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As it is recorded in the Gospel according to Luke, the tenth chapter, I begin the reading at the verse numbered 30. Jesus replied, "A man was going down 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 him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a

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Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him he had compassion, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii, and gave them to the

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innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend I will repay you when I come back.' Now which of these three do you think proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? And they said, 'The one who showed mercy on him.' And Jesus said to him, 'Go and do likewise.'" And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word.

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Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I learned of it just the other day. Dr. Amy Charles, one of my finest college professors, died. I'll always remember her because she was a great lady, and a great teacher, and because she introduced me to John Donne. You see, in Dr. Charles' class, the second semester was given

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over to the writing of a research paper. There were 25 students in the class, and she would select 25 research themes, and each student would select a theme on which to write. The day the themes were to be distributed, I got to class late, and only one theme remained unchosen. John Donne, post-Elizabethan poet and dean of St. Paul's. Now that wasn't too appealing to a 1950s

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freshman, but I could not persuade Dr. Charles otherwise. Her reasoning was very simple. There is one topic left as yet unselected, and there is one student who has not yet made a selection. That's a perfect match. So for the next 16 weeks, I studied and read John Donne, and I will always be grateful that I did, because I fell in love with him. I remember how I concluded my 50-page

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paper on John Donne. It was with his epitaph, which was written by Isaac Walton. The words are, "Reader, I would have thee know, Donne's body only lies below. For if the grave his soul comprised, earth would be richer than the skies." A great man who wrote many great words, and I am sure you are familiar with some of those words. Perhaps of all of his words, the ones best known are from

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the conclusion of his 17th devotion. I'm sure all of you have heard these at one time or another. "No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manner of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me,

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because I am involved in all mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." John Donne understood us all to be related in the human community, and when the bell tolls, it tolls, he says, for each of us, for we are all one. The question is, do we believe that? How much love do we really have for a suffering world?

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I would submit that most of us don't think much about the suffering of the world, and there are reasons for that. Some of us are caught up in what I would call "pietistic backgrounds." We have been raised in religious traditions where one had concern for sins like adultery or the misuse of the tongue or theft or bearing false witness, those kinds of sins, and sins they truly

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are. But in the background of which we were a part, there never was any reference to world need or to the universal cry for justice. And what's interesting is that many people who are raised in these rather pietistic backgrounds go on to be educated and move to positions of great sophistication and influence, and they still hold on to their pietistic backgrounds.

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They're still much more concerned about obeying the Ten Commandments in their own lives, and they ought to be concerned about that, but they don't think a thing, for example, sitting on the board of some great corporation, of slaughtering an entire city by eliminating the mill and the jobs of all the men and women who work there. No sense, you see, of universal need. I read about a man who

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owned blocks of slum housing occupied by poor black folks. This housing had no toilet facilities. The community passed a law that this man was going to have to put sanitary facilities in every one of these houses. He vigorously opposed this law. He called it "bleeding-heart liberalism." He called it "do-goodism." He called it "socialism" and "communism." Then a couple of weeks later, his

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grandson was seriously injured, and as he was sitting in the hospital waiting for a report on the little boy, he said, "No expense shall be spared in bringing my grandson back to health again." Now, how is it that this man could be willing to spend so much to save the life of one, and at the same time be utterly indifferent to the health of all of those who lived in his houses,

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including many children and who dwelt in the worst unsanitary conditions? Well, the answer, you see, is a kind of naive pietism. This man really did not see himself involved with mankind, and when he heard the bell toll, he only wanted to know if it was for him or for his. Other people don't relate to the suffering of the world because they are simply overawed by

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the statistics of the problems. I mean, they read of 241 Marines who are slain by a bomb in Lebanon, of 2,500 who are poisoned by gas in Bhopal, India, of 4,000 Mexicans who are crushed to death in the earthquake ruins of Mexico City. They sit and they watch the news and see an Ethiopian mother with her starving child in her arms, and they're moved very deeply, but five

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minutes later, the move of the news has brought them to the weather report or to the sports report, and so they forget it very quickly. I know of a man who started out going to seminary and then decided he could have more influence in political action, so he gave himself the political involvement and did become one of the dominant political figures of the 20th century, and this man said

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on one occasion, "If one person dies, that is a tragedy. If a million people die, that is a statistic." The man knew what he was talking about because he himself ordered the deaths of millions. His name was Joseph Stalin. It is possible, you see, to become so accustomed to immense suffering that we simply turn away from it without becoming involved, without becoming

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what John Donne was, a part of mankind, so that when something was lost to one, something was lost to all. There are others who have no interest in world need out of sheer selfishness. I remember sitting once at the lunch table with two faculty colleagues at Grove City College. These two men said many things to me that afternoon that astonished me, but the conversation can be

