You may know this story, in one form or another:
A man is shipwrecked on a desert island. He cries out to God in his distress. He prays to be saved from this terrible situation. After he cries out and prays to God, he is overcome with a tremendous feeling of comfort and assurance. He hears the message that it’ll be all right. God will help him.
The next day a boat comes by. But the stranded man doesn’t bother flagging them down. He knows that God will deliver him. His faith is in God alone, not human hands; and faith is, after all, “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
The next day a coast guard helicopter flies over and drops a ladder down onto the island. The man calls up, “Don’t worry about it. God’s going to save me. My faith is in God alone. I’ll wait here. You go on.” He sends the helicopter away.
A couple more days pass. The man by now is very hungry and thirsty and weary. He starts to despair. He cries out to God: “God, save me! You said You’d save me.”
Immediately there is a radiance surrounding him. And from that luminous cloud he hears a voice: “What more d’ya want from me, huh?! I sent’ya a boat. I sent’ya a helicopter. C’mon, man, you’re making me want to take my own name in vain! Ugh, the things I gotta deal with.”
(You know you’re in trouble when God talks to you like that.)
Now, when we hear this story, it’s clear to us how much of a fool this person is. But in what ways are we acting like this? In what ways do we pray without letting our prayers move us to actually act and respond to the opportunities that God gives us in answer to our prayers?
The testimonies of our faith should make it clear:
God asks for our participation, not our passivity.
God asks for our cooperation, not our complacency.
Here’s another story you’re probably familiar with, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. I hope we can see it from a new angle. (Luke 10:25-37)
We can imagine that the man who was beaten and robbed and left for dead on the side of the road cried out to God in his distress. We can imagine he was someone of deep faith, and through his prayer he received a sense of reassurance.
But then a priest passed him by and ignored his need. And after him a religious scholar hurried past and averted his eyes.
We could imagine the man’s distress: Where is God? Where is divine deliverance in his hour of need?
God is in the mercy and right relations urged by the law of Moses and the Hebrew prophets – love God and love your neighbor as yourself – which the priest chose to ignore, choosing instead to disdain the ugly vulnerability of this pathetic man.
God is in the voice of conscience urging from the individual soul, which the religious scholar chose to push away, choosing instead fear or selfish convenience.
The Samaritan, in contrast, chose to listen to the voice of God, through the urging of his conscience and the precepts of his wisest ancestors.
He chose to become a Godsend for another.
When we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” Jesus makes it clear that we are not merely beseeching God to intervene somehow out of the clear blue sky. Rather, we are praying that our wills may become aligned with God’s will, and that may shape how we act here and now on earth in alignment with the way of the realm of heaven.
This way is the way of Love, for our Holy Creator, and for our fellow creatures. As Jesus teaches, this love is not just a feeling, but a way of being and a way of doing, unto others as ourselves.
This is why the Letter of James says that “Faith without works is dead.” It is not a real and living faith if it does not move us to action. (James 2:14-26)
God did not create us to be robots. Out of love, God created us to have a meaningful degree of free will. Yes, there’s so much that is out of our hands and out of our control, but every being does have some measure of freedom. And when it comes to things that are in our control, like the choices we make, we shouldn’t have any reason to expect that God would somehow make those choices for us and do things for us.
The way the book of Genesis tells the story of the first murder is very telling. Cain and Abel were brothers. Cain became jealous of Abel; he resented his brother’s success, so he desired to annihilate his rival.
God intervened … how? God intervened by speaking to Cain and telling him, “What you are wanting to do to your brother is terrible. It is wrong. Don’t do it.” How did Cain respond? He ignored that voice of God, that voice of conscience, and he did the deed he has been warned against; he committed the first murder. (Genesis 4:6-7)
God did not prevent him from doing it. God’s intervention was through an appeal to Cain’s conscience to use his power of choice to do the right thing.
It is up to us to be our siblings’ keeper, or not to be. It is up to us to be our neighbor’s keeper, or not to be.
And who is our neighbor? As Jesus makes clear, our neighbor is anyone who needs us to be a good neighbor for them, who needs us to do right by them, to be a Godsend for them. We should not expect God to do this for us.
Moreover, the fact that other people may not be doing the right thing is no argument for us to give up hope and not to try to do right by others. On the flip side, the fact that other people may well be doing the right thing is no argument of us to sit on the bench and let them take care of it. The Gospel brings into focus the choices we make with the powers that we have, and our ability to hear how God may be calling us to choose to respond with love and mercy to the needs of others.
And you know what? It’s great to do it ourselves, one on one. But it’s even better to do it together. Because truly and actually caring for the needs of those who need us to be good neighbors takes coordination. How much more are we able to do as a church, for example, because we are working together to grow food in our community garden for the Great Valley Food cupboard down the street, and collect provisions for the Alianzas cupboard for our immigrant neighbors, and cook at the Franciscan family shelter in Phoenixville, and provide ingredients for the folks coming out of homelessness at the Old First House supportive shelter?
Yet still hunger persists, near and far…
If only there were a way for an entire society to coordinate the contribution of their common wealth for the common good … The Law of Moses, after all, did call for his society to have several different ways of coordinating the contribution and distribution of extra food so that no one would go hungry (for example, Leviticus 19:9-10 and Exodus 23:10-11)
How much better if we did this in a way that gave everyone representation in having a say for how shared resources were fairly used … hmm…
Could this also a way we can be Godsends for each other, in the work to build and maintain democracies that seek to care for the common good?
As you know, for those who care about hunger, it has been very distressing the interruption to SNAP benefits, not to mention the cuts to global famine relief. At the same time, it has been very heartening to see the tremendous outpouring of generosity: food pantries have received a surge in donations of food and money and volunteer hours; in Philly we belong to a grocery co-op that put a call out for donations to support folks who pay for groceries with SNAP – they very quickly raised more than $100,000.
We can be Godsends for each other. At our best, we truly want to be.
We’re not always going to get it right. An important part of what Jesus does is challenge us to recognize the ways are hearts can harden against another’s need. But also, ultimately, no matter how loving or unloving we act, the outcome of things is not in our power. This is why we always need to rely on God’s mercy for the mistakes we make, and why we need to put our hope in God rather than human powers to save us.
But Jesus is clear: our call is to live in a such a way that we may become Godsends for each other. It is a blessing that we have many different ways we can do this, according to our gifts, from the small daily ways, to much bigger projects of mercy.
I thank God for those who have been Godsends for me. I thank God for those who have been Godsends for you. I thank God for the ways you have been Godsends for others; I thank God for the ways we all can be Godsends for each other, together.
Thanks be to God.
Delivered Sunday, November 16, 2025, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge.
The Dandelion Way 