Pentecost 8C
July 14, 2013
Luke 10:25-37 (The Good Samaritan)
How
many of you have heard today’s Gospel lesson before? How many of you would say,
“That’s a nice story, with a clear moral.” What’s the moral?
Would
any of you say this is a story wrought with conflict and scandal?
It
is a nice story! Guy gets in trouble. A couple people, respectable people, walk
by and don’t help. But then another person walks by, this an unlikely candidate
to be helpful, and HE is the one who helps. He goes over and beyond, cleaning
the guy up, bringing him to a motel, and paying for him to be taken care of – a
couple days wages! And the moral is: that third guy, he’s the one we should be
like. Go and do likewise, says Jesus. Go out of your way to serve and help
others. It is the quintessential story of the Christian faith, isn’t it? It is
well-known, well-loved, even known colloquially. Culturally speaking, to be a
kind, giving person, especially to strangers, is synonymous with being a Good
Samaritan.
So
I think we’d like to fancy ourselves good Samaritans, right? At least we are pretty good Samaritans. Well, most of the time we are,
anyway. Right? Definitely if I saw someone close to dead on the side of the
road, I would help.
Or
would I? I heard this week about a study that was done some time ago at
Princeton Seminary. There were forty students, training to be pastors or church
leaders, who were asked to go from one building to another, through an alley.
Half were told they were going to teach a study on the Good Samaritan, and half
were told they would be talking about jobs available. Some were told they were
late, and had to rush. Some were told they had no rush. In the alley between
buildings, there was a plant, a man slouched in a doorway, in need of care. He
coughed twice as each student went by. Guess how many of the forty students
stopped? Sixteen. 24 just kept walking. Of those who were told they were in a
hurry, only 10% stopped. Of those who were on their way to teach a study on
this very story, only half of them stopped. And again, these were people
training to be church leaders!
It’s
easy to say, “Oh what a shame, those Princeton Seminary students should have
known better!” But I have a hunch we are not so different. What if you saw
someone in need, but you were in a hurry? Maybe late for an appointment, or to
see your kid’s hockey game? What if the person in need was someone you didn’t
like? What if it was someone no one
liked, a social outcast? What if it was someone who had done wrong to you, even
something really, really wrong that had changed your life for the worse? What
if it was someone from the proverbial “other side of the tracks,” the sort of
person you are afraid to associate with, someone who could take advantage of
you? What if it was someone who reeked of alcohol, probably was high, and had
not showered in weeks?
It
becomes harder and harder to see ourselves as that Good Samaritan, no? And I’m
not just stretching the text to paint a picture I want to paint – no, this is
legitimately the question first century hearers were faced with. Here’s a
little history lesson to help you understand. By the time Jesus told this
parable, Jews and Samaritans had hated each other for a thousand years. When
king Solomon died in 931 BCE, the united monarchy split into two factions.
Under the revolt and leadership of Jereboam, ten of the twelve tribes of
Israel, the ones in the north, established a new capital in Samaria. The two
remaining tribes of the southern kingdom of Judah maintained their capital at
Jerusalem. The result and legacy of this split was a thousand years of
political rivalry, ethnic hostility, and religious bigotry. The two kingdoms hated
each other with a great passion, and even though many other changes had
occurred during that 1000 years, including the Babylonian exile and the fall of
the northern kingdom, the hatred remained. Whenever you hear about a Samaritan
in a story about Jesus, you have to know that Samaritans were seen as dirty
heretics, and they were looked down upon.
So
you can see that when the Samaritan, the man from the hated former northern
kingdom, showed mercy and compassion for the man in the ditch, it was not just
the story of a nice guy who helped a guy in need. Turns out this isn’t such a
nice, easy story with a clear moral. It is, after all, a story wrought with
conflict and scandal! Although even still, the moral seems to be: show mercy
and compassion even to those who are different from you, even to those you
hate. That is what a Christian does. That is what Christian love looks like.
Well
I can stand up here all day long every week and tell you that, and it would
never be wrong. But what if… what if this story isn’t the story of the Good
Samaritan after all? What if the heading in your Bible said not “The Parable of
the Good Samaritan,” but rather, “The Parable of the Helpless Guy in the
Ditch”? How would that change your understanding of it? Because it is one thing
to help people in need even if you don’t like them or even are afraid of them.
It’s nice and all, but if you are the one helping someone in such great need,
you are in the dominant position. You have the power. The much more remarkable
character in the story is the helpless guy in the ditch, the guy who had to
humble himself enough to be helped by someone he hated, someone he perceived to
be below him, someone about whom he had made cruel comments and dirty jokes.
And now he relied entirely on this man – indeed his very life depended on the
man he had previously derided.
Many
were horrified a couple months ago to hear about three women being held captive
in a man’s house in Cleveland for ten years. Just this week the women came out
with their first public statements, thanking people for their support. The part
of this story that intrigued me the most was the man who helped them get out:
Charles Ramsey, a black man, looking a little rough around the edges, who as it
turns out had done prison time for domestic abuse charges. He was a “Samaritan,”
the guy you don’t want to see coming to help you, the guy you’re a little
afraid of, the guy respectable people wouldn’t want to be associated with. But
when Amanda Berry needed help, he was there, and she ran into his arms. When
you need help as much as those women did, you throw yourself into the arms even
of the most unlikely savior.
You
know, as much as we would prefer to take our moral from the Good Samaritan, the
hero of the story, I’m inclined to say that this story is just as much about
the helpless guy in the ditch, and it is from him that we can take our lesson
in the Christian life. Being a Christian is not about always being the
righteous hero. Just as important as helping and much more difficult is to find
ourselves lying in that ditch, desperately in need of our enemy. Is that not
the epitome of humility? To let yourself be helped by someone or something you
hate, that has caused you harm, that has caused you grief? To take the
struggles of life and to turn them into lessons, to take the frustrations of
life and see them as pathways to later joy, to look at those questions in your
life, and live them and love them right now, rather than long for something
more or different?
And
it is with this humility that we also come before Christ – Christ, who was
hated and beaten and offended, whose own friends deserted him, and who still
went to the cross for us. Christ, who continues to love us and show us mercy
and compassion even when we neglect or deny him. Let’s face it: we are utterly
helpless, just like the guy in the ditch. We do our best to get by, but at the
end of the day, our very lives depend upon this man who was previous derided.
We are totally reliant on the love of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, and
the saving grace of Christ. We are the helpless guy in the ditch, and Jesus is
our Good Samaritan, there to help us, to save us, when we are in our most need.
Let
us pray. Merciful and compassionate God: You do give us the power to serve,
and we pray that you will help us to do this. But we also pray that you give us
the humility to be served, and to learn even from those whom we may despise.
Thank you God for your relentlessly saving works. In the name of the Father,
and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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