Three seminarians strolled into a classroom during the final week of class.

Each of the three students were seniors, with only a week until graduation,

With only a week left until they leave the hills of Missouri and go out into various parts of the country and become shepherds of their flocks.

The three students had known each other since their first year at that seminary in Missouri.

They had class together, they studied together, and several times a week, they would all eat together.

They were very promising young ministers with a positive outlook on life and the ministry.

And they had only one week left.

At five minutes past ten, an old, wise priest walked into the classroom. For the past three months, he had taught the three students the study of homiletics, which is a fancy term for preaching.

As he walked in the room he looked at each one of the three students in the classroom, knowing that in one week they would be leading God’s people.

Sitting near the front was Karen. Karen was an interesting girl, she came to the historic seminary from Harvard University with a degree in political science.

The old professor remembered back to when Karen first arrived at the seminary. Her reputation had moved on campus long before she did.

The granddaughter of William McClain, who served as pastor for seventeen years at Liberty Presbyterian Church in downtown Philadelphia, Karen came to the Missouri seminary because her granddaddy did.

She was a fiery woman with a brilliant mind and incredible ambition.

The admissions staff had a bet since the day she arrived that she would graduate number one and be the president of the seminary student body.

Karen had already accomplished half of the bet, she was elected president by her peers six months earlier, and the other half would be determined by her grade in old priest’s class.

And based on her sermons during the year, she was counting on an A in the priest’s class.

The old priest then looked to the back of the room to a gentleman who was uncrinckling papers out of his briefcase.

The old priest shook his head. This was a scene that was repeated every class meeting as Adam frantically tried to find his assignment that was buried somewhere deep in his briefcase.

Adam was everything Karen wasn’t. He was sloppy, unorganized, and lazy.

He didn’t come from any great preaching stock either.

The old priest had compassion on him and gave him more credit than deserved for his sermons.

The admissions staff didn’t have a bet on the future of Adam, but the janitors did. They had a steak dinner riding on Adam flunking seminary and working beside them as they polished the pews in one of the chapels.

Like Karen, Adam’s grade in the homiletics class was extremely important. But Adam wasn’t trying to first in the class, or even thirtieth, he just wanted to graduate.

But the old priest wasn’t sure if even his graciousness in grading would save Adam from not graduating.

He would have to preach a flawless sermon to graduate.

And then the old priest looked to the right side of the classroom at Jonathan. There was not much special or spectacular about Jonathan.

He grew up nearby and after he served his three years in the Army, he worked for a few years as an administrator at a hospital and then decided to go to the seminary.

Of the three he was the oldest. And along with his age came more life experience. He had seen more of the world, and had seen more of people.

And it showed.

His sermons were acceptable but seemed to be a little negative and pessimistic.

But other than his sermons,

He didn’t say much. He just came to class, did his work, and went home. He was not in any danger of finishing first in his class or not graduating.

He was happy being right in the middle and right in the middle was were he was.

The old priest greeted the three students and found his way to the center of the classroom behind the old wooden podium that creaked when he leaned on it.

"The final assignment is to preach a sermon", the old priest said. This did not come as a surprise to the seminarians, for all they did for the whole class was preach sermons.

"The text of the sermon will be Luke 10:25-37"

The seminarians were relieved, usually the old priest would give them very difficult texts to preach on.

Passages in the Bible that were conflicting or difficult to interpret, but Luke ten was well known and very easy to preach on.

"even though I’m sure you are familiar with Luke chapter ten, I will read it to you anyway" said the old priest, and he opened his Bible and with the authority of someone who witnessed the event, the old priest read.

Karen began to smile because she knew she could get an A. Adam grinned as well at the thought of graduating, and Jonathan just sat there indifferent.

The old priest began to speak, "the sermon on Luke ten should be written and delivered at 3:00 this afternoon at the chapel that I have assigned to you".

The corners around the mouths of Karen and Adam began to retreat in the opposite direction.

All semester they were given two weeks to prepare and deliver a sermon, and most of the time, the seminarians took the whole two weeks, but today they had less than five hours to prepare and deliver their final sermon.

