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Luke 10: 25–37
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Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us. Melt us, mold us, fill
us, use us. Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us. Amen.
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It’s hardly news– to any of us – that Almighty God
can speak to us, right where we are on any given day, through
scripture. This is what we in this church learned to listen for
as we began, years ago, to practice Lectio Divina. And yet, every
time the Lord speaks to me through his Word, I’;m amazed and
grateful — that his compassions, they fail not, but are new
every morning – as the writer of Lamentations puts it. It
happened again for me this week, as I began to prepare this sermon.
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Last Monday, the Fourth of July, I had already begun to work on this
sermon based on the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan
when – suddenly — news of the Highland Park shooting began
to filter through the airways. I couldn’t believe another
gun massacre was happening again – and this time to families
gathered to celebrate together — families with small children,
loving mothers and fathers, devoted grandfathers and
grandmothers. Along with them, I wanted to say that this kind
of violence couldn’t happen here. But it was happening
here – all over the country. And suddenly, to me, it all
felt like too much – not just too much gun violence, but too much
incivility, too much racism, too much pandemic, too many wars all over
the world – and definitely too much climate change. All
the upheaval, all the violence left me feeling helpless, feeling
powerless to effect any change in my world.
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Imagine my amazement, then, as I reread the parable of the Good
Samaritan in our Gospel passage from Luke this morning, and found
Almighty God speaking to me in a fresh new way through that familiar
story, a story I thought I knew backwards and forwards.
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Luke introduces the story through the question of a scribe, an expert
in the Law of Moses. “Rabbi,” the man asks Jesus,
“what must I do to obtain eternal life?” Now,
scribes were the lawyers in those days. They were the
experts in the Law of Moses, the people others consulted when
they had questions. So maybe this lawyer wasn’t really
looking for answers. Maybe he was posing this question to Jesus
to test him, to see how this rabbi from backwater Galilee would answer
it. And Jesus gets that. He sees the trap. So
he’s not drawn in by the man’s gambit.
“You know the Law,” he responds. “What does the
Law say you must do to obtain eternal life?”
The lawyer, of course, knows the answer to that question and he recites
the answer without hesitation. “You must 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.”
“You got it,” Jesus responds. “That’s
the right answer. Do it and you will live.”
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But the lawyer still wants to show Jesus up. So he ventures one
more question he hopes will entangle this unlettered rabbi – and
show off his own superior knowledge. “Tell me, then,” he
says, “who is my neighbor?” To answer that
question, Jesus responds with the story of the man accosted by robbers,
left lying half dead in the ditch on the infamously dangerous Jericho
Road. First, a priest passed by. But he ignored the wounded
man in the ditch. Then a Levite, who also served in the Temple,
came along the road. But he too passed by the man, not wanting to
get involved. Finally, a Samaritan came along – a man from
a religious tradition most faithful Jews disparaged. But this one
actually stopped and rendered aid. He poured oil on the
man’s wounds, offered him wine to ease the pain, and then hoisted
him onto his own donkey to take him to a nearby inn. There he
offered the innkeeper money to care for the wounded man, adding that if
his care cost more, then he – the Samaritan — would gladly
pay more when he returned.
His story finished, Jesus then asks the wily lawyer, “Who, then,
of these three, do you think was neighbor here?”
“Why, the one who showed him mercy,” the lawyer stammers.
“Go, and do likewise,” Jesus says.
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Now, usually, when we come across this passage, we tend to focus on the
colorful story Jesus told of the wounded man in the ditch and the
three travelers who passed by — for that’s the situation
we can imagine ourselves thrust into. Would we have stopped
to help him, we wonder? Would we have gone so far out
of our way to show mercy as the Samaritan did?
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But the part of the passage we tend to ignore is the way the lawyer
framed the story – by asking Jesus how he could obtain eternal
life. We tend to skip over that governing frame of the story
because ‘eternal life’ sounds like something that’s
beyond our pay grade, something we don’t feel qualified to
comment on. Eternal life is about life with God – a life we
imagine we won’t see until after we die. So we tend to
skip over that part.
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But the whole point of this passage is the way Jesus answered a
question about gaining eternal life – a vertical question if
ever there was one — by telling in response a story of
horizontal relationships – an experience so low, so potentially
violent and messy — that several passers–by refuse to get
involved in it. In other words, Jesus answered the vertical
question, an aspect of life only God can answer – by telling a
story that emphasized the love and mercy of horizontal human
relationships. And in that juxtaposition, we begin to get what
Jesus was saying; if the lawyer wanted to have life eternal with
God, he needed to start by practicing what he preached. Knowing
what the Law said wasn’t enough. He had to begin by
showing love, by doing mercy — to all he
encountered. Then and only then, Jesus seemed to say, would he
find eternal life with God.
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And all of a sudden, I began to see the relevance of this parable to
some of the situations in our world that had left me feeling so
helpless. Just as the Samaritan had not been able to stop the
mugging of that man on the Jericho road – the crowd at that
Fourth of July parade in Highland Park was not able to stop the gunman
from wreaking havoc on the crowd assembled there. But they did
render merciful aid after the gunfire stopped. They did
demonstrate their love and concern. One man immediately
administered CPR to eight–year–old Cooper Roberts, who was
lying unresponsive in a pool of blood on the ground. Because of
his quick action, little Cooper survived — with no brain damage,
though his spinal cord had been severed by the bullets.
Two–year–old Aidan McCarthy survived because his wounded
father, Kevin, threw his own body over him to shield him from the rain
of bullets. Aidan’s father and mother finally died in the
carnage, but strangers managed to reunite the child with his
grandparents and set up a go–fund–me page for
him. Katherine Goldstein also died in the attack, but her
daughter was able to say, “Mom, I love you,” as her mother
died before her eyes. Acts of kindness and mercy, every one of them.
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So finally, I got it. Just as what we remember of that mugging
on the Jericho Road long ago is the kindness and mercy the Good
Samaritan showed to the man wounded by that mugging, so we will tell,
over and over, the acts of love and mercy in Highland Park on the
Fourth of July – as some lives were saved, substantial comfort
was given, and many families were reunited.
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In the same way, maybe I am helpless to stop gun violence in this
country. Maybe there isn’t much I can do to turn
climate change around . . . or end the
war in Ukraine . . . or stop
racism . . . or put an end this awful
pandemic that keeps us apart. These are big questions, big issues
of our day, the situations that God alone can change.
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But I can practice what I preach. I can resolve to be kind and
merciful to one and all. And in the process bring in the Kingdom
of God.
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Amen
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