July 15, 2007
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10, Year C)
Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
The parable of the good Samaritan is certainly one of the few parables that almost everyone has heard. And if you have heard a sermon before in our life, likely you have heard one about the “Good Samaritan” and can remember something of value in it for this parable is one that is dripping with layers of meaning.
Historically we know that the three classes of people used in the story had deep meaning to the listeners. The priest was the most highly respected and pious, a true Jew and certainly one who considered himself saved in the sense that the lawyer, who was questioning, Jesus was asking. The Levite was the same. Levites were known for their piety. So priest and Levite, the higher classes of religious folk, those who kept the law and the ritual of the law, passed by the man left for dead by robbers.
And no one would have been surprised. A dead body, especially an unidentified dead body, was ritually unclean and to touch it would have been devastating to the long term spiritual well being of the person who touched it. The pious, faithful, question for the first century person of faith was always, “What will happen to me if I touch this man?” For keeping the law was about one’s personal well being.
No one would have been surprised at this story so far, especially the pious young lawyer who wanted to trick Jesus by getting him to say something that would prove that the lawyer knew the law better and lived it more faithfully than Jesus.
Then Jesus springs the third passerby on the young man – and us by extension of course! But unlike the young lawyer we know that Samaritan is “good.” To the young lawyer the Samaritan was akin to a low life, a charlatan, an outcast, a religious fraud. Samaritans and Jews had been in conflict since 722 BCE, the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Samaritans had opposed the rebuilding of the temple in
So, it was that despicable Samaritan that stopped and nursed the man with his own bandages, wine, and oil. It was the Samaritan who took him to an inn, and nursed him to a point that the innkeeper could be asked to care for him until he returned to full health. It was the Samaritan that paid for his keep, the keep of a perfect stranger, and though never mentioned, that stranger was a Jew, one for whom enmity was the expected reaction of a Samaritan, not mercy.
No. mercy was the mark of a person of deep faith, the right faith, the Jewish faith of Jesus and the young lawyer with whom he was arguing – and so by extension to us. Mercy.
If we examine the challenges of our day and time, we can name many “Samaritans,” those whom we would at the very least question before we call them neighbor, those for whom our mercy is metered and measured and carefully doled out, those we would be very surprised to see stopping for the battered man left for dead by robbers: illegal immigrants, Muslims, Iraqis, the “needy” who do not help themselves out of poverty, the growing number of gang members, Democrats, Republicans, those who refuse to speak English, the list of modern “Samaritans” is endless.
But we are no less responsible for our neighbors than the priest and Levite who walked by on the other side. We are to emulate, not the pious, but the outcast Samaritan. Put that way to think of an illegal immigrant as the example Jesus might draw is, at least for me, a little startling. It adds a dimension to this familiar story that makes me squirm a bit.
The question here is, of course, not, “What will happen to me if I help this person?” or “What will it cost me in piety or dollars or religious esteem or political prestige?” No, always Jesus is telling us the question is: “What will happen to them if I do not?” That is the embodiment of the merciful question. That is the response of the person of faith. “What will happen to them if I do not?”
Its easy to get political and find Samaritans on a global scale today. Likely we would not all agree on who they are. But I think there is something in the fiber of Americans today that is causing us to become more and more preoccupied with the first question, the “What will happen to me if I do this?”
But, “What will happened to them if I do not?” is the question that Jesus holds out for the young lawyer as a measuring stick for righteousness. “What will happen to them if I don’t?”
Today it is not uncommon for a news story to tell of people stepping over bodies lying on the sidewalks in the cities or of others who do not call police when someone is screaming, or of people using cell phones to capture the beating of another rather than stepping in to help the person. We tend to think, ”It’s not my concern,” or “Wow, I might make some money from this great footage!” or “Something might happen to me if I try to stop this.”
And people lie battered and beaten in all sorts of ways, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. The incredible thing to me is that we allow that beating and battering to go on; we are more like the priest and Levite of old than the Samaritan. The gang mentality of getting someone while they are down, allowing battering to go on, continuing to typecast and outcast those we profile as “other” is becoming more the “American way,” even the “Christian way,” than opening ourselves, and our pocketbooks, and our vulnerability, to the battered that lie before us every day of our lives.
I do not know what salvation means, at least not as the young lawyer seems to want it to mean. I only know that Jesus called us to be a community that has mercy with one another and with all the others God created. It seems to me that Jesus gives us story after story, example after example, of how our salvation is not tied to our own piety or to our own good works. It is rather a corporate concern: how we as a people recognize Christ in all the others of this world, of our world. That has more to do with our salvation than any piety we keep or proclamation of words we make or fingers we point.
When I dismiss us each week, I say, “Go from this place in peace, proclaim Christ, serve others, love abundantly, forgive freely, and the blessing of the Holy Trinity, God the eternal creator, God the incarnate word, God the abiding spirit be with you and those you love.” And sometimes I add, “and those you have trouble loving.”
As I reflect on this story of the good Samaritan this time around in the lectionary, and the modern Samaritans of our world and our lives, even the battered that lie in plain sight, left for dead in the road before us, it is these, all these “that we have trouble loving” that seem to me to be most inextricably aligned with us and our ability to exhibit mercy.
Good people be merciful, as God is merciful always. As Samaritans taught us and continue to teach us, be merciful. May we all be merciful to each other and to the Samaritans in each of our lives, to those whose very being smacks of impiety and disgusts our way of thinking. For when we do, we will be merciful as Jesus instructs.
Be merciful.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd