Luke 10:25-37
Lent 2A
We are told that just as Jesus was done speaking to his disciples, surrounded by the 70 that had just returned from curing illness, casting out demons, and spreading the gospel to the towns and cities that dotted the Galilean countryside, a lawyer steps out of the crowd and poses a question to Jesus, as they so often do. “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And, unlike some of Jesus’s other encounters with those of the Jewish faith in which Pharisees and Sadducees ask Jesus to expound on some obscure piece of the Torah, there is no indication that this man and his query are anything other than completely genuine in the asking. Yet, rather than offering him the easy answer, rather than giving him a pass, Jesus turns the question back to him and asks the man to peer deep into his own soul for the reassurance that he is seeking. And immediately we see two different the realities at play, as the lawyer recites, almost like a child in Sunday school reciting the beatitudes, the relevant portion of the Torah, “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 assures the man that he has answered properly, “do this, and you will live.” And like I said, there are two sets of realities that immediately arise as the man offers his answer and Jesus his positive response. For the man knows the “right” answer to give, it has been woven into the Jewish story for thousands of year, their religious tradition tells them how to move from life into new life. And yet, at the same time, the man does not garner the relief that he and his soul are seeking. He has, from all indications, practiced these things to the best of his knowledge and ability for some time and has still found something deep within his faith is missing, feels incomplete, like working for hours on a 5,000 piece puzzle only to discover that a single piece has disappeared under the rug or deep within the consuming darkness of the couch. And we all know that feeling. Even having put together all the other 4,999 pieces as you stare at the kitchen table all you can possibly see is that single vortex in an otherwise completed portrait. And you know how it is, it doesn’t have to be the piece with the upper observation deck on the Eiffel Tower. It really can be just a section of the Parisian sky, some wisp of pink or orange or blue and yet it eats at you, gnaws at the whole of your being. If you don’t find that piece before you go to bed, you will think about it all night. It will occupy way too much of your mental capacities. This is the experience that the lawyer is having on this day, except rather than being a hobby, a pastime, something that you give your kids to do on a rainy afternoon when that trip to the park has been canceled, rather than that, it is this man’s eternity that he is staring into the heart of. And knowing this, feeling this dis-ease within his faith, he pushes Jesus a little further into his quest for peace. “And who is my neighbor?” And again there is no indication of Jesus’s reaction, the reaction of the disciples, of the 70, of the crowd of folks who always seem to be following Jesus around. There is nothing to suggest that this man knows that he has cut against the foundations of every society, culture, grouping, tribe, gathering of folks from the beginning of time. And to do that, Jesus tells the gathering a story.
“A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho…,” Jesus, says and immediately there is something about the minimalist manner in which he describes the man. He is everyman and no man. He could be any one of the gathering there. He could be their brother, their father, their friend. He could be you and he could be me and Jesus is wholly uninterested in taking us off the hook as he tells the story. And immediately following this introduction, we learn that this man falls into the hands of bandits and is beaten and robbed and left half naked somewhere in the liminal space between alive and dead and there is no reason at this moment to think that there is going to be anyone, anywhere who can do something about this. And yet, bit-by-bit, Jesus introduces representatives of the different religious communities within the culture in which the story is being told. He speaks of a priest traveling that same road coming across this man and quickly shuffling off to the side of the road. Likewise, a temple worker, the one whose job it was to make sure that proper worship of God can and does occur within the walls of the holiest site, encounters this man on the verge of death and like the priest before him, quickly moves to the other side of the road. And with the introduction of these two characters, Jesus challenges the ground upon which the whole of Judaism is built. By showing their lack of human concern for their fellow brother, Jesus exposes the danger in following the codes of a faith tradition above and against the spirit in which they were given. For either of these two men, to even touch a person whose body was covered with wounds and whose blood is being spilled would have rendered them ritually unclean and thus, unable to perform the most basic functions of their job. It would have forced them to undergo a ritual to be made clean again in which they would have been separated from family and friends, in which they would have been sequestered by themselves until such a time as they were declared to be clean again. They would have had the entirety of their lives upended and, in the end, both men decided that this was simply too great a religious cost to pay to simply allow the human feelings of compassion and love to flow through them and onto this man. And lest we miss Jesus’s critique of those kinds of practices of piety, he then introduces a Samaritan into the story. And upon hearing this, a couple of emotions would have passed through the crowd that gathered around Jesus. On the one hand, they would have felt a sheer and utter revulsion just at the mention of this new characters regional affiliation. Samaritans were wholly and completely reviled by those in proper Jewish society. They were viewed as being almost a whole other species from the rest of the Middle Eastern world and as such were constantly relegated to the bottom of the barrel, the most menial of jobs, the lowest rung in a society that was largely driven by class commitments. Moreover, they were seen through the eyes of Judaism as apostate, heretical, radical. They were a group that had taken the Torah and applied in wildly different ways from traditional Judaism and because of that there was little but animosity between the two communities of people. And all of this would have been playing out in the minds of the collection of people listening to Jesus. “But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.” Now things are really turned upside down. Not only is there a Samaritan in the story at all, but now he is playing the role of the hero in the story—as the one who, in his humanness, reaches out to the man who had fallen in with bandits and was lying half-dead. It’s hard to imagine if there was even a category that the people could have placed this new information—this Samaritan taking the man, crossing cultures, breaking the religious norms of Judaism, caring for him with his own economic resources and expecting nothing in return, not even a “thank you” and a handshake. He just took the man to the next town and paid the innkeeper for whatever it would be that he would need to see to the man’s injuries with a promise to bring more the next time if need be. And just like that, this Samaritan, this hated, loathed, subhuman creature, crossed over cultural, societal, religious, and economic boundaries to be a neighbor to this other man. Upon completion of the story, Jesus asked the man who had acted in the most neighborly manner, to which the lawyer quickly responds, “the one who showed him mercy.” “Go, and do likewise.” And just like that, the man had discovered that final piece that he had been missing. Just like that, the heavens opened up and light was streaming all around. Just like that, the man knew, and in knowing, believed. And in knowing, and believing, he found the peace that surpasses all understanding.
