Out of the Believer’s Heart

The following letter appeared in an early edition of today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Every summer from 1873 to 1877, the hardworking farmers of Minnesota saw their crops destroyed by grasshoppers.  Then Governor John S. Pillsbury proclaimed a day of prayer on April 26, 1877, to rid the state of these ravaging marauders. And the next day, the grasshoppers were gone.  I am beseeching Governor Tim Pawlenty to declare a day of prayer as soon as possible to get rid of the nasty mosquitoes that are biting all Minnesotans relentlessly.  If this works, I will start going to church and voting Republican.” (Pause) My first thought, as I read this letter in an airport that had been taken over by hundreds of exhausted Presbyterians catching their flights home, was: “That must have been one of the overtures we missed.” (Pause)

In these last few days, I have been one of seven hundred and twelve Commissioners elected by presbyteries across the country to gather in Minneapolis to consider approximately nine hundred items of business which were sent to the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to be considered at this year’s General Assembly. For the Commissioners, our work began one week ago, on the afternoon of July 4th, as nineteen committees convened to begin their work.  From that moment until the General Assembly dismissed yesterday and we climbed on the bus for the airport, the only glimpse I caught of Peggy Kenny was this lump in her bed when I returned to our room sometime before midnight each night.  She would awaken as I came into the room and we would briefly exchange the highlights of our day as I crawled between the sheets, my eyes closing almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.  Now that my tenure is over and I can pass the baton to Peggy, who is slated to serve as a Commissioner at the 220th General Assembly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2012, I can only say that she deserves the greatest respect for her willingness to serve our church in this capacity.  Having seen the work that was done in the last ten days, and having met just a few of the incredible people who convened in Minneapolis to do this work, I have the greatest respect for them and am honored to be counted among them.  It was truly a humbling experience. (Pause)

Our text today is a wonderful lens through which to examine the work of the General Assembly and to talk about what it means to be a Christian today… for that is all that we were doing in Minneapolis during the past week.  A lawyer comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life.  What, in essence, will guarantee that he will receive this gift from God?  We are told that he asks this to test Jesus… and the only other time that this word “test” is used in Luke is when Jesus warns the devil not to “test” God.   Rather than answering the lawyer’s question, Jesus instead asks the lawyer what the law says and what he reads in it… or, in essence, how he interprets it.  The lawyer, in turn, quotes the two great commandments: “To 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." Jesus commends him for his answer and urges him to follow that guidance. The lawyer, wanting to understand the limits of his responsibility, then asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” and Jesus, in response, tells this wonderful story that shares several different perspectives with us, depending upon the role that we choose to take in it. (Pause)

Traditionally, we, as Christians, love to take the perspective of the Samaritan, the one who rescues the man… binding up his wounds… carrying him to a safe place… and restoring him to health.  This is the role that all of our superheroes would take… Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Wonder Woman… and the role that many of our folk heroes would also take… Robin Hood, Davy Crockett, Florence Nightingale, and so on.  It is a challenging role, but not impossible to do.  In doing it, we elevate ourselves above both the pastor and the member of the law enforcement community who turned away and did nothing for the poor, suffering victim in our story. (Pause) And yet, at the same time, we can see some of ourselves in both the pastor and the member of the law enforcement community, for we know that we have chosen to ignore the plight of many in our community and in our world who are suffering… but each time we have done so, we hope that no one else saw us doing so.  By turning our faces away and staying on the far side of the road, we can pretend… at least to others, if not to ourselves… that we never saw the problem and, therefore, did not realize that help was needed.  But, in the deep recesses of our own hearts, we know that we could have done something and we consciously chose to avoid getting involved. (Pause)

There is still another role we can take in this story… a role that, perhaps, was the one that Jesus meant for us to consider.  When the story opens, Jesus tells of a man who is traveling down a very dangerous road toward Jericho.  Many of those who were listening would have identified with this man.  They knew the road was dangerous and that, if they traveled that road, they could be attacked… beaten… robbed… and left for dead.  Lying on the road… traumatized and bleeding… they could imagine themselves waiting for help.  And, during their time of waiting, they could imagine the travelers who might stop to help them. A pastor… or any leader of their faith community… would probably top the list. (Pause) Well, this pastor did not stop… and we all know that Jesus wasn’t talking about me, because we know that Pharisees were all men and I am not a man. (Pause) That statement may be facetious, but how often have we weaseled out of Jesus’ parables in exactly that way… finding any excuse to protect ourselves from the accusations we feel when we read the story? (Pause)  It couldn’t be me… I’m not a Pharisee!  I would never do that! (Pause)

