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| Parable of the Good Samaritan by Vincent Van Gogh |
I'm baaaaack!
I've been out for two weeks thanks to the blasted COVID variant that is running rampant in the United States. Because I am a priest in Southwest Georgia, it is nearly impossible for me to find a priest who could fill in for me when I was sick, especially at the last minute. I was very fortunate to get ahold of the woman who had been serving my congregation once a month for about a year before I got there, and she was able to lead a funeral that had been planned for about three months. Otherwise, the people of St. Barnabas had to go with lay-led Morning Prayer in my absence. Not ideal, but the only thing we could do.
Now that my oxygen levels are back to normal, my fever down, I'm not coughing, and I have tested negative for COVID, I am back in the pulpit and behind the altar again in Valdosta.
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Texts:
Amos 7: 7-17; Luke 10:25-37
Prayer: There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea;
there’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty. May we come to
experience God’s unfailing love, mercy, kindness and justice in the hearing of God’s
word. Amen.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is so well-known. It’s one of the
few Bible stories that I remember from my Sunday School days in the basement of
Christ Church Exeter. I recall the way the teacher told the story and said with
such great reverence the line: “But a Samaritan while traveling came near him…”
(Lk.10:33a).
We all want to identify with the Samaritan. We all want to believe
we’re that “good person,” the noble one, the one who goes to the aid of
another. Certainly, that was the way this story was passed down to me in Sunday
School.
A funny thing happened as I was preparing this sermon.
I just couldn’t shake myself from thinking about our first reading
and the prophet Amos who doesn’t want to be a prophet.
Amos was happy enough tending sheep, minding his own business.
But God had other plans and needed a shepherd such as Amos to do
the difficult and hard task of talking truth to power.
And the powerful don’t want to hear what Amos has to say.
The priest Amaziah has a good gig going as basically chaplain to
the king. He has the “right” beliefs, does all the “right” practices.
And so when Amos shows up to tell him that Israel is doomed, he
dismisses him in the most snarky way.
He basically tells him, “Go away, little man, and go bother
somebody else with your words.”
Amaziah is so full of his own self-worth, and self-worthiness based
upon his status, that he is willing to ignore the words God has given to Amos
to speak to the northern kingdom of Israel.
In fact, the reason Amos is having to speak such a terrible
prophecy to Israel is because the people and the leaders have failed to live
into being the people of God they were supposed to be. Full of themselves, they
have left no room for God.
In that way, I can see the same issue at play here with the lawyer
who wants to test Jesus.
If we look at what he asks, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit
eternal life?” this is not really an honest question.
He already knows…and Jesus knows he already knows…the legalistic
answer to his question.
When Jesus says, “What do you think?,” the lawyer rattles off the
Shema…the highest commandment to love God with your all-in-all and love your
neighbor as yourself. Jesus gives him a thumbs up and tells him to go on about
living into that commandment. This confirms his self-assuredness, his
self-worthiness.
But then the lawyer…in his haughty puffed-up state…decides he now wants
a legal answer to a Gospel question: “Who…precisely…is my neighbor?”
Like the same self-assuredness of the priest Amaziah, this lawyer,
this oh so clever lawyer, doesn’t really want to be bothered by what Jesus has
to say. He already is well-convinced that he has the specific answer to his
question already in his head.
But Jesus doesn’t want to play head games.
Jesus gives a Gospel answer to this desire for legalistic specifics.
Not only are there no boundaries as to “who” constitutes the
neighbor; the neighbor is an “other,” a despised person, the Samaritan.
It’s significant that Jesus names the Samaritan as the one who goes
near the person left for dead in the ditch. If we can remember to the Gospel a
couple of weeks ago (and I am so sorry I wasn’t with you to actually talk about
this point at that time), but Jesus has “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Lk
9:51).
This is a major turning point in Luke’s Gospel.
Jesus has become resolute, determined, and there’s no going back.
He’s headed toward Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and
has no use for anyone wishing to challenge the status quo. Jesus knows this is
a road of danger for him. To get to Jerusalem, he goes through Samaria, not
around it.
And Samaritans and Jews do not get along at all.
He’s taking a dangerous trip through a dangerous territory.
It’s not that Samaritans and Galileans are so different. But the Samaritan
Jews are the ones who have descended from those left behind during the years of
one conquest after another and exile of the Jewish people. They had
intermarried with Assyrians and come to form different ideas about worship and
didn’t regard Jerusalem as the great holy site that the exiles believed it to
be.
The Jews of Jerusalem, which is Jesus’ band of followers, didn’t
like this “mixed race” of Samaritans and the feeling was mutual.
As they traveled through Samaria, Jesus and James and John found
the Samaritans to be less than welcoming.
They didn’t care about Jesus’ message of God’s love.
They didn’t want any of Jesus’ healing power.
The Samaritans sneered and told Jesus and the others to just keep
moving. John and James, being the devout Jesus followers that they were, wanted
to reign down fire from heaven on the Samaritans, but Jesus told them to back
off and leave them alone. This isn’t a time for retribution. His face is set
toward Jerusalem, so keep moving.
Now, here is Jesus using a Samaritan, someone who hated Jesus, as
the exemplar for this Jewish lawyer of what it means to love your neighbor as
yourself.
One who rejects Jesus and Jesus’ teachings is the hero of his
parable of love.
This is so shocking to this lawyer, this man so concerned with his
self-preservation, that when Jesus asks him who was the neighbor to the man
beaten and left for dead, the lawyer could only mumble, “The one who showed
mercy.”
He can’t even say the word ‘Samaritan.’
In my experience…and what I remember from Sunday School about the
way the church presents this story…we’re encouraged to see our selves in the
person of the Samaritan.
The Good Samaritan is supposed to be the model of what it means to
be “a good Christian.”
But if we go that route, casting ourselves in the hero role, I
think we miss the real power of what we can gain from the parable.
The Biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine encourages us to not see ourselves
in any of the major characters of the lawyer, Jesus or even the Samaritan.
Instead, what if we see ourselves in the position of the person
beaten and discarded in the ditch?
I’m sure we have all had that experience of feeling as though life,
the world, circumstances have smacked us down and left us languishing. We’ve been
robbed, either literally or figuratively. And we’ve been passed by when we
desperately needed someone to notice us, pay attention to us, care for us.
Who would be our Good Samaritan?
Is it the Mexican immigrant?
A person in a Black Lives Matter T-shirt?
A white guy in a MAGA hat?
When that person, that one who shows mercy, is moved with pity to
come near us, to bandage our wounds, how do we respond? Will we see God at work
in them?
We can’t know or predict who will be our version of the Samaritan.
But just as God uses a shepherd such as Amos to speak truth to power, we must be
prepared to be surprised by who God moves and sends to show us loving kindness.
And when they tend to our woundedness, can
we look into their face and give thanks to God?
Such a simple Gospel story. Such a challenge for us in our day.
In the name of God…F/S/HS.
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