…YOU FOOL!”

A sermon based upon Luke 12: 13-21

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

October 20th, 2019

My mother warned me not to call anyone a ‘fool’.

Jesus said ‘if anyone called their brother a fool they’d be in danger of hell fire. (Matt. 5:23). Yikes!  I’ve never called anyone a fool since.  But it’s not because I’ve haven’t wanted to. 

People can do some really stupid, foolish things. Can’t they?  An old story in Reader's Digest told of a man who flew his own plane on vacation, but got tired of the long auto trip from the airport to his country place situated on a lovely lake. So he equipped his plane with pontoons so he could land right in front of his cottage. However, on his first trip up to the country with his newly-equipped plane, he headed for a landing at the airport just as he always had done in the past.  I guess you could say, old habits are hard to break.

But just as he was going in for the landing it dawned on his wife what was happening and she hollered, "What do you think you're doing? You can't land this thing on the runway. You don't have any wheels, you've got pontoons on it!"

Fortunately, her warning shout was in time and he pulled up from his landing pattern, swung the airplane around, and headed the plane for a landing on the lake. After the plane landed safely on the lake he heaved a really big sigh of relief, turned to his wife and said, "That's about the stupidest thing I've ever done!"  And then he opened the door, stepped out and fell directly into the lake."

Haven’t you done something really stupid?  I know I have.  Who will admit it?  Come on now, I’m not the only one. 

Someone has made a list of "Politically Correct Ways of Indicating Stupidity." Perhaps you have heard some of these. They're quite creative. Speaking of someone who has done something really dumb, we might say:

He's a few clowns short of a circus . . .

A few fries short of a Happy Meal . . .

A few peas short of a casserole . . .

He doesn't have all his corn flakes in one box . . .

The wheel's spinning, but the hamster's dead . . .

His antenna doesn't pick up all the channels . . .

His belt doesn't go through all the loops . . .

The elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor . . .

He is several cards short of a full deck . . .

If he had another brain, it would be lonely . . .

Missing a few buttons on his remote control . . .

The lights are on, but nobody's home . . .

All these are just polite ways of saying that sometimes, people do really dumb things.

In our text today, which gives us Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool,  a wealthy man who does something really foolish.  It is God who calls that man a ‘fool’, or a moron, if you want to get technical about it.  Moran is simply the Greek word for fool.  Although my mother said not to call anyone a fool, God can. He’s God.  My mother told me that too.  But for God to do something he tells us not to do, must be pretty serious, don’t you think? Why on earth did God dare call a man who had everything a fool? 

BE ON GUARD AGAINST GREED….

One of the oldest stories about a wealthy man dying was told about Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher.  After the richest man in the world died, people where standing around talking about how much money he left behind.  One fellow, overhearing the conversation declared that he knew exactly how much money Aristotle left behind.  He said: ‘everything’.  Sobering thought.  There are no uhaul’s behind hearses.

One of the reasons, the man is Jesus story was called “fool”, was exactly because he did not understand this; that we can leave and loose everything a lot faster than we get it, and besides that, we actually can hold on to nothing.  This man in Jesus parable didn’t seem to understand this most basic reality: that we can take nothing with us.  But, he’s just a fictional person in a story Jesus told.  The parable pointed to another foolish person in real life.  His actions motivated Jesus to tell this story in the first place.

It all happened right after Jesus had been teaching a crowd of thousands, when a man approached him seeking an answer about money.  Obviously money and the love of money was an issue in Jesus’ day just as it is in ours.   The Bible contains around 500 verses on prayer, 200 verses on faith, and about 2000 verses on money. This biblical attention on money and wealth reveals the importance of money in our lives.

But Jesus hadn’t been teaching about money, at first.  He called was warning about coming tribulations when a certain man interrupted him.   Our text says in, verse 13, “Someone from the crowd” wanted Jesus “tell (his) brother to divide the inheritance with (him).”  Jesus responded negatively to his request: “Dude, what does this have to do with me” (V.14).  Jesus then used this moment to teach about the dangers of money and acquired wealth:  Watch out and be on guard against all greed…” Like so many people, this man was so distracted by his concerns for money the he didn’t pay attention to what Jesus had been teaching.  He didn’t really come to learn from Jesus, or to do something for Jesus, but he only wanted Jesus to do something for him.   

The overarching issue Jesus addresses is human greed.  In a recently movie, entitled Wall Street, the main character, a Financial Broker, in a speech to all his partners says,  “Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good!”  Here, however, Jesus sees ‘greed’ very differently.  The word Jesus uses here, means the ‘desire to have more’.  The real problem with desiring more, is that it leads to never having enough.  Jesus illustrates this with a parable: a story told beside the real story so we can see it.  This story is about this wealthy man who already had enough, but still didn’t have enough.  He built ‘bigger barns’, not because he needed money, or to keep his business going, but only because he wanted it.  He wanted to feel safe, and establish security with money.  Like the person thinks they can buy happiness, this man thought money was all he needed to be safe and secure.

The point Jesus was making is that this man was already more secure than most, but he still needed more.  The issue hear is that wealthy people struggle with greed too; just like many people do, even when they already have more than they’ll ever need. Having money doesn’t make you less greedy.  In fact, wanting more and more is seldom connected to material need, but it’s often points to a spiritual, emotional deficiency—a spiritual hurt that shows up a obsessive need and demand for more and more, so that enough is never enough.   

Jesus defined true success security by pointing out that it can’t be achieved with one’s possessions.   Jesus wants this fellow and everyone to know, that having money will not solve all your problems.  Of corse, Some money might solve a few problems, and cover up a lot a problems, but normally, money makes more problems than it solves.   

Jesus emphasized this by giving this strong warning using the phrases “Watch out” and “Be on your guard.” He did this to reveal the underlying danger of giving into greed, like this person who never has enough. The world measures a person’s worth by his wealth; God views a person’s worth very differently.

The big question in this story is not the story, but whether the man struggling with his sibling over the inheritance would see himself in the story. Jesus told parables not necessarily to make things easier, but to invite the person into the story, not just to illustrate a point; but to confront people with the truth they were too blind to see.  It was a truth that could save lives, both now and forever.  It was to keep people from being ‘stupid’ with the only life they have to live, with the people they have to live life with.

