Episodes
Sunday Sep 22, 2013
Being the Hands of Christ
Sunday Sep 22, 2013
Sunday Sep 22, 2013
Rev. Dean Snyder
Luke 10:25-37
There was a classic experiment done several decades ago at Princeton University. It involved dozens of students at the Princeton School of Theology.
The students were assembled in one building and told they had to go to a different building, and give a talk one at a time. They were put into two different groups, and each told a different topic that they would have to talk about.
On their way to give a talk one at a time, each one of them came across a person in need … a stranger slumped in an alley, semi-conscious, groaning. Someone obviously in trouble.
A majority of the students did not offer help of any kind. A majority of the students did not even stop to check on the person. And they were not just any students...they were seminary students. They were studying to become pastors.
They were given one of two topics that they would have to speak on. One group was told that they would have to give a talk about different jobs that a seminarian might like to take. The other group was given a Bible passage to read and then told that they would have to preach a sermon on that Bible passage. The Bible passage they were given was the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Here’s one of the shocking findings of the experiment. Students, seminarians preparing to be pastors, who had just studied the parable of the Good Samaritan and were on their way to give a sermon about the parable of the Good Samaritan were no more likely to stop to help a hurting person slumped in a doorway than people who were not thinking about the parable of the Good Samaritan at all. Apparently it is not just studying the story about the Good Samaritan that causes people become one.
What was the bottom line finding of that study was? Princeton Seminary is a Presbyterian Seminary so the obvious finding is that Presbyterian seminarians are inferior to Methodist seminarians.
No. The implication is that it is easy for there to be a gap between what we practice and what we preach.
Right now we are taking a few minutes each Sunday to look at our Foundry core values. You will find them on the last page of your bulletin. Today we are spending a few minutes on the third core value: We serve God by serving others. The second of Christ’s greatest commandments is to love each other. We make personal commitments to work with people in our neighborhood and around the world.
Each Sunday we talk about ways that we try to live out each value.
Today I want to say a word about our Walk-In Mission.
We have a team of volunteers … servants really … who give hours each week to serve people in our community who have been mugged by life. One of the big things they do is to help people get copies of their birth certificates so they can get IDs because if you don’t have an ID you can not get a job, you can not get help, you may not be able to get a place to live. But the Walk-In mission also gives people who need them clothing, sandwiches prepared by Sandwich 1000. Referrals to other services.
One of our Walk-In volunteers is Alan Stewart who is here at this service. Alan worked with a quiet, soft-spoken young man who was new to DC from Texas. He’d had his wallet stolen and had no ID whatsoever. Because he had grown up in the Texas foster care system, he had no relatives to sign for his birth certificate. Alan worked with this young man for two weeks to do the paperwork requirements to get his ID. Sometime later, Alan met this young man coming out of the Safeway with a huge smile on his face. He told Alan that he had his ID and that things were finally falling into place for him.
So we are thankful to all of our Walk-In volunteers. Alan Stewart, Ron Schoolmeester and Joan Williams who runs our clothing closet. Jane Northern. If you have any questions about how you might become involved, talk to one of these persons.
But Walk-In is only one way we live out the value of serving God by serving others. If you go to our ministry team page on our websites you will find many ways to serve. The question is – Is this value of help others a pathway that would help you grow spiritually and as a follower of Jesus at this particular [time in your life. That is what we are inviting you to think about each Sunday as we talk about each of our values.
Here is what the Princeton experiment really discovered. A majority of students, seminary students preparing to be pastors, did not stop to help even after studying the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The only variable that made it more or less likely for a student to stop and help was how hurried they were … how much time they had been given to prepare their speech and to get to the building where they had to give it. They found that students who were given more time and who were less hurried were much more likely to stop to help.
So the question for many of us in the busy lives we lead is Will we do what we have to do to make time in our lives to practice what we say we believe?
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