God’s Good Samaritans: Living on Both Sides of the Ditch
A sermon by Lanny Peters, Pastor, Oakhurst Baptist Church
July 18, 2004
Today’s scripture contains perhaps the most well known of all the stories Jesus ever told. It begins with a lawyer asking a question which John Claypool calls the perennial question really “ ‘What is life all about anyway?’ Sometimes we put the question this way: ‘What must I do to be saved?’ At other times we ask, ‘How can I find my highest fulfillment?’ or ‘What is the real reason for my existence?’ This issue has been raised in a variety of ways, and represents a curiosity that is well-nigh universal. Who hasn’t at times wondered what is involved in getting in touch with what is deepest and highest and most important in all existence?” John Claypool. Stories Jesus Still Tells: The Parables.
McCracken Press, New York, 1993, p. 94
Jesus responded to the lawyer’s question in vintage rabbinical form with a question of his own. Claypool “once asked a Jewish friend why people of his faith usually answer a question by asking another one.” His friend “got a wry smile on his face and replied, ‘Why not?’” (Claypool, p.94-5)
Jesus probably had another reason for being indirect. Luke tells us that the lawyer stood up to test Jesus, to possibly trick him into an answer that could be used against him. A lawyer in Jesus’ time would have been an expert on the religious law; in fact, a professional interpreter of the Scriptures upon which Jewish law was based. Sly as a fox, Jesus turns things around and says to him, “Well, what is written in the law?” Suddenly, the lawyer is put to the test to see if he understands the law. “What do you read there?” Jesus asks. The lawyer knows his stuff and answers from the heart of the law, the Torah, words from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Confidently, he gives the answer, “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.”
And Jesus said, “Hey what do you need me for! You have given the right answer; do this and you will live.” The lawyer’s words are very familiar because they are what the Hebrew people had used for generations in expressing the core of their faith.
Claypool points out that in the Jewish scriptures, “There are only two orders of reality: the uncreated which has life in itself, and the created, which derives its life from the other. This is what is called ‘contingent reality.’ It hangs like a chandelier. It’s because Something Else has given it the right to be and caused it to be. There are, then, these two orders of reality, and God belongs on the Uncreated side of the line, and everything else except God belongs on the created side. Meister Eckhart put it succinctly once when he wrote, ‘It’s God’s nature to give being. It’s creation’s nature to receive being.’ Once you get this fundamental distinction clear, it isn’t surprising to find that we’re to relate to the two orders in radically different ways. ...We’re to relate to the uncreated-the already perfect and complete-by loving with all our hearts and minds and souls and strength. We’re to see that one in a category all by (Its)self because there’s nothing- absolutely nothing- exactly like (God). ... Everything that derives its life from Another is to be nurtured; only the Lord God is to be worshiped and recognized as Absolute.” ….St Augustine once prayed, “Thou has made us for thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee’ …Idolatry then is “taking something on the created side of the line and relating to it as it were the Uncreated. ...Mark it down that just as you can not get milk from a statue or wine from a stone, you can’t get your ultimate fulfillment from anything but your Divine Source. Whatever on the created side of the line is elevated to a place of worship-be that a child, a job, or a possession-is going to leave one profoundly unfulfilled. It doesn’t have in it that for which our hearts ultimately hunger. …God is already complete and is to be loved accordingly, while everything else is in the process of being completed, and thus all Jesus’ teachings rest on this ancient understanding of reality.” (Claypool, pp. 95-97)
All this is why Jesus reminds the lawyer that he knew all this himself; it’s right there in the heart of the law. “You have given the right answer, do this and you will live.” Notice something vital here. The lawyer asked about eternal life and Jesus tells him that he has just given the answer to how to live--in this life. Jesus moves it from eternal life, the someday, to the here and now. He has also issued a challenge for the lawyer not to just live in his head, but to go and do these things right now.
Luke thinks that the lawyer’s motive to begin with was to justify himself. With Jesus turning the table, this is not at all what the lawyer was after. So he tries again. “And who is my neighbor?” This time Jesus answers his question with a story. “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves.” Jesus’ hearers would have been very familiar with the geography here.