I’LL BUILD BIGGER BARNS!

16“Then He told them a parable:  “A rich  man’s land was very productive. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What should I do, since I don’t have anywhere to store my crops? 18 I will do this,’ he said. ‘I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones and store all my grain and my goods there. 19 Then I’ll say to myself, “You  have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy;  eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.” ’

Did you get what this guy did that was so stupid?  He said: “I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones and store all my grain and my goods there”.   In much of the business world today, this is the right approach.  Take care of the business, look after yourself, and ‘the heck with the other guy’.   That’s competition.  That’s business.  That’s what it takes to survive in the ‘dog eat dog world’.  But what the world calls good business, Jesus called foolish.   Rather than finding ways to share his abundance to help others, he focused on hoarding more and more of the harvest only for himself.   The economy in the area depended on farmers selling or sharing their crops. His decision affected a lot of people, not just him. He only cared about his needs.  He didn’t care about the needs of others. He was only looking out for ‘numero uno’.  And he thought he could do this with money alone.

So, there are two ways money and wealth can turn us into fools.  Are you ready?

One main problem with money is that it promises to give what only God can give. In addition, love of money take the place of loving God with our lives. When money becomes a god it will lead to greed. Greed lies to us, it blinds us, and it ultimately destroys us. It is interesting to note Jesus did not give the man a name in the story. His riches defined him.   Jesus also called attention to the fact that the man’s wealth came from the ground; it was not something he could boast about, God provided his abundance. The man showed his lack of gratitude to God by wanting to keep it all for his own. The man revealed his attitude toward his blessing by repeating the words “I” and “my.” He had no sense of obligation to anyone else.

Jesus portrayed too, how the man constantly thought to himself and talked to himself. He did not consult any another person. Luke consistently used a person’s selfishness to portray that person in a negative light.  Notice how many times he uses the word, ‘I’.  Other examples of this can be found in Luke 2:35, 5:21-22; 6:8; and 9:46-47.   Only thinking for himself, and about himself, this farmer never considered that his feasting would likely lead to famine for others. All he wanted to do was take an early retirement and take life easy. That was his big plan. He had won the lottery and he depended on his windfall to make him happy. His motto was “Eat, drink, and be merry.” He forgot the part about “for tomorrow we may die.”

WHOSE WILL THEY BE?

God called this man a fool.   ‘You fool!  This very night your life is demanded of you. And the things you have prepared—whose will they be?’  “That’s how it is with the one who stores up treasure  for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Again, this is rare. In the Old Testament only a person who says there is no God is a fool.   Here is the only other person in Scripture named a fool by God.  Why was he called a fool?  This fool made plenty of provision for retirement, but made no provision for eternity.  He made no plans for presenting his soul to God. 

Just the other day, a man, who was still working in his 70’s, told me that all his friends who stopped working, when they retired, died.   My neighbor in, Mr. Roy Austin, stopped working at the mill at age 65 and went home only to die in a couple of days.   To die before you plan to, outer in a way you didn’t plan, happens to most everybody, doesn’t it?  And if you make plans, you will still be surprised when it happens, or when you learn it will happen. 

And even if you can’t plan when or how you will die, if you’re not making plans to die (before you know it), you’re being foolish too.  In the parable, this man’s life was demanded of him, whether he was ready for it or not. The word demanded means to something on loan that had to be returned.  Life is like that.  We have a life, but it’s never really ours.   Now, it was required of him to pay for a debt and he hadn’t planned on paying back.  In other words, this man had invested in the wrong stock.  Now, after telling him his time was up, and that his money or wealth wouldn’t buy even one more day, one more hour, or one more minute, or second:  God looks at all his barns, all his money and wealth and asks,.  “Who gets all this, now?”  

Now, don’t misunderstand, Jesus was not condemning this man’s success or even his material possessions. He condemned the man because he invested only in his own life to the detriment of others.   Jesus doesn’t express that God has a problem with people possessing wealth, but he’s saying there’s great peril in being possessed by wealth.  

When people are defined by what they own, what they own ends up owning them.  My Dad used to tell me, “Son, it’s one thing to want something, but it’s another thing to get it, and have to take care of it.”  One way possessions can own people is by demanding our time and effort. If a person is constantly afraid to lose their possessions, that person can become obsessed defending and protecting those possessions.

Jesus closed the story by calling attention to people who are rich in possessions but who are not rich in the things of God.  The real issue here is priorities.  It is the question of what matters most.  It is a question that constantly stays with each of us, everyday, all the way down to the final stretch of our lives. 

Because we are mortal, and because our lives are full, free, but short, we can all see our own faces in this story. We all struggle between storing up treasures here on earth; doing things that matter now, verses storing treasures in heaven; doing things that make an impact on others, our families and the world after we are gone.  The only way most people to learn to deal with the dilemma of wealth, is to have something happen to us, to remind us what really matters before we die.  Fortunately, you don’t have to wait to learn what it means to be ‘smart’ with the only life you have.  The Holy Spirit is in the reality business.  To hear the Spirit, you must learn from what Jesus is saying.

One way to ‘get real’ in the Spirit, is to experience the goodness, grace and generosity of God, so that you can learn what really matters in life.   When you understand what ‘good’ really is, and that ‘good’ is more about ‘who’ than ‘what’, you are beginning to learn about what is most valuable in life.  And When you experience this kind of spiritual intelligence, the kind Jesus was teaching about, it’s becomes easier, to stop just ‘taking’ and to start becoming a ‘giver’ with you life.  Teresa told me recently about her hair dresser, a lady in her 40’s who was getting excited about going to the Prom.  Yes, you heard me.  She was going to the special prom they were having for special needs kids at Western Avenue Baptist Church, and she was taking a young special needs child, who loved to ‘dance’. He was excited too, but he said he didn’t want to have to wear a tux.  He just wanted to move, even though he could only shuffle his feet.  And what a joy, she said it would be, to get to take him to take him to the prom.

Giving to others in need, is the best, biblical way to store up treasures in heaven. John 3:16 says “For God so loved he gave . . .” This is what love does, it gives.

