Luke l0:25-37
Now I know God has a sense of humor and certainly a sense of
timing. One Bible verse short enough for me to remember says
simply: “And God laughed.”
About 2pm Thursday I was just finishing this sermon on the Good
Samaritan for the evening service when a man walked into the church.
Pastor Holmer had stepped out, and Donna Jarvi and I were in the
office.
“Where’s the pastor?” he asked, and I knew without much scrutiny
that this man needed money.
“There’s the pastor,” Donna said helpfully, though I am not that
sure I would have volunteered that information. From the
beginning of my ministry I have been a soft touch for every visiting
indigent with a good story. In time stories shared among
pastors about scams have made me more careful, even a little
cynical.
“Where’s the pastor?” he asked.
“There she is,” Donna answered.
I stepped forward and asked, “What can I do for you?” Maybe that was
a foolish way to start, but inside my head, even as I looked him
over, rang today’s text on the Good Samaritan and his word to us:
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Here was this man with the baseball cap, a yellow shirt hanging out
and a broad scraggly smile saying he had just been released after
twelve years in Stateville…imprisoned on a gangbanging attempted
murder charge. He had tried to find a job at Jewel and at
Dominick’s, but they were not impressed with his resume. He
had applied for a transition-from-prison program at St. Leonard’s
House in the city, but they were full until the fall. He had slept
the night in an abandoned Lake Bluff home with no windows or door.
The following morning the alarmed neighbor saw the stranger next
door and called the police. When the police came, he gave
our man Dave five dollars for breakfast.
It struck me forcibly how almost impossible it is to re-enter
society after doing time in prison. And so it was that,
discouraged with any prospects around here, David told me had called
his sister in Mississippi and she told him to come home. He
had learned he could buy a bus ticket anywhere in this country for
$69.99, and asked me for the money. What else could he do but ask?
He hoped to get to Chicago Thursday afternoon in time to get the
ticket and head for home.
And there I was with this Good Samaritan sermon sitting almost
finished in the typewriter and with no church kitty to fund such
requests. Had God brought a new neighbor to Donna and me?
About the time things are going smoothly in life God has a way of
interrupting, getting your attention, making you rethink and perhaps
take unexpected action.
All I could do was make the best character assessment possible, then
act on it. Donna in the meanwhile went to the kitchen to get him a
cold glass of Coca Cola. As David rode out of the driveway on an old
bike, heading for the Lake Forest train station, I promised to pray
for him. He’s going to need prayer.
Maybe David rode off to enjoy the money that had come his way.
Maybe by now he is in Jackson, Mississippi, with his sister looking
for work. I’ve been duped before, but I would rather be duped than
fail to help someone trying to get a foothold in life.
Jesus said: “Love God first and your neighbor as yourself.”
To illustrate his point, Jesus told a story. He always did. It was
shocking that Jesus should use the Samaritan as the hero and the
Levite and Priest as the bad guys. For the practicing Jew, the
Samaritan would represent both racial impurity and religious heresy.
Even so, Jesus chose the Samaritan as his hero.
Without any fear of contamination from the injured stranger, or
concern for his own safety from the robbers, the passing Samaritan
stopped. With tenderness, he treated the injured stranger’s
wounds, took him to a nearby inn and paid for his care there.
“Who was neighbor to the injured traveler?” Jesus asked. The
Jewish religious leaders or the despised Samaritan?
This was no idle question on Jesus part. He was reminding his
listeners not to judge a book by its cover, nor judge a person’s
worth by his/her position or national origin or looks.
After all, the priest and the Levite were the esteemed leaders of
the religious community, but they flunked Jesus test as decent human
beings. They had been totally outclassed by the compassionate
outsider from Samaria..
Jesus challenges his listeners then as now by teaching that our
neighbor, our real neighbor, no matter where he or she lives or who
he or she maybe, our neighbor may be any person…not necessarily
someone who lives next door, belongs to the same church or golf club
or drives the same kind of car. By Jesus standards, our
neighborhood is as large as we choose to
make it. And certainly modern media has made the face of the
Palestinian or the Indonesian familiar…modern media has called us to
think in terms of larger human neighborhood.
For many of us our neighborhood goes to the end of the block, end of
the lane. We confine neighbor to people most like us and feel
comfortable and safe with that. Our community here in Lake
Forest and Lake Bluff, Libertyville…our community is unusually
homogenous. It is too easy to assume our neighbor, the one for
whom we are called to feel concern, is someone like us and our
family…middle class, educated, children play soccer, parents play
golf. Wake up….Jesus says. You have other neighbors.
Actually enlarging your neighborhood is closely related to spiritual
and moral maturity. There is a direct relationship between one’s
moral and spiritual development and the size of one’s sense of human
neighborhood.
We begin life as infants, our initial concern our bodily comfort.
Our interest in our mother as supplier of good things.
Actually some people never grow much beyond this infantile
self-absorption. But given a loving home and some life
experience most of us begin to look around us and care about others
and their well-being.
Nevertheless it must be said that in the last forty years there has
been a very real wave of narcissism and self-absorption. Even
as my rearing dictated love of neighbor, recent cultural messages
clearly emphasize love of self. People are encouraged to buy
luxuries with the message that says: You Deserve It. How often
have you heard someone say in regard to a newly acquired
luxury: “I deserve it”?
Today’s scripture asks why. Why do I deserve every imaginable
comfort when neighbors starve and go without medical care, their
children without decent day care? Watching the story of the
two little sisters lost in Chicago, little girls who should have
been safe in day care while their mother worked, makes me furious
with society and its skewed priorities.
Last week while police and neighbors searched for two little
sisters, Congress was busily debating whether desecration of the
flag is a form of freedom of speech…debating whether the Salvation
Army is obliged to hire homosexuals or not…debating while children
go untended and lost and most probably killed. Nero fiddled while
Rome burned.
For more than half of my lifetime, America has been a culture of
Narcissism…Privileged and unchallenged by adversity or war, we have
come to think we deserve the best…that we are special. It’s been
about twenty years now since Christopher Lasch wrote his classic on
the Culture of Narcissism. And while long long ago I was
reared to believe love of neighbor came first, the pendulum has
swung to the priority of loving self.
Both extremes of loving neighbor or loving self are unscriptural, as
we see in today’s text. Jesus called us to love our neighbor
as we love ourselves…and it must be said that unless we love
ourselves, we can’t understand what it means to love our neighbor.
Jesus rule came into play today when the stranger came to St. James.
Love of self carefully assessed David’s story. Love of self took
safety precautions for Donna and me. Love of neighbor sent a
new neighbor on what I pray will be the road to hope, a life begun
again.
Today’s text as familiar as it may be continues to challenge us.
Go out into the world in peace; have courage; hold to what is good;
return no one evil for evil; strengthen the faint-hearted;
support the weak; help the suffering; honor all people; love and
serve the Lord. Amen.
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