Dear Caldwell,
Last Sunday, we celebrated the congregation’s energy, enthusiasm and commitment as we considered the Epiphany call to share God’s promise of love, healing and justice. We capped it off with a luncheon to say thanks for your financial commitments to the 2019 operating budget.
We are given so many ways to “share the promise,” as the apostle Paul wrote in last week’s passage, Ephesians 3:1-12. This Sunday, we begin a time of discernment about how, with the abundance of our campus and our resources, God may be calling us to help solve the city’s affordable housing crisis.
We turn to a story that almost risks being too familiar – Jesus’ example of “the good Samaritan.” This is Jesus at his best – deftly out-debating a lawyer who is trying to trap him and, along the way, casting a vision that tears down the social boundaries of Jesus’ time. It is the heart of gospel; as people of faith we have two commandments – to love God and to love our neighbor.
The particular part of the good Samaritan story we focus on Sunday deals with the fact that there was an inn that took in the man who had been attacked on the road, providing him shelter and a place to heal. What if, we might ask, there had been no such place?
See you Sunday.
In Christ,
John