On the news recently, an was the author of the new book, “Happy Money.”  The writer was also a TED Talks contributor, who said that it wasn’t enough to ‘give’ generally, but that the happiest givers were those who gave specifically, who had special interests and concerns and wanted to stay in touch with who, what and where, their money helped.  That author also said, according statistics, money doesn’t make people happy, unless they are helping someone with it.  Jesus told us that in this story a long, long time who.  And it wasn’t because he was smart.  He was God in human flesh (CBS This Morning, April 26, 2019). 

Now, don’t you wonder whatever happened to the man who wanted Jesus to settle his inheritance?  I wonder if he got the message, or if he, like so many, just let it go over his head, instead of letting it sink deep into his heart?  How about you?  Amen.

A FRIEND…AT MIDNIGHT.”

A sermon based upon Luke 11: 1-13
By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
October 13th, 2019

One of my favorite songs is Carol King’s ‘You’ve got a friend’. James Taylor’s recording first made it popular in the 1970’s.  Most of you probably know it:
When you're down and troubled.   And you need some love and care
And nothing, nothing is going right.   Close your eyes and think of me
And soon I will be there,  To brighten up even your darkest night
You just call out my name. And you know wherever I am
I'll come running, to see you again.    Winter, spring, summer or fall
All you have to do is call.   And I'll be there.   You've got a friend.”

Jesus says that prayer is a friend like this.    But with a friend who does not always seem to answer, especially when we are in desperate need ‘at midnight’, prayer can also be a friend who is frustrating, even causing unexpected hurt and unwanted misunderstanding.  As one lady once asked me: “Why are we told to ask anything, when we know we won’t get it?’

The frustration of prayer can be the same kind of feeling once expressed in the comic strip Frank and Ernest, when one of them has a conversation with God:
"Is it true, God, that a thousand years is but a second to you?"
"Yes."
"And is it true that a million dollars is but a penny to you?"
"Yes."
"Uh, can I have a penny?"
"Certainly...wait a second."

How do we pray? How does God answer prayer? Why does God sometimes seem to ignore my prayers? Questions like these lie just beneath the surface of Luke’s unique version of Jesus discourse on prayer.

TEACH US TO PRAY
More than any other gospel, Luke stresses the importance of prayer in Jesus' life (see 3:21, 5:16, 6:12, 9:18, 9:28, 10:21-22, 11:1, 22:41-4, 23:46).   For Luke, prayer was such a daily priority for Jesus that his disciples felt the need to ask him to teach them about prayer.  What is most noticeable, however, is that the disciples did not so much ask Jesus how to pray, but they wanted Jesus to teach them to pray --to take the practice of prayer as seriously as he took it.  They wanted Jesus to help them make prayer a priority in their daily lives.

Why and how should we make prayer a priority in our lives too?  One of my favorite episodes in the cartoon strip “Peanuts” pictures the piano-loving Schroeder and his constant admirer, Lucy. Lucy interrupts Schroeder half-way through one of his many concerts. She says, “Do you know what love is?” He quickly stops, stands, and speaks: “Love (luv), noun, to be fond of: a strong affection for or attachment or devotion to a person or persons.” Abruptly he sits down and resumes playing.
Stunned and puzzled, Lucy turns away and murmurs, “On paper, he’s great.”
Like Linus, ‘on paper’, we may know that we need to pray, but it’s not as easy as it sounds, especially in a world where we have so much to do, and such a short time to do it.  Of course, when a time of crisis occurs, people may call out a brief prayer most naturally.  Who did not cry out or say to yourself ‘Oh my God!’ or ‘My goodness!’ when you watched the Twin Towers fall on 9/11, or when you saw Notre Dame in flames?  When bad, or good things happen, even unbelieving people echo a most natural, primitive form of prayer.  Because we are religious creatures we pray.  Because we are people in need, we pray.
Anne Lamott writes in Traveling Mercies that our two best prayers are: ‘help me, help me, help me" and "thank you, thank you, thank you" (p. 82).  My late aunt’s common expression of surprise was “Goodness gracious sakes alive”.  That’s a great southern expression that derived from an old expression of prayer, but is this really praying? Or was this just cultural ways of expressing feelings, fears, hopes, or joy?
My favorite expression of surprise is simply, ‘Great day in the morning!’  And I often say this in the evening too.  When I was teaching English in Germany, a student ask me about sayings like this: ‘Do you know what that means?’  I answered ‘No, but I know how it feels.’  So much of our language, and our praying too, is not as much about the actual words we use, but the words express feelings we can and sometimes can’t express.
Prayer, at it’s core, is about expressing our deepest needs and feelings to God. Prayer isn’t just talking to ourselves, but it’s about making a daily priority to keep our hearts open to God.  The focus of prayer is to express our true heart, being honest with ourselves because we are being honest to God.

Taking time to pray is, then, as the Psalmist says, to stop, to be still and quiet, so that we will  ‘know that the Lord is God.’ In true prayer we recognize who God is as we also recognize who we are not.  In prayer we face this constant, most basic truth of life: as limited and dependent human beings we constantly stand in the need.  Like the spiritual says: ‘It’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.’  We are people who need God, who need others, and who need to face the truth about who we are and who we aren’t.

This need to pray is a religious need because it is a most basic human need. As Shakespeare himself understood when one of his characters said, “to thine own self be true” , we all must constantly fight with our own delusions of life.  Only in a spirit of prayerfulness, are we able to separate reality from illusion; truth from fiction, and the greatest good, from what can become the most descriptive lie.  In other words, it is through the daily kneeling of the human hearts before God that we become most fully human.  Prayer not only keeps not only from losing our hearts, but it also keeps us from losing our heads as well.  Only when we acknowledge God as truly God, will we discover our true and best self. There was a violin teacher, though not a very successful one, who had a good deal of wisdom that was refreshing. A friend called on him one day and said, “Well, what’s the good news today?” The old music teacher went over to a tuning fork suspended by a cord and struck it with a mallet. “There is the good news for today,” he said. “That, my friend, is A. It was A all day yesterday. It will be A all day tomorrow, next week, and for a thousand years. The soprano upstairs warbles off-key, the tenor next door flats his high ones, and the piano across the hall is out of tune. Noise all around me, noise; but that, my friend, is A.”
Doesn’t this story remind us why prayer is so necessary and needed today?  Without being honest and open to God’s perspective—what is always true and absolute, humans can quickly lose their own?  When those movie stars and other privileged people thought they could ‘buy’ success for their children by bribing their way into elite schools, they lost their way.  When people think it is the end of the world because they don’t get what they want, they also lose all sense of reality.  Some end up either taking their own lives or taking the lives of others.  When a young man saw the pretty young girl Jayme Closs, he killed her parents and kidnapped her.  Later when authorities asked why, his only answer was, ‘When he saw her, he knew she was the one.’  What was he thinking? What kind of explanation is that for killing her parents and kidnapping a young girl?  Was he insane or was he lost in his own mind?

