Day 3: Availability

Today, we’re looking at the two-sided coin of how we practice service: becoming both intentional and interruptible.

In Matthew 22, Jesus responds to a question from a highly educated Bible teacher about the most important biblical command. He responds — verse 37 – “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22v37–39, NIV)

In Luke’s account, though, the teacher of the Law presses for specificity: “And who is my neighbor?” In other words, “Who rabbi, am I responsible to serve?”

Jesus responded to the question not with a direct response but with a story known as “The Good Samaritan.”

Walking the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, a man gets mugged, robbed, and is left bleeding on the sidewalk. A priest sees him but passes by on the other side of the street. Next, a Levite (a particular type of priest) sees him but pretends not to, passes by, and gets along with his day. Next, a Samaritan, whom most of Jesus’ audience would have thought of as half-breeds and heretics. Verse 33: “but a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.” (Luke 10v33, NIV)

And it’s not a single stop. He enters into his pain in the moment (allowing himself to be interrupted). He pays for his healing and rehabilitation. And he returns to him (remaining in a relationship over time, meaning it’s not a transactional moment but a kinship relationship).

Verse 36 — “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10v36–37, NIV)

The story began with a man asking Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus flips the question back on that man, essentially asking, “Who made that stranger in need on the roadside into a neighbor?”

So the question I should be asking is: does my spiritual practice draw me toward the suffering and injured one on the roadside, toward the strangers I might pass by without recognizing them as neighbors?

In Matthew Chapter 20, you’d find Jesus living the themes of the very parable he’d later tell. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem — the Triumphal Entry, the Last Supper, the Cross — it’s all right around the corner. But here at Jericho, two blind men are screaming from the roadside, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!”

Jesus stops. Diverts his path. Allows himself to be interrupted. “Who’s calling me?”

Verse 34 — “Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him.” (Matthew 20v34, NIV)

This is one of so many stories where Jesus is interrupted. In fact, the ministry of Jesus, as presented in the Gospels, is largely one of responding to unexpected interruptions with divine compassion.

A life of apprenticeship to Jesus typically begins with growing more intentional (like Jesus), but that intention is meant to free us to become more interruptible (like Jesus).

You can think of apprenticeship to Jesus as intentionally training to become the kind of person who, when you are pressured by life, when the unplanned and unexpected come your way, you increasingly respond and react to life the way Jesus would respond and react if he were in your shoes.

Recently, on a weekday morning, I walked outside to the sacred seat on my porch to begin my daily practice of prayer. That’s when I heard it: not the Spirit’s gentle whisper but my two-year-old’s cry. An hour early. And he wasn’t stopping.

So riddle me this: What is prayer? Is it holding the contemplative silence I honor each morning? Or is it serving my wife by being the one to go into the room to pick my early-rising little one up out of his crib?

It’s both, right? Both are ways of communing with God. So how do I know which is right for this moment?

Well, the truth is, for me, at this particular stage in my apprenticeship to Jesus, my intentional spiritual practice has outrun — by a pretty large margin — my interruptible spiritual practice.

So that’s how I know: The practice that I need this morning, even more than the sacred stillness, is the practice of free interruptibility in service to another.

And maybe, hopefully, as I attune to God in small interruptions, I’ll grow in perception of larger interruptions.

I leave you with the simple, profound words of Mother Teresa:

“God loves us, and we have the opportunity to love others as he loves us, not in big things, but in small things with great love.”