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Sermon - July 15th, 2007
The Good Samaritan
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Luke 10:26-37
I’ve been wondering all week, what can I say about the parable of the good Samaritan that you haven’t heard before? What new twist can I put on oh, so familiar story? My prayer was, God give me a surprise ending where folks will be awestruck, amazed, and inspired. Well, by now, I should know that God doesn’t GIVE me answers. God gives me opportunities to work and figure it out myself.
Well, one of the truths of this parable is that God comes to us daily through the unexpected: unexpected encounters with unexpected people in unexpected places. If we are paying attention, being mindful, we will not ignore these encounters. So I could ask you, what unexpected person has embodied Christ for you recently. Or, who have you fed, clothed, visited recently and came away realizing what Jesus said, “Whenever you do these things for the least of these, you do them for me.” When was the last time you have been a good Samaritan?
We know the good Samaritan well! He is the least likely to be the hero. He is the heretical outcast who is a more righteous Jew than the Jews. He is the one fighting to keep illegal immigrants out of our country who stops for a car load of Hispanics to jump their car and then buys them a new battery as well. She is the lesbian daughter rejected by her family who comes home to care for her dying mother. We have many, many examples of good Samaritan heroes. People we aspire to be like, knowing that Jesus really wants us to be loving neighbors. Yet, we wonder how far Jesus would ask us to go in our world today? We wonder if Jesus really wants us to risk our own lives to save a stranger left to die in a ditch. We know what it takes to be a good Samaritan.
But do we know what it is like to be the one in the ditch? Have we received God’s grace from someone we despise? Have we accepted help from someone we are prejudice against? If we were dying in a ditch and the last person you wanted to see came along to save you, how would you feel? Would you rather die? We don’t get in the ditch very often and look at this parable from that point of view. Do you wonder if the man in the ditch changed his opinion of Samaritans after he was saved by one?
We can be challenged to be a good Samaritan, we can wonder what it would be like to be the man in the ditch; but, the person I want us to look at today is the one I believe we understand the most--the lawyer, the one who inspired Jesus to tell the parable in the first place. The lawyer was smart with a well-trained mind and logical mind. He was concerned with the law, with drawing the line between right and wrong, making connections between the facts, finding inconsistencies. This lawyer seemed to be following Jesus around. So, maybe he is like us in that way, hungry for God, wanting to experience the divine in his complicated and logical life.
So, he approached Jesus with the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus, as usual, answered the lawyer with another question, as if to say to the lawyer, “I’m not going to spoon feed you the answer. I want you to discover the answer yourself.” Jesus asked him what is written in the law. The lawyer answered: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” This answer was the right, true, profound answer. So Jesus told him that by saying, “Do this, and you will live.” So, the lawyer got the right answer, he understood, he said it very, very well. He knew what to do. And Jesus said, “Do it.”
But the lawyer wasn’t done with this conversation for some reason. Maybe, just maybe, he was thinking about all the people he past to and from his way to work, the people sitting on steps, sleeping on the street, children begging on the street. At the same time, we are thinking about the man or woman standing at the intersection with a sign that says, “Veteran, anything will help.” Or the face of a child in a bulk letter you received asking you to send money to help children with AIDS in Africa. The list of good causes that help people in dire need is long. We and the lawyer in the story think about all the needs of the world and the demands in our own lives and our hearts feel too heavy because there is no way in the world we can do it all. Do this and I will live? Do this and I will die of physical, emotional, and economic exhaustion!
So the lawyer does what any good lawyer does. He asked Jesus to define the terms. “And just who, by the way, is my neighbor?” Please Jesus, help me decide what our limitations are so that I have even a prayer of a chance of being able to meet it. “Who is my neighbor?” Wouldn’t you like to know that? I would. Whom may I legitimately exclude from my concern and still feel okay about myself? I am open to discussion and dialogue about this. Let’s expose the problems, study them, prioritize the needs. Let’s make everything so complicated that we can go home and pay our bills with a clear conscience.
That’s my favorite way of justifying myself--making it so complicated, that I just throw up my hands and do nothing. Have you done that? Look at the problem of homelessness. We could stack up all the evidence and find that homelessness in Washington County can not be solved because of the cost of land, housing, mental illness, addiction, illiteracy, the migrant population, the welfare system and pretty soon we are saying, how in the world can we even begin to do anything about it--so we do nothing and worse yet, feel justified in doing nothing.
Now, if you are having a hard time following this argument, well that is the point. This argument is designed to not make things clearer, but to make it so complicated and muddled that it becomes difficult to do anything at all.
But Jesus does not cooperate. The lawyer wanted a long hashing out of every little detail. After all, Jesus, can’t you make the directions a little easier to follow? But Jesus knew that the last thing on earth the lawyer needed was another discussion and a little more understanding, so Jesus told a story instead. The story we all know by heart, even if we do not know the Bible. It is the story about how it does not matter what wee think, understand, know, feel, or say about love, but what we do about love that brings us life.
After Jesus told the story, he let the lawyer answer his own question. “Which of these three,” Jesus said--the two religious types who crossed to the other side of the road or the heretical outcast who took care of the man beaten and left to die in the ditch--”which of these three, do you think, proved to be neighbor?” It was a setup, of course. There was only one simple answer to Jesus’ question and the lawyer, again, gave the right one: “The one who showed mercy.” The one who did something. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus said back to him. “Do this, and you will live.”
Perhaps you have noticed, especially if you are a lawyer-type of person, that Jesus did not really answer the question the lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Rather, the question Jesus answered was, “Whose neighbor are you?” The answer to that question is: anyone’s. Everyone’s. Jesus does not limit the commandment of love. Jesus let the lawyer dicide how he will act upon it, but one thing is for certain. What Jesus was challenging him to was not a leap of thought, or understanding, or knowledge, or even emotion, but a leap of action--of showing mercy, of being a neighbor, of doing love.
But, please, do not hear me this way! I am not preaching about doing more, or feeling guilty if you do not. The very next story in Luke is about the busy, busy, anxious Martha and her lazy, do nothing sister, Mary whom Jesus praises for sitting at his feet listening, while Martha does more. I am not preaching about doing more! This is a sermon about not confusing the knowing, understanding. feeling, thinking, or saying of love with the doing of love. Not that those aren’t fine things to do, but only one thing leads to eternal life, according to this story And by eternal life, I don’t mean what happens after we die, I mean the fullness of life now that makes you believe there is no end to life, love, either, and thank God we have enough to go around.
So love God. Love a neighbor. Be a neighbor. Don’t complicate this by arguing about the specifics. All of us, I hope know what it means to do love because at some time or another we have been on the receiving end of it. Remember, knowing the right answers does not change a thing. If we want the world to look different the next time you go outside, do some love! Do a little or do a lot, but do some, and do not forget to get some for yourself. Just do it. And find out for yourself, that when you do, you do live, and live abundantly, just like Jesus said!
Amen.