Humans can become all kinds of ‘lost’ when we lose perspective.  The disciples lived in a world had lost its perspective, and we still live in that kind of world.  The world has it’s own mind, and giving into it can be destructive.   What the disciples saw in Jesus was a way back.  They witness something hopeful in Jesus’ perspective.  Jesus way of prayer and prayerfulness gave them hope.  Later, the apostle Paul saw prayer as the supreme spiritual weapon negative spiritual powers.

WHENEVER YOU PRAY….
We should pray, but what are we to prayer about?  Even the apostle Paul wrote to the  Romans: “We do not know how to pray as we ought”(8:26).

The late conservative commentator Paul Harvey told about a 3-year-old boy who went to the grocery store with his mother. Before they entered she had certain instructions for the little tike: "Now you’re not going to get any chocolate chip cookies, so don’t even ask."

She put him in the child's seat and off they went up and down the aisles. He was doing just fine until they came to the cookie section. Seeing the chocolate chip cookies he said, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you not even to ask. You’re not going to get any at all.”

They continued down the aisles, but in their search for certain items she had to back track and they ended up in the cookie aisle again. “Mom, can I please have some chocolate chip cookies?” She said, “I told you that you can ’t have any. Now sit down and be quiet.”

Finally, they arrived at the checkout. The little boy sensed that the end was in sight, that this might be his last chance. He stood up on the seat and shouted in his loudest voice, “In the name of Jesus, may I have some chocolate chip cookies?” Everyone in the checkout lanes laughed and applauded. Do you think the little boy got his cookies? You bet! The other shoppers moved by his daring pooled their resources. The little boy and his mother left with 23 boxes of chocolate chip cookies.

When are told to pray about everything, but prayer still has a special agenda.  When the disciples asked Jesus to ‘teach them to pray’ Jesus gave a pattern for true prayer.  The response, which Both Luke and Matthew describe, is what we call the Lord's Prayer, but it might more accurately be named ‘the disciple’s prayer’. Jesus was giving this prayer not so much as words to recite and say, but as a pattern or way for a disciples to live.
While Luke’s version shares the same basic elements of Matthew’s rendering, Luke’s  emphasis sounds more down-to-earth, placing emphasis on daily concerns of securing "bread for tomorrow" and living in a spiritual community of faith.  At the core of this prayer, however, there is only one major concern.  Each of the seven petitions made ‘flesh out’ what it means for God’s name be kept holy.  In other words,  when God’s name is hallowed and respected, the kingdom comes near.  God’s kingdom comes near when God’s will is done.  God’s will is done when there is daily bread for everyone.  When everyone has what they need,  people don’t have to have everything they want, so people desire to live in a spiritual community of forgiveness and peace.  When such a forgiving spirit prevails, people are delivered from all kinds of temptations, trials, and evils.
Can you see the pattern and the process of faithful prayer?  Daily prayer shapes daily life and invites God’s presence into our lives so that life’s priorities and human relationships are transformed.  The spiritual teacher, Brother Lawrence’s, called this daily practice “practicing the presence of God.” But like all practice, it must be regular.  A concert pianist who said, “If I miss practice for one day, I know it. If I miss two days, the critics know it. If I miss a week, everyone knows it.” Practice. Discipline. That’s essential to prayer.  Prayer is practicing a daily, constant, continual awareness of God.

In his spiritual writings, Brother Lawrence also told how he finally, "…gave up all devotions and prayers that were not required and I devoted himself exclusively to remaining always in his holy presence… The holiest, most ordinary and most necessary practice of the spiritual life is that of the presence of God. It is to take delight in and become accustomed to his divine company, speaking humbly and conversing lovingly with him at all times, in every moment, without rule or measure, especially in times of temptation, suffering, aridity, weariness, even infidelity and sin."
Brother Lawrence spoke of doing everything as an act of worship--even picking up a straw off the floor--as something done for God. "I possess God as peacefully," he said, "in the commotion of my kitchen, where, often enough, several people are asking me for different things at the same time, as I do when kneeling before the (altar)." He said if we can learn to do everything we do as a conscious act for God, in the presence of God and for God's sake, perhaps it will become easier for us to cultivate an ongoing conversation, "speaking humbly and conversing lovingly with him at all times."  Don’t you think this is precisely what Paul meant when he said, "Pray without ceasing."

When we don’t live in this constant awareness of God’s presence and the kingdom’s nearness, God’s peaceable kingdom remains far away, people go hungry, community remains broken, and life becomes one difficult trial after another.  Sound familiar?  What Jesus pictures here is not a community of people saying words and doing nothing, but Jesus’ prayer, the Lord’s prayer, which should also become a disciple’s prayer, maintains a perspective of God which gives shape to how they live their daily lives in this world.
Life can and will be shaped and transformed by living for God’s purposes and toward God’s promise.   This prayer calls us to literally to pray,  ‘will’, and to live God’s presence into this world.  God has created us for himself, but he also created us with the freedom to invite or reject God’s loving presence.  This very resistance toward God’s love and God’s purposes is what now shows up in Jesus’ parable about prayer, known as ‘The Friend at Midnight’.  In a world that resists God’s will, through this story that imitates life, Jesus is calling his disciples to be bold and persistent in both praying and living God’s world into reality.

BECAUSE OF HIS….BOLDNESS
To illustrate how disciples should boldly approach God in their prayers, and why God can be trusted to respond, Jesus gave this parable of the surprising need that arose in the night.

