Sermon Transcript
I believe that Silicon Valley has a tremendous deficiency.
I believe there is a problem that we experience that many other parts of the world do not, or at least not as severely. I believe there is a large percentage of people here who are hurting for a specific reason.
And I believe hospitality is the solution. We, as the church, have the answer for what causes this pain. Now, when we think of Silicon Valley, we don’t really believe that people have deep, unmet needs? Most of the people who live here seem to have everything. Most of the people, not all the people, most of the people have food, shelter, work, transportation, education, healthcare.
So, what could be missing?
After living here for nearly 4 years, here’s my observation. People in Silicon Valley are profoundly isolated from one another. We lack a sense of community or belonging. People feel like they are unnoticed, unappreciated, feel like they need to make it on their own, no one is going to help them. People feel like their existence doesn’t matter.
To others. It’s a bit of a mystery how we ended up with this problem. Maybe, here’s one guess, maybe it’s because so many people where we live just kind of want to keep to themselves, which is fine in some ways if that’s the way you’re wired, you want to keep to yourself. But if everyone is keeping to themselves, then really no one ends up with any substantial relationships in their lives. We might be busy with other people.
We might complete tasks with other people. We might have a group of people that we do activities with. We might even talk about our opinions on world events with some people. It is not like we don’t talk to anyone ever, even if we prefer to keep to ourselves, but many of us lack a group of true friends.
And it seems to me, honestly, we might not remember what a true friend is. A friend is someone who genuinely misses us when we’re not there, who tells us that they miss us, like our absence was noticed and it mattered. A friend is someone who can’t wait to know what is going on in our lives. Someone who hears us when we cry and actually wants to listen to what’s going on, like, why are you crying? Many people in our lives probably don’t want to be bothered when they hear us cry.
They hope we can just somehow deal with it on our own. But a friend is someone who not only knows about our insecurities but loves to help us face them. And Silicon Valley has a shortage, maybe an unprecedented shortage of friends. Hospitality is the process, the set of actions of bringing someone from stranger to friend. The word for hospitality in Scripture, in case you weren’t in a small group in the first hour, hospitality is actually a compound word combining the words of love and stranger.
The type of love is philos, which is not romantic love, it’s friendship. So philos means friendship, and the word for stranger is xenos. So we have philos and xenos, and we just smush those 2 words together, so it’s friendship of strangers, befriending strangers. That is literally hospitality. It’s taking a stranger and making that person a friend.
And Jesus tells a famous parable that addresses hospitality and the need for it. In fact, this parable is so famous that even if you’ve never been in church before, you’ve probably heard people refer to it. And that can actually sometimes cause problems because we might bring our preconceived notions of what we already know when we talk about it. So as we read this account of when Jesus tells this parable, let’s try to just suspend some of what we already know, which I’m sure is great stuff and all true, but hopefully this morning we can hear a little bit different nuance to what we’ve heard maybe so many times. The parable is in Luke chapter 10 starting in verse 25.
This is in your bulletin or it’ll be up on the screen, but Luke chapter 10 starting in verse 25. And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, a lawyer who was going to put Jesus to the test. So, he says, Teacher, meaning Jesus, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He, Jesus, said to him, the lawyer, What is written in the law? How do you read it?
And he, the lawyer, answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind. Your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus said to him, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. But the lawyer, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor?
Jesus replied, a man was going down from Jericho, or from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw the man on the side of the road, he passed by on the other side. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw the beaten man, he passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where the the beaten man was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. The Samaritan went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine.
Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day, he took out 2 denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. Which of these 3, the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan, do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among robbers? And the lawyer answered, the one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, you go and do likewise.
We normally read this and think, oh, we are supposed to help people. We are supposed to be charitable. We’re supposed to be good Samaritans, that’s the name of how this is usually referred to. I’m going to help the person across the street, I’m going to be a good Samaritan and pick up someone else’s trash, right? Those are all fantastic things to do, please keep doing them, but there is more to this parable than just that.
