SPEAKER_02: A reading from Amos.
SPEAKER_02: This is what the Lord God showed me.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.
SPEAKER_02: And the Lord said to me, Amos, what do you see?
SPEAKER_02: And I said, A plumb line.
SPEAKER_02: Then the Lord said, See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.
SPEAKER_02: I will never again pass them by.
SPEAKER_02: The high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste.
SPEAKER_02: And I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.
SPEAKER_02: Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jerobim of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: The land is not able to bear all his words.
SPEAKER_02: For thus Amos has said, Jerobim shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.
SPEAKER_02: And Amaziah said to Amos, O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there.
SPEAKER_02: But never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_02: The namos answered Amaziah, I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees.
SPEAKER_02: And the Lord took me from following the flock.
SPEAKER_02: And the Lord said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel.
SPEAKER_02: Now therefore hear the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: You say, Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore, thus says the Lord, your wife shall become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be parceled out by line, and you yourself shall die in an unclean land.
SPEAKER_02: And Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: We will read responsibly by the half verse.
SPEAKER_02: God arises in the council of heaven and gives judgment in the midst of the gods.
SPEAKER_02: How long will you judge unjustly and show favor to the wicked?
SPEAKER_02: Save the weak and the orphans.
SPEAKER_02: Defend the humble and the needy.
SPEAKER_02: Rescue the weak and the poor.
SPEAKER_02: Deliver them from the power of the wicked.
SPEAKER_02: They do not know, neither do they understand.
SPEAKER_02: They go about in darkness.
SPEAKER_02: All the foundations of the earth are shaken.
SPEAKER_02: Now I say to you, you are gods, and all of your children are myself.
SPEAKER_02: Nevertheless, you shall die like mortals and fall like any leader.
SPEAKER_02: Arise, O God, and rule the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Reading from Colossians, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae.
SPEAKER_01: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
SPEAKER_01: And our prayers for you always thank God, the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We have heard your faith in Jesus Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: You have heard of this hope before in the Word of the Truth.
SPEAKER_01: The gospel that has come to you, just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it, and truly comprehend the grace of God.
SPEAKER_01: This you learn from Epiphhrase, our beloved fellow servant.
SPEAKER_01: He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf.
SPEAKER_01: And he has made known to us your love and the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: For this reason, since the day we have heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work, as you grow in the knowledge of God.
SPEAKER_01: May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from the glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints and in the light.
SPEAKER_01: He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom you have redemption and forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Teacher, he said, What must I do to inherit eternal life?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to him, What is written in the law?
SPEAKER_00: What do you read there?
SPEAKER_00: The lawyer answered, 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.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus said to him, You've given the right answer, do this, and you will live.
SPEAKER_00: But wanting to justify himself, the lawyer asked Jesus, And who is my neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: But a Samaritan while travelling came near him, and when he saw him he was moved with pity.
SPEAKER_00: He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them.
SPEAKER_00: Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
SPEAKER_00: 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'll repay you whatever more you spend.
SPEAKER_00: Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?
SPEAKER_00: The lawyer said, The one who showed him mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to him, Go and do likewise.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: This is our opening scripture that God shows up in the nation of Israel holding a plumb line.
SPEAKER_00: Even if you have done some significant building, it's likely you use a bubble level instead.
SPEAKER_00: This is really helpful to know.
SPEAKER_00: This is ancient technology.
SPEAKER_00: It allows you to tell what's perpendicular based on gravity alone.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be sort of like well building a space shuttle with a slide rule.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, we did that.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, this is how the pyramids were constructed with a string and a weight.
SPEAKER_00: And in aim, it's God shows up in the nation of Israel, in the people, and says, I'm gonna hold a plumb line up against you to tell where you're perpendicular and where you're skew.
SPEAKER_00: You've got opportunities here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you the easiest one first, which is that God is like Santa Claus, always watching when you're naughty and when you're nice.
SPEAKER_00: You'd better be nice.
SPEAKER_00: Because you won't just get coal in your stocking, you'll get hell when you die.
SPEAKER_00: We can hear Amos saying that, and then God is really pretty scary, don't you think?
SPEAKER_00: I want to suggest to you though, there's a completely different way to hear Amos, which I think is actually a lot more life-giving and frankly might even be more difficult to live into.
SPEAKER_00: It goes something like this.
SPEAKER_00: If you know your New Testament, Paul says, your bodies are a temple for the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Have you heard that before?
SPEAKER_00: It's not Greek singular second person like your body, Michelle.
SPEAKER_00: It's Greek second person plural, y'all's bodies.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all's.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all's bodies are a temple for the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You're being built into a vessel that will contain God's presence on earth.
SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
SPEAKER_00: When we don't build it correctly, it will collapse.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever done masonry work.
SPEAKER_00: I've had very limited uh experience myself.