What stood behind this prayer was of paramount importance in the biblical world.  When a guest arrived -- even unexpectedly at midnight -- there was no question that hospitality must be extended. So as the host finds himself without bread for his guest, he goes to his friend and asks to borrow bread, even though he must wake up his friend’s entire household.

“Do not bother me,” the friend answers from within. “The door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything” (11:7).
We might empathize with the woken-up friend and think that the midnight caller is pushing the limits of friendship. But in that culture, it is the woken-up friend who is behaving badly. The ability of his friend to provide hospitality, and thus to save his honor, is at stake.
Jesus says that the man will eventually respond to his friend’s request, not because he is a friend, but because of his friend’s shamelessness (11:8). The Greek word is anaideia, is better translated "shamelessness" than "persistence (NRSV),". This implies a boldness that comes from familiarity and out of friendship.  It doesn’t imply that God needs convincing or manipulating by persistence, because the host only asks once.  This host is bold and  "shameless," counting on his friend's duty to be a friend, even at midnight.
Tom Long, professor of preaching at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, tells a wonderful story along these lines. A friend of Long’s, who is a pastor, received a disturbing telephone call one day in his church office. A part-time staff member in the church, who had been out in his neighborhood walking his dog, had been mugged, stabbed in the heart and rushed to the hospital. He was now in intensive care with virtually no prospect for survival. When the word spread among the church staff, his friend said, they gathered spontaneously to pray. Standing around the communion table, each person prayed. They prayed sincere prayers, but these prayers were mostly polite and mild petitions, prayers that spoke of comfort and hope and changed hearts, but prayers that had already faced the hard facts of almost certain death.
Then the custodian prayed. His friend reported that it was the most athletic prayer he had ever witnessed. The custodian wrestled with God, shouted at God, anguished with God. His finger jabbed the air and his body shook. “You’ve got to save him! You just can’t let him die!” this custodian practically screamed at God. “You’ve done it many times, Lord! You’ve done it for others, you’ve done it for me, now I am begging you to do it again! Do it for him! Save him, Lord!”
“It was as if he grabbed God by the lapels,” said Long’s friend, “and refused to turn God loose until God came with healing wings. When we heard that prayer, we just knew that God would indeed come to heal. In the face of that desperate cry for help, God would have been ashamed not to save the man’s life.” And so, says Tom Long, it happened. The man was healed. (Thomas G. Long, Christian Century, March 21, 2006, Vol. 123, No. 6, p. 18. Cited by The Rev. Charles Booker-Hirsch, http://www.northsidepres.org/worship/sermons/sermon/51).
So, Jesus implies, that we should we take our requests boldly to God, shamelessly insisting, just we would boldly impose on a friend.  We can be so bold because God, our Father, will answer, according to his will and his love, no matter how importune the moment.  Behind this image we can feel Jesus’s complete trust in abba, his Father.  He is teaching that his disciples should also approach God as ‘our’ loving, caring, compassionate Father’ too.  When we approach prayer with such boldness, we can rest assured that God’s answer will come, like this friend who gets up at midnight.

GIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT….
However, one lingering question about prayer is simply ‘what’s the hold up?  If we are told to pray boldly because God answers, why the delays?  Sometimes, at least, when it comes to getting what we pray for, God may seem like a‘friend’ who doesn’t want to get out of bed.  There is a story about H.G. Wells, that when he was a young man he prayed hard for something to happen. It didn’t, so he said, “All right for you, Mister God, I won’t bother you again.” And he didn’t. That was the end of his prayer life. The world is full of people who say, “I’ve tried prayer and it didn’t work.”
Jesus’ very different understanding of prayer is that God desires to answer our prayers, perhaps even more than we want to pray:  “So I say to you”, Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened” (11:9-10). How do we take such encouragement to pray when prayers go unanswered?
Again, Jesus’ encouragement to ‘ask, seek, knock’ is often thought to be another call to persistence, meaning "ask and keep asking" and so forth. It might be more helpful, though, to read Jesus' instruction as inviting us to trust, and to keep on trusting, remaining confident that we will receive God’s answer.
But again, how do we trust, when so much of our human experience contradicts the literal implications of Jesus’ words?  So often we have asked and not received; have sought and not found, or have knocked and doors did not open. In spite of our most fervent prayers for the health and safety of loved ones, we have lost them to cancer, or other illnesses and senseless accidents. In spite of the fervent prayers of people around the world, daily we hear of tragedies of violence, hunger, disease, and natural disasters.
There is no simple answer to this, though simple answers are often given. One answer given is that it only seems that God has not answered our prayers; God always answers, but sometimes says no. We do not always ask wisely, and God, to be a truly loving God, must refuse our request.  But this explanation cannot account for the many cases in which our requests must surely be in tune with God’s will. Scripture bears witness to God’s will that everyone have enough to eat and that violence and war cease. Jesus tells us to pray for daily bread and for God’s kingdom to come. Yet millions continue to go hungry and wars rage on.
Another explanation often given to the problem of unanswered prayer is that “everything happens for a reason.” This is to affirm that there is some purpose in everything that happens. No matter how bad it may seem, it is all part of God’s plan to bring about some higher good.
This is a troubling explanation, to say the least, as it holds that whatever happens must be God’s will. One would then have to say that all kinds of evil -- such as violence, torture, starvation, and premature death -- are the will of God. We dare not call the tragic results of our own sin and rebellion “God’s will.”  Of course we believe that God can bring good out of evil. Indeed, this is our only hope and the heart of our faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection. But that is quite a different thing from saying that whatever evil thing happens is God’s will.
What then, can we say about unanswered prayer?  It is wise to be wary of saying more than we can possibly know (This the point the movie Bruce Almighty made).  We can, however, affirm what Scripture tells us: that God is all-powerful, yet God is not the only power in the world. There are other powers at work, the powers of Satan and his demons, the powers of evil and death, often manifested in human sin. Although God has won the ultimate victory through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the battle still rages on. Consequently, God’s will can be -- and often is -- thwarted.
Why bother to pray, then, if God’s will can be thwarted? Again, we affirm what Scripture tells us, and particularly what Jesus keeps on telling us in this passage: that we are invited into relationship with a loving God who wants to give us life, and who continues to work tirelessly for our redemption and that of all creation.  This is exactly what Jesus means with his outlandish example about who would give a snake or a scorpion to a child.  If no one in their right mind would do this, can’t we trust that God, our heavenly, spiritual Father, will give us all that we need,  especially the Holy Spirit---with is God giving us himself.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale once told a story about a young man named James C. McCormick who was stricken years ago with the terrible disease of polio. This was before the advent of the Salk vaccine. Young James was totally paralyzed, totally helpless, and in great pain. He could not move; he could not swallow; he could not breathe; he had to stay in an iron lung. He wanted to die. He even prayed, “Lord, I’m so helpless that I can’t take my own life. Please take it for me.”
But God chose to ignore that prayer.

