Rosa Lee Harden
July 11, 2004
Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
Our story today of the Good Samaritan
is one of the Bible's MOST
familiar stories ...
Jesus is being tested by the authorities of his day.
Jesus has been going around the countryside
for quite some time now
not paying much
attention to customs,
eating meals with tax collectors and sinners ...
nor did he keep Hebraic law ...
with his healing and picking grain on the Sabbath ...
He was also frequently traveling in areas of the countryside
that most Hebrew
folk would try to avoid ...
places like Samaria where the
'untouchables' of his day lived ...
He didn't seem to be willing to let any idea
or custom
or other way that society
holds itself together
go unexamined.
He questioned everything
* This guy was causing
problems.
* People were beginning to
get what he was saying.
*People were beginning to think differently.
Folks were following
him around ...
enough folks to cause a scene ....
So, the authorities of the day were trying to
figure out a way to discredit this guy.
In my imagination, those authorities
did what we would do today ...
it appears that some of the lawyers of
their day
begin an informal deposition ...
trying to get on the record
what this guy actually
thought and taught ...
Perhaps if they could get him to ADMIT
that he didn't really
understand Hebrew law
they could get the people following him to stop.
Perhaps he would finally be exposed
as a fraud.
"Teacher," the lawyer asked, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
They agree that the law gives the answer ...
"You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your strength,
and with all your mind;
and you should love your neighbor as yourself."
But just one more question, the lawyer says.
Can't you just see this playing out in a courtroom drama?
My
favorite is, Law and Order ...
(of course it is, cause I think Sam Waterson
is
just the coolest ...
but we can talk about that at coffee hour!)
The prosecution has not gotten the person on the stand
to admit to anything, or even to incriminate himself
in the slightest bit ...
So Sam head back to the table to sit down,
then pauses and turns back
and asks Jesus one more question.
"So, Jesus, just who is my neighbor?"
Then Jesus tells his tale.
A certain man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho ...
A particularly dangerous stretch of land
...
It descends 5,000 feet,
is desert, red rocks, tricky canyons ...
a place where highway robbers would
frequently
ambush folks who had to travel this way.
To complicate things,
not only were there good folks who had to travel this way
and bad folks who waited to rob them on this road,
there were righteous folks, (the Hebrew people, priests, scribes)
traveling in this particular stretch of countryside ...
And untouchables, people you would not
want to associate with
(the Samaritans) who traveled this way, too.
So when one was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho,
there were several types of tricky terrain
to navigate.
Our Hebrew traveler got ambushed by those highway robbers.
He was left dying on the side of the road.
All he could hope for was for someone to come and rescue him.
Therein lies the problem.
Beaten up and bloodied, our fine Hebrew
friend
was no longer recognizable!
He could just
as easily have been a trap the robbers
set to get another chump to stop and help ...
so they could rob him, too.
So, first the priest passes by on his way to work
and can't get his hands defiled ...
if the man had died, and he had
touched him
he would not have been able to work
in the temple for many days ....
Surely he was justified in not
stopping ...
The Levite was in the same situation ...
if he helped someone on the side
of the road
he would similarly be defiled ...
not able to work ...
And what if this was a trap?
Wouldn't both of them have been foolish to stop
in this dangerous neighborhood??
I am certain it is not difficult for any of us to imagine
situations where we would not stop
either.
That is clearly something important to pay attention to ...
and we'll come back to that in a
minute ...
But first, let's put ourselves in the position
of the good Hebrew lawyer ...
Jesus is telling this story to a lawyer
...
probably one who had to travel this road regularly ...
Our friend lying on the side of the road
could easily have been the man Jesus is speaking with.
From what is said about this road,
anyone who traveled it alone
would be afraid this might happen to him ...
So rather than imagining ourselves walking
down the road
SEEING the wounded man ...
Let's imagine that we are, in fact,
the person who is beaten, robbed, stripped
on the side of the road.
A priest has passed you by ...
then another religious person ...
folks you THOUGHT would help ...
It's time for someone to come by who will recognize you!
Someone who is from your neighborhood ...
Someone who can see you are a decent human being!
But instead, a Samaritan,
someone from a bad neighborhood,
someone who scares you,
stops and offers help ...
Picks you up ...
As a friend of mine says, it's like
somone you would never dream of
even speaking to
gives you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Your life is saved by someone you had,
until that very moment,
considered to be an outcast.
an untouchable.
How does your life change?
Who IS your neighbor?
The lawyer gets it ...
The neighbor is not the person who lives
in the same neck-of-the-woods ...
or the person who is in the same socio-economic class ...
or even, the person you go to
church with.
The neighbor is the one who has shown mercy.
Jesus's words back to the lawyer?
Go and do likewise.
Go and show mercy ...
Go and DO ...
Jesus did not say:
Now yall go think about that ....
Ponder it,
See what YOU come up with ...
Analyze the problems of scary roads,
figure out what you want the politicians to do.
Write a report.
Read a book about it.
Form a study group.
Jesus said:
Go and do likewise.
Get out of the middle of the road where it is safe,
move out onto the edges where the danger is.
Where people are hurting ...
Where people are in need ...
Do something.
Practice mercy.
Practice LOVING our neighbors !
In this increasingly shrinking 21st Century world
we don't need to be reminded ...
We KNOW we are all interrelated ...
regardless of where we live ...
whether it is Nigeria or Noe Valley ...
what happens to one of us can
affect the other ...
We don't need Jesus' story to prove to us we are all neighbors.
We know we are all interconnected.
The question is not WHO
The question is:
What are we doing?
Jesus' story about the Samartian was radical.
Judean folks were not supposed to care about Samaritans.
But I am fairly certain that this story,
this encounter that was designed to expose
Jesus as a fraud ...
to get people to realize he was a fake ...
failed.
While it probably made the authorities a bit more unsettled,
I cannot read this parable without
KNOWING that
it increased the number of his followers.
People who were outcasts,
people living on the margins of society ...
There is a reason this story is one of
the best known
of Jesus' parables ...
It hits a nerve with us.
We get it.
We know regardless of how different we are ...
How much on the margins we feel ...
We know we are loved.
And
...
We know we are being asked to be different.
We hear it. We know it.
"Go and DO likewise."
One of the most challenging books in my personal library
is a thin paper-back called Sacramental
Ethics.
Even if I were never to open it,
simply having to look at the name of it ...
lying there on my bedside table
is powerful enough.
Sacramental ...
those outward signs that we celebrate here.
our baptism.
the Eucharist.
Ethics ...
what we DO.
How does what we celebrate here in this place
usually on Sunday
CHANGE was we DO
with the rest of our lives?
If we don't ask that question,
If we don't find that our actions,
our behaviors,
our REAL lives are changed
by coming here on Sunday morning ...
If what we do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Friday, and Saturday isn't different
because of coming here on Sunday,
then we need to stop.
My friend, Ed Bacon, puts it this way:
"if God only comes in our thinking,
in our cerebrating,
in our cogitating ...
if God does not come in our actions ...
then God has not come at all."
The story Jesus told was a radical story.
WE celebrate a radical story here each week.
We come to this table and sacramentally remember
the mercy that was shown to us
in our humanity,
the unconditional love that was given
by Jesus' death on the cross.
We KNOW we are different because
of that love.
because of that mercy shown to us.
Jesus' command then AND now ...
is simple:
Go and do likewise.