Sunday, July 14, 2019

The Good Samaritan

Race cars roar outside, as St. John's Speedway worships inside Brickyard Crossing.


Sermon preached on the sixth Sunday after Pentecost (July 14, 2019) at St. John's Episcopal Church, Speedway IN. Readings: Deuteronomy 30:9-14Psalm 25:1-9, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37


Audio file

Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, mother to us all. Amen.


Twice in recent days, I have come across one of those inspirational quotes that you see all the time on Facebook or Instagram artfully displaying the phrase “Everything happens for a reason.”


We’ve all probably had these words spoken to us at one time or other when we’ve been in grief or hardship, and we have probably spoken them ourselves as well. They’re meant to be comforting, but at best they gloss over the complexity of human existence in a world whose forces are ultimately out of our control, and at worst they ascribe malevolence and evil to the great ruler of the universe, whoever that may be.


But given its presence on greeting cards, inspirational posters, jewelry and keychains, “Everything happens for a reason” is as much an industry as a sentiment. So it’s not going anywhere, and it will remain a go-to phrase indicating sympathy and a sort of casual spirituality, part of the cultural background noise in the midst of grief and sorrow.


But what caught my attention in the two made-for-Instagram social media posts was not the phrase itself, but the attribution.


As near as I can tell, no one knows who first said, “Everything happens for a reason,” so I was surprised to see two posts that attribute the quote to scripture. One says it’s Genesis 50:20, and the other says it’s Psalm 37:5. I’ll let you look these up on your own later, but - spoiler alert - “Everything happens for a reason” is a boneheaded paraphrase of either verse.


I don’t know who created these posts - they just sort of seem to have sprouted like mushrooms after a rain in Facebook feeds and on Pinterest boards, but I do worry about the character of their creators’ faith, one that squanders the riches of scripture by shoehorning it into a shallow and sentimental secular platitude.


We run a similar risk with the parable of the Good Samaritan. The risk, fortunately, is not the scripture is outright misconstrued as in the “everything happens for a reason” stuff.


But this is a super well-known story, and we can sometimes be too comfortable in thinking we know what it means. Even outside the church, it has cultural currency in the naming of countless hospitals and other non-profits, and has even worked its way into our legal system, in the form of Good Samaritan laws that protect those who in good faith offer aid to an injured person from being sued in the event that such aid should cause unintentional injuries or other damage.


In American culture at large, the Good Samaritan is a helper, a healer, very often a hero - the sort of person we might aspire to be.


But Jesus tells us the Good Samaritan is a much more mundane kind of person: a neighbor.


Now, I might just be overly picky about vocabulary here, but I don’t think so. The trouble with the conception of the Good Samaritan as a heroic figure is that we can easily enough absolve ourselves of the responsibility to be heroes. I mean, who am I to be one? But it’s hard to say you don’t have the responsibility to be a neighbor, when pretty much by definition, you are one.


Not that that stops the lawyer who kicks off this story from trying. The lawyer asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”


This is not a genuine question. As a student of the law, the lawyer has in his mind the 19th chapter of Leviticus, which sets the standard for how you should treat your neighbor: by leaving the edges of your fields unharvested, so the poor and the foreigner can have enough to eat, by having honest business dealings, by telling the truth to one another, by paying wages promptly, by judging fairly in the event of disputes, by seeking reconciliation rather than revenge.


Luke tells us the lawyer asks this question not out of genuine curiosity, but “to justify himself.” In other words we can safely assume that in his life perhaps he has had dishonest business dealings, or has held grudges rather than pursue forgiveness, has lied or held back wages - he wants to get off on the technicality that the people involved weren’t neighbors. Maybe they weren’t Jews, or they were foreigners, or Roman occupiers, so he’s held to a relaxed standard of behavior, he hopes, until Jesus gives him the gold standard of a neighbor in the form of the enemy dwelling in their land - a Samaritan.


Think back to the Gospel two weeks ago. It’s only been about 30 verses since Jesus himself was refused entry to a Samaritan village, and his disciples asked if they could destroy that village with fire from heaven.


And it’s not just the lawyer who has looked for a way out of the responsibility toward the neighbors we love, and the neighbors who make us uncomfortable, and the neighbors we despise, that God lays upon us.


Many of the early church fathers gave the story an elaborate allegorical interpretation. In one version, the man making the trip from Jerusalem  (representing heaven) to Jericho (representing earth) is Adam. The robbers stand in for sin, the priest is the law, the Levite stands for the prophets, and the Samaritan is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus drops Adam off at the inn, which stands for the church, and promises the innkeeper he will come again - the second coming. (Origen, Homily 34.3, paraphrase)


It’s actually pretty elegant, and there’s nothing wrong with viewing the text this way, unless you assert, as some have, that the allegorical reading is actually the truest reading of the text.


Because then you’ve just done what the lawyer did: found a way to avoid loving neighbors you’d rather not see, let alone love: Indifference built on a scaffolding of pious intellectualism.


That can’t be the way of our church, least of all now, today, when migrant families are being ripped apart, and ICE raids fill communities with fear; when friends and neighbors live in the grip of addiction; when children in this city go to bed without mattresses and sleep on the floor.


The law of love that Jesus describes in the parable of the Good Samaritan is not an abstract sentiment but concrete action: meeting a man down in the dust, binding his bloody wounds, heaving him on a pack animal, carrying him to an inn, putting up a little of your own money to see that your neighbor is cared for. It’s a messy business.


It’s no wonder we put so much effort into avoiding it.


Even though I’m not a big fan of the elaborate allegorical reading of this parable, there’s nothing wrong with spending some time with it, as long as you keep it in the appropriate perspective. Because there’s one thing it gets really right: the concept of the church as the innkeeper - the place where a wounded soul can heal.


Because “Love God, Love Neighbor” is the heart of what we’re supposed to be about in our time here on earth - and if it were easy - well, we’d have a much shorter Bible, for one thing, because that business is covered in the first five books.


But it’s not easy. Being busy makes it hard. The need to make a living makes it hard. The blindness of sin makes it hard.

And let's face it - for as much as we might like to cast ourselves in the role of the Good Samaritan (set aside whether or not we actually want to do it), just as often we're the guy in the ditch.


And so God gives us the church, this inn where sinners can heal, and week by week be restored to the image ff our gracious, loving creator. It is a credit to you, St. John’s, that even over all the uncertainty and change of the last year and then some, you have faithfully continued to gather to ready your hearts for the transformation and salvation our Lord Jesus Christ promises to us.


"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."


“Surely, this commandment is not too hard for you,” Moses says, “Nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, neither is it beyond the sea. No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”


Do this, and you shall live.

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