THE NEIGHBOR, THE STRANGER AND GOD

Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37]

“Living the questions”.  As we battle our way through the demands of our lives, this is a great phrase to keep in mind.  Inundated as we are with purported “answers” as information, sanity can only come by way of clearly discerning what the real questions are, what the real issues are.  And once we are clear about the questions -- the issues, we can then go about living the questions in hopes of discovering something that is life-giving.

To my knowledge, the phrase, “Living the questions”, comes from the book written by the late 19^th-early 20^th century German poet, Ranier Maria Rilke.  Entitled Letters to a Young Poet, his book contains Rilke’s generous and compassionate response to a young man who aspires to be a poet.  Boldly and not with a little hint of desperation, the young aspirant dares to write to the renowned Rilke for personal advice and direction.  The gist of the correspondence between the two is that the young poet is frustrated by the fact that in his mind a poet is to express truth; and that at his young age and lack of experience, it seems to him a bit preposterous to assume that he has anything that would be worth the effort to write or to read.

In my eyes it is at this painfully honest point that Rilke shines with humane wisdom, offering this counsel.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

In today’s gospel, St. Luke continues his “travel narrative”, depicting Jesus’ unwavering journey to Jerusalem and ultimately to the climax of his life and ministry.  In today’s episode of “On the Road with Jesus”, a lawyer, a “Torah scholar”, asks Jesus a question seemingly out of the blue.

Now, it is common knowledge that a good lawyer never asks a question to which he or she does not already have the answer.  And so it was with this lawyer and his question of Jesus.  St. Luke implies as much when (as the narrator) he reveals the lawyer’s intent was not to gain an answer but to “test” Jesus in an attempt to discredit him publicly.  The lawyer’s prosecutorial question was, “Teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus, ever the well-balanced and deeply rooted rabbi, looked at the lawyer and answered his question with a question.  “What’s written in God’s law?” Jesus parries.  “How do you interpret it?”  Being a religious scholar and an interpretive authority of the Mosaic Law, the lawyer responded with the answer every faithful Jew knew by heart: 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. [Luke 10:27]

“Good answer!” Jesus said.  “Do this, and you will live.”

Yet, being a self-justifying person and an inveterate lawyer, the man sought an opportunity to explore a possible loophole.  So, the lawyer asked a quick follow up question: “And how would you define ‘neighbor’?”  Not to be sucker punched and exhibiting a remarkably mature sense of detachment, Jesus ironically turns the tables on the lawyer and tests him with a story -- a special kind of story you and I know as a parable.

Now, it’s been a while since we were last exposed to Jesus’ parables.  So, it behooves us to recall that our Lord used parables and their story-time narrations to communicate a point that the hearers neither expected nor could dismiss.  In a sense, the parables were Jesus’ way of making his point gently but directly in a “no tag-backs” fashion.  And of course the parables Jesus always told featured God as the key player.  So, the story that Jesus told the lawyer about God and what life is like on God’s terms was a story that just about everyone knows.  It was the “Parable of the Good Samaritan”.

Yes, just about everyone knows the “Parable of the Good Samaritan”, but I am on very safe ground to say that we have most frequently missed its point.  Well-meaning people have (in one way or another)  tried to domesticate the parable, at best making it into a morality tale about costly kindness that is suitable for Sunday Schoolers, summer campers, or elected politicians.

At worst, in the hands of some self-justifying Christian preachers and teachers, the “Parable of the Good Samaritan” becomes an antisemitic portrayal of how Christianity is superior to and a replacement for a presumably law-ridden Judaism.  But true to its form as a parable and more particularly a parable on the lips of Jesus, this parable’s point is not what we expect – or even want.  Its meaning is not something we can conveniently control at the edges of our lives.

One avenue into the parable’s meaning is to focus on the lawyer’s two questions and what it might mean to live these questions.  In my experience – and with Rilke’s wisdom in mind, there are two kinds of questions.  On the one hand, there are “interesting” questions; and on the other hand there are what I categorize as “helpful” questions.

“Interesting” questions don’t usually illuminate what needs to be seen or done.  In fact, “interesting questions” tend to function as a distraction.  For instance, a question of “when did you stop beating your wife?” is an “interesting” question in that it attracts pornographic voyeurs and (more appropriately, I hope) law enforcement.  Whereas, “helpful” questions lead us to a place of discovery and mature awareness – to new life, new perspectives, new options.

So, on its surface the lawyer’s first question (“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”) sounds like a “helpful” question, but it is nothing more than an “interesting” distraction because the fact is that one does absolutely nothing to inherit anything!  Inheritance is a matter of receiving what has been uncontrollably – perhaps even surprisingly -- provided.  You would think that a lawyer would know that inheritance is not earned or achieved.  It is given, and as such it needs to be received.  The lawyer has unwittingly faked himself out with his own question about “doing” because the only thing to be done in order to inherit is to show up!

Conversely, the lawyer’s second question about who is a “neighbor” can be a “helpful” inquiry, as its illuminating possibilities can lead to the answer that has deep consequences for the way we live – something our country and many parts of the world are failing to face.

In its telling, Jesus’ “Good Samaritan” parable implicitly poses a most important question that harbors a radically unsuspected and life-changing impact, an impact Jesus makes clear with his own, concluding question to the lawyer: “Which one of the three [parable characters: the priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan] was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

Unavoidably sobered and humbled at Jesus’ storytelling, the lawyer finally had to face the transformational question (that is, the question worth living) and gives voice to the answer about which of the parable’s characters demonstrated what it means to be a “neighbor”.  “The one who showed mercy,” was the lawyer’s answer.  Underscoring this recognition, Jesus points to the next step: “Go and do likewise”. Or as another translation puts it: “Do this and live”. [The Message].

