"The One Who Did Mercy"

When I looked at today’s gospel reading I had to smile. The parable of the good Samaritan was the theme of Vacation Bible School at St. Dunstan’s last month.

Every day that week in chapel the story was told in a different form – from the quiet, calm voice of Vicki Ledet telling it with the materials from the Godly Play curriculum to a much rowdier rendition put on by our older kids.

The story was reinforced by other activities. Our kids learned about nearby neighbors they could help – bringing in bags of beans and rice for the food pantry at Emmaus House near Turner Field.

And they learned that sometimes our neighbors are farther away, like our brothers and sisters in Haiti who are still suffering from the earthquake that shook that already poor nation six months ago.

They did chores and sold their artwork to raise money to build houses in Haiti, and later this summer we will present Bob Longino with a check for Habitat for Humanity’s Haitian efforts.

Jesus’ ancient parable seemed to sink in with our kids. I heard reports of one very young child who went home and organized his siblings into a skit of the story, with himself in the starring role of good Samaritan/Ironman.

And another child, watching the movie The Blindside the week after Bible school, made the connection that the family in the film who took in a fellow student who had no home or functioning family were acting as good Samaritans.

It is exciting to see our children not only learning the stories of our faith, but making the connections between those ancient stories and their lives. The story to them was fresh and new, and presented them with a challenge to think about and act on.

The rest of us could probably use a new outlook on this very familiar story, a tale so well known that a commentary I read this week begins with this question: “What possible new and fresh word can one say about the parable of the good Samaritan?”

The story is so familiar that the very term “good Samaritan” has made its way into our lexicon. The dictionary defines the term as “a compassionate person who unselfishly helps others.”

Or as the commentary put it, the good Samaritan has become a kind of secularized saint, a symbol for do-goodism, which usually means the favored fortunate doing good to the unattractive, less fortunate.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing good deeds. But that narrow interpretation of this story misses the sharp bite of the parable and helps us to avoid its shocking and threatening challenge.

In telling this parable, Jesus was not just urging his followers to do good deeds or be good citizens. He was addressing bigotry and racism head-on by telling a story that was both shocking and unsettling to those who first heard it.

Jesus tells this story in response to a lawyer, who is questioning him about how to inherit eternal life. As he often does, Jesus answers the lawyer’s question with a question of his own – “What is written in the law?”

Of course, that is an easy question for one who is steeped in the law, and the lawyer answers promptly and correctly, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus gives his approval of the answer, but the lawyer wants more. As scripture puts it, “Wanting to justify himself, he asks Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’”

What the lawyer really was asking is, “who is not my neighbor?”

What are the boundaries, the limits of my responsibility? How far must my care for others extend? Whose needs is it OK to ignore?

We have the same questions. If a first-century Palestinian lawyer was worried about how far his care and concern for others must reach, how much more are we worried today?

Who is our neighbor? Those who live around us? Those in our church? People we don’t know in our own city who are homeless or in need of food and health care? People in other American cities hurt by tornadoes and hurricanes?

What about those who come to this country illegally? Are we obligated to treat them as our neighbors? What about people around the globe who are starving, or suffering from violence or natural disasters? Are they our neighbors, too?

Who is our neighbor? Who isn’t? Surely there must be some limits to what we are expected to do.

This seems to me to be a particularly relevant question at this time in our country. There seems to be a climate of fear and suspicion of those who look or speak or worship differently from us.

I hear it at school, where there was much joy when the opening of a new school in the community last year took away many Hispanic students.

“I don’t send my child to a neighborhood school to be with a bunch of Mexicans,” one parent said.

I hear it in the political rhetoric of a candidate for governor in this state who vows to work to change the law that grants citizenship to anyone born in this country.

I hear it in the discussions this week about the new immigration law set to go into affect in Arizona that will give police the authority to ask people to prove their citizenship or immigration status – questions that most likely would never be asked to anyone in this room, even if we were stopped by the police.

Who is our neighbor? And if we don’t like the people who are becoming our neighbors, what can we do about it?

Jesus’ parable has something to say to those questions. There is an element of real racial tension in this story that we easily miss, but that those who first heard it recognized immediately.

Samaritans were despised by Jews. They were the ultimate outsiders. Today we rarely hear the word Samaritan without the adjective “good” in front of it. But in Jesus’ day, Jews would never put the words “good” and “Samaritan” together.

Samaritans were social outcasts. They were considered religious heretics, immoral, foreigners, not to be trusted.

And now Jesus is holding up the Samaritan as a positive example.

This story is about much more than helping someone in need. If that had been the only point, Jesus could have made the wounded man a Samaritan, and the helper a Jew. If he had, the story would not have been as shocking.

Jesus is not saying that the Samaritan should be pitied and helped, but that this pariah, this outcast, this alien, should be emulated. If the hated Samaritan acted toward the Jew as a neighbor, then the whole question of where to draw the line between neighbor and alien breaks down.

The result is to destroy any parochial understanding of God that presumes God’s interest is limited to “me and people like me.” It calls into question tensions between individuals, races, and nations that have become an accepted way of life.

I imagine that the kingdom of God is a place where there are no illegal aliens, no artificial borders or boundaries separating God’s people.

I also know that is not the world in which we live. Immigration is an issue which must be addressed.

The Episcopal bishop of Arizona, Kirk Smith, released a statement the day that the immigration bill was signed into law, calling it “a sad day in the struggle to see all God’s people treated in a humane and compassionate manner.

“It seems for now the advocates of fear and hatred have won over those of charity and love,” he said. “We all know that our immigration system is broken, but it cannot be fixed by scape-goating the most vulnerable among us.”

Jesus ends the parable of the good Samaritan by asking the lawyer who was a neighbor to the wounded traveler. “The one who showed him mercy,” the lawyer said.

“Go and do likewise,” Jesus says to him.

Jesus doesn’t give us the details on how to address the immigration issues our country faces. But he does tell us where to start.

Not with fear and hatred, but with mercy, compassion, and love.

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Readings

Deuteronomy 30:9-14

Colossians 1:1-14

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father. In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit. For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of God. May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Luke 10:25-37

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “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 he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 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, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

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