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summed up in essentially two sentences. One man said, "Just let the poor people of the world die. That will mean more for the rest of us." And the other man said, "I cannot see that the United States has any obligation, moral or otherwise, to assist any other nation on the face of the earth." Now, when I listen to these men, both of whom describe themselves as Christians, I was reminded

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of Langton Gilkey, the great theologian, graduate of Harvard University, who earlier in his life was held a prisoner in a Japanese concentration camp for three years. There were 1,500 prisoners in this camp, which was very crowded. There was not much food. And of these 1,500 prisoners, 300 were Americans, and the rest were Canadian and British and European. Now, 2,100 Red Cross

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food packages arrived from America, and the Japanese who were running the camp decreed that every one of the 1,500 inmates would receive one package each, and the remaining 600 packages would be given to the 300 Americans because the packages had come from America in the first place. But the Americans rose up and vigorously protested this. They argued that every one of the American

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inmates should receive seven packages each, and nobody else should receive any at all. That's the attitude which was being verbalized by these faculty colleagues. When they heard the bell toll, they only scrambled to see what they could get that was left behind. Then there are some people who do not relate to the world's needs out of what one might describe as deliberate ignorance. Now,

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these are the people who don't want a prison built where anybody can see it. They don't want a halfway house in their neighborhood. They're willing to come out vigorously against abortion, but they would never think of adopting a handicapped child or a child of another race. They read no magazines that keep them up on the world mission situation. They do not subscribe

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to any objective and responsible international journals. When television has a white paper on some matter of international significance, they turn to comedy or sports instead. This is the attitude which suggests that beer and pretzels and Monday night football can drown out the sound of the tolling of the bell. Now, over against these attitudes, I want to hold before you this morning

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a particular dictum of moral philosophy. And that dictum is this. The fewer people you are concerned about as you consider what to do with the wealth and the power and the influence which is yours, no matter how great or little that might be, the fewer people you are concerned about, the less moral your actions are. The more people you take into consideration as you consider the

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impact of your actions, the more moral your actions become. Now, by that dictum of moral philosophy, naive pietism and statistical shell shock and sheer selfishness and deliberate ignorance are immoral. They are confined to the small circle. There is in them no broad love. And because there is no love, there is no God. Think of how God loves. See the extent of the love of

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God. It is as wide as the suffering world. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life. This is no narrow circle. This is a circle that is as wide as the whole wide world. Look at the love of God, how generously it was displayed in the life of Jesus, God incarnate. He loved lepers, touched people that

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nobody else would touch. He loved crucifiers and prayed for those who took his life. He loved persons of other races and spoke approvingly and told parables about good Samaritans. He loved the handicapped. Do you remember how he dealt with blind Bartimaeus? He loved the little children. Let them climb in his lap and tug on his beard. He loved people of all economic levels. He would

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speak with joy of a woman who had only two mites and also of a rich man like Nicodemus. He loved the dead. Do you remember how he wept at the tomb of Lazarus? He loved prostitutes. Do you remember how he said, "Neither do I condemn thee"? He loved those who betrayed him, giving to Judas the sop of honor. He loved them all. There was no extent, there was no boundary, there was no

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demarcation, there was no place of cutoff. Every bell that tolled he responded to. And he loved them even to blood. None overlooked, none excluded, even to blood. Now we all know that the world is filled with hate and sin and anger and frustration. And the world knows it too. And confronting its own nature, the world has only two places on which to put the blame. Either it must blame itself,

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which it will not do, or else it must blame God. So the world blames God for the way the world is. And the world took this God who so loved all of it and all of those who are a part of it, and put him on trial and found him guilty. And the sentence which was passed upon him was not a sentence conceived by one person. Rather it was a sentence made up by all those who sat upon the

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prejudiced jury. One said, "Let him be condemned to become a man, so he'll know the weakness of humanity." And another said, "And let him be a poor man, so he'll know the stink of poverty." And another said, "And let him be part of a minority group, so he'll know what it is to be called a kike or a dago or a wop or a nigger. And let him be part of a conquered people, so he'll know what

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it feels like to have the heel of an oppressor upon his throat. And let him be misunderstood by the very people to whom he came to minister. And let him be betrayed by someone that he loved. And let his family abandon him and turn away in shame. And then let him die a common death, an ugly death, naked so that every prying eye can see. And let him be beaten, and let him be scarred,

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and let him be eaten alive by swarming flies. And when he's dead, let there be no grave in which to bury him, but only some other borrowed hole into which to throw what's left." That was their sentence. And they carried it out. And he loved them still. You know, we speak often of the power of God, and it's easy to see. You have only to look at the orbiting stars, the swinging of the spheres. And he