Then he prayed, “If I can’t die, please take away this awful pain.”

The doctors gave him drugs to ease the pain, but he was becoming dangerously dependent on them.  So he prayed, “Lord, please take away this craving for drugs.”
Gradually, the craving left him.

Then he prayed, “Please let me be able to swallow again. Let them take this tube out of my throat and these needles out of my arms. If I can just drink a little water, I’ll try not to ask for any more favors.”  And he became able to swallow, but he was not able to stop asking God for favors.

So he prayed, “Lord, let me be able to breathe a little bit on my own. Let me be able to get out of this iron lung just for a little while.” And this, too, came to pass.

After a while he prayed again, “Heavenly Father, I’m so grateful for all Your favors. Can I ask just one more? Let me be able to leave this bed just for an hour, get into a wheelchair, and see the world that lies outside this hospital room.”

This request, too, was granted. Then James McCormick asked to be given strength enough in his arms to move the wheelchair himself. And after that, he asked for the ability and the stamina to walk on crutches. And finally, after a 20-year struggle, James McCormick could walk with two canes, and he was able to marry and have children and lead a close-to-normal life. James prayers were answered, but not according to his timetable and not in the way he would have chosen. But, in retrospect, he has no doubt that God heard his prayers and God answered.  He has no doubt, that God was present with him through his terrible ordeal (Seth L. Leypoldt, http://www.chadronumc.org/assets
/sermons/pent16a08.pdf).

So, now we end, where Jesus’ lesson on prayer, has been going all along.  While we tend to fixate on the mechanics of prayer: how, why, when, Jesus' instructions focus on a different question: who.  The greatest purpose of prayer is revealed as Jesus invites us to stay on track by reminding ourselves that prayer is about ‘who’.   What we must never do is to make prayer only about ‘what’; making it a simple ‘hotline to God’ to get what we want.  Prayer, is not primarily about getting things from God, but prayer is rather about the relationship we have with God whom we can and must trust at all times, especially, in the midnight of our lives.

And Jesus practices what he preaches and teaches!   Praying again his own ‘midnight’ hour as he was hanging on the cross (23:46). Similarly, we are invited to make all of our needs, wants, hurts, hopes, and desires known to God. Even though God knows our needs without being asked (Mt. 6:8), we are invited to make our needs known, and to share them in the full confidence that whatever may happen, our relationship can bear hearing these things and may actually even depend upon hearing them.

Saint Augustine was a wild and profligate youth. His mother prayed for him constantly. The early chapters of the Confessions of Saint Augustine are filled with references to his mother’s earnest prayers that he might become a Christian. One day he told her he was going to Italy with some companions. She believed that if he went to that sinful city there would be no hope of his reform.

She prayed earnestly that God would not allow him to go to Italy. She did all she could to prevent it, even so far as to follow him on the early part of the journey, until he tricked her and went on with the journey. It appeared that Augustine’s mother’s prayers weren’t answered, but it was in Milan that Augustine came under the influence of Saint Ambrose and put his reluctant feet on the first step of the ladder that led to baptism, to Ordination, and to then to sainthood. His mother’s ultimate prayers for him were answered in the very place she asked God not to allow him to go.

While God may not give us everything we want, as we want it, God will, at least, like a good parent, give us his goodness, and his grace and will answer our prayers, sometimes in ways we never imagined.  The following lines might help us keep our prayers in the proper perspective, even when they aren’t answered as we wish:
I asked God for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health that I might do great things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I asked for but everything I had hoped for;
Despite myself, my prayers were answered. I am, among all people, most richly blessed.

We dare to be shameless in our prayers, to keep bringing our needs and hopes to our heavenly Father, because Jesus tells us to do so, trusting in God’s loving purpose for us. Not everything that happens is God’s will. But we can affirm with St. Paul, “in all things God works for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).  Amen

Who Is My Neighbor?”

A sermon based upon Luke 10: 25-37

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

October 6th, 2019

I’ll never forget it was one of our first Sunday’s as a pastor of a Baptist Church in Germany.  We stayed after the service to have an extended prayer meeting.  During the prayer time, while prayer requests were being voiced, we heard someone crying in the street.  My wife and I both looked at each other.  Being new in town and unfamiliar with the surroundings, we didn’t know if it was normal or not.  We looked for signs in the faces of the others.  Everyone was preparing to pray and paying it no attention.   No one seemed concerned.  The cries got louder and louder.  Finally, my wife spoke up and asked the prayer leader, 

       “Shouldn’t we go and see what’s the matter.  Someone sounds as if they are hurting.”   

       “Oh, it’s just the children next door.  It’s nothing.”

We were submissive to our new, more experienced church members.  We didn’t get up and go to the window.  We didn’t want to disturb what we were doing, or what they were teaching us.  We tried to block the screams from our ears and get on with the prayer meeting.  After a while, it finally stopped.   We kept on praying.

The very next morning, opening the German newspaper, I read that a child had been struck by a car in the street that ran along beside the church.  The paper said that the child lay their awhile before anyone came to his aid.   Fortunately, the paper did not say that it happened right beside the house where we were having church---where we kept on having church, ignoring the screams of an injured child.  It’s good that the world didn’t even know we were there.

In today’s Jesus story from Luke’s gospel, people who should see, and should respond to a human being in need, don’t.   This is the very difficult point of Jesus’ story that is still hard for us to hear:  The most memorable story Jesus ever told casts religious people as the bad guys, and casts a bad guy as the good guy. 