SPEAKER_00: It's very tempting when you lay a layer and it's not level to think, I'll just make it up with mortar the next time.
SPEAKER_00: And you can easily go from a 116th inch mortar joint to a two-inch mortar line and think that's gonna work.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, it won't.
SPEAKER_00: It won't hold.
SPEAKER_00: It'll collapse.
SPEAKER_00: And it won't hold all the bricks.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all are a temple for the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Who's y'all?
SPEAKER_00: In the Psalm, the psalmist writes, the nations of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Not just the ones you like.
SPEAKER_00: God invites humanity to be a temple for the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And when we start building structures that won't work for our own sake, God would like us to re-level.
SPEAKER_00: Now I'll tell you, if you do brickwork in Houston in July, there's nothing worse than getting to the end of a course of bricks and realizing it's not straight.
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's tempting to just slap a little more mortar on there, but of course, it's always better to do the job right.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the best job uses the least mortar possible.
SPEAKER_00: So I invite you to hear anew the story, Jesus says, that in some ways is God's plumb line for us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've never been to church in your life, it didn't matter.
SPEAKER_00: You know this story.
SPEAKER_00: The Good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: And hopefully by now you've heard that Good Samaritan's an oxymoron, there's no such thing as a good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: Categorically, that doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_00: They're all bad.
SPEAKER_00: I'll retell a story for you in a way that is, you're gonna say hyperbolic, but pretty much what Jesus is doing.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine once upon a time there's diocesan council in the diocese of Texas, and it's down in Houston, and the priest is on his way.
SPEAKER_00: And I stop at a stop sign in the heights, and I get carjacked because everybody wants a Toyota Prius from 2014.
SPEAKER_00: I've been shot and left for dead in the street, and the next car that comes is none other than Bishop Diocesan Andy Doyle.
SPEAKER_00: He's on the way to Diocesan Council.
SPEAKER_00: He sees me, he sees me every year at Clergy Council, he recognizes me.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I even know that guy.
SPEAKER_00: But if I get another car, council will be late starting.
SPEAKER_00: I've got to get there because I've got a greater duty.
SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, he's got Bluetooth, he calls 911, he goes on to the convention center.
SPEAKER_00: That's probably what I'd do.
SPEAKER_00: The next car that comes around is well, you you decide.
SPEAKER_00: It's the associate rector Jimmy Scott, or it's one of our council representatives here at St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas, or it's the senior warden Jim Steele.
SPEAKER_00: Now the priest told him they better get to council on time because they're representing the parish.
SPEAKER_00: So they get to the stop sign and they see the priest and they think, oh, he's hurt, but he told me I better not be late.
SPEAKER_00: Good thing I got Bluetooth 911 on the go.
SPEAKER_00: The third car, don't let me lose you here.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna think that's preposterous, what I'm gonna say, but you need to let it be preposterous.
SPEAKER_00: The third car.
SPEAKER_00: You heard a long time ago that SEAL team 6 got Osama bin Laden.
SPEAKER_00: You were wrong.
SPEAKER_00: The third car has Osama bin Laden.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, he's dressing in drag now.
SPEAKER_00: He's not really sure about his sexuality.
SPEAKER_00: He went to the bathroom number two and didn't wash his hands.
SPEAKER_00: In the car, he's got TNT dynamite.
SPEAKER_00: He is going to diocesan council as well, but to blow it up, he stops at the stop sign and sees one of those people he was on his way to blow up.
SPEAKER_00: And this strange thing happens.
SPEAKER_00: He has compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he even has to throw some of the explosives out of the car to make room for the priest, but that's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: Puts the priest in the car, drives over to Methodist, and says, here's$20,000 to start the bill, and I'll be back tomorrow to pay the balance.
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's a preposterous story.
SPEAKER_00: But you need to know at the time of Jesus, again, there was no good Samaritan.
SPEAKER_00: There's no good Osama bin Laden.
SPEAKER_00: There's no good blank in your life.
SPEAKER_00: We all fill in the blanks differently.
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you if you take away from the story, we're supposed to help everybody.
SPEAKER_00: It's a great takeaway.
SPEAKER_00: The truth is, you already know that.
SPEAKER_00: I think the question is why don't we do it?
SPEAKER_00: Please notice that in the story, everybody's on the way to somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: They're all on the way.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I get filled with this religious energy that thinks I'm going to help somebody when their car's broken down on the side of the road.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to make them rely on AAA.
SPEAKER_00: And invariably, the next time I see that, I'm on the way somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: So when I'm not on the way, that's when I'll help.
SPEAKER_00: We're always on the way.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I think part of the deal is make way.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to tell you a different part.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and maybe this is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: It probably is.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the guy in the story is so hurt.
SPEAKER_00: He's so at the point of death that he actually, again, you're going to think I'm crazy when I say this.
