First to care

Pentecost 5 year C Sermon on the occasion of
St John 125^th anniversary

Forgive us… when we are the last to care.

St John mission statement is … First to Care…
and I for one am very glad it is.

Ever had to call an ambulance for yourself? It’s a lonely exercise…look for hands…

·         Alone in Paeroa Ministry Student

·         Woke up Pain

·         thought throwing up would help?

·         Passed out in the hallway and hit my head.

·         no one in the house could hear me

·         Called St John

·         Couldn’t answer the front door so they thought it was the wrong house

·         But They kept looking

·         Heard them out the back and staggered out waving

·         Took the pain away

You might say I was a pilgrim all alone in a far away land on that day when the St John Paramedics took good care of me.

Taking care of sick and weary pilgrims…
has always been the aim of the Order of St John.

From the beginning of the Christian movement in the first century…pilgrims have been coming to Jerusalem…
to visit the places Jesus walked and taught … by the third century they were all wanting to see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built by Constantine to commemorate Jesus death and resurrection.

Six hundred years later the head of the Roman Church… commissioned a hospital to be built in Jerusalem…
to treat and care for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land… some who were coming as far away as the British Isles and India.

But at the turn of the first millennium…the ruler of Jerusalem was the Egyptian Caliph al-Hakim.  During his reign, Al-Hakim grew hostile to other religious groups.
He ordered the destruction of synagogues and churches and even the mosques of rival Muslim sects… the hospital for Pilgrims and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre…
were destroyed by his raging troops.

When the hospital was rebuilt twenty years later…
they chose the site where the monastery of Saint John the Baptist had been – because it too had been a place of refuge and care… for pilgrims to the holy land.

Initially the hospital simply cared for sick and weary pilgrims but as the dangers they faced increased…the hospitallers…
as they were called… began to provide armed escorts
for the great throngs of pilgrims
…and during the crusades these forces grew and became known as the Knights Hospitaller. 

These Knights included the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem… and their special task was to care for the sick.

These Knights of St John wore the same cross our St John wears today.  
In the order…they were driven by a desire to serve the poor… especially pilgrims of whatever race or faith… caring for them when they were sick…
and burying them when they died…
and they believed by doing this…they were serving Jesus…

They remembered a story Jesus told about being a good neighbour …Remember… the one Jesus tells because a scholar of Law is trying to trick him… into making a religious mistake …

the question the scholar asks to trick Jesus is this…

Rabbi…he calls Jesus Rabbi which means teacher…
Rabbi… what do I need to do to inherit eternal life?

Well…Jesus knew it was a trick question…
so he asks a question right back…
"What's written in God's Law?  How do you interpret it?"

So the man has to give Jesus the answer he already knows is right and replies ‘it is written…
that you love the Lord your God… with all your passion and your prayer and your muscle and your intelligence— and that you love your neighbour…
as well as you love yourself."

"Good answer!" says Jesus. "Do that and you will live."

But the determined lawyer still wanted to trick Jesus into making a mistake and so he asks…

"And just how would you define the term …'neighbor'?"

So Jesus tells him a story.

"There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho.
On the way he was attacked by robbers…who took his clothes, beat him up, and went off…
leaving him for dead in a ditch on the side of the road.

A priest comes along the same road and when he sees the helpless beaten man in the ditch…
instead of stopping to help… he crosses over to the other side of the road and just keeps walking.

A while later… a very religious man…of the tribe of Levi… shows up… and he avoids the injured man too.

Finally a Samaritan traveling the road rides by on his donkey…

When he sees the man's condition, his heart goes out to him.
He gives him first aid…disinfects and bandages his wounds ...then lifts him onto his donkey as an ambulance…
and takes the man to the closest bed and breakfast to make him comfortable.

In the morning the Samaritan takes out two silver coins and gives them to the owner: 'Take good care of him…you hear. If it costs any more, just put it on my bill—
I'll repay you on my way back.'

Finishing his story… Jesus turns to the scholar of the Law and asks him…so what do you think? 

Which one of those three travelers who came past…
was a neighbour…to the helpless injured man?

The scholar has no choice but to reply…
"The one who treated him kindly"

That settles it then… Jesus says,
"now you go and do the same."

And Jesus had a few tricks up his sleeve too…in the story
he knew the priest and the Levite would have avoided the man
because their religious purity laws…
forbid them to touch blood. They thought serving God was about being pure…
they didn’t want to risk touching anything unclean,
they didn’t want to risk dirty hands, inconvenience, financial implications, or their reputation…it was someone else’s job to do the dirty work…

The other trick Jesus had up his sleeve is that the Jews considered foreigners to be unclean too…and Samaritans were foreigners…so if the man in the ditch had been a Samaritan…the priest and the Levite wouldn’t have touched him with a barge pole.

But Jesus tells the story so the good neighbour is a Samaritan. The good neighbour isn’t the one whose trying to be pure by obeying all the religious rituals …
the good neighbour is the one who shows mercy… no matter what. The good neighbour is the person…
who’s prepared to help anyone…

Jesus was talking about a certain kind of freedom…what Paul letter to the Galatians calls Christian freedom …
which means our caring can be available to everyone…the Law doesn’t call the tune… because God’s love is available to everyone …

and… I’m glad to say…
it’s a founding principle of St John too…
that its services and membership are ‘available to all’.

“Love others as I love you.”  Jesus told his friends and
“If you want to see me… look no further than the man lying on the side of the road…injured and left for dead…

Jesus says…it’s me.  Be a neighbour to me!”

When I was hungry and naked and sick and in prison…
it was me…

Be a good neighbour to me!

If you want to inherit eternal life… serve your neighbour and you will see me in them….you will see God…
and then you will truly live…please stand as we pray together