Jesus is teaching us what hospitality is and why it is so important. So, let’s take a look at it. This morning, we will investigate who is ignored. By that, we mean who is in the ditch, who is on the side of the road, who passes by and does nothing, and finally, who is the Good Samaritan? And along the way, we’ll probably learn a good bit about hospitality.
So, first, who is ignored? Who is left for dead? Who does this person who is in the ditch on the side of the road, who does that represent? Who was it that was passed by? There’s this guy in the ditch, but it’s a parable, so this represents a reality.
Who is ignored?
All of us.
In a way, this represents— the guy in the ditch represents all of us. We are all, in some ways, in the ditch being ignored. You’re in the ditch, I’m in the ditch. I told you this wasn’t going to be your normal Good Samaritan sermon, right? Now, I know also other people are in the ditch too, and I know lots of people in the world need help, and that’s definitely part of what this parable teaches, and we will get to that, okay?
But Jesus tells a story that would have immediately elicited empathy from the lawyer asking the question. In that setting, at that time, getting mugged and left for dead was a big problem. You wouldn’t travel by yourself. You wouldn’t travel at night because it was easy for people to ambush you. There were no forensics.
There were no detectives. Unless there were witnesses and the criminal could be identified by those witnesses, probably not a whole lot could be done, which means getting mugged was semi-common. It’s very possible the lawyer who asked Jesus the question could have been a victim of robbers at some point in his life, or at the very least, he knew someone close to him who had been a victim. The lawyer would have seen the possibility that he himself could have ended up in the same ditch as the hypothetical person in the story. Even in the story, the way Jesus tells the story, right, he says 4 people went down a road.
There was a man, there was a priest, a Levite, and then a Samaritan, right? It’s the same road and same number of individuals going down each time. Why was it that the man was robbed and not the priest or the Levite or the Samaritan? It could have happened to any of them. People knew this could happen to them.
The lawyer knew it could happen to him, and they knew, all the people knew, that if it happened to them, they would need someone to stop and to care for them instead of passing by. Jesus might have told the parable in this way to get that kind of empathy. The lawyer might have rolled over so quick because he empathized with the man in the ditch. Did you notice he didn’t give Jesus any pushback at all? He didn’t say, oh, that guy who was robbed, he shouldn’t have been out there.
He should have been carrying his mace. We all know that we’re supposed to do that. It’s his own fault. This is survival of the fittest, right? The lawyer, he didn’t say any of that because he understands this problem exists in the world and we need each other if we’re going to get through it.
And if we can’t count on each other, if we all just say everybody needs to handle their own business, then actually none of us are going to be okay. So Jesus, if Jesus potentially started with empathy before moving to imperatives, maybe it’s wise for us to do the same. I want you to think about when you needed someone to be hospitable, you needed someone to see you and care about you, but they didn’t. Instead, they passed by you and ignored you, just like the priest and Levite passed by the guy in the ditch. They saw him, they understood he needed someone, and then they passed on by.
When has that happened to you? I think, unfortunately, For us who live around here, it has probably happened a lot.
I have never lived in an area where people felt more like they were on their own, like no one cared if they fell. In Silicon Valley, actually, people might be rooting for you to fall. You mess up on a project or even like a simple social media post and they pounce. Right? But you do a great job.
Hardly anyone notices. Hardly anyone mentions it. Maybe it’s your work anniversary and nobody says anything. No one says, thanks for your service. I’m glad that you’re here.
We’re a lot better team since you came. We can feel like we aren’t noticed, like we don’t exist. Around Silicon Valley, there aren’t many people who put in the effort to remember what’s going on in your life and then ask you you about it. About a year ago, our young professional ministry here at Bridges began putting a major emphasis on building relationships, and so we started talking about the challenges of developing significant friendships in this area. And the more we talked, we’re still talking, the more that we uncovered the pain we have because others have passed us by.
