Luke 10:25-37 Fairchild AFB Chapel July 14, 2013
Are you my neighbor? A Story of Radical Obedience
I checked my sermon bucket, the place where all
sermons, good, bad and indifferent, go to reside after they are preached. I was really surprised to find that in 22
years of ministry, I have never preached on the parable of the Good
Samaritan. What an amazing opportunity
to teach on one of the most well-known and beloved of Jesus’ parables. And what an unbelievable burden, since we
think we know what this parable is all about. Jesus’ stories often send us in a different
direction than we originally intended to go. And that, my friends, is a very scary
proposition. So let us begin.
In his book, Crazy Love,
Francis Chan begins with this quote from 17th century French priest
Francois Fenelon, “To just read the
Bible, attend church, and avoid “big” sins – is this passionate, wholehearted
love for God?” And yet that’s the way many of us live. But what would it be like if we really got to
know God in all of his infinitely amazing ways? What if we took Jesus seriously and
committed to loving others wholeheartedly?
What if the Bible and its story weaving through time became our
story? What would life look like
then?
Today we encounter Jesus in
conversation with a member of the following crowd. Now there were two kinds of people who showed
up whenever Jesus was around… those who were desperately in need of what he had
to share, and those who wanted to trip him up.
The desperate ones were usually not members of polite society. They were poor, lame, or diseased. They were shunned, shamed and forgotten. They were the woman who touched Jesus’
garment for healing, lepers who had spent much of their lives in solitude, people
with shady backgrounds or occupations – In short, the outcasts of the world.
The ones who wanted to trip
him up were the people who saw Jesus as a threat. The one we encounter today is introduced as a
scribe – one who as a traveling judge dispensed legal advice on complicated
matters of Torah and Talmud – the law and it’s interpretations through hundreds
of years. This scribe must have found
Jesus’ teaching quite threatening. We
hear him ask Jesus a simple, complicated question. This testing by the scribe is actually a way
of challenging Jesus’ honor, even more than his knowledge of the Law. The man’s question about how to inherit
eternal life is not about personal salvation.
It is much bigger than that. His
question is really about “Who is in?” and “Who is out?”
And to this expert in the
law, Jesus replies – love God with everything you have – heart, soul, strength
& mind – and your neighbor as yourself.
This statement implies that no part of us or our lives is to be withheld
from God. There is no compartmentalizing
in God’s world… no such thing as a personal or professional… no sense that
faith is only lived on Sunday. Indeed,
when one loves God fully, life is lived out in service to others as a natural
extension of that love… we can do nothing else.
The scribe, a lawyer, is indeed well read. But Jesus’ answer shows us that knowing about
God or the law is not enough. Real love
of God is found in living the commandments in everything we do. Real love of God is about being “all in.”
The scribe’s follow-up
question, “Who is my neighbor?” is meant to push Jesus out on a limb, exposing
him to the judgment of the religious elite.
But Jesus does not back down. He answers
the question by telling the story we all know so well, but as with many of
Jesus’ stories, it has a twist the crowd is not expecting. Our story’s twist: the hero of the story is by all accounts the
enemy. Samaritans were other, outsiders,
unclean and unacceptable. But by making
this man the one who lived within the commandments
of God, Jesus smashes through all the conventional excuses for separation. Race, religion & region (or nationality)
– they count for nothing with Jesus. This Samaritan risks everything by showing
compassion for a stranger. And as this
preconceived idea about Samaritans is shattered, all other stereotypes assumed
by the crowd are in essence invalidated.
Even more remarkable, the
Samaritan provided rescue and recovery for the man, expecting nothing in
return. His actions are a gift. Jesus is teaching us that neighbors are not
bound by social boundaries or class divisions.
Neither is mercy the product of a calculating heart, nor eternal life
the reward for a life well lived. Being
a neighbor does not earn us a place in heaven.
Being a neighbor is what we do in response to the gift of eternal
life that is already ours through Jesus Christ.
Eternal life is the promise.
Loving God and neighbor is the “thank you” note we write with our lives
every day.
Now with parables, it’s
natural to see ourselves in the characters, and this one is no different. Upon first reading, I want desperately to see
myself in the role of the Samaritan – a helper and friend to those in need. But as I study it more and more, I see in
myself much more of the other players in the story. You know, the Priest and the Levite had excellent justifications for not stopping to help... to touch a dead body would make them unable to perform their appointed duties. That happens to me, too. I see myself often too busy to stop and help,
even when I see a need that I can meet with little delay in my schedule. Or maybe I'm afraid of what others
will think of me if they see me relating to someone outside my tiny, comfortable
world. I can even see myself as the beaten up man, at times alone and
battered by life, wondering if anyone really cares about my pain, my
loneliness, my isolation.
We can easily be lured into
thinking of Jesus as a kindly Savior, one whose friendship assures us of a
place in heaven. We are comfortable with
the idea of someone who saves us from our sins… and ourselves. But it’s always a surprise that Jesus rarely talked
about that kind of stuff.
More and more, I realize that
Jesus didn't come to make sure that things stayed the way they had always
been. No, whether we like it or not, Jesus
came to change the world - to upset the apple cart, to challenge the status quo. Prevailing religious wisdom said that
following the letter of the law would save the world – some of us even live
that way today. Instead, Jesus asked the
people (and us) to follow two commandments:
First, to love God with everything we have. And then, as a natural outpouring of that relationship,
to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. In a nutshell, the 613 laws from the Torah
and thousands of interpretations all boil down to one simple command – just LOVE.
And yet, in its simplicity,
LOVE the most difficult challenge of all.