As a parable that Jesus offers, there is something much larger and more significant here than trying to answer the question of “Who is my neighbor?” because that question (as interesting and pertinent as it continues to be in our time) is not what Jesus’ parable is about.

Let me bring this sermon home.  With regard to connecting with the parable’s meaning, here is what I believe is a “helpful” question for us all.  In which of the parable’s characters do we see ourselves?

I suspect that not many of us see ourselves in the characters of the priest or Levite, although I have personally registered trembling in my own soul over such a consideration.  As a priest or as someone who assists a priest in worship’s duties, it is easy (certainly convenient) to get so caught up in the formalities and duties of the office that simply being human can slip off the screen.

Regrettably, another reason we do not see ourselves in the priest and the Levite stems from how many Christians erroneously view these two as symbols of Judaism itself.  Hiding beneath the veil of the trope that Judaism is essentially about purity laws and other expressions of tribalism, intended as a damning indictment of the Hebrew tradition and people, the priest and the Levite get censured for avoiding someone in need.

Antisemitic ignorance notwithstanding, what if you did see yourself as the priest or the Levite?  What if these two religious officials were seen as mere human beings and were simply afraid of getting involved?  What if they were fearful of what might happen to them if they stopped to help?  There are, after all, bandits on the road.

Fear.  Fear (the opposite of faith) can overtake our human brain’s capacity at the expense of a humane, compassionate  orientation.  The brain’s limbic system prescribes the basic survival mode: namely, we either run away or fight.  Perhaps in their fear -- and to their mortal shame -- the priest and the Levite could only fearfully flee the scene.  Humanity can be like that, no?

Commenting on this aspect of the parable in one of his sermons, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed this insight.  He said that as human beings it was most possible that the priest and Levite were undoubtedly afraid.  “And so,” Dr. King observed, “the first question that the priest [and] Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’  But then the Good Samaritan came by, and unexpectedly his action reversed the question; ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”

As I say, there are bandits on the road – the road to Gaza, to El Salvador, to Ukraine, to Sudan – even in Easthampton.

O God, make speed to save us.  O Lord, make haste to help us.1

But I suspect that many of us see ourselves in the “Good Samaritan” – or at least would like to see or be seen this way; and yes, that viewpoint can have some very positive impacts.  In fact, the figure of the “Good Samaritan” is a fixture in our culture, reflected in the number of hospitals that bear the name, the nationally organized charity known as “The Sams”, and the camping community also known as the “Good Samaritans”.  In fact, there is even an Australian charity that is called “the Good Samaritan Donkey Sanctuary”.

In the common story of what a “good” person is like, the parable’s “Good Samaritan” has become the centerfold of a caring type of kindness – the model of a good citizen.  But in effect, this perspective only domesticates the parable’s point, to the extent that it is convenient for us to see ourselves as the kindly, caring, and daringly heroic figure who delivers what is needed to the poor, the “retched refuse” on life’s teaming shore: The “Them”.

Amy Jill Levine (an Orthodox Jew who previously taught New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt and currently teaches New Testament Studies at Hartford International University for Justice and Peace) – as Levine writes, “What’s not to like about helping the stranger and being charitable toward others?”2  Yet, as I am suggesting, this is not the point of Jesus’ “Good Samaritan” parable.  Again as Professor Levine says, “the truth is that the ‘Parable of the Good Samaritan’ has come to mean whatever we want it to mean.”3

But the teeth of the “Parable of the Good Samaritan” can be quickly felt if we recognize that its purpose is not to answer the question of being a “neighbor”.  The teeth of the parable emerge when we remember that this and all of Jesus’ parables are essentially about God and the God-life.  The purpose of Jesus’ parable of the “Good Samaritan” is to illustrate what life is like on God’s terms and more to the point, what God is like and what God gives to us as an inheritance of holy compassion and mercy.

In the “Parable of the Good Samaritan”, God is the Samaritan.  To begin to feel and understand the impact of this meaning on those who originally heard Jesus – and those thereafter who are careful not to dodge the parable’s trajectory, what if the parable’s contemporary title was “the Parable of the Good Hamas”? or the “Good Jihadist”? or the “Good Klansman”? or the “Good Drug Dealer”?   At this, the parable’s teeth are self-evident and purposely unsettling.

The parable’s unsettling, unfettered point is that the unexpected actions of the Samaritan to the near-dead Jew (historical and theological enemies who lived cheek by jowl) is precisely what God offers to all of God’s children: namely, to extend compassionate mercy to all – “mercy” meaning “not getting what we do deserve”.  And in the final analysis, this is our inheritance as children of God.  As St. Paul writes in the wake of Jesus’ Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension: “But God shows his love for us in that while we’re yet sinners (that is, while we were yet turning our backs on the One who made us), Christ died for us.”

God suffers for us.  God suffers with us because that is the nature of the Holy One’s “mercy” and love.  And because we know that there are bandits on the road, we need the help of this, our divine inheritance.  It’s a gift, and gifts are meant to be shared.  Do this and live.  Amen.

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1.  BCP. Opening Sentences ,“Noonday” liturgy, . 103

2.  Amy Jill Levine. Short Stories by Jesus, p. 80

3.  Ibid