As we have all gathered here this morning, wearing our Presbyterian blue t-shirts, we do so to consider the work that the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance program does throughout our nation and our world. They respond to emergency conditions on every continent on the globe and every state in the nation. At any given time their staff are on the ground in 11 catastrophes, internationally, and 26 states (plus Puerto Rico. They go into lands that have been torn asunder by war and pestilence like Syria and the South Sudan, where drought or flooding has caused interruptions in the creation and distribution of food rationing, like so much of Africa and Asia, and they are an advocacy group for refugees and asylum seekers seeking to escape from the violence that consumes too many nation-states within the International community. Far from being simply a clean-up crew who comes in after the real work of relief has concluded offering a bit of Jesus as a balm on the wounds of a place ravaged for one reason or another, they are often one of the first teams on the ground. And I know, because I saw the face of Jesus in a man who seemingly appeared out of nowhere to hold me when I found myself subsumed by the violence that humans tend to mete out against one another, far too often.
I have only ever made passing references to my experience on the campus of Virginia Tech on April 11, 2007 within this gathering of the faithful. And I imagine that I have handled it in this way for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, I have spent the last almost 13 years both processing it and feeling like I haven’t begun to really delve into the deepest held terrors that consume me. On the other, it is an event that has become so commonplace that it barely registers a mention on the evening news. We really only ever hear about the ones in which the bodycount is such as to be unable to ignore it and another city is added to the list of locales that some of us can rattle off like we are reciting our ABCs. Aurora, Las Vegas, Columbine, Parkland, Roseburg, Charleston, Blacksburg. Moreover, it is one of those moments that is completely frozen in time for me, the feeling of fear for my wife and unborn son even as I felt completely helpless to do anything but flee. The mutual breaking of hearts shared by the folks at the counseling center where we retreated to get more information and watch the news. Having some version of the same phone call 20 or 30 times that night. The cocoon of safety that was forever shattered for the members of this small college town in the mountains of Virginia. The protective apathy that so many of us cloaked ourselves with in the hours and days and weeks that would follow. The near PTSD-like conditions that those who remain after the fact have around reports of future shootings. Trying to explain to my 6 year old why they have to do these drills. All of it is completely overwhelming and sad and so rare are the occasions when I am willing (or even able) to bring them to the surface. But, as has become commonplace, while time may have stopped in Blacksburg, where I lived, it had not in Richmond where I was a graduate assistant teaching three sections of Christian ethics and a lecture based seminar. Some two or three days after the fact, I loaded up to drive across the state and away from my wife and son. And, maybe I had been trying to keep up a veneer of confidence and strength in front of Lesley. Maybe, it had been in the first few moments that the sadness of leaving them behind had washed over me. Maybe it was just that the dam that was holding everything back had finally burst but, for whatever reason, as I sat at the gas station, filling up my truck, and about to get on the interstate, It all became more than I could possibly handle and it was at that moment that the man, wearing the Presbyterian blue PDA shirt appeared as if out of nowhere. And I said just a few words of mutual presbyterianism and I collapsed into his arms. I have no clue how long we remained there in that place, my tank having filled some time ago nor do I have any idea if that guy knew what he was for me on that day but he, and his organization were the guy who had stopped along the side of the road, literally, to see to another man’s wounds, he was the Good Samaritan, he was Jesus and for as long as I live, I will never forget that man.
The thing is, we are all called to be that person. We not all be called to drop down in the middle of a war torn Syria, or drought stricken Malawi. It might not be our place to travel to the rice paddies of the Philippines where a typhoon has washed away so much of their safety and security or even Puerto Rico where they are still trying to simply get the power back on to the whole of the island. Not all of us are called or destined to go to far off exotic lands and live there for months on end helping folks pick up the pieces and carrying them when they cannot walk. But we are all called to find the one in our midst who is lost, who is hurting, who is carrying the burden of pains that subsume the whole of her person, and we are called to be Jesus to that sister, that brother in Christ. To abandon all those walls of difference that we put up around ourselves and seek to allow the Christ that dwells deep in you to touch the Christ that dwells deep in the other. To slowly allow the part of our selves that seeks the security on the backs of others, that refuses to see the portion of us that is in the other, that seeks only our self-interest, to allow that part of us to be consumed in the fires of grace until all the dross that is in us is gone, and we are left with the gold of God’s love, pure and undefiled. During this Lenten journey, we are assessing ourselves in relationship to God, to one another, to creation. And in doing so, we are seeing those parts of us that are less than savory, those aspects of our character and our personage that cause us and others around us pain and suffering, those place in our souls that we would prefer remain hidden in the darkness. And yet, Lent gives us the methodology by which we can take a true accounting of who we are and whose we are, an opportunity to really push ourselves through the muck and the mire that so often gets piled on top of our souls until it feels as if there is nothing left and push through the soil with signs of new life, to live into our eternal life, our eternal home, our eternal rest starting now. So let us depart from this place prepared to see the Christ standing in our midst, crying out from the street corner, next to us at the grocery store or the gas station. And let us do so, confident in the belief that if we show mercy, we will find that missing piece to and even when those times arise in which we feel lost in the darkness of a broken and hurting our, we can rest assure that our joy always cometh in the morning. Amen.