Why is that? Because it often
contradicts everything that the world says is important. In his first letter to the church at Corinth,
Paul writes to a congregation struggling with what it means to live outside the
world’s expectations. “For the message of the cross is foolishness
to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of
God… Where is the wise person? Where is
the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made
foolish the wisdom of the world?... For the foolishness of God is wiser than
human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (I
Corinthians 1:18, 20, 25)
If nothing else, we live in a
world that considers itself wise. The
trouble is that everyone’s understanding of wisdom is different. I used to watch the news regularly, but
somehow news coverage has devolved into commentary, people from all sides
telling me how to think and live, and calling me stupid and worse if I disagree
with them. It’s no surprise that The New
York Times has eliminated the comment sections on many of its news stories and
editorials because people are so vile in their responses to what is written, with
ugliness and condemnation equally shared from all sides of every issue.
As I think about this parable
and its challenge for my life, I realize that I have got to quit picking
sides. Republican/ Democrat –
liberal/conservation – black/white/Hispanic – American/Foreigner – old/young – Christian/Muslim/Jewish/or
No religious faith at all – Jesus tells us that all of these and all the others
we can think of are false dichotomies.
The only question Jesus wants answered is “are you a neighbor to someone
who needs you or are you not?” Or to put it another way: “Do you live out
mercy? Do you live in love?”
If I’m honest with myself, I
realize that I have such a long way to go.
It’s too easy to get comfortable… to be lured into a routine which makes
“busywork” demands of my time and my energy… too easy to be blinded to the
needs around me… or to make assumptions about others… too easy to assume that
those who don’t agree with me are my enemies… or expect someone else to take
care of those needs that I’m just not that interested in meeting… too easy to
worry about what others will think about me when I stand up for those who are
deemed “other” and “outside” by the rest of society… It’s often too easy to just not care.
Zig Zigler wrote, “You have never really lived until you have
done something for someone who can never repay you.” As soon as I saw this
quote, I thought of this parable. And this week, I remembered my own Samaritan
story. A few years ago, Shawn and I left
our dream assignment in Germany for ultra-sunny Altus, OK. As usual, we checked out the local Methodist church
and settled into a hot and windy life.
A few weeks later, I was
chatting with one of the ministers and said what I always say, “Let me know if
I can do anything to help out with your ministry here.” The associate minister and the office manager
shared a look, and one of them said, “Well, there is this member who could use
a little TLC. She’s in the middle of
treatment for a workman’s comp accident and has to travel to OKC once a month
for appointments and procedures. Her car
isn’t reliable enough to make the trip, and it’s probably good for her not to
drive in the city anyway.” It sounded
like a simple matter… take someone to a doctor’s appointment two hours away and
maybe grab a bite of lunch and squeeze in a stop by TJ Maxx while we were gone.
The day before our first trip,
I checked in with the office to get the address and to call J, who
wouldn’t pick up the phone for a number she didn’t recognize. I called from the church, and after I talked
to her, I thought for a minute and then asked the staff a question I hadn’t
thought of before. “Is there anything
else about her I should know?” “Did we
mention that she’s a former crack addict and spent two years in jail for check
fraud?” Long pause…… “Uh, no, I think I
might have remembered that.” “You’ll be
fine. She’s a good conversationalist,” (which
is the equivalent of asking about someone’s looks and hearing, “She has a great
personality.”)
For the next year I took
J back and forth between Altus and OKC.
We talked about the oddest things.
I found out about her son, an AF NCO, her abusive ex-husband, and her
favorite TV shows, “Prison Break” and “Dog, the Bounty Hunter” – ironic choices,
for sure. I saw the world from a whole
new perspective, learned about how food stamps work, and how a person can live
on $400 a month, including feeding two rescued Rottweilers. Sometimes we talked about theology, but not
very often. J’s needs were
simple. She just wanted to get through
her surgeries and hopefully receive enough disability benefits to not have to
go back to work.
There were days when I asked
myself, “What were you thinking when you volunteered for this?” Often, helping out was inconvenient and downright
messy, like when I cleaned up throw up from the front seat floor mat after she
had some out-patient surgery. But at the
end of each journey, I knew that I had made a difference. J believed that someone cared, even though she didn't often say the words, “Thank
you.”
Eventually, my time with
J came to an end. Her longtime
drug use had caused some dementia, and she finally went to live in a long-term
care facility near her son and his family.
She was only 51 years old. J wasn’t someone I would have chosen to be my friend, but in the end, she was my
neighbor. And because of her, I think
differently about poverty and addictions and know something more about the
lengths some people will go just to survive.
We have a long way to go, my
friends, if we are going to claim to be true neighbors to those around us. Radical obedience to God’s commandment of love
is a lifetime’s work. It’s hard. It’s scary.
It’s uncomfortable. And in this story we are told that it’s
what’s required to be true neighbors and deeply devoted disciples of Jesus
Christ. Maybe I have this sermon title
all wrong. Instead of the one I came up
with in the beginning of the week, “Are you my neighbor?” a new one may be more on point… “What
kind of neighbor am I?”
The prophet Micah summed up a
life dedicated to God in this way: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and
to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
May it be so with us! Journey on, my friends, journey on.
Amen and Amen.
Almighty and merciful God, you have planted in us
the seed of your word. Help us by your
Holy Spirit to receive it with joy and live according to it, so that we may
grow in faith, hope, and love. Lead us
to reflect this love to our neighbors by helping them in all their needs. We ask this through your Son, Jesus Christ
our Lord, who taught us to prayer together saying, Our Father, which art in
heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy
kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread. And forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver
us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and
ever. Amen.
Peace, Deb
Peace, Deb
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