How’d it go for you this week living as a Christian in the world? Did you have an opportunity to share your faith? How many times did you have to turn the other cheek? Were you able to be a peacemaker? Did you suffer any abuse because of your faith? Bill, how’d it go for you? Janet, how’d it go for you? Mike, how’d it go for you?
I love Sunday morning because it’s a time when the soldiers of Christ come back together to re-charge those spiritual batteries after living as a Christian for a week in a non-Christian world. Sometimes it’s been a great week, with many joyful experiences to report. Sometimes we come back really needing the prayer of confession after having failed to live up to our Christian calling.
We come into this holy place, kneel and collect our thoughts, and say our prayers. We sing hymns that praise our loving God, hear scripture readings that recall various portions of the story of the people of God, and receive anew the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ through his Body and Blood.
Some of the things we do are pretty strange to the uninitiated. For instance, in the first reading today from Amos, Amos foretold that Israel would be destroyed, that her people would fall by the sword, and the land parceled out to the conquerors. Whoever was left alive would go into exile. After we heard that reading, we responded, “Thanks be to God!” Why thank God for something like that? Because we know it’s part of a larger narrative; we know that narrative ends with God being merciful and redemptive. In fact, we know the narrative ultimately ends with our Lord Jesus Christ reconciling humanity with the Father. And so, even after a reading prophesying utter destruction, we can with confidence say, thanks be to God.
The Gospel we heard is likewise strange, if you happen to know the background. The religious leaders were always trying to trap Jesus by goading him into saying something that they could criticize. Saint Luke tells us that a lawyer wanted to put Jesus to the test by asking what he should do to inherit eternal life. Our Lord reminded him that he knew the answer because he knew the law: love God and love your neighbor. So, the lawyer asked Jesus to define who one’s neighbor is. “Who must I love, Jesus? Draw up some boundaries so I can know what kind of people I’m responsible for. Whom can I exclude from the category of neighbor? Are my neighbors those who live next-door? People who are religious like I am? People I work with? People who are the same color as I am? People who speak the same language?
Instead of giving the lawyer a straightforward answer, Jesus tells a parable. A man was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among robbers, and was beaten to within an inch of his life.
That particular road was notorious. Only 20 miles long, it drops 3200 feet. It was extremely unsafe, the haunt of thieves and robbers. It wouldn’t have been especially surprising to any of Jesus’ hearers that a priest and a Levite passed by the man. Hypocrisy disappoints everyone, but surprises no one. “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson.
What they probably expected Jesus to say was that, while the religious people passed him by, a Jewish layman came along and helped the man. The surprise is when a hated Samaritan turns out to be the hero of the story.
Hatred between Jews and Samaritans went back hundreds of years, beginning with the Assyrian occupation in 722 BC, the one foretold by the prophet Amos. Over the centuries points of dispute over theology and liturgy evolved, resulting in enmity, distrust, and limited contact between the Jews and the Samaritans. In fact, it was considered a sin if a Jew even spoke to a Samaritan. In the second century BC, the Samaritans had even helped an outside nation in its wars against the Jews. In retaliation, the Jewish high priest burned down the temple on Mount Gerizim, the center of worship for the Samaritans.
So this despicable Samaritan binds up the man’s wounds, treating them with wine and oil, the wine as an antiseptic and the oil for healing, then takes him to an inn and gives the innkeeper an amount of money that could sustain a person for about three weeks, with a promise for more if needed.
Then Jesus asks the lawyer, “Who proved to be the neighbor of the man who fell among the robbers?” The lawyer couldn’t bring himself to say the word Samaritan, so he answered, “The one who showed mercy on him.”
And so, this parable has become known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan. If you don’t know the background, you might think that it’s a nice story about a non-Jew helping a Jew. But the whole point is that a mortal enemy helped the man when two leaders of the man’s religion wouldn’t lift a finger. The good guys in the parable become the bad guys and the despicable guy is the good guy.
If Jesus were telling such a parable today in Sarasota, he wouldn’t tell it about a Samaritan. The bad guys in the parable might be a priest and a senior warden. The good guy might be a Democrat, if he’s talking to Republicans, or a Republican, if he’s talking to Democrats. Or the good guy might be a white person if he’s talking to a black congregation, or a black person if he’s talking to a white congregation. Or the good guy might be a Muslim or a Buddhist or Hindu.
Who would the Samaritan be for you? Is there a group of people who by category you’re tempted to dislike or look down on or dismiss as not being “your kind of people?”
As we go out this week to live and work in a world in which people always want to make that distinction between “us and them,” we need to remind ourselves always that our Lord Jesus calls us to be neighbor to all.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
5th Sunday after Pentecost
14 July 2019