Because of the political and religious edge in this story, Jesus could not directly tell the truth, but he had to tell it as a parable.  A parable is a imaginative story, told alongside our human story, to hopefully teach us how to live our lives with more insight and understanding.  By telling the hard, difficult truth, Jesus hoped to bring about healing and hope for everyone, without anyone getting hurt.   Those who heard the truth indirectly, by overhearing its implications, could figure out the implications, and learn how to rightly respond.  A parable transferred the responsibility of the truth of the story from the teller of the story to the hearer of the story. 

At the center of this parable is the answer to one of the most basic human questions: ‘Who is my neighbor?”  This question is made clear, while the answer is not always clear in life.  Some of the main characters in this story, including the expert, does not realize how he should answer this question.   The one person who does know is the surprise in this story.  The person most of Jesus’ audience would call ignorant, or worst, bad, is named ‘good’; the ‘good Samaritian’.  The one person no one wants as their neighbor, is the only true and good neighbor in Jesus’ story.    

WHAT MUST I DO?

Why did Jesus make this Samaritian good? Wasn’t it because his people, the so called ‘good’ people, the experts, the religious, his own people Israel, were missing what was happening right around them, under there very noses?   They could not see what they needed to see and would they would not hear what they needed to wake up and hear, so Jesus told them this story.  Why did Jesus have to do this?  It was for a similar reason the church in Germany would not respond to the the cries of the child in the street.  The heard, but didn’t respond because they were preoccupied.  They were preoccupied with what they were doing and they were missing what needed to be done, in the moment.  In carrying out their responsibilities, they overlooked or lost touch with the more immediate need of their neighbor. 

Recently, I read in a religious, denominational publication, a report on how and why many urban churches were closing their doors.  Church membership is in decline.  Some churches had over built buildings and could no longer afford the maintenance costs.  Other churches had problems they couldn’t recover from, and lost too many members.  Church neighborhoods had changed.  There were many reasons, but the common thread throughout was this: these urban churches closing their doors had lost touch with their neighborhoods.  They had forgotten that the most important key to their existence was not to answer who they themselves were, but to answer this one, critical, question; who is my neighbor?

I didn't see the finale of the hit TV show Seinfeld, but I know how it went.  In the conclusion of the Seinfeld Series, the show assumed that everyone knows, even people who have never been to Sunday School or Church----about the GOOD SAMARITAN.  In that final show, the four main characters, Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer, find themselves stuck in a small town in Massachusetts.  At one point, they make their way along a sidewalk, and they end up standing by and watching as a very fat man gets robbed.   Rather than help the man or call for the police, they look on and laugh at the chubby fellow’s plight.  As a result, the four of them get arrested, charged with violating the town’s Good Samaritan Law, a law that requires people to do what the Good Samaritan did---the have compassion and to show with a deed of mercy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Finale_(Seinfeld).

How did Seinfeld and his friends neglect what they should have done?  How do churches miss what they should be doing, not just to stay alive, but to do what they should be doing, and should have been doing all along to be a church?   How does anyone miss being the Good Samaritian?  Doesn’t it happen when we fail to realize who is our neighbor and what it means to be a good neighbor? 

How exactly does this happen?  How did the church in Germany, the urban churches in America, or the characters on Seinfeld get off track?  How do any of us get off track?  Isn’t the same way this expert in this gospel story got off track?   He was never on track.  He was constantly asking the wrong questions, so he was always getting the wrong answers.

In this story, the good question being asked wasn’t wrong, but it still wasn’t enough.  The answer he sought wasn’t bad, it just didn’t fit the situation.  The expert was wondering how he could gain eternal life, when people around him were struggling to live in this life.  It’s like asking a Fireman to stop and consider his personal faith while he’s rushing into a burning building.  It’s not that the fireman shouldn’t ever think about life, death or his personal faith; he’d most certainly better.  His dangerous job demands it.  But in that moment, when a fire is burning, when lives are threatened, because it is his job, there was an even more immediate need to help someone. 

The parable of the Good Samaritian is preceded by the Great Commandment.   The expert asks about eternal life, and Jesus answers with the two greatest imperatives from all of the Scriptures: Love God, Love Neighbor.  Asking which command is most important misses the point.  What Jesus makes clear is that while loving God gets you into heaven, it is by loving your neighbor that makes heaven worth getting into.  Can you see this important point?  What’s the point of God’s love unless there is someone to receive this great love. This God who is love, can’t be God  unless he gives love to someone who needs love.  And because this God of love, lives to love and loves to live, Jesus tells this legal, religious expert, to ‘go and do likewise’.  If life is what you want, love is what you must give.  You must give love to have life.  For just as life is found in loving, loving is ‘fountain of life’ in this world, and for finding life in the world, God’s world that is still to come.  Without love, there is no life, and no life worth having. 

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?

But if life, here and now, earthly and temporal; and life that is still to come, then and there, which is both enduring and eternal, is about love, who is it we are supposed to love, both now and then? 

We all have to draw a line somewhere, don’t we?  You can’t write a word or draw a picture without making a line.  Lines make us who we are and aren’t.  We define ourselves by distinguishing ourselves from others or with certain others!  Some deserve to have special, lines of life and privilege drawn for them.  Others don’t deserve to receive love at all.   They deserve to live lesser lives, or even to die.

Since God draws the line of rightness and justice, so can we, right?  It certainly can seem clear and simple, can’t it?  This is how life goes and it’s how life is.  It’s the hard facts of life.  You know how it goes.  You might not want to think about it, but you are given that privilege every Sunday morning—to think about what it means to be right or wrong, or to be in and out, to deserve to live or to deserve to die.  And you don’t just think about this for yourself.  You are given the opportunity to think about this for others who can’t, who don’t, or who won’t think about it at all.  

And especially because you and I follow this Jesus who came from the God who is love, we must think about what love means.  What we can’t do, is not think about it.  And especially thinking about who to love and how to love can be hard; real hard. Some people are hard to love. But as Jesus tried to tell his listeners in this story, tried to show with his life, and especially to put on display in his death: loving is not just about easy.  Loving is also about what is hard.  It is about asking and answering the right, and most difficult, complicated questions, about who to love and how to love?  And like all hard questions, Jesus had to teach it with a story to move people beyond the normal ways of seeing and understanding.

