too much work. Work is too much work. Our hobbies are too much work, and to stop. And care for the person on the side of the road is just too much without even beginning to worry about what might happen to us.

If we do that, will we have enough? Will we get attacked while caring for the person that’s been attacked before us? It’s so easy, I think, in our world to say, I am too busy to begin to care just like these climbers were in 1997. Dave Matthews Band, some lyrics for you driving in on this highway, all the these cars and up on the sidewalk.

People in every direction, no words exchanged, no time to exchange pictures. A world where we’re all just missing each other, all too busy zipping past each other. To begin to stop Carl Gras one more time. Actually being present with people and actually seeing them is expected. Are followers of Jesus.

That’s how Jesus lived his life and what he dreams for us when he imagines the life that you and I might live. And so practice number one of five, the easy one, the one within reach for every single person that’s listening here and online is to be praying for those around us. It’s so obvious, if I’m honest.

I rarely think to do it. It doesn’t require, knowing our neighbors doesn’t require knowing their names, at least just knowing that they live, that they exist. It’s the smallest thing we can do to care for them. It’s counterintuitively two things at the same time. Prayer is the least we can do for those around us, but because I believe in what prayer does, it’s also the most we can do for those around us.

We’re invited to just notice that those people exist to choose to ask God that he would bless them and keep them, that he would do good for them. That’s the invite. That I think Jesus has for us the first easy step to becoming a neighbor to those that live around you. I got a chance to chat to someone after the first service who just bought a house somewhere else that they visit occasionally, and she said we arrived in a small clump of nine or 10 houses and people had lived there for 20 years and never met.

So the first thing we did was through a big party and people just came and chatted and laughed and enjoyed life together. I would love us if we were known as the Party Church for those good kind of reasons that we invited in, those that had never met before, but I wonder whether that doesn’t begin with praying for them.

When Laura and I moved here in 2020, we found South Fellowship as a church. I remember Laura walked in and we hung out with some people in that courtyard outside and she walked out and said, this is home, this is family. And then we found what felt like the perfect neighborhood, a small cul-de-sac in Highlands Ranch.

I’m not gonna tell you where it is ’cause I used to live in a church that had a parino and everyone knew where I lived. And so I’m just a little triggered by that. I don’t, it was this small neighborhood where everybody got on well. There were kids in multiple houses and everyone seemed to laugh and have fun together.

And then we came back from vacation. We were gone for about three weeks and came back to a road that had just stopped communicating. Some people had fallen out on 4th of July. It was just this thing where people just became enemies almost overnight, and we came back to a bunch of people that no longer talk to us.

Seen us, saw us as outsiders, and for a while it just bugged me and then it did what should have been the most obvious thing in the world to a pastor. Began to pray for them. Whenever I saw them, just began to pray that God will bless them, encouraged them. I have a friend back in England who has this saying, and he said it for the last 20 or 30 years.

It goes like this. And when I pray coincidences happen and when I don’t, they don’t. Not long ago, a few months ago, I was walking with my youngest kid, Leo, down the road, and I ran into one of my neighbors who’d ignored me for two years straight. Every time he drove down the road, he fixed his eyes dead in front of him, criticizing him for looking at the road right now.

But he ignored me whenever he could. And we fell into this conversation, catching up, sharing news, all of those things that I felt like we’d been missing for a while. When I pray coincidences happen and when I don’t, they don’t. Here’s what I think is true about prayer and how it works. When we pray for our neighbors, prayer might change my neighbor, and I’m glad it did in that case, but it definitely changes me.

My sense of bitterness in terms of how they act, maybe my sense of being an outcast, all those different things begins to change something in my heart, begin to want for their good long to hear stories that God has blessed them. Think that’s the first step in learning to be neighbors. Jesus seems to have this deep way of caring for every single person, and if I’m honest, I don’t do that.

When I begin to pray for them, something in me changes my care for them changes, and they become just a little bit more like Jesus. Jesus, thank you that you invite us into your big story. You don’t just do it yourself for some reason. You trust people like me and you say, be involved. Share this good news.

Use words when you must. I pray that you would help me to live like you in the little neighborhood you’ve given me to call home, and I pray that for my friends as well. But somehow the culture we have here at South embracing this idea of living like Jesus, living with his heart. I pray that would spread to our neighborhoods too, that it wouldn’t just be a thing we do here.

It’ll be a thing we do everywhere. I pray you would bless my friends here today. Encourage them. For those that feel this is way out of reach for them. God, I pray that you would give them your values. Give them your courage. Thank you for this great mission. You left us. Amen.