This news drew a reaction from even the usually unemotional Jonathan.

The old priest handed out slips of paper with the name of a chapel and gave them to Karen, Adam, and Jonathan, and walked out the door, smiling.

Karen, Adam, and Jonathan stared at the piece of paper for a moment until the reality of the situation hit them.

Five hours!

You could chairs moving and feet scrambling as the three seminarians in Missouri made their way out of the classroom.

The three seminarians began to make their way to the library.

Karen had to make a phone call and Jonathan stopped at the vending machine so Adam was the first out of the building.

His feet barely hit the ground as he was flying down the sidewalk to the library. All that was going through his mind was his final grade. Visions of graduation flashed in his head. Visions of polishing pews flashed in his head, and Adam began to sweat.

He had to get to the library and he had to do well and nothing could distract him.

He was jumping over fire hydrants and dogs as he ran to the library and he even jumped over Stuart, the 13 year old son of the landscaper who always rode his skateboard all over the campus of the seminary, annoying everyone in the process.

Stuart was clutching his skateboard in obvious pain. The fabric that covered his kneecap was torn with red liquid around the edges. The freckles around Stuart’s eyes were wet as tears quickly flowed down his cheek.

He called out for Adam as he ran by, but Adam was too worried about his grade to bother with Stuart. Adam acknowledged Stuart long enough to jump over him and get on to the library.

Jonathan made his way out the door next. He wasn’t running, but his pace was a little faster than normal.

He came up on Stuart as he was finishing his apple he bought at the vending machine. Jonathan was well aware of Stuart and his skateboard.

Last year Stuart was skating too close to Jonathan’s car and accidentally put a dent in the fender of Jonathon’s Volvo.

Jonathan couldn’t prove that Stuart did it, but he knew without a doubt that he did.

Stuart cried out for Jonathan as he walked by and Jonathan looked for a moment without slowing down and then turned toward the library.

In all his travels and experience, Jonathan believed that peopled needed to learn that life was tough and that in order to make it in life, you had to fight back the tears and get on with life.

He thought this would teach Stuart a valuable lesson, a lesson that he needed to learn. What comes around goes around. You bang a car and sooner or later you’ll bang a knee. Good, though Jonathan.

Serves you right. And he kept walking.

And finally out came Karen. She knew that the chapel that was assigned to her was a large chapel and very influential people will be in attendance.

She had just hung up the phone with a reporter for the Presbyterian News who was going to cover her sermon and put it in the next issue.

All she could think about was her sermon gracing the pages of the prestigious magazine. This would get her recognized by a large church who would call on her to serve as pastor.

It wouldn’t be long before she was serving a church like Liberty Presbyterian in downtown Philadelphia, or maybe a church even larger!

She was thinking about all the little tricks and plays on words she would use in her sermon. She knew the text well and she knew this was her ticket to a high profile career.

She was looking so far up that she didn’t even notice Stuart who was so far down on the sidewalk.

She was hearing the applause from the congregation louder than the cries for help from Stuart.

She could she her face in the magazine clearer than the wound on Stuart’s knee.

And she kept walking to the library.

And Stuart, after calling out to three different seminarians, just lay there bleeding.

The old priest emerged from the shadows of the building and helped Stuart up, cleaned his wounds, and walked him to the ice cream parlor.

Adam, Karen, and Jonathan did make it to the library, and they did make it to their chapels.

And at exactly 3:00 they climbed into their pulpits, opened the Bibles and read Luke 10:25-37, and began their sermon on the Good Samaritan.

The old priest didn’t even listen to the tapes of the sermons. The test wasn’t the words that were spoken that day, but the actions that occurred.

On the bulletin board, the old priest posted the grades for the final sermon.

Karen McClain – Ambition A – homiletics – F

Jonathan Miner – Merciless A – homiletics – F

Adam Freeman – Selfishness A – homiletics – F

The young seminarians fit in well in Missouri. After all, Missouri is the Show Me state.

And they certainly did a good job showing who they were.

Here the words of Saint James:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. DO WHAT IT SAYS. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.

But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it – he will be blessed in what he does.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.