The next person who came down the road was a member of the law enforcement community.  Upon hearing that, Jesus’ listeners would have thought, “Of course, he will stop… after all, his motto is ‘to serve and protect,’ isn’t it?”  But then again, perhaps this particular stretch of road wasn’t in his jurisdiction.  He would have liked help, of course, but it was someone else’s responsibility to do so… and if he stepped in, there would be a lot of paperwork to fill out… a lot of confusion about roles and boundaries.  He needed to get back to his own constituents… and take care of them. (Pause) If, in the minds of Jesus’ listeners, they still saw themselves as the man lying in the road, they would have been deeply disturbed and angered by this second rejection.  As a Jew, didn’t they support these Levites, who had no land or property of their own?  Don’t their tax dollars pay this man’s salary? How could he pass by without helping? (Pause)

Still lying in the road, beaten and bloody, Jesus’ listeners hear the sound of another person approaching.  This one comes over to where they are lying in the road… and he gets down off of his horse to help.  Greatly relieved, the battered victim lifts one eyelid to see his rescuer. (Pause) Oh, no!  Not him!  Oh, please! Anyone but him! Don’t touch me, you filthy… and we are left to fill in the blank! The one who has stopped to help is the one person on this earth that we most despise… the one we would never have any association with, if we had a choice.  Who is it? (Pause)

It is difficult, in our American setting, to describe the depth of the hatred that existed between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Jews, particularly the legalistic Jews, like this lawyer, had hated the Samaritans for generations.  While the Samaritans had once been Jews themselves, when the Northern Kingdom was overthrown, these Jews had been left behind and had intermarried with other races who had taken over the Jewish lands when many Jews were taken into exile.  They were seen as collaborators with the conquerors of the children of Israel.  They were seen as lower class aliens.  They had perverted the Jewish religion, worshipping in the wrong places and interpreting scripture differently. The animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans was so great that they would not sit at the same table… drink from the same well… and would travel miles out of their way to avoid each other. (Pause) When Jesus asked the lawyer, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”, the lawyer could not even choke out the word “Samaritan.” Instead, he said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Why would he give any honor to one he so despised? (Pause)

So, who would that Samaritan be for us today? (Pause) Is it the… and I am cleaning up my language here, for we would never speak publicly about those we despise in the same language that we might use in the privacy of our own homes… is it the sweaty, hairy biker who drinks too much and uses profanities?  Is it that unmarried promiscuous woman who has had several children by different fathers and subsists on welfare?  Is it that African American heroin addict who can’t hold a job?  Is it that gay man who wears outlandish clothes or that Pakistani shopkeeper who kneels on his prayer rug five times each day?  Is it that tattooed and pierced teenager with the purple mohawk whose pants are slipping down, carrying his skateboard? (Pause) Whoever it is, Jesus makes it clear that the one who stopped to help the battered and beaten man is one whom the lawyer most despised. (Pause)

If Jesus merely wanted us to hear that we should help others… which is the way in which this story is most often interpreted… then why would he even introduce the idea that the person who was doing the helping was our enemy… the one we most despise?  Bernard Brandon Scott, in his book Jesus, Symbol Maker for the Kingdom, summarizes this parable in this way, “to enter the kingdom, one must get into the ditch and be served by one’s mortal enemy.” “Grace,” he says, comes to those who cannot resist, who have no other alternative than to accept it. To enter the parable’s world, to get into the ditch, is to be so low that grace is the only alternative… only he who needs grace can receive grace.” Robert Funk adds, “A Jew who was excessively proud of his blood line and a chauvinist about his tradition would not permit a Samaritan to touch him, much less minister to him… But note that the victim in the ditch is given only a passive role in the story… all who are truly victims, truly disinherited, have no choice but to give themselves up to mercy.  The despised half-breed has become the instrument of grace: as listeners, the Jews choke on the irony.”  And so would we, if we were also served by those we most despise.  In the Kingdom of God, mercy comes only to those who have no right to expect it and who cannot resist it when it comes.  Mercy always comes from the quarter from which one does not and cannot expect it. (Pause)

Do we, as white Christians in a country where those attributes still define the dominant culture, truly recognize the jeopardy that the Samaritan put himself in when he stopped to help this man?  If confronted by Jews who wanted to know what the Samaritan was doing with a beaten and bloody Jew, how much credence would they give to his version of events?  What is the likelihood that the innkeeper believed his story?  Why would he risk his life for this stranger? (Pause) We don’t know the answers to these questions.  What we do know is that we are called to a radical understanding of our world… to see the world through new and different eyes… and to respond in ways that are counterintuitive.  But always at the core of our belief is the message of love and of grace that we learned when we realized that two thousand years ago another man died for strangers he never knew… for you and for me.

  The decisions coming out of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) reflect this radical view of the world… that we are to touch and be touched by those we most despise… to show the love and grace of Jesus in new and counterintuitive ways for the Kingdom of God in this world.  And the charge for us in our own communities is to determine how we can touch and be touched by those we most despise… that in both giving and receiving grace, we might grow in the likeness of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gathered the outcasts and sinners around him that all might partake of the love and grace of God.  May God bless us on this journey into a new understanding of God’s love.  Amen.

Luke 10:25-37