And so, since that was the experience of our young adults, I just began asking everybody about this. And honestly, in this area, it kind of seems like an epidemic. So, for example, around here, when you ask someone where they are from, what they do for a living, what they like to do for fun, they will answer your question, but then almost never will they reciprocate and ask you the same question in return, like, where are you from? And they’re like, Chicago. And then there’s nothing back from them.
You’ve taken an interest in them, but there is no return interest in you. That’s inhospitable. That is passing you by. That is, I see you over there, But I don’t care, I have my own stuff. That is priest and Levite, that is not stopping to connect with you, that’s walking on by with basically no interest in you.
The Good Samaritan, on the other hand, is emotionally moved by what’s going on with somebody else and he cares enough to get personally invested. Jesus shows us in this parable the Good Samaritan is someone who does more than write a check charity. The Good Samaritan stops what he is doing, stops his task, and then refocuses relationally. He has compassion, that’s the word in the parable. He spends time with the person, at least an entire day with this brand-new person.
He prioritizes relationally on the person who is in need, and that’s not what happens in Silicon Valley in general. But that is what we need. We need to feel like we matter to others. We need to feel like we are noticed and remembered. Someone shared a story with me, again, because I ask everyone, what are friendships like in Silicon Valley?
Do you think isolation is an issue around here? And everyone says, yes, it’s an issue, and then they tell me a story. So someone shared with me a story. That there was a new guy in his office. The new guy was not on his team, the new guy’s desk was maybe around the corner, but the guy who told me the story said he would occasionally pass by the new guy’s workspace throughout the day.
So, after about a week, he stopped to say hello to the new guy, like, hi, I think you’re new. How’s it going working here? The new guy, like, jumped back, scared that someone was speaking to him, and said no one had stopped by his desk the whole time that he had worked there. Been there over a week, no one stopped to say hi. I don’t know if that means he wasn’t on a team or if he only communicates to his boss through email, I don’t know the all the details, but there was no onboarding process to get him relationally connected with others in his office, either formally or informally, no process for that.
And no one seemed to think it was necessary, like, who cares if you have relationships, just get your work done. That’s a problem, and we’re all experiencing it to some extent. It’s like everyone around us is in their own world or is so dedicated to whatever task they are doing that it feels like we don’t really matter and no one cares if we are here or not. We’re in the ditch and the priest and the Levite just keep walking by. We are ignored.
Now, for most of us, there’s nothing fundamentally terrible about our circumstances. We are not mugged and left for dead, but being ignored by the majority of the people the majority of the time is its own terrible circumstance. And it really adds up. If only one person overlooks us, that’s not really a problem. But the aggregate, the ongoing cumulative effect that no one sees us, no one remembers, no one cares, has robbed us of the relational connections we need.
Have you ever felt like that in Silicon Valley?
Have you ever felt like that in this church?
We all know what it’s like to be in the ditch, which makes the next point all the more condemning. Who passes by Who is the priest and the Levite in the story?
All of us. Who do these 2 religious men represent?
Us. We’ve all passed by.
You do and I do. We all know how it hurts to be overlooked, to be ignored, to be passed by. We don’t want that to be the way the world is. We want to be noticed, remembered, cheered for, encouraged, supported. And yet, we contribute to the very problem that we experience.
Every time we ignore someone, we make it more likely that person feels an even greater need to look out for himself, to make his own way, Because we haven’t remembered him, he feels more urgency to focus on himself, and if now he is more focused on himself, then he will be less likely to turn around and focus on others, and then the problem multiplies. We have contributed into the world what we wish wasn’t in the world. This is the gotcha that Jesus put on the lawyer. The lawyer said, I don’t really need to be a friend to everyone, do I? Neighbor only means people I already know, or people in my immediate proximity, right, Jesus?
