To listen to the sermon as it was preached at the 9:00 AM service click here.
To listen to the sermon as it was preached at the 10:45 AM service click here.
Pentecost 7 ~ Year C
July 11, 2010 ~ St. Charles Episcopal Church
Amos 7:7-17, Psalm 82, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37
The Rev. Elizabeth G. Meade
Those of you who get the Chicago Tribune may have read the lead story in yesterday’s issue. So I apologize for the repeat, but it bears re-telling.
Christopher Scott was driving in River Forest the other night, and saw a man whose Honda had jumped the curb and nearly crashed into a stop sign, and Christopher did something he’d never done before: he stopped to see if the man was okay. The man looked and acted really dazed, but told Christopher he was fine. Christopher, feeling like something was “not right,” and sensing the man needed medical attention, pulled his car ahead about half a block, and got on his cell phone and called police. All of a sudden, he noticed the man’s car beginning to speed up, and coming right at him, so Christopher hit his accelerator and peeled away. A car chase ensued – at speeds exceeding 80 m.p.h. through River Forest city streets. It all ended in Maywood, when Christopher, still on his cell phone with the police screaming, “HE’s chasing me, he’s chasing me,” blew through a yellow light to get away from the guy. The man chasing him ignored the now red light, plowed through the intersection and slammed into a Mercedes SUV, killing both people inside and himself in the process. Christopher, the “would be” Good Samaritan wasn’t injured, but when asked if he’d ever stop to help someone again said he doubted he ever would.
So that story was on the front page of yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, and today we get the story of the Good Samaritan as our Gospel reading. Go figure! There are no co-incidences! What are we to make of this parable in the face of Christopher Scott’s story? In a society as dangerous as ours, dare we stop? Last week, I got a “Please forward this on” e-mail from my college roommate that told me men were prowling around mall parking lots on weekdays letting the air out of minivan tires. When a woman comes out to one of these cars alone, these “Good Samaritans” approach and rob them at gunpoint.
Is the Parable of the Good Samaritan relevant any longer? Is it prudent for us to offer help anymore? And should we accept help from strangers? More and more people are saying “no” as evidenced in an ABC TV show last season hosted by John Quinones called “What Would You Do?” The network staged “public altercations” and set up hidden cameras to watch how people react. Not many stop. Few want to “get involved.”
So where does this leave us?
We all know the Parable. We know the Samaritan was the one to stop and help the traveler while the holy men passed him by. And we all probably know that we should strive to have the compassion of the Samaritan. But if we’re truthful, most of us could probably admit to feeling slightly guilty that we aren’t as brave as the Samaritan in Jesus’ story – especially in the face of news articles like that of Christopher Scott or in the face of e-mails detailing robberies in mall parking lots.
But do you see what we’re doing? We’re doing exactly what the Lawyer did. We’re getting ready to dismiss the parable because we are now so alarmed. We’ve sunk into semantics, just as the lawyer did. Jesus had answered his question, but the lawyer stalls, not yet ready to go out and love God and his neighbor, by asking, “Well, just who exactly is my brother?”
The lawyer isn’t ready to act on the law as God stated it. The lawyer wants a definition of neighbor. He wants to know the loophole. He wants to know who he can exclude. And Jesus says – no one! No boundaries, no exclusions.
And we’re guilty of doing the same thing. We fret about what we might do in a situation. I’ve done it. I think about it.
What would I do? “Well, I might help if I was over in Galena, because it’s safer over there, but I’d never stop on the south side of Chicago.” Then I smack myself around and feel guilty. We all do it. It’s so human.
But do you see what we do when we get way-laid in the “what ifs?”
When we’re so wrapped up in our fears and anxieties, we miss the point Jesus was trying to make.
Jesus was simply giving an example of what compassion looks like, and exhorting us to “Go and do likewise.” It was a story. The priest, the Levite, the guy in the ditch, and the Samaritan never happened, folks. It’s a story – an example Jesus used to drive home a point; to illustrate what true compassion looks like. God knows we aren’t there yet. God knows we’re in process. In the process of coming to God, of re-turning to God. We are to look to the Samaritan as a goal, just as God help up that plumb line in the reading from Amos. Jesus is the plumb line, the perfect goal, but God knows we’re out there swaying in the wind, not even close yet. As our faith deepens and matures, we are called to come closer and closer to the plumb line that is Jesus.
So let’s leave our anxieties behind us and focus instead on what Jesus has to teach us in his Samaritan example. His invitation here is to quit feeling “merciful” (or guilty about not feeling merciful enough) and actually start “doing” mercy.
Right here, right now, right where God has planted us. We only need to look at the verbs in verses 33-35 to see how Jesus would have us do it.
· The Samaritan “came near.”
· He was “moved.”
· He “bandaged his wounds.”
· He poured oil (a salve) and wine (an antiseptic) on them.
· Put him on his animal. (In other words, offered him a way out.)
· He took him to an inn.
· Cared for him.
· And paid the innkeeper to care for him when he left.
Jesus exhorts us to set aside our “what ifs;” to set aside our anxieties and our suspicions and start looking at the needs right here, right now. The lawyer was asking “Who is my neighbor?” so he could figure out who he could exclude, but Jesus said, NO EXCLUSIONS. No semantics. No delay tactics. Just “do mercy.” That’s the teaching here.
As a faith community, we need to be asking ourselves:
· “Who is being beaten up in our community? In our country? In our world?
· Who is being chewed up and spit out by the culture we live in?
· Who is being ignored, forgotten or sold into slavery?
· Are we coming near to them? Are we moved? Are we bandaging their wounds and providing shelter?
In other words, are we passing by on the other side, or are we doing mercy? We are all in the process of coming closer and closer to God’s vision for each of us; all coming closer and closer to the perfect plumb line that is Jesus Christ.
Even the holy men screw up, and Wm Barclay writes of a French priest who was still learning just what doing mercy was; a priest who realized he was far from perfect. The story goes that a group of soldiers were on the battlefield in France during WWII. Their friend was killed on a particularly bloody day, and rather than leave him behind, they dragged his body to a church about a mile back from the fighting. At sunset, they banged on the door of the rectory, and asked the priest there if they could give their buddy a decent burial in his churchyard.
The priest asked, “Was the boy an observant Catholic?”
“No, he was Lutheran,” they replied.
“Well the Church says only Catholics can be buried here,” said the priest gruffly.
The men, battle-weary and disheartened, started to walk away, but as they latched the gate, the old priest called after them, “You can bury him just outside the church fence if you’d like.” And so they did.
A few days later, when the entire unit was ordered to move on, the men returned to their friend’s grave to say goodbye one final time. When they got there, they couldn’t find their friend’s grave. Mystified, they knocked again on the rectory door. “Sorry to bother you, Father,” one of them said, “but last week we buried our buddy just outside the church fence there, and now we can’t find him. Where is he?” The old priest smiled.
“Your friend is right there, by the gate where you buried him.”
The soldiers looked even more confused, but the priest winked at them and whispered,
“I couldn’t sleep that night, so I got up and moved the fence. Brought him in where he belongs.”
That’s doing mercy. We, like the old priest, are in process. Always learning, always turning (at least ostensibly) closer and closer to God by following Christ more and more faithfully. Heaven knows we stumble, but let’s not get paralyzed by semantics or by fear and avoid “doing mercy.”
Just jump in. Who needs your help today? This week? This year?
Who needs a touch? A wound bandaged? A story understood?
Don’t delay. The Kingdom of God is very near to you.
Amen.