The Rev. Ashman's sermon on the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, 2011

There is a story told of Mohandas Gandhi who was once boarding a train.  Suddenly one of his sandals slipped off his foot and landed on the track and he was unable to retrieve it since the train was moving.  Then to the amazement of his companions, Gandhi calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land close to the first.  Asked by a fellow passenger why he did so, Gandhi smiled and replied, "The poor man who finds the shoes lying on the track will now have a pair he can use."

A week and a half ago at the National Latin Convention in Richmond, Kentucky, I was driving to find the nearest Starbucks but this time not for myself.  A young colleague of mine from Illinois and I chair a contest called Latin Sight Reading which is designed to measure how well young scholars can read Latin in front of judges.  The judge's meeting and the contest mean that some teachers and chaperones have to give up an entire morning.  So Chris and I provide them with Starbucks and pastries.  It's a small thing but a rewarding one.  Anyway, as I was driving to the Starbucks, I was listening to a local radio station and caught a talk show under way. I will never forget the question and answer I heard.

A listener asked the host if it was permissible for a Christian to bargain for a better deal in a business transaction.  The answer was a swift, "Yes, it is permissible. But if you have the upper hand in a business transaction, then that is the time when you need to ask yourself what would Jesus do."  Consider Gandhi.  He wasn't a Christian.  He wasn't engaging in a business transaction but he knew by grace and compassion to give another person a break.  Now consider as well the collect that was prayed for all of us just a few moments ago.  Did we not ask God: “Graft in our hearts the love of his Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of his great mercy keep us in the same”?

My trip was illuminating in many ways.  Perhaps most profoundly illuminating were my two visits to Saint Simeon Skete in nearby Taylorsville.  Father Seraphim and his wife Vicki have a lovely parish family and I was struck that they were just like my own tri-parish family in that I could palpably feel the bonds of affection with that parish family.  Father and Vicki also sponsor a missionary outreach to Liberia, one of the poorest and most violence plagued countries in West Africa.  Father has had more success in conversions than most other missionaries because he uses a unique and wonderful technique.  He goes to villages and just loves the people.  He helps medically, physically and educationally but he does not bully the local population into becoming Christian.  The result is that they see him as a man filled with love and they respect him; and sometimes they convert.  But in any event they see Jesus in this wonderful priest and his wife.

I have so much I would like to say about the Skete and its work in Kentucky and Liberia; and I will in the future including how grateful Father and Vicki are for our support.  But let us consider the Gospel in light of what I have said about the work of the Skete and the Gandhi story.  Jesus had been preaching in the wilderness and was surrounded by hundreds of people.  Did you notice that he clearly told his disciples that he had compassion on the multitude because they had no food and could not make it to their homes safely without food?  So he performed a miracle.  He gave them bread and fish to sustain them.  Yes indeed, the feeding of four thousand is a prefiguring of the Last Supper, the Holy Communion and the Banquet of Eternity which never ends.  But it is more than these; for this miracle was rooted in compassion.

My dear friends how many times in our daily pilgrimage do we ask ourselves, "What would Jesus do?"  How many times do we allow the Holy Ghost to inspire our hearts to do kindly to others, even those we do not know?  How many times do we lighten the burdens of others or listen to their troubles with a sympathetic heart?  How many times do we show unbelievers or lapsed Christians or sincere people of other religions who Jesus is by the love and compassion we live out in our lives?  These are simple and profound questions but they are the only questions worth answering.  Who will say of us, "We sent them away filled?"