A Sermon preached on July 10th, Pentecost VIII
at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Deuteronomy
30:9-14, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10: 25-37
Today’s Gospel
reading was full of surprises for the original listeners, though we have grown
so used to the story that they are not so obvious to us. There were certainly
surprises in store for the lawyer, who was perhaps not as smart as he thought.
If he had been really smart, he would have stopped when Jesus told him that he
had given the right answer, rather than asking his follow on, mister clever
question, “and who is my neighbor?" and then getting more than he expected
and – to be positive – being transformed in the process.
So what is
surprising? Well for one thing, it is a surprise that the man going down from
Jerusalem to Jericho was on his own in the first place. He was literally going
down. Jerusalem sits on top of a ridge and the ground slopes gradually all the
way down to the Jordan valley. Part of it is the Judean wilderness and having
been there, I can tell you that it is beautiful but also not without danger. It
is arid, and mountainous. To get from Jerusalem to Jericho you would follow a
narrow valley path lined with caves that made good hideouts for robbers and
bandits. At the site we visited, the caves are now part of a Greek Orthodox
monastery, perched on the cliff face, and offering the safety and hospitality
the man in the story sorely missed. While we were there, we were harassed only
by some Bedouin kids trying to sell us bags and shawls, not by robbers. But back
in Jesus’ day, you really would always try to travel in a convoy or a caravan.
If you didn’t, as we heard, danger threatened.
The next surprise
is that the Priest and the Levite passed him by. I suspect that when Jesus’
audience heard him say, “now by chance a priest was going down that road,” they
thought. Phew, great, he’s saved. If a priest won’t help him, who will! They
thought very highly of priests, as I hope you do too! After all, a priest was
sworn to obey the Law and according to the Law, as we heard, taken straight from
the Book of Leviticus, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In this
morning’s reading from Deuteronomy – containing the other half of the great
commandment, to love the Lord your God, we heard Moses tell the people “this commandment
… is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not … beyond the sea,
that you should say, 'Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and
get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it? No, the word is very near
to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe." (Deut.
30:12-14) That may be the case, but the priest, and the Levite, another good
law abiding Temple officer, do exactly the opposite, they cross over the road
to avoid helping and keeping the Law.
I have sometimes
heard this explained away by the laws of ritual purity, that by touching a dead
man they would become ritually unclean and unable to serve in the Temple for a
while. Well, there is one major problem with that – the man is not dead, and
the least they could do is to check and see. Moreover, even if he were dead, burying
the dead was a very important commandment. Love and compassion would always trump
ritual, every day. No. I think they were just afraid and so afraid that they,
the insiders, moved on as quickly as possible to save their skins. Getting
involved is costly and dangerous and the investment was just too high for them.
The next big
surprise, for the listeners and certainly for the lawyer who was hoping for a
very narrow definition of the neighbor, is that the hero of the story is a bad
guy. A Samaritan, a half-breed, a heretic, an enemy is the very last person they
would expect to be hailed as an exemplary neighbor. Now the Samaritans were not
a good, but oppressed minority. The antagonism between them and the Jews was
mutual. Back in chapter 9 (51-56), the Samaritan villages had refused Jesus
passage through their region because he was a Jew and on his way to Jerusalem,
they had rejected him. But surprise, surprise it is the Samaritan who helps the
Jew, and who helps him generously. God’s word was clearly in his mouth and in
his heart.
Look how Jesus
uses as many words as he used to describe the activity of the two Jewish
leaders, to detail all the Samaritan does to save the man—six actions in all.
He comes up to the man, binds his wounds, anoints him with oil to comfort him,
loads him on his mule, takes him to an inn and cares for him, even paying for
his whole stay. In fact, given the amount the Samaritan leaves with the
innkeeper, the injured man probably has about three and a half weeks to recover
if he needs it, since the going inn rate was one-twelfth of a denarius and two
denarii was two days' wages. So,
while getting involved was too costly for the priest and Levite, the Samaritan
spares no costs at all to help.
Just to make clear
how surprising his and their actions were, here is a modern day retelling of
the story, taken from a book, “The Misunderstood Jew” by Amy-Jill Levine about
Jesus and Judaism. It is set in the occupied West Bank, where the road from
Jerusalem to Jericho is today:
“The man in the
ditch is an Israeli Jew; a rabbi and a Jewish member of the Israeli Knesset
fail to help the wounded man, but a member of Hamas shows him compassion. If
that scenario could be imagined by anyone in the Middle East, perhaps there
might be more hope for peace.”[1]
Jesus' question to
close the story does not require a degree in ethics or theology to answer correctly:
"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into
the hands of robbers?" Until our Bible Study this Wednesday, I would have interpreted
the lawyer’s reply, "The one who showed him mercy," as his unwillingness
to even pronounce the name of the hated Samaritan, that he cannot even bring
himself to mention the man's race. But Susan, one of our participants, thought
the opposite. She thinks the lawyer had got the message, that his transformation
had begun, and that therefore he was no longer willing to refer to him as “The
Samaritan,” using a divisive ethnic identifier, because he recognized him as a positive
universal role model, simply the one who showed mercy. The lawyer now realizes that
each of us is to be a neighbor to the other that neighbors can come from
surprising places, and that even “enemies” can love God and be examples. That
would be the last and biggest surprise in the story.
It should not be a
surprise to us. In Matthew’s Gospel (5:43-47), Jesus is much more explicit: “You
have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you …. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? …. And if
you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?”
Loving God and loving our neighbor are two sides of the same coin; we love the
neighbor not because we are told to, but because we want to as an expression of
our love for God, whose image is in every person. We cannot rule out any people
as neighbors. Neighbors are not determined by race, creed, class, gender, or
orientation. Neighbors are anyone in need made in the image of God, and anyone
who helps those in need.
I said that this story
is full of surprises. Why don’t we surprise the world by making it a true story?
Today, as the definition of neighbor seems to becoming narrower and narrower, as
more and more countries and people turn their back on the world outside their
borders, and on those in need within their countries, we need an inclusive, generous,
and extensive vision more than ever. Jesus last words to the lawyer are as relevant
as ever: “Go and do likewise!”
Amen.
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