Sermon

October 23, 2005

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on October 23, 2005, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar tells the probably apocryphal story of an old man in Virginia about two hundred years ago. The old guy was traveling on foot and needed to cross a substantial river, so he resolved to hitch a ride with a horseman traveling in the same direction. Before too long a group of horsemen came down the road toward the river. The old man let the first rider go by without asking for a ride, then the second, third, fourth and fifth. Finally as the sixth rider drew abreast, the old man looked him in the eye and said, “Sir, would you give me a ride across the river?” The rider readily agreed, but as the old man began to dismount on the other side, the rider asked, “Sir, I could not help but notice that you permitted all the others in my party to pass by without asking them for a ride. Then when I came abreast you immediately asked me to carry you across. I am curious as to why you didn’t ask them and you did ask me.” The old man replied, “I looked into their eyes and could see no love and I knew in my heart it would be useless to ask them for a ride. But when I looked into your eyes, I saw compassion, love and the willingness to help. I knew you would be glad to give me a ride across the river.” The rider was touched. “I am grateful for your judgment,” he told the old man, and with that, says Ziglar, Thomas Jefferson rode on from Monticello to the White House. Ziglar reminds us that the eyes are the windows of our souls. Then he asks, “If you had been the last rider, would the old man have asked you for a ride?”

I think it is important that we remember that Jesus asks us to love, and is not too specific about HOW we are to love. In the Gospel of Matthew, the occasion for Jesus’ famous summary of the Jewish law is another dispute between Jesus and the religious authorities. In an attempt to make a fool of Jesus, they ask him to choose which one of almost two hundred serious scriptural commandments is the greatest. Jesus’ response cuts to the heart of the matter: the most important commandments are these: “Love God and love your neighbor.” All the weight of the entire Bible hangs, not on specific do’s and don’ts, but on a relationship. We are supposed to care for God and show it by caring for those around us. If we have compassion, love and the willingness to help we are not far from the kingdom of God .

Jesus’ commandment is easy to remember and tough to do. As I mentioned last week, there are a lot of hard choices to make in life. Is it more loving to help your child play hockey on Sunday mornings or to help her go to church? Is it more loving to buy a new car or to help the church fix the roof? Even if we thread our way through all these choices, the sheer volume of the world’s need is overwhelming. I think most of us are numbed by the constant demands on our compassion: we go from hurricane to hurricane, from war to earthquake to flood. It is hard to know where to begin.

Jesus’ commandment to love God and our neighbor doesn’t really tell us where to begin, just reminds us that we begin where we are and follow wherever compassion leads. Sometimes beginning where we are leads to rather splashy acts of love. I was present when two former parishioners began to get involved with political refugees. Liz and Tom were Colgate University professors who were touched by the plight of refugees from the crackdown in Poland on the Solidarity movement. Since Liz and Tom were empty nesters, they threw themselves into refugee resettlement, heart and soul. It was some years later after resettling more than a dozen refugee families and after having retired from teaching that a trip to Burma made them aware of the plight of refugees in that war torn region. A summer of teaching in a refugee school eventually led Liz and Tom to devote their retirement to teaching in Burma and to the creation of a small foundation to help with that teaching effort.

Others I have known have not had such splashy results. Some of the most loving people I know have led much quieter lives, working hard at being loving parents and loving neighbors who occasionally help out with volunteer efforts like the Interfaith Hospitality Network for the Homeless, or with Habitat for Humanity or Literacy Volunteers—or any of the buffet of opportunities you’ll hear about at coffee hour today at our “Ministry Fair”. The important thing to remember is that Jesus doesn’t ask us to accomplish splashy results. Jesus simply asks us to continue to be in relationship with God by being in a loving relationship with those around us.

To summarize this message, I’d like to turn to the amazing world of tournament poker. One of the most successful characters in that world is a fellow named Amarillo Slim who has won the World Series of Poker. Slim’s poker-playing motto is, “Decisions, not results.” You see Slim is convinced that the results of one particular game don’t mean a thing. He believes that if you make the right decisions about what cards to play enough times, the results will take care of themselves in the long run. As you play, says Slim, focus on “Decisions, not results.” It seems to me that what is true of poker is even more true of the great game of divine love. The results are not so important. Sometimes we will accomplish tremendous feats of loving. We’ll make a huge dent in poverty, heal disasters, or at least make our own little corner of the universe a better place. Sometimes it will be hard to see any results at all. But through it all, the thing that really matters is whether we continue to have compassion, love and the willingness to help. What really matters is what God and the old man on the side of the road see when they look into our eyes. I hope what they see is love. AMEN