The story Jesus told, is most familiar too us, perhaps too familiar.   To highlight this story is to point to who the neighbors were, and who the neighbors weren’t.   This is the very complication Jesus’s story seeks to moves us beyond.  When ‘a certain man fell into the hands of robbers…” he became the neighbor in need as the Samaritian became the neighbor who broke through all the complexities of life to have compassion and to show love.  He is the true neighbor.  The Samaritian broke through all the unanswerable questions with the loving right answer.  He did this not because of what he figured out in his head, but by following what he felt in his heart.  He answered the most complicated by answering the question about love by doing love. 

As we consider this story again today, is to ask ourselves what is it that makes still makes love most complicated?   One thing that still complicates love, just as it did in that world,  in this world, is race.  It not accidental that Jesus made this Samaritian ‘good’.  A Samaritian was certainly not a Jew.  A Samaritan was  halfbreed, a half Jew, who, according to the book of Ezra, was of a people who were one of the greatest threats to Jewish life and existence.  When the Jews came back to rebuild Israel, they wanted to do everything right this time. Since their prophets blamed half-heartedness for Israel’s destruction, only whole-heartedness would suffice. 

These Samaritans who were simply living and surviving the best they knew how, were caught in the crosshairs of Israel’s ambition for doing what is right for preserving and protecting Israel’s future.  A Samaritian was understood as a person getting in their way, but Jesus made this Samaritian as a person showing the way.  But to see this, to have this way made clear, Israel would have to move beyond their racists complication.  To see who their neighbor was, Israel would have to be willing to admit who the wouldn’t allow to be their neighbor.  This is why Jesus made the Samaritian the hero of his story.  Only by allowing this ‘good’ Samaritian to be the hero, would God’s people become the good neighbor.  And only by throwing out the ‘race card’ could Israel learn what it means to love like God loves. 

But of course, race is not the only way people still complicate love.  We still try to complicate love with religion too.  The religion card can be double trouble.  Both the Priest and Levite were religious heroes.  Jesus does not make them villains, but he does imply how the best, most respected people, can complicate what needs to happen.  Both these religious leaders should have stopped, and helped, but they didn’t.  They complicate the simple question, not because they don’t feel, or have feelings, but because the didn’t look.  If they had stopped and looked, would they have stopped and helped?  Perhaps, but the point is they didn’t look.  It was because the didn’t even look, but were too busy minding their own business, which they claimed to be God’s business.  This is what incriminated them.  It wasn’t that they simply missed seeing, but that they missed looking and then seeing.  And what complicated their seeing, was thinking they were doing God’s will and doing God’s work.

We all still know, that not only can the right kind of religion make you a good neighbor, the wrong kind of religion can make you a very bad neighbor.  I. It’s not because the religion is bad, or you are bad, but because you’ve made things more complicated than they should be.  I once heard a missionary tell of a church in Africa that was growing so fast, it needed a new, larger building for worship.  When the new church building was finally finished, everyone wanted to worship, and there was not enough room, so they had to have the same worship service several times each Sunday morning.  People were so hungry and excited to worship in the new building, that they pushed to get in, and some people tried to stay and worship in the next service too, even though people were still waiting outside to get in the first time.  When the church ushers caught on to this, they would confront the would-be-repeat worshipper: ‘How dare you stay and hear the gospel twice, when some have still not heard the gospel once!’

Of course, to have a religious problem is not always about an official religion.  Eric Lomax, was an British army officer in WWII, who was captured and spent time in a Japanese prison camp.   I don't think any neighbor would be harder to love than the one who has tortured and tried to kill us.  That was the problem Lomax had.  He was unmercifully tortured by his enemy, and one particular Japanese guard.  After the war was over, he still had nightmares about the ordeal and was unable to forgive, wanting to go back and confront the Japanese man who submitted him to torture.   Possessed by hate, Lomax finally went back and to find, face and kill that Japanese.   He found the man, put him in a cage, just like the man had done to him.  While he was ready to take the knife and kill him,  and began to see this man humbled and shaking in fear,  something inside of him told him, that if he killed this Japanese, the hate would never stop.   Instead of killing him, he let his enemy out of the cage, and they became close friends, and the hate and hurt was healed in them both.   

What did Lomax realize?  He realized what true religion always discovers.  If he did not pay the debt of hurt, and choose love over hate, he would always be empty, and his own soul would die.  Only by paying the debt of ‘love’, even the strange debt of loving our enemies, can we pay a cost that gives us more than we could ever imagine. 

This is why we must hear Jesus; in the church, in the world, in our nation.  Unless we overcome the complications of race and religion, and unless we overcome the complication of loving our neighbor, simply because they are in need of our love, we will loose our soul too.  For only the choice of love, even when it is hard and complicated, gives us the promise of life and love in life now, and in life that is promised beyond this now in which we live.

WHO PROVED TO BE A NEIGHBOR?

There’s more being said in this story than can be expressed, because this story points to all our stories and everyone’s need of love, somewhere along the journey of life.  But what we must all take away from this story, is to answer Jesus’ final question in every person we meet: ‘Who proves ‘to be a neighbor’? 

Did you notice that Jesus didn’t ask, ‘who proves to be a good neighbor’, or a bad neighbor.  Jesus takes all the complications we put as labels on people and  simply asked: who proved to be a neighbor?’  He sounds a lot like Mr. Rogers, doesn’t he?  Or Mr. Rogers sounded a lot like Jesus: “Wouldn’t you like to be a neighbor?”  Wouldn’t you like to be my neighbor?

Of course, the other less complicating truth about neighborliness Jesus implies is that to answer who is your neighbor is less about where you live, or who you live beside, but the right answer has much more to do with who needs love than it every does with geography, religion or race. 

Here again, Jesus wants to simplify, rather than complicate.  Jesus simplifies all our questions of who, what, and how to be a neighbor by showing how neighborly love, which reflects God’s love, is always based on compassion and showing mercy.  The more the person we see, know, or meet, needs love, no matter who they are, the more we should have compassion, show love, and be a neighbor.  It just doesn’t get any more complicated than this.  If it does, your not being the right kind of neighbor everyone needs. 

A neighbor is anyone we see in need.  Being a neighbor never gets anymore more complicated than this: ‘He took care of him’.  Go and Do the same!  Amen.