Welcome to our 2025 Lent worship series: Everything [in]between ~ Meeting God in the Extremes, written by the poets, prophets, and preachers at A Sanctified Art. This series is an invitation to navigate the polarities in our lives with more faith, intention, and openness to be transformed. Each weekly sub-theme explores two supposed binaries, like “faith & works” or “rest & growth,” or “grief & hope.” Concepts we often consider to be in opposition. However within the scriptures we find nuance and complexity, and that these dichotomies are false. Each week is an invitation to reconsider how Jesus redefines or upends the labels, definitions, and polarities we tightly cling to. In the process, we might begin to see a full spectrum instead of black and white. We might find that God is present in between.
We begin the series in Luke 10, with what might be the most tender polarity: stranger and neighbour. There is no denying that we are all keenly aware of the labels, beliefs, and assumptions that make us strangers to one another. The lawyer asks, “Who IS my neighbour?,” a question we are still asking in our own lives in a million different ways: “Who is in and who is out?” “Who should I align myself with and who should I distance myself from?” “Who can I trust and who should I fear?” Jesus seems less interested in answering WHO our neighbour is, and instead spotlights WHAT a neighbour does. May we go and do likewise.
This teaching was preached at Knox Presbyterian Church in Oakville by The Reverend Jacquelyn Foxall, on this 1st Sunday in LENT March 9th, 2025.
Associated Scripture: Luke 10:25-37 ‘The Parable of the Good Samaritan’