And Jesus says, let me tell you a story. And then the lawyer realizes, oh, wow, I need to be noticed, I need to be cared for, I need that, so if I need others to be a neighbor to me, then I must be a neighbor to them. That is the command after all, right? Love your neighbor like you love yourself. Jesus is like, what’s written in the law?
And the guy’s like, love your neighbor like you love yourself. And Jesus is like, exactly, how you doing?
We have all failed at that. We are more into ourselves, into our own worlds, into our tasks than we are into others. During the first point of this message when I was listing all the ways that we feel ignored, did you realize you might be guilty of doing the very things that others do to you?
I’ll confess, I do at times. I definitely pass by others and can be more concerned with my own world. I will stand here guilty with you, but it is guilty that we collectively stand. So, some examples, some more examples of how we do this and some of our excuses of why we do this. And then what those excuses reveal about what’s in our hearts.
We can start a little light.
I say hi to people at Bridges on Sunday morning all the time. And by the way, this isn’t just at Bridges, this happens all over the Bay, just walking down the sidewalk, random people. But I say hi, and it is amazing how often people don’t say hi back. I find it very odd because I’m from the southeastern United States and that would never happen there. Everyone says hi to everyone, that’s the way we do it, Southern hospitality is a real thing.
But people in the Bay, if I say hi, some of them just keep walking. Or sometimes I’ll say hi and people seem like completely startled, that someone would say hello to them and they just like nervously turn and walk the other direction. By the way, if you do that to Beth, my wife, if she says hi to you and you don’t respond or run away in fear, this actually happened in our neighborhood just the other day, someone didn’t respond when she said hi, she will track you down.
She will just keep waving and pursuing you until you say hello to her. Like, she is going to make a connection with you whether you like it or not. Like, she will wear you down and win you as a friend. It’s going to happen. Now, listen, I’ve been on the other side of that, okay?
So, I can understand why we might not respond when someone says hi to us. I told you I’ll stand here guilty with you. You know, people have waved at me.
Or I thought they were waving at me, right? Has this happened to you? So then I wave back all excited, someone has noticed me, but it turns out they weren’t waving at me, right? They were waving at the person behind me, and then I feel like an idiot because I just waved at no one. And then, in the future, when someone— when I think someone’s waving at me again, that makes me hesitate, right?
I don’t want to look like an idiot again. So maybe I don’t wave back this time, just to make sure I don’t look like an idiot. But we have to realize how that makes someone feel if they wave at us, and we do nothing. They went out of their way to say hi to us and we just stand there. Like, whether we intend to send the message or not, the message is sent, we don’t want to have anything to do with you.
And here’s what that reveals about us, instead of risking myself to make sure that you are affirmed, I’m going to put you at risk to make sure I am affirmed. I don’t want to look like an idiot, so I’m going to protect myself by not waving, even though that might make you feel unwanted. So, I’d rather you feel unwanted than me feel like an idiot.
That’s not loving our neighbor like we love ourselves. We are putting ourselves above our neighbor. It is a simple interaction, maybe a silly example, but it exposes our hearts. I am more important than you. I love me more than you.
A second example which will sting a little more, I have had people tell me, so not everyone, this is not everyone’s experience, alright, the sky is not completely falling, but I have had people tell me they have visited life groups at Bridges and they feel like barely anyone talked with them. No one learned their name. Class ended, existing people talked to each other but not to them. They felt like they didn’t exist and it hurt. Similarly, I have seen people sitting around a table at one of our church gatherings where there was a new person at the table, and no one speaks to the new person.
They even turn their backs to the new person so they can talk with people they already know, which again, I will stand here guilty with you. I can relate to those instances. I’ve been there myself. This is the Bay, so we’re all a little socially awkward. You know, we don’t know what to say to a new person, so we just don’t say anything, right?
