Luke 10:25-37
Imagine that you are driving through
a dangerous area of town. You make sure
your doors are locked. You might even
drive a little faster than normal. You
have your cell phone right next to you so you can call for help. It’s a dangerous area and you cannot be too
careful. Now imagine that you are in
that same part of town and you are walking alone. You are walking fast. Your head is down and you are not making eye
contact. Your hand is clutching something
that can be used as a weapon. As you turn a corner you happen to look up and
you see something on the side of the street.
At first you cannot even tell if it is a person because it’s just lying
there. As you get closer, you see it is
a person and that person is possibly hurt, but you are really not sure. You could go check, but you decide it’s
probably just someone sleeping. If it is
someone injured, what could you do? You are not a doctor. You keep walking,
even faster now. As you pass by you
justify your decision. What if this
person was injured in a crime and that criminal was close by? What if it was a
ruse and the person was pretending. Once you got close, he would knock you down
and steal your wallet. The more you
think about it, the more you realize that you did the smart thing. Besides,
once you get out of this dangerous section of town you will call the police and
let them know. That thought makes you
feel better and you keep walking.
The road to Jericho was a
notoriously dangerous road. (It still is.) Most people would have avoided
walking it alone. It was windy, which made it difficult to see what was coming
ahead. One never knew what was around
the next corner. It was a place where
criminals frequented and often preyed on the weak or the foolish. Occasionally people would even pretend to be
injured so someone would slow down.
Meanwhile their friends would hide nearby and attack the person who
stopped to help. This was the kind of road where people walked fast and kept
their heads down. This was the road that
Jesus was talking about in the Gospel reading.
In the story, he mentioned several
people who passed by the injured man. It
is easy to pass judgment on these men, assume that they were heartless people. The
priest, the Levite…these were not necessarily bad men. There are all kinds of theories about why
they did not stop. If this was a dead
body, the body would be considered unclean and by getting near it, they would
have been unclean and would not have been able to perform their priestly
duties. Or perhaps they were in a hurry
to get to a meeting about how to improve the road to Jericho and make it safer
for travelers. We don’t know. But my guess is that it all came down to
fear. They were afraid for their own
safety. They were afraid that they
would stop and the person would not want their help or even reject them. They were afraid of the time it would take
out of their day. They were afraid.
When I first moved to Norfolk, I
did not know the area at all. I moved to
an area that was not a super safe section of town. It was a large apartment complex. It was loud. There were always car alarms
going off. People were often yelling at
one another. I kept my head down and was
not especially friendly. One night Conor
and I were in our apartment and we heard a woman yelling. I was prepared to ignore her. I assumed she
was crazy or just being dramatic. Then
she started yelling for help. Conor
immediately put his shoes on and went to the door. I did not want him to go for all the reasons
I mentioned. She was probably out of her
mind. It might have been a trick. It was
not safe. He was out there for about 10
minutes and I was terrified. When he came back he said that this woman was
beaten by her boyfriend. She was not
seriously injured, but she was scared to walk back to her apartment, so of
course Conor accompanied her. I reprimanded him. What happened if the boyfriend came
back? Did she know where we lived
now? I was terrified. She was quite literally our neighbor. Even as I was going through all my fear
scenarios I thought about this story of the Good Samaritan and I knew I was
being a hypocrite. I am ashamed of my
feelings and my actions on that night. I
let fear keep me from helping someone.
This past week has been a bloody
week in our country. It has not just
been a week, it has been years. Children
shot in their schools, men and women (many of whom are African American men) killed on the street or in their cars, police
officers gunned down, gay and lesbian people shot in a night club. This violence and hatred is almost
incomprehensible. I believe that the
source of this violence, hatred, division and mistrust is fear. It is fear of the unknown. It is fear for our own safety. It is fear of things that we cannot
understand. It is fear. To some degree fear keeps us safe. It keeps us from taking unnecessary risks and
harming ourselves and others. This fear
we are now experiencing is having the opposite effect. Our need to keep
ourselves safe and comfortable is hurting our neighbors-- our brothers and
sisters in Christ.
This story that Jesus told, the
story of the Good Samaritan is a story about a man who risked his own safety
and well-being to care for someone he had never met and would probably never
meet again. Jesus told this story to
answer a question by an inquisitive lawyer.
The question was, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer knew the answer and Jesus knew he
knew the answer, so he turned the question back to the lawyer. The lawyer correctly answered: “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 your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus responded, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will
live.”
Here is the irony. When the lawyer asked how to identify the
neighbor (so as to achieve eternal life) Jesus told a story about a man who
cared for his neighbor by risking his life. In order to live, to truly live, we
have to be willing to take risks for other people. The Good Samaritan risked
everything to care for this man on the side of the street, this man who could
have easily been an enemy.
Taking risks to care for our
neighbor might not always look like it does in this story. It probably won’t require risking our
life. It could be about risking our
comfort, our feelings, our pride…. It could be allowing ourselves to experience
other people’s disdain and even hatred or simply opening ourselves up to
experience their pain and their sorrow.
The story of Jesus Christ is a story of
a man who allowed himself to be hated….allowed himself to be
scapegoated…allowed himself to experience the depth of people’s anger and fear
and pain. And he returned all of that
with love, a love that would seem weak to most of us now. That was the only way to break the cycle of
violence.
Two thousand years ago God sent his only
son to this earth because he realized that punishing human sin with violence
was not working. God could no longer
merely punish people for their sins. Instead
he put a mirror up to all of humanity to show them what their sin was
doing. Jesus was that mirror. In that mirror (if they were willing to
look), people saw what sin was doing to the Prince of Peace, the God of Love. It tortured and killed him. But not for long. Jesus transformed the violence and the
darkness and the hatred. He transformed
it to love.
Death could not defeat the Prince of
Peace and the God of Love. Human hatred
and agony could not defeat him. So why
are we acting now as though we have been defeated by hate and anger? Jesus already won this war. He taught us this lesson--that the only way
to live, the only way to experience victory over death is to refuse to let fear
motivate us and control us.
Perhaps
you are thinking, but that was 2000 years ago.
It was a different time….different people. NO. That time is now. We are those people. Jesus is still that mirror for us, if only we
are willing to look, really look. That
is why we come to church every Sunday and why we celebrate Holy Communion. We look into the mirror that is Jesus Christ. We look upon the cross. We talk about how
Jesus was broken for us, so that we can be whole. Jesus defeated hate and death. It is up to us now to live in to that victory
and to proclaim that victory from the mountain tops.
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