How and why to CARE a sermon by R. Charles Grant, D.Min. Bon Air Presbyterian Church - Richmond, Virginia Lent 3 March 15, 2009 Texts: I John 4:7-21 Luke 10:30-37 Acts 5:1-7 I continue my Lenten sermon series today as we consider how and why to CARE. As it was with how and why to forgive and how and why to pray, the WHY to care may seem the more obvious: if Christian faith is about anything worthwhile at all, it is about caring for one another. It is not the WHY CARE that stumps us. The challenge is HOW TO CARE. When a friend dies, do you ever struggle with what to say to the survivors? Or a neighbor s child develops a serious and debilitating disorder do you find it difficult to know how to respond? A friend or a family member loses his job and is clearly in financial hardship. You care about this person and are concerned about his troubles, but what do you do? Someone you know well has an addiction problem and falls off the wagon. Do you tell her husband? Do you confront her? Do you pray, but otherwise stay uninvolved? Knowing how to care for someone in need can be both a technical and personal challenge. Now for sure, those of us who are professional care-givers may indeed have some insights to offer and pointers to share with you as you seek to know how to care. But as I hope we will discover this morning, the WHY CARE question has more to do with the HOW TO CARE dilemma than you might think. How and why to care. In a little book I return to often, On Caring, author Milton Mayeroff writes: To care for another person, in the most significant sense, is to help him grow and actualize himself. Caring, as helping another grow and actualize himself, is a process Caring has a way of ordering our values and activities. (1,2) Mayeroff suggests that the HOW and the WHY of caring cannot be separated. When I care for another person, I am committed to helping that person grow into all that God would have that person become. Through my caring for you, I also find fulfillment through my care for you. How I care for you flows out of who I am, and when and how I care for you shapes who I am as well. A contemporary of Mayeroff, psychologist Carl R. Rogers states it well:...the degree to which I can create relationships with facilitate the growth of others as separate persons is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself Why care? Simply put, the Bible is all about it and Jesus commands it. As the author of I John writes, 7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is
from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. And as Jesus says in the gospel of John, Beloved, a new commandment I give you: that you love one another. Now, love and care may not be the same thing, but cannot you really have love someone if you don t care about him or her? And in some of Jesus most difficult words, What greater love has a person than to lay down one s life for one s friends. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said that the great insight of Christian faith is the linking of religious obligation and love in the simple command thou shalt love. But though we are commanded to love commanded to care, if you will as followers of Jesus we do not hear that command as a BURDEN. Again, Mayeroff states it well: when it comes to the obligations of our religious faith, we do not experience such obligations as forced on us, or as necessary evils; there is a convergence between what we feel we are supposed to do and what we want to do (9) Jesus summed the essence of religious faith this way: You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself. For Christian believers, then, caring for others is our calling. Caring for others is what we want and try to do, because through Jesus Christ we can see that the life of caring and a life in communion with God are one and the same. We care because God cares. God cares for us, empowering us to care. And calling to care. That s WHY care. What about HOW TO CARE? The Bible is filled with examples of how to care for one another. None better than the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. In our selection for today, I have intentionally stripped away the setting of Jesus confrontation with a man seeking to justify himself so as to direct us to focus on the story as a story about how to care. Let s look again at this story we know so well: A man fell among robbers. The parable begins with a MAN IN NEED. The story begins where all of us begin: as persons in need. The type and depth of our need differs. That we are in need is universal. The man who fell among robbers is an everyman kind of figure. A person who needs care. Several persons pass him by. For the parable, of course, it is important to note that they are RELIGIOUS people who pass him by, persons we might suppose knew HOW to care for him but couldn t see WHY it was important to care for him. Then another person sees him. The Samaritan. What is different about the Samaritan and the first two is that he actually SEES the man in need, that is, he sees him through heart: he is filled with compassion, the story says, and the understanding then was that the seat of compassion was not the head but the
heart. And it is significant that the Samaritan and the man in the ditch, the Jewish man in the ditch, were from rival racial-religious groups who were not friends. Yet the Samaritan sees the Jew as a man who needs care. The insight here: we do not always get to choose who needs our care; in a sense, the one needing care chooses us. And what does the Samaritan do? He binds his wounds. He responds to the man s needs. He cares for him. He gives him the kind of care he needs, when he needs it. Then he takes him to an inn. The Samaritan gives the immediate care the Jewish man needs today, and arranges for the continuity of care he will need tomorrow. And then he withdraws. He doesn t become the man s long-term, daily caregiver. But he does establish a relationship: he promises to return again. The care he extends is both interrupted for a time and then reestablished. Jesus tells the parable to startle his listeners into a new understanding of WHY to care. But the parable he tells also gives us a model for HOW to care. HOW do you care for someone? You first have to learn what it is that the person needs. But even before that, the parable reminds us we first must SEE a person in need for what he is: a person, a human being like ourselves, who needs our assistance. Knowing HOW to care and WHY to care happens almost simultaneously for the Samaritan. For most of us, gaining the knowledge of how to care comes AFTER we are moved with Good Samaritan-like compassion. Caring for another person is a HANDS ON activity. Now, we may not be an EMT like the Good Samaritan, but if you would care for another person, be prepared to give of yourself in your care: physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. Note also a subtle lesson available in the parable: caring has its limits. Has its own rhythm of engagement and withdrawal. This is what family members find so hard to do when called upon to be the primary caregiver for a loved one. It s often hard for you to GET a break from your care giving. It is also hard to TAKE a break. The Good Samaritan story is for all of us a reminder that as best you can, it is important to schedule your care. Important for the person being cared for as well as important for the caregiver. Now, that doesn t mean we leave a man in a ditch if it is inconvenient to care that day that was the logic followed by that infamous priest and Levite. No, extending urgent care when it is needed seldom comes at a convenient time. But when the immediate crisis passes, a schedule for ongoing care is needed. Which leads to another of our texts for today, the story in Acts of the calling of the first deacons. The first care team in the church. Why did the
church seek out deacons? Because the care of the widows was falling by the wayside. The pastors couldn t do it all! The pastors and the church and the widows all needed a plan and good people to work the plan so that all who needed care in the community could have their needs met. And hey, it s turned out to be a pretty good model for how to extend care through the church And there is one more element to care that is only implied in the parable. How to RECEIVE care. In the parable, it seems the Jewish man was in no position to refuse care from the hated but good Samaritan. But I imagine he could have refused. But somehow perhaps through the grace of the moment he accepted the care offered. Now, I suppose if you are bleeding beside the road it is easy to receive care. But it is no less important for each of us to learn how to accept care for ourselves. It is said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. And that is true. But all the same, it IS a blessing to receive. And each of us, at one time or another, will need care just as much as that man in the ditch. And we need to learn how to receive the care we need. Sally was, as they say, "born and reared in the church". She had always been there, singing, preparing a meal for a sick friend, teaching in the church school, serving on the session. Then one day, things just fell apart. She couldn t cope anymore, and was hospitalized in a town about 30 miles away. That s where Jim came into the story. Sally and Jim were lifelong friends. Not the closest of friends, perhaps, but friends all the same. And when Sally was hospitalized, Jim was thrown for a loop. He didn t know how to offer her care. So he just went to see Sally in the hospital. The first time she would not see him, so he just left a note, "miss you". On another trip she still wouldn t see him, so he just wrote another note, "praying for you". This went on for some time, Jim stopping by the hospital whenever he was nearby on business. Then one day when he stopped by, Sally came out to see him. And they just talked. And Jim told Sally how things were going back at the church, and how much her friends missed her. Before long, Sally was home for a weekend, and she came to church, and with Jim s encouragement, Sally greeted her old friends, who were delighted to see her. And before long, she was back, back home, back at work, back at church. Now, maybe Jim s care for his friend had nothing to do with her recovery at all. And then again, maybe, just maybe, his words, his presence, his care, had everything in the world to do with her recovery! Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God. AMEN.
Luke 10:30-37 30 Jesus replied, 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. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend. 36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? 37 He said, The one who showed him mercy. Jesus said to him, Go and do likewise. I John 4:7-21 7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, I love God, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. Acts 6:1-7 1 Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being
neglected in the daily distribution of food. 2 And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables. 3 Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task, 4 while we, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word. 5 What they said pleased the whole community, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. 6 They had these men stand before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. 7 The word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.