Saturday, July 20, 2013

Sermon for July 14, 2013, at Emmanuel, Mercer Island


The parable of the Good Samaritan is so well known
            that the name, “Good Samaritan,” has become proverbial.
We name churches after the Good Samaritan.
We call those who help a stranger in need Good Samaritans,
            especially those who have nothing to gain personally
                        for the time and inconvenience caused them by their actions.

But notice that we have had to come up with Good Samaritan laws
            offering legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance
                        to those who are injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated.
In some cases, Good Samaritan laws encourage people to offer assistance,             indicating that there is a duty to offer aid.

I lived in Minnesota for nine winters,
            and in the rural areas during those cold snaps
            if you came across a car by the side of the road
                        you stopped to see if everything was all right.
It might mean the difference between life and death for someone.

Yeah, everybody knows what a Good Samaritan is.
But in that very familiarity
            we are in danger of missing significantly powerful things
                        that Jesus is saying in the context for this parable.
There is much more than meets the eye.

I want to call your attention to some of that
            and see if that turns on a light bulb for you,
                        even at the risk of making things uncomfortable.

First of all, the occasion for the parable is a scribe, a Torah lawyer, a Pharisee
confronting Jesus to test him about his knowledge of righteousness and law.

He asks his question of Jesus in such a way
            to see if Jesus thinks the same way he does:
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What must I do for ME to get for myself eternal life?”

And, of course, Jesus turns his question back on him:
                                                                                    “How do you read the law?”
The Torah lawyer answers with the comprehensive law
            of love for God with one’s whole being and love of neighbor as self.
Jesus says, “Right.  Do this and live.”

Now this man has the opportunity to display his scholarly expertise,
            his rabbinic discernment about the multiple guidelines
                        for love of neighbor in multiple circumstances,
            all the ways of fencing in the commandment
                                                                        to make it workable and achievable.
So he asks the question, “Who is my neighbor?”

Next comes the parable, and when Jesus told a parable to people,
            especially as they are related in the Gospel of Luke,
the story is not going to go in the expected direction;
            you can depend on something odd in the story that doesn’t quite fit.

What is that element here in this story?                          It is the Samaritan.

What is a Samaritan doing here, a Samaritan who comes from north of Judea,
            whose home is in a sort of buffer zone between Judea and Galilee?
What is a Samaritan doing here on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho,
                        a road no where near Samaria?

Now this road, I’ve got to tell you, is not a safe road.
I know.  I’ve been on it more than once, that road that’s been there for millennia.

The road down from Jerusalem to Jericho is about 30 miles long.
In that 30 miles the elevation goes from 2,500 feet above sea level
            to over 1,200 feet below sea level – a change of almost 4,000 feet.
The road hugs the sides of cliffs along steep wadis,
            and often passing under rocky overhangs.
It offers so many hiding places and points for easy ambushes
            that in the last decade the Israelis have actually
                                                plowed up and barricaded that ancient road
                        so that no one can get to Jericho that way anymore,
                        or get from West Bank Jericho up to Jerusalem either.

Then, at the time of Jesus, as now,
                                                it was not a safe road for anyone travelling alone.
So we have an unfortunate soul who gets ambushed, robbed,
            stripped of his belongings, including his clothes,
            and is beaten and left there lying by the road.

Two individuals come by, a priest and a Levite, clergy.
One might expect compassion.
But they would not, by law, touch a dead body, touch blood,
            look upon nakedness,
            or – here one might be cynical – would not delay their journey
                        especially on such a dangerous road
where this might be a set up for getting ambushed themselves
            (one could recognize this trick as old as the hills)
                                                            let alone complicating their journey
            for the sake of a man who,
                        if not dead already, would probably die soon enough.

Now, the non-sequiter:  the Samaritan,
            totally out of place on the road between
                    Jerusalem, where the Temple is, the heart of the Jewish religion,
            and Jericho, in an area of religious schools, desert holy men and prophets,
a Samaritan,
            of a people whose Jewish religious beliefs were considered
            greatly lacking, even heretical, by the good Jews of Jerusalem and Jericho.


Here he is with oil and wine and money, himself risking attack on this road,
and that he should take action to help the robbers’ victim
            is as unexpected under the circumstances
                                                                        as his being on this road in the first place.

But what bridges this gap is compassion.
All other issues of identity and purpose are set aside.
            There is no self concern, no closed heart.
Here is a pure demonstration of the way of life, eternal life or simply life:
            “I love you as myself.  You are myself, and I will care for you.”

How many barriers were crossed, were broken down here?
Barriers of distinctiveness of class and right belief,
            of ethnicity and historical antagonisms,
and of legalistic restrictions
                        about how Torah was read and interpreted and conscribed.

Notice: The priest and the Levite cannot act with compassion
            from within their religious identity.
So there is no neighborly link between them and the man naked by the road.

Who is neighbor?
    Not the one who fits the ethnic and religious lineage of the priest and Levite.
No, it is the body of a human being – in suffering –
            held within the mutual awareness of shared humanity,
                        this image of God, vulnerable in distress and need.
That is the actual and only focus of authentic compassion.
            This wakeful compassion is the channel for effective action
                                    in giving service to another in a truly life supportive way.

Jesus ends the parable with this question:
            “Which of these three, do you think,
                        was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"
The lawyer is compelled by Jesus to confess – the Samaritan,
            in contradiction to his own legalistic, ethnic and religious mindset.
“Go and do likewise.” 

Jesus calls this man to leave behind his own carefully worked out system
                                    of keeping the Torah law
            for this radical and counter-cultural way of service
                        through mercy and compassion and self-forgetfulness.
Jesus is actually calling him into discipleship.

“Go and do likewise.” 
This is much more than simply doing good deeds
            where motivation comes from within the limitations
                                    of our individual moral judgments.
Action in no way impeded by any thoughts about worthiness,
                                                            how deserving the one in need is.
Who is neighbor?
            Who is NOT neighbor?  Can anyone possibly not be neighbor?
If we are to take seriously the call of Jesus into discipleship,
            then we have to exam how that will take us beyond our self-interest
                                                                                                            and even our morality.
Compassion knows no boundaries of worthy or unworthy, clean or unclean,             friend or enemy, family or stranger.
Jesus would take us into circumstances
            where there can be only self-forgetfulness and no self-interest.

Can we do this on our own?  No.
That is why Paul, as he writes to the disciples in Colossae,
            prays in today’s epistle reading:

For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.