Lead me in your truth and teach me, *
for you are the God of my salvation;
in you have I trusted all the day long. (Psalm 25:4)
The pain of this week is almost unbearable. Even in a country soaked in violence with more guns than there are men, women, and children, this week has brought into our lives a level of death and destruction that has shaken us all to our core. I have not watched the brutal videos that now with our technology allows unspeakable horror to be recorded and broadcast into every one’s life who owns a computer or a phone or television. But I did watch the son of Alton Sterling, collapse in grief as his mother talked about his father who will not be coming home because he was killed while being restrained by several policemen.
I have been in conversation with friends who are afraid. As people of a different skin color than mine in America they fear they cannot protect their children and they themselves do not feel safe outside their homes. I watched a video sponsored by churches in Ohio with children, young people, and adults telling people of color how to get home safely if they are stopped for any reason by a police officer. It is excruciating to watch. And then as if it could not get any worse, during a peaceful, and law officer supported, march organized by a local pastor through downtown Dallas, Texas protesting Alton Simpson’s murder in Louisiana as well as Philando Castile’s killing in Minnesota, five police officers were gunned down by an army veteran who wanted to harm white people.
On the heels of terror attacks around the globe, including Orlando, Florida, it has been a really rough week to be a human. We feel numb, angry, confused, sad, and deeply divided as a nation. Our hope feels threatened and we are in danger of losing our belief in a world where all can live together in peace.
But today I want us to take time to remember what happened this week to Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Tuesday and to Philandro Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota on Wednesday night and to the five police officers killed on Thursday night in Dallas, Texas; Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa. I want us to remember their families and friends who grieve and all of us who grieve for them. I just learned that Michael Krol graduated from East Longmeadow High School, here in Massachusetts. But each of them have friends who loved them and depended on them. They are all our brothers and to have had them taken from us because of the senseless violence of this world, breaks our hearts. We pray for their souls, and in so doing we must face the question posed in our gospel reading today: what does it mean to be a neighbor?
This parable found in Luke Chapter 10 is one of the most familiar of all of Jesus’ stories. It is a parable that even people who are unfamiliar with churches and the practice of religion have incorporated into their morality and descriptions of acts in life that represent selfless heroism. We even have a law called the “Good Samaritan Law” that protects from litigation those willing to show compassion when they stop for others at accident scenes, perform CPR when necessary, or offer other acts of assistance to those in need. There are Good Samaritan medical clinics and hospitals. And every so often on the evening news you will hear the story of someone who puts their own well-being at risk to help another. They are often called “Good Samaritans.” And so with this familiarity we can settle in like a comfortable chair, believing that we know everything that Jesus was trying to convey in this story. In our efforts to define it, we have given it a title, “the Good Samaritan.”
But whenever we think we understand exactly where Jesus is going with his teaching, we find that things are getting ready to be turned on their head.
It is probably a familiar story to you. Jesus tells it in response to a lawyer, or a scribe, who is an expert in the Mosaic law–the Torah. The lawyer stands to test Jesus’ authority as rabbi. He asks, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What acts must I accomplish, what law must I follow, to gain God’s inheritance. Or in the words of Barbara Brown Taylor—how can I hit the jackpot right here and right now? Jesus turns the question around. “You who study the law–what do you read there?” The lawyer answers combining the scripture found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus into one. “You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus applauds the answer, but he is not finished with the answerer, and so he pulls his conversation partner just a little closer, to the place where proper words and proper actions meet, and offers a surprisingly simple summary statement. “Do this and you will live.”
The lawyer has been drawn in, and so he follows up his question with, Who is my neighbor? Are there lines around who I am to love, who I am to care for as I do myself? Or perhaps in the words of our modern era “What lives matter?” The question has an air of urgency, and Jesus responds with a story.
The story is one we all know. A man is walking along a long, dusty and dangerous road that leads from Jerusalem to Jericho. He is attacked by robbers who steal all his belongings, even his clothes, beat him severely and leave him to die. He lies in the dirt by the side of the road seriously injured. Along comes a priest and later a Levite, both leaders in the temple. Each one looks at the suffering man and each cross over to the other side of the road leaving him without help. And then along comes a man who is a Samaritan. He sees the man’s obvious distress and is “moved to compassion or pity.” Despite possible danger to himself and obvious inconvenience, he tends to the man’s wounds, and then lifting him on to his animal, he takes him to an inn where he pays to see that the man is cared for
But this story is not just about one who cared for another. This story was at the time, one of scandal. Jesus used parables to teach because they took ordinary events of life—traveling, making bread, sweeping the floor— and turned them upside down to break open the listener’s perception of God’s love and God’s mercy.
The people listening to the story would have been shocked that neither the priest nor the Levite stopped to help the man. Intervening to save a life is an ultimate commandment in Judaism. They would have been expected to help him. But first century listeners would have been horrified to learn that the rescuer, the one who stops and cares for the wounded man was a Samaritan. This story truly turned their world upside down.