Meaning it’s really our insecurities that prevent us from engaging with someone new. Or maybe we’re just mean-spirited, but I’m trying to give us the benefit of the doubt, so we’ll just say we’re insecure. All right, but again, The new person doesn’t know that we feel insecure. They only know that no one talked with them and they feel alone. Here is what that shows about our hearts.
We would rather make ourselves feel comfortable and at home than make others feel comfortable and at home. We want to talk with people we already know, so that we’re not out of our comfort zone, but by doing that, we put them in an uncomfortable position of feeling insecure and alone. Right? If it’s my comfort versus your inclusion, my comfort is going to win.
We don’t love our neighbor like we love ourselves. We love ourselves more.
We understand we have a need to feel like we’re noticed, to be included, to feel like we matter, to feel like someone cares about us and what’s going on in our lives. We know we have those needs, and we all do all we can to make sure that those needs are met, and then we fail to love our neighbor like we love ourselves. I met a homeless woman one time. This is when I was living back on the East Coast, but she told me the hardest part about being homeless was not that she felt hungry or cold, The hardest part for her, and I don’t presume that she speaks for all homeless people everywhere, but the hardest part for her was she felt everyone ignored her. Everyone passed by on the street tried to avoid her.
She felt unwanted. She wouldn’t even get water from a public drinking fountain because she didn’t think people wanted her to be in a public place. So, she would drink out of puddles whenever she could. Her biggest pain was, no one sees me and no one cares if they do. And if we’re honest, that might be our biggest pain too.
I wonder, the man in Jesus’ parable who was mugged and left for dead. Now, I know it’s a parable, so it’s a fictional example, to prove a point and not a real person, obviously, right? But I wonder if the fictitious man that Jesus made up was more upset that he had been beaten up and robbed, or if he was more upset that people passed by and didn’t care. What’s worse?
Meeting that relational need is vital to hospitality. If that relational need is not met, we have not accomplished hospitality. Now, of course, we also want to meet people’s physical needs, and that is also a vital part of hospitality, but friendship is in the definition of hospitality for a reason. It means we actually need to be making friends with people who we’re helping. And oftentimes, we’re never going to know what the physical needs are unless we first get to know people and hear what is going on in their lives.
If all we ever talk about is ourselves, or all we ever talk about is some subject that is interesting to us instead of wanting to get to know the people around us, we will never know how to help them. And I’ll just pass this along to you. There are people who feel like we don’t really ask about them. We just talk about ourselves or what we find interesting, which means we appear friendly, we are perfectly pleasant to have a conversation with, but we are more interested in talking at someone than with someone. We have something we want to say, so somebody needs to be there to hear it, but it doesn’t really matter who they are or what’s going on with them, right?
We could just, like, remove them and replace them with anybody else, and it would be exactly the same to us, because what we have to say is what matters. They don’t matter.
If that’s us, if that’s how we do conversation, then how will we ever know what the needs of the people are around us? We won’t know how to help them professionally, academically, physically, medically unless we actually get to know them.
Their needs probably aren’t going to be as obvious as robbed, mugged, and laying in a ditch most of the time. Some people have very apparent needs, and we can just jump in with compassion and help them while also developing this relational aspect, and that is hospitality. If someone has a baby, you just take them a meal, actually lots of meals. Even if they aren’t super involved in the church already, you know, they don’t need to be super involved for us to just jump in and help with a need. Remember, hospitality is love or friendship to strangers.
It’s not friendship to super involved people. So, if there is a stranger with an obvious need, we just meet it. And invest relationally at the same time? Of course. New baby, hospitalization, bound to the home, homeless, immigrants, refugees, prisoners.
If we’re acting like a friend or neighbor to someone with any of those needs, we will, one, meet the need, and two, convey they matter to us as people and invest into them relationally. Of course, we ought to do that. But the majority of people around us do not have glaring needs that we can just jump in and begin to serve. With the majority of people, we need to develop the relational aspect first. If we never develop the relational aspect, we’ll likely never know the physical aspect.