Claypool notes, “The city of Jerusalem is on the highest elevation in Palestine, while Jericho is down by the Red Sea at the lowest place on this planet, some thirteen hundred feet below sea level. Thus, in the span of a very few miles, there’s a precipitous drop. The road was quite circuitous and narrow, with desert on either side. To this day, that road is known as the ‘Red and Bloody Way,’ because so much violence occurred there. The very thing that Jesus described took place all the time. It was easy for robbers to slip in from the desert, assault and rob somebody, and then disappear back into the dessert.” (Claypool, p. 102)
So Jesus is telling a story that that would have been very familiar to the lawyer and those hearing it. The characters in the story would have been easily recognizable as well. “There was a Priest of the Temple, who represented religion at its professional best, a man who had been given the responsibility of not only presiding over the sacrifices but also of keeping alive the traditions of Israel. Second was a Levite, who was a lower Temple functionary; he too had the responsibility of carrying on the tradition of the Hebrews.” (Claypool, p. 103)
He was sort of a well-respected layperson, what we might call an elder or a deacon. Now their behavior would have been perfectly understandable. If robbers had just attacked the man in the ditch, they might well be still around. When the Priest and the Levite came to the place where the man was lying bleeding in the ditch, they quickly crossed over to the other side and passed by. It was a sensible thing to do for their self-protection. They pretended not to see.
“The third person making his way by this stricken person was identified as ‘a Samaritan.’ These were the racial half-breeds of first-century Palestine. Anytime a Jewish person married a non-Jewish person and a child was born, that offspring was labeled a Samaritan. You don’t need a doctorate in history to know what individuals of mixed racial heritage have an especially difficult time in any era with dominate groups. Do you remember those children from the Vietnam War who had African American fathers and Vietnamese mothers? The push to place these children in adoptive homes was met with great resistance. Historically, people with this form of origin are not accepted by any group. They wind up being rejected by almost everybody, occupying a kind of no-man’s land. … Folk of that day would not have expected anything humane, heroic, or compassionate from a Samaritan; in fact, they probably would have surmised that a Samaritan would have gone over and tried to plunder the already beaten man.” (Claypool, p. 103)
Instead, he does just the opposite. Jesus says, “But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds.” He even poured oil and wine on his wounds, which would have been a very unexpected and quite expensive way of providing an antiseptic cleaning. If the Samaritan had then wished the man in the ditch good luck and moved on quickly before the robbers came back, what he had already done would have been a courageous act. But shockingly, then the Samaritan put him on his own animal, and walking beside him, brought him to an inn. Now that was way more than enough. But the Samaritan was still not through showing compassion. He spent the night to make sure the man was okay. Not only that, but the next day, he paid his bill and asked the innkeeper to “Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you may spend.”
This parable is so familiar to us that we can hardly imagine the impact it had in its time. It would be like telling a story where an American is in the ditch and Billy Graham and Jimmy Carter pass by on the other side and the one who stops and does all these loving things is--a member of Al Qaeda.
Or if you are a member of Al Qaeda hearing this story, Osama Ben Laden and an Imam each pass by on the other side without offering help and the one who stops and does all these loving things is an-- American Christian fundamentalist.
The lawyer and everyone hearing this parable would not only have been stunned but they would have also been gravely offended. The lawyer had approached Jesus calling him by the respected title of Teacher. There is no better example of Jesus’ brilliance as a teacher than here. After telling this outrageous story, Jesus feels no need whatsoever to explain it. Instead, he calmly asks the lawyer another question, inviting him to interpret the parable. “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
The crowd around them had started off watching a lawyer, a professional expert and interpreter of the religious law, put Jesus to the test. But now the lawyer is put to the test. But this is no game with Jesus. I don’t think Jesus simply wanted to show him up. No, Jesus wanted him and the others listening, including us sitting here today, to know the essence of things from God’s own perspective. The lawyer answers, “The one who showed him mercy.”
And Jesus said to him what he says to us today: “Go, and do likewise.”