But for us to understand the outrage of this story, we must bring it closer to our own experience. This one who stopped to care, the one who demonstrated the way of being a neighbor, the one who practiced a love of God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength and his neighbor as himself, was one for whom others would have had difficulty seeing as human. Amy Jill Levine says that for her as a Jew, it would be as if a person active in Hamas stopped to help. For a person who grew up in the Civil Rights era as an African American it might be a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Or today it might be for a black man seeing a police officer or for the police officer, a young black man. There is fear on both sides. For some of us it might be someone seen to be a terrorist or someone linked to ISIS. It may be different for each of us, but it is important that we recognize our “Samaritan” for us to truly understand this story.
Jesus is not simply telling us a morality tale of helping someone whose car is broken down beside the road. If this was so, Jesus would have inserted the character of another Jewish man as the third person who comes along. Instead, the one who sees the man’s need, recognizes his humanity, and stops to help is a man from Samaria. This is the reign of God that is coming near. The lion is lying down with the lamb.
What does this story offer us today as we stand in a world soaked in blood where too often the response is revenge or further alienation from each other? It is important to look closely at this familiar story.
First the Samaritan, unlike the religious leaders, got close to the man’s suffering. He put himself in immediate proximity to see the extent of the man’s pain. Though very different from the one being helped, the Samaritan came near. Standing on the other side of the road the man may have appeared to be already dead and therefore beyond help. But by coming near he was able to see that the man was still alive and in need of care.
Our country may seem at times in danger of coming apart. Many of its citizens are suffering. The only way we can care for them, to stand with them, is to come close, to draw near, to listen to their pain, to listen to what they need to be loved back to health. It is important in times like these not to back away, not to shut ourselves off from each other. What if instead we intentionally invited others to sit down and talk about race relations in this country? What if we invited a group to share their stories of being an immigrant in the Berkshires? By creating opportunities to come close, to listen, to stand with each other, with God’s help we can move forward.
Then the Samaritan took action. And responding to this severely wounded man on the side of the isolated and dangerous Jericho Road meant that he had to step far outside his comfort zone. He was the outsider. He did not have any guarantees what would happen to him once he got close to the injured man. He did not know if the robbers might still be around waiting to harm him. Some commentators have speculated though, that the Samaritan may have felt a particular kinship with this individual. He may have believed that if it was him lying injured by the side of the road, no one would stop to help him. Realizing this he decided that if he did not help this injured man, who would?
To offer our prayers for those in need and for those who suffer is vitally important. Saying out loud the names of those who have lost their lives, or been injured, praying for their families who mourn, opens God’s healing grace into our world. But we also are called to put our faith and our love in action. We are involved in wonderful ministries with some of our neighbors in the Berkshires. What else are we being called to do with others?
Finally, the Samaritan man did not give up hope. He did what he could for the injured man on the side of the road and then took him to a safe place to recover. He did not see the extent of the man’s wounds and say, “You are beyond what I can do for you.” He did what he could. And his instructions to the innkeeper let us know that he expected to continue the relationship. He promised to return and check on the injured man’s progress. He promised to provide continuing support for his return to health.
It may be easy with all that has happened in the past weeks to give in to despair. The issues of gun violence and racial division and acts of wanton horror may just seem too overwhelming. We may feel like throwing up our hands, turning off the news, and saying there is nothing we can do.
But as Margaret Mead says, “One person, one act, can change the world. Indeed, that is all there ever has been.” We are children of hope. We are children of a God who never leaves us, who comes to us in our times of joy and times of tragedy. God comes to us as we lay in life’s ditches on the side of the road, helpless, overwhelmed, defeated. God takes us in God’s arms and offers us a love that heals. We must guard our hope fiercely. Hope keeps injustice at bay. Hope keeps love alive. Hope strengthens us to do the next thing, to reach beyond ourselves, to find what is needed to move forward.
Jesus tells this story as he himself is headed toward Jerusalem.He knows that he is going to the cross where the ultimate sacrifice of love will be required. He will give himself on the hard wood so that all may be brought within his loving embrace. Our ability to offer our presence, our compassion, our love to our neighbor comes from this gift—the love of Jesus and the mercy of God.
As we move forward in the world, our grief at times can almost tear us apart. We seem to be locked in an endless cycle of violence. But Jesus shows us the way to end that cycle—by coming close to those who may be beyond our definition of neighbor, to act with compassion–putting our love into action, and by holding fiercely onto our hope that with God’s help, God’s love always wins
Jesus says that the whole of Biblical faith is about just two things: love of God and love of neighbor. But it is always those two things, not just one. Because you can’t say you love God whom you do not see, and then refuse to encounter your neighbor with love.
May we, through God’s love, be a neighbor to all..
Let us pray:
O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.