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could have shown his power here. He could have dazzled them with his might. He could have left them gaping with his power. He could have knocked them dumb with the strength which was his. But oh no, he loved. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Now apply that kind of loving to this moral dictum

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I hold before you today. You remember how it goes. The fewer people you are concerned about, as you consider what to do with the wealth and the power and the influence, great or small, which are yours, the less moral your actions are. But the more people you take into consideration, as you consider the impact of your actions, the more moral your actions become. By this standard, God is the most

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moral lover of all of history. That's the reason Jesus told this parable of the Good Samaritan I read to you a moment ago. The thieves, they did not see themselves as part of mankind. They didn't listen to the bell for its tolling. They went out and made it toll for other people. And the people who pass by, the Levites and the priests, well, they did not see themselves as involved. They

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listened not at all to the tolling of the bell. But then comes one in this story told by Jesus, who is a Samaritan, and Jesus makes him the hero because, you see, he crosses every boundary. He crosses the boundary of religion. He crosses the boundary of race. He crosses the boundary of health and injury. He crosses the boundary of safety and danger. He crosses every boundary and

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loves the hurt man like God. How wide the circle of his compassion. And Jesus concludes the parable by asking, "Who is your neighbor? How wide is your love?" That's where all of this brings us, you see, to the question, "How can we learn to love as God loves?" And there's only one answer to that question. We can only love like God when God's love is in us. It is only when we accept

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the cross, when we realize how much we ourselves have been loved, that we can begin to extend that same love to others. Think of it as if someone saved your life. Suppose that we're in some military operation and someone saves your life. Having saved your life, could you say no to that person? Would you not feel under some obligation to live that life saved for you by another,

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to live that life to the honor of that other? I mean, could you in good conscience say to that one, "Well, what have you done for me lately when your very life is a gift from him?" Well, when we come to the cross, we find that our lives have been saved. Our sin, our transgression, our lack of conformity to the law of God, all of this has been taken by God himself,

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and the punishment for it all has been borne by him. And the indignation of it all has been borne by him, and the pain of it all has been borne by him. And when that breaks forth in your mind, when that somehow seeps down into your consciousness, when that somehow soaks into your soul, when you recognize that you are divinely loved by the divine lover,

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then you can never say no to him again when he asks you to love another in his name. John Taller, the great 14th century mystic, called the illuminated doctor. His writings are so profound you have to read them five or six times in order to begin to get at the truth. But there is one picture which he uses that is suitable for our purposes here, simple as they

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are. He says, "When one yields to the love of God, it is as if one is caught on the divine fisherman's hook." We are hooked by God, and like a hooked fish, we still have a certain freedom to swim as we will, even away, even away from the divine fisherman. But we can only go so far, and finally we must yield, and finally we must accept. And we are brought into a kind of sweet

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captivity, and we are held fast by the Spirit of God. And the first thing that he takes out of us is our natural selfishness. And when he has taken from us that natural selfishness, then he begins to fill us with his Spirit until we go out and use our hands and our feet and our minds and our mouths and our bodies to serve the whole world. When you're hooked by God, you can be no longer

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selfish. You cannot hide behind naive pietisms. You're no longer awed by statistics because you have confronted God, and there's nothing more awesome than that. And you cannot retreat into some willful ignorance. The mathematics of your morality changes so that your sympathy never wavers and is ever on watch. You no longer see yourself as an island. Instead, you are involved

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with all mankind. You are a part of the continent of humanity. And when the bell tolls, whether it be in sadness or joy, in victory or defeat, in great gain or crushing loss, that bell is heard in your heart because you are a part of all everywhere. That bell tolls for you, owned by God. The mathematics of your morality becomes pure. For God so loved the world, for God so loved the

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world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. And when, by giving yourself at the cross, that becomes true through you, then you love the world, and you present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. For this is your reasonable service. Let us pray.

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Our Father, we do not know for sure, but thou knowest. In our midst this morning, or in the radio audiences, there may be those who have been playing at this thing called faith. And the mark of their gamesmanship is that when the bell tolls, they ignore it. Bring them this day to the cross. Help them to recognize that being so loved, they are under command to love. Help

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them to see that being forgiven all, they must forgive all. Help them to grasp that being so suffered for, they must be willing to suffer. O Holy Spirit of God, move in the hearts of those who have not yet come to the cross, and at this very moment, reach out and lay hands on them as they have never been gripped before. Hook them with thy love, and set the hook deep, so that

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there can be no swimming away, no dodge, no deception, no escape. Clean them for thyself. For thine own sake, and for the world's sake. Amen.