The relationship part is not optional.
Just because people might not have glaring physical needs doesn’t mean we’re off the hook for hospitality.
So, lastly, who is the Good Samaritan? Before we say who it is, let’s say who it isn’t. It isn’t us.
The first point was all of us, the second point is all of us, the third point, Not us. We’re not the Good Samaritan. We just said that we frequently fail to love our neighbor like we love ourselves, which means we are not the Good Samaritan in the story, right? The Good Samaritan is an illustration Jesus made up to show what it’s like to do the law, to love your neighbor like like you love yourself, and we aren’t him. Now, some of us are really awesome.
Some of us more closely emulate the example of the Good Samaritan than others of us, and as I think about some of the people in this room, I’m like, what you people do is incredible, right? But even the people who I’m thinking about, you, during this message, in your mind, have probably thought, wow, there are ways that I fall short of Loving my neighbor like I love myself, which means the standard is still out there even above you, right? All of us are shooting for this standard, even those of you who are super awesome, you’re like, wow, and you might even know more so because it seems like the closer we get to Jesus, the more we understand what a mess we are. So those of us who look up to you, you might not think that we should look up to you, and you understand there’s a standard out there that even you are shooting for. But if you’re shooting for it, that means you are not the standard.
You’re still aiming for it. It’s still out there. We’re not the Good Samaritan.
Maybe we think the cost is too high. In the story, the Samaritan had to spend time, energy, resources, and money to elevate the other man. The Samaritan stopped his journey, bandaged the man’s wounds, poured on oil and wine, took the man to an inn, stayed with him in the inn, and then paid the innkeeper to continue caring for the man. The priest and Levite probably understood as they’re walking by, if I get involved, that’s gonna cost me a lot. We probably think the same thing about the strangers around us.
We think, I don’t have the energy for somebody new. I don’t have the time for somebody new. I have to focus on my job right now. I have to get this task done. I can’t get tied up in a new person.
I would just feel uncomfortable, you know, going over there, engaging with that person. I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know them. That’s awkward. It would just be so uncomfortable.
Priests and Levites like us probably calculate that hospitality will cost us something we are not willing to pay: time, energy, investment, comfort. We aren’t willing to pay it sometimes. We are not the Good Samaritan. But there is a true Good Samaritan. There is a real person who is the standard.
He is not a hypothetical metaphor. There is someone who always loves his neighbor like he loves himself, and therefore, there is someone who earned the right to eternal life which was the lawyer’s original question. While none of the rest of us have a claim to eternal life by following the law, loving others like we love ourselves, there is someone who does have that claim. There is someone who considered the cost to rescue us from the ditch we were in, and he paid that cost in full. There is someone who not only detoured from his path along the road to assist us, but he instead made it his very mission He made it His very purpose in this world to seek us out and heal us in every single way.
There is someone who prepared a place for us to rest, not just in some hotel, but He instead prepared a place for us in His Father’s house. There is someone who poured His wine over us, not just fermented grapes, but He poured His very blood over us. There is someone who came to bind up our wounds, to make us whole. There is someone who paid the price we couldn’t pay to restore us who we ought to be. There is such a person.
Who is the Good Samaritan? It’s Jesus.
The Good Samaritan, the true Good Samaritan who completely fulfilled the command to love neighbor like self where we have fallen short in many ways to fulfill that command is Jesus.
Our mission, now that we have been rescued by him, is to go and do likewise.
Let’s pray.
Jesus, thank you for coming to rescue us.
Thank you for seeing us in our need and not passing us by.
Thank you for caring enough to stop. For making it your very mission to heal us.
Lord, we pray that you would continue that process in us, that we would even more so closely approximate the model that you have set. Would you fill us in such a way that we really would love our neighbors like we love ourselves, we really would see people as you see them around us, Have love for them, compassion, and refocus our energies on them relationally to meet their physical needs, Lord. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
