A Sermon preached on July 14, 2019, Proper 10 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Deuteronomy 30:9-14, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10: 25-37
This year’s parish Lenten retreat was titled, “Rehearsing Scripture.” We approached Scripture using acting and
rehearsing methods: based on the idea that the Biblical text is a collection of
scripts that God has given us to rehearse, in our lives, until something true
emerges and we are transformed in the process. Some texts lend themselves to this
method more than others of course. Jesus’ parables are particularly suitable, and
in fact it was the parable from today’s Gospel – the Good Samaritan – that we studied
and used back in April. We had a lot of
fun reading, rehearsing, and acting this text. Everyone really got into character
… though I had the feeling that those playing the robbers were having far too
much fun! But we also learned from the experience.
We started by looking at the verbs, the action words, of each character.
What do they actually do? If we just focus on the parable itself, the man who
gets beaten up only has two verbs: he was going down (from Jerusalem to
Jericho) and he fell into (the hands of the robbers). These are passive verbs. They
tell us that this was not his fault, it happened to him.
The robbers on the other hand are very active, they stripped, beat,
went away, leaving him. Presumably they also took some money and goods with
them – or was it an entirely senseless attack? The text doesn’t tell us. We
just know the results of their action: the man was left half dead.
And then we have our two devout, religious characters, those who we
would expect to be the ones most likely to obey the law that the Lawyer had so
cleverly summarized for Jesus: the priest and the Levite. Like the man, they
were going down or came to the place, they saw the man, and they passed by.
We are not told why they passed by. I have heard
and read many theories. One is that they were concerned about ritual defilement
if they touched a dead body, for they would then be unable to carry out their religious
function for some time. The only problem with that idea is that the man was not
dead, just half dead. Another possibility is that they were afraid. The road
from Jerusalem to Jericho was dangerous, the robbers might have been hiding nearby
(though having been to this place when we visited the Holy Land, I can tell you
that there are no bushes or trees to hide behind!). In his last sermon on this
parable, Dr. Martin Luther King too wondered why thy did not stop to help. His
conclusion was that, “the first question that the priest asked, the first
question that the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will
happen to me?’”[1]
There is no question what the Samaritan thought. His question was: “If
I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” The Samaritan gets
the most verbs, and so we learn more about him. He was travelling, came near,
saw, was moved by pity, went to the man, bandaged, poured, put him, brought him,
took care of him, took out money, gave, said, and promised. His story starts
passively – he was travelling – but soon becomes active. If he is afraid, he
doesn’t let it influence him. He crosses the road and removes the distance
between him and the man. Then, from that close proximity, from that intimacy, he
was moved by pity and all the other actions taken to save the man result from
that familiarity, that contact.
Finally, we have the innkeeper. He gets no verbs at all; he is silent
but accepting. One thing we identified at the retreat, which I had not noticed
before, is that the innkeeper is also one of the “good guys,” he is trusting
and willing to take on responsibility in caring for the man just based on the promise
of the Samaritan that he will come back and repay him. That’s a big deal when
we remember that Samaritans were a small, hated minority. But I think the innkeeper
was influenced by the example of selfless love the Samaritan had already shown.
If we step back from the parable to the conversation between Jesus and
the lawyer, it is interesting to see how Jesus answers his questions, or often how
he doesn’t. To start with, he answers the lawyer’s questions with questions of his
own. “What is written in the law?” (Luke 10:26) he asks as he wants to find out
what the lawyer believes. The lawyer’s answer is a sound one, love God and love
your neighbor. But will he act out his faith, will he do this and live a life
of love as Jesus tells him to? It appears not, for our good lawyer has yet
another question. Who is my neighbor, he asks, and what he really wants to know
is, who is included in God’s love, and who isn’t, who am I supposed to love and
in extreme cases help, and who can I leave by the side of the road?
Jesus’s answer is all about turning abstract faith into action. Jesus’ reply
not about who to help, but who helps. The neighbor is not just the one being
loved, but also the one doing the loving, the one who showed the injured man
mercy or loving-kindness. And by taking an extreme example of a total religious
and ethnic outsider, Jesus is making clear that God has no interest in the barriers
we set up and the distance we try and keep from one another. You can’t be a neighbor
from a distance. The priest and Levites distanced themselves from the man and
were thus able to ignore his situation and his need. The Samaritan came near
him and then went directly to him. He no longer saw an object, but a fellow
human being in desperate need, someone who just would not survive without him.
We could so easily retell this parable today using the current refugee situation.
That’s why Jesus so often taught by using parables, because they are so easily
adaptable to other situations. We try and keep the refugees well away from us.
In Europe we close our harbors and we prosecute and demonize the real
neighbors, those who quite literally come alongside the refugees in their boats
to rescue them. We prefer the refugees to be far away: in camps in North Africa
or Turkey or Mexico. One reason is to discourage people from coming in the
first place, to make escaping a less attractive option. But we know that doesn’t
really work, not when even the risk of drowning is better than staying at home!
Another reason is if the refugees are not where we can see them, we don’t
experience their need and their plight and treat them as some abstract concept,
as some “other” rather than as fellow human beings. We don’t want them to be
our physical neighbor, or that pesky command to love our neighbor might apply.
Martin Luther King was right, we are afraid, afraid of what might happen to us.
I don’t mean the risk of injury, of getting hurt, though that happens too.
Refugees are human beings, and not all good. I am thinking of the fear that we
will be changed, that like the Samaritan we will be moved with pity, that we
will have no choice but to show loving-kindness. That observing the law will
become a matter of the heart and a labor of love.
That is what Moses is saying in the first reading from Deuteronomy, God’s
commandment is not abstract or distant, it’s not in heaven, and it’s not beyond
the sea, but instead very near “it is in your mouth and in your heart for you
to observe.” (Deut. 9:11-14) “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love
your neighbor as yourself.” Not only does your life depend on observing this
commandment, but the lives of everyone you touch and encounter when you do.
Amen.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2012/04/why-didnt-they-stop-martin-luther-king-jr-on-the-parable-of-the-good-samaritan/
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