SPEAKER_00: He can't stop the Samaritan from helping him.
SPEAKER_00: You may say, well, why would he want to stop him?
SPEAKER_00: The Samaritan's going to be the one that helps him out.
SPEAKER_00: Jewish people would rather die than have a Samaritan help them.
SPEAKER_00: You may say, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: We all know the difference between life and death.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I hear lots of people say, I'd rather die than have Osama bin Laden help me.
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather die than have Hillary Clinton help me.
SPEAKER_00: I'd sooner die than have Donald Trump do anything for me.
SPEAKER_00: Usually it's not even people we don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, there's folks in our lives that have hurt us, and we'd rather die than receive any help from them.
SPEAKER_00: It's not so much that we've got too much pride, it's just that we don't want to be hurt again.
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe I'm just talking about myself here.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're hard to help.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to put to you that it's really important, I think, to receive help from other folks.
SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is when somebody has hurt us, whether personally or socially, there can only really ever be reconciliation when there's restoration.
SPEAKER_00: We're logical data people, so we're very unlikely to hire ex-cons or people who are on Megan's list for a reason.
SPEAKER_00: But what are they supposed to do?
SPEAKER_00: Is a prison sentence really supposed to destroy the rest of your life?
SPEAKER_00: Is something you did when you were 19 years old supposed to make it impossible for you to get another job and consign you to going back to jail?
SPEAKER_00: This is where I think the story actually gets a little bit harder.
SPEAKER_00: Because the way I grew up, you're not ever supposed to need help from anybody.
SPEAKER_00: And there's this weird business here about one of the ways we be an acceptable neighbor is by allowing people to do things to make up for when they've gone short, or frankly, to recognize we're worth receiving help.
SPEAKER_00: We're worth it.
SPEAKER_00: And in giving and in receiving help is how neighbors are actually made.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's this interesting part of the story, you see, because the lawyer knows the law.
SPEAKER_00: If you know anything about Judaism, every Jewish home has on the outside this little rectangular prism, which holds inside of it a little scroll.
SPEAKER_00: It's called a mezuzah.
SPEAKER_00: The scroll in it says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, and you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with everything left over after that.
SPEAKER_00: That's how it reads in Hebrew.
SPEAKER_00: Here we hear it, your soul and your heart and your mind and your strength.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So the lawyer knows that.
SPEAKER_00: If you're Jewish, you say that.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to kiss that mezuzah every time you go in and out of your house to remember that that is the primary plumb line of your life, don't you see?
SPEAKER_00: The lawyer knows a little extra.
SPEAKER_00: Love your neighbor as yourself.
SPEAKER_00: That's another line for holding it up.
SPEAKER_00: The end of the story says, which one was the neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: And let's be honest, they were all neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: They were all neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: I live on a street in a really nice neighborhood.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen most of my neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know them.
SPEAKER_00: I know some of their names.
SPEAKER_00: I wave at some of them when I want my dog.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them I don't want to get to know.
SPEAKER_00: The thing is, I think we already get we're all neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, what kind of neighbors are we gonna be?
SPEAKER_00: Are we gonna be neighbors who take time on our way?
SPEAKER_00: I think there's an opportunity to reflect when we say really dumb things, and we all say really dumb things sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Like we call people out.
SPEAKER_00: We think we're being prophetic like Amos, we call people liars and cheats, we call them all kinds of names, especially on Facebook, where we think that's safe.
SPEAKER_00: We do that, and I think the story offers us this opportunity to think really hard.
SPEAKER_00: If you were dying, is your life worth denying being somebody's neighbor?
SPEAKER_00: No, Mike, of course I would rather live at the hands of somebody I don't like, then that's how we're supposed to live.
SPEAKER_00: We're not supposed to wait until we're dying to figure that out.
SPEAKER_00: We have this opportunity to think neighbors might be people I don't like, and how do I be neighbors to them?
SPEAKER_00: How do I be neighbors to them?
SPEAKER_00: And how do I let them, dare I let them be neighbors to me.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to know, Mike Loody told me a couple of weeks ago that one of his former priests had this button, and this has really been in my head for a while, and forgive me if I offend you here.
SPEAKER_00: One of his former priests had this button that said, Love is a hell of a lot of work.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And I think what's really great to hear is that as St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas, our slogan says, we can do more together.
SPEAKER_00: So love is a hell of a lot of work, St.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas.
SPEAKER_00: And we can do more together.
SPEAKER_00: And if we would just hold that line up a little bit more visibly.
SPEAKER_00: If we go out of our way to help and go out of our way to let somebody be a human being just once this week, that's a hell of a lot of work.
SPEAKER_00: We'd be a temple for the Holy Spirit this week.
SPEAKER_00: We can do more together.