Claypool says, “It is important to notice what Jesus did with that question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ He turned it around one hundred and eighty degrees and focused it on the lawyer, not on anyone else. There was a long tradition among the Hebrews of finding ways to limit their liabilities. Again and again this term ‘neighbor’ was trimmed to smaller and smaller proportions; for example those who were descendants of Abraham or who had property were considered neighbors. …
Before there was anything except this Mystery, God said, ‘This is too good to keep. I want others to get in on what I am and what I am experiencing. I want to share the aliveness of my experience with creatures made in my own image.’ Remember, according to the Bible, creation comes out of God’s generosity. We humans are made in that image. Thus, what the Samaritan did on the Jericho road was to act in the image of primal generosity. Loving one’s neighbor is a gift of what we’ve been given by God. ‘Loving our neighbor as ourselves’ answers to the deepest impulse within us. We love because it’s our nature to love. We don’t ask, ‘Are they worthy?’ but rather, ‘Am I willing to act out the image of God that is within?’” (Claypool, p. 105)
If we want eternal life, we have to live fully in this life. And the key to living fully is this: “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.”
And where, you might ask, do we learn to do this. Why, the answer is right in front of your nose. And right beside you in the pew. And written up here on the wall. (Our church covenant.) Ideally, you learn to love in the body of Christ and you take it out from here.
I have been reflecting a good bit on my upcoming fifteenth anniversary as pastor of Oakhurst Baptist Church on August 1. Of all that I experienced and all that I have learned, this is at the heart: “We are together only to be the church of God in Christ.
We are not here by chance, but God though grace is making of us a fellowship to embody and to express the Spirit of Christ.”
As I think back on these fifteen years, the most important memories are those when I experienced the love of God being expressed in acts of love for each other and for the world outside our walls. I see Harry Rezzemini spending countless hours with Gail Campbell helping her move on more than one occasion and sitting with her countless hours in Grady Hospital. A nurse who knew that Harry was not a relative once asked me what their connection was, this young man with a pony tail and this greatly overweight developmentally disabled woman. All I could think of was, “Jesus brought them together.” Bill Reynolds ministered to sick and dying children and their families for many years. When Oakhurst member Sarah Woolf came into the hospital, professional boundaries were no longer a possibility. At their farewell party, Bill told us that the time with Sarah and her family was the completion of his ministry at Egleston Hospital. Her death was the end of one call and the beginning of a new time in his life. Last Sunday I spoke of my friend Bobby who is dying and the impact he has had on my life. Lynne Mouchet listened to that sermon knowing that she is facing some tough times in her cancer treatment and knows she will need all the support and prayers she can possibly get. After the service, as I was standing by the door, I looked and saw Lynne on the sidewalk. Facing her with a look of compassion born out by experience looking into the jaws of death was Donna Woolf. I said aloud to those standing within earshot, “There, on that sidewalk, is the meaning of church.”
When Garry Rank joined the church, his symbol was the sleeping bag that he used to sleep on the streets for many years when he was homeless. Garry will occasionally leave a message for me just to tell me he is thinking of me and it always seems to come at just the right time when I am feeling a bit weary and cynical.
We spend a lot of our days walking by on the other side avoiding another’s pain. At times, we even avoid our own, half dead in one of life’s ditches yet pretending we do not need anyone’s help. But then come those moments when a Good Samaritan comes along. And by God’s grace, we become that Samaritan ourselves some days.
Today is Kate Hauk’s son Thomas’ 18th birthday. (He died on August 21, 2002.) We had lunch on Thursday and celebrated and grieved together, and talked of forgiveness and hope and things that matter.
We also talked about the service today when she would lead worship on Thomas’ birthday. Last week, Kate listened to my sermon and heard me talk about my friend Bobby. She sent this e-mail:
“This is most gloriously read aloud...we had to learn it in Victorian Literature...It captures sadness and articulates a plea for love so beautifully. Anyway...I thought of you, and send it in that spirit. Love, Kate.”
I told her it was not only what I needed but also it connected deeply with what I hoped I might say today. So with that poem, we close.
Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -- on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.