Batteries (and compassion) included

In this episode, I reflect on how a childhood Christmas gift—a toy car needing batteries—mirrors our spiritual lives. Just as the car needs power to run, we need God’s Spirit to truly live. Drawing on Deuteronomy and Luke’s Gospel, I explore how God draws close and energises us through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The parable of the Good Samaritan challenges us to receive and share compassion, especially with those in need. I invite our church community to be “batteries included”—empowered by God’s love to care for others and live out our faith together.

00:00:00 I have this memory. It’s a bit vague now because it’s a long time ago when I was just a wee little lad and it was Christmas and I’d been, you know, hanging out to get this, this toy, it was probably a toy car, electric car, something like that. And I’d been bugging mum and dad for so long to, you know, to get me this, this toy. And so when it finally came time to, you know, tear open the presents and, you know, my heart just delighted when I saw that this car was there and I was just. Like, yes, I get to play with this new car. It’s amazing. It’s fantastic. But remember that dreaded asterisk that you often saw on the boxes of these devices, *Batteries not included, and your heart would just sink and just think, oh no, because an electric car without batteries. But thankfully, my father came to the rescue and he had the right kinds of batteries. He’d seen the little Asterix as well.

00:01:04 And he wasn’t going to let Little Ricky not have the toy to play with, and he just forgot to to wrap it up and he said, oh yes, that’s right, I’ve got the batteries. And so he was able to to provide for them. You know, life can be a bit like that toy car, you know, it looks fantastic, it looks great. And everything about it is, is really good. But the batteries are needed to give it that spark. The batteries are essential to provide the essence of what it is for that that car to be. And so often we try and get by with in life without adding the batteries or letting them run down, not charging them again. You know, we need to to receive that charge, that life, that goodness, that energy in order for us to experience what God wants for us. You know, if we can imagine that God is not very close to us. And yet, when we get to this final section of the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 30 to 34, Moses is giving this final rallying cry to the community.

00:02:08 He won’t get to cross over the river. It’s Joshua who will lead the people across the river. So Moses is saying these final things, and he’s going to die on the eastern side of the river while the rest of them go across to the west bank of the Jordan. And so he wants them to understand the gift of all that God can be for them, as they now take possession of the land, as they slowly settle into the place that God has wanted them to be all along. And so he’s reminding them, look, our God is not a long way away. Our God has drawn so very near to you. His word is available to you. You know what other people have the possibility of being able to know God directly. Intimately. Immediately, as Paul tells us in Colossians tonight. It’s in Jesus that all of this comes to its final fruition. All of this life, all of this possibility that Jesus is the batteries, that provides the energy for life, that he pours upon his church.

00:03:16 The gift of the Holy Spirit to provide that energy, that life, that goodness, and that energy is so often driven by these two experiences of love and compassion. The lawyer who tested Jesus tonight is pretty good. You know that. He knew what it was that Jesus wanted to say. Everywhere else in the Gospels, it’s Jesus himself who gives this definition of what the greatest commandment is. It’s the lawyer alone in the Gospel of Luke who takes this strange mash up, as we know from earlier in the book of Deuteronomy, quoting from the Shema and then quoting from the the book of Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18, smashing these two verses together. And so Jesus normally does this, but here alone is the lawyer who is clearly able to ponder upon the Word of God, who clearly has taken the time to really. Allow these words to have their essence to to really resonate within his heart and his experience. And yet, when it comes to the crunch G Jesus is is clear that this man hasn’t yet experienced the life of the Holy Spirit.

00:04:32 He hasn’t yet had the batteries included in his life. There’s still something that is lifeless about him and when he wants to justify himself. But who is my neighbor? You know, so often within Judaism at the time, the neighbor was understood in these very restrictive and narrow senses. Unfortunately, it’s probably still the case in Israel that that sense of neighbor isn’t the people that live around you. It’s just the people that are in your same little social bubble on social networks. You know that the way that we craft our little worlds now, where it’s just people who think like us and vote like us and dress like us and and look like us that we are so limited in all of this. But Jesus really just completely destroys all of that notion with this image of the traveler who’s going away from Jerusalem, away from the center of life. Remember in the Gospel of Luke, the Jerusalem is the center of Jerusalem is the place where everything happens. Everybody should be coming back to Jerusalem. So whenever there’s someone leaving, going away from Jerusalem, that’s always a problem.

00:05:41 Remember last week that Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem? So Jerusalem is the heartbeat of all of this. So there’s something about the traveler going away from Jerusalem. And the priest also not the hero. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a story where the priest is a good guy in the Bible? That would be really a lovely thing to have. I think we need to have a new gospel kind of written where the priest becomes the action hero. Now. Anyway, that’s probably not going to to happen. The Levite, a member of that priestly tribe, the people that were there to look after the whole religious life of the community. They also step over very carefully around this bloody person in case perhaps they’ve already died. Of course, it would make them ritually impure and not able to take part in the sacrifices in the life of God. The Samaritan. He’s already an outsider, already ostracized or already excluded. He doesn’t have that same concern. And yet he sees the man. He sees him with all of the compassion and the mercy and the wonder of God inviting us into that life.

00:06:51 When you read this parable, when you kind of ponder it, is there a character that you naturally take the place of, or kind of sit in their shoes and and walk with their, their vision? And so often we kind of perhaps imagine ourselves to be the Samaritan. But sometimes it’s good to first remember that often we’re going to be that beaten and bloody person that’s there on the side of the road. We’ve all carried our wounds, we’ve all been hurt. And all these kinds of things, these mistakes that have wounded us and all kinds of effects that are there, that have crippled us in in so many ways and prevented us from living the freedom that we’re invited into. Sometimes we need to be that traveler who is cared for, that someone needs to come and to pour oil and wine on our wounds. Or perhaps a modern equivalent. I’m not quite sure what the the wine or the oil. I know it’s a medicinal incense, but to have our wounds bandaged, to be tenderly cared for, to be carried, to be lifted onto the horse and gently taken to the inn or the the air, whatever we were requiring to go to and to find that life.

00:08:04 Sometimes we need that tenderness. Sometimes we need to be to receive that nurturance, to receive that healing. But most of the time we do need to have our eyes changed and transformed. We need to become that Samaritan. We need to be the one who offers compassion to the poor, to the one that is unable to help themselves. We need to be a church that has the batteries included. The church that is slowly beginning to be changed and transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, calling us into that union, receiving that compassion being changed by that merciful love that we encounter, the sharing then that life and that goodness with the church around us, with the people around us, with whoever is around us. Because there is no limit to this love of God, that love that we have received. We’re meant to share with absolute generosity and goodness. Let’s pray that the Lord will indeed recharge our batteries, that we might be the church, that we’re meant to be, the community that cares for the most poor and the most vulnerable in our midst.

00:09:10 And pray that we might experience that power of the God who has drawn near, who is available to us in the Word of God, and changes us and calls us, and allows us to be the people that he wants us to be.