Don’t Get Mad at Me.  Jesus Said It.

 Luke 10:25-37

In First Light today, we had people act out the parable in the beginning of worship.  And when the First Light worship planning team began thinking about this particular Scripture from Luke, we first had the idea of letting everyone choose the part he or she would play in the parable.  We wanted to let them decide who they would be.  Would they take the part of the priest, or the robber (unlikely), or the one in the ditch?  Or would they choose to be the Good Samaritan or the innkeeper who takes them in?  We were going to let them decide and then have some kind of mass drama for the proclamation of Scripture.

 But then, we got back together a few weeks later and changed our minds.  We wondered what might happen if we assigned them parts instead of letting them choose.  They would have no control over who they got to be.  Some of them who would rather be the innkeeper would end up as the Levite.  Others who much preferred to be the one in the ditch, would be the robbers.  And the few who might choose to be the priest who just goes right on by, would be forced to play the part of the Good Samaritan. 

 We wanted to assign the parts because, frankly, we all know who we are supposed to be in this well-worn, well-loved story, don’t we.  We all know that we are called to be the one named the Good Samaritan.  But have you ever noticed that the adjective “good” is actually nowhere to be found in the text?  Jesus never uses the adjective ‘good’ as he tells the story.  Now, this fact probably should not surprise us.  A few weeks ago, when we preached on the Samaritan village rejecting Jesus’ desire to stay with them, we talked about the extreme national and religious tension between Jews and Samaritans. 

 In Jesus’ day, there is no way faithful Jewish folks would put the adjective “good” next to the noun “Samaritan.” And that probably worked the other way too.  Most Samaritans were probably not falling all over themselves to spend their time with Jewish people either.  To put it lightly, neither group had much love for the other.  So our insertion of “good” comes purely from our interpretation of what we hear Jesus saying about the Samaritan’s behavior.  “Good” is our hermeneutical decision, our interpretive decision.   And it is a decision that colors how we hear the story. 

 For when we hear the words “Now, let us listen for God’s voice in the parable of the Good Samaritan,” we already know who the hero is, don’t we.  As I stated earlier, we already know where we are supposed to stand in this story.  We already know that, in the end, we are all supposed to want to be like the Good Samaritan, the one who refused to pass by another human being in need of help.

But, what if the whole premise behind my question is wrong?  What if we are not supposed to find our place in Jesus’ parable? What if we are not supposed to even consider if we stand in the place of the priest, or the Levite, or the one in the ditch, or the innkeeper, or even, the Samaritan?  What if, instead, we are supposed to stand with the lawyer, the one asking the questions in the first place.  What happens when we stand there, with him, and hear Jesus’ story?

 “Teacher,” the lawyer said as he stood up to test Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  We can tell by the verb form that he used that the lawyer was looking for a limited-action kind of response.  He was looking for the one thing he must do, or, even better, has already done, in order to get to participate in the age to come, life eternal. 

 His question strikes me as being fairly close to what I would occasionally encounter in college.   People from Campus Crusade would come to my dorm room in the hopes of convincing me of the four spiritual laws and getting me to pray for Jesus to come into my life.  If I would do that one thing, they would say, than I could be assured of getting into heaven.  (Apparently being a Presbyterian was not quite assurance enough!)  But though I never took them up on it, I could see how it was appealing.  From their theological perspective, if I would just do that one thing, then I could know with certainty that my passport for eternity had been stamped with the heaven stamp and I was forever safe and saved. 

 I hear echoes of that longing for certainty in the lawyer’s voice, in our voices, as we stand with him.  But Jesus refused to answer the question outright.  Rather, he asked him a question in return.  “What is written in the law?  How do you read it?”  It was a very teacher thing to do.

 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself,” the lawyer recited quite well.  And at first, Jesus seemed to agree with that assessment – Yes, he said.  You have given the right answer.  But then, Jesus throws in a monkey wrench.  He changes the verb form on us.  Jesus takes the lawyer’s one-time only, limited action verb “do” and changes it to a present imperative form.  Now, stay with me—this is very important because the present imperative verb form implies a continual, open-ended life style kind of response[i].  In other words, the lawyer asks Jesus “what must I do once in order to get in?”  And Jesus responds, “It isn’t a one-time thing.  Rather, you must continually keep on loving God and neighbor without limits and without qualifications, and in doing so, you will live not just in the hereafter, but in the here and now.”  Big shift.  He messes with our understanding of salvation and eternal life—all in one blow.

 So it is no wonder why the lawyer immediately started looking for loopholes.  We would all start looking for loopholes, wouldn’t we?  Jesus is telling us that in order to live eternally beginning right now, in the realm of God, the household of God, we are called to continually love God and neighbor with the totality of all that we have and all that we are.  No big deal, right?  Ha!  All you have to do is watch the live feed from our denomination’s General Assembly meeting to see how tough love of neighbor can be.  It is not easy. 

 So the lawyer looked for loopholes, just as we look for loopholes.  Just who does the noun “neighbor” imply?  For if neighbor means only family or friends or even those in my congregation, then that is more doable.  Then it is not so difficult.  We can understand why the lawyer wanted Jesus to be more specific.  “So who exactly is my neighbor?” he asked Jesus. 

And as Scott Black Johnston once preached[ii], that is probably the moment when Jesus leaned in and thought “now we are getting somewhere.”  That is the moment when Jesus knew he had a real discipleship conversation going now.  And so he told a story because stories are so much more powerful than lectures. 

 He told the story about a person who was robbed and beaten within an inch of his life.  He was stripped of his clothing and of his dignity.  The man was so beaten up that you could not tell by looking at him who he was or what he did.  You could not tell the color of his skin.  You could not tell if he had money and education or neither.  You could not tell if he was from that country or an undocumented immigrant.  You could not deduce anything about his religion or lack of religion.  He was simply a severely wounded human being in need of help. 

 And then Jesus described how a few folks reacted to the man’s dire situation.  First, a Presbyterian clergywoman came down the street in her car.  She noticed the heap of the human being on the side of the road.  She started to slow down, but then thought better of it.  She was new to the area so she was not quite sure what she would do if she actually stopped to help.  Besides, she assumed that the city had some kind of compassion services set up through an interfaith service agency so it would be much more effective if she could just get back to her office and call someone else to go and do something.  After all, she had a sermon to write on the Good Samaritan and that guy looked like a whole lot of human need and she was just tired.  So she kept on moving.

 And then a Presbyterian elder started to make his way down the road.  He had seen his pastor’s car in the distance ahead of him and had watched as she had swerved over to the side to get a quick look at something, but then noticed she had kept on going.  He was not quite sure what she was up to.  But as the Elder got closer, he figured it out.  Unlike his pastor, he walked over closer to the person.  He heard the guy crying softly and considered for a moment what he might do, but then he looked at his watch and remembered that he was late for a meeting at church.  They were getting together that night to talk about forming a task force that would work on keeping people in their town safe from harm and he could not miss it.  So he apologized out loud for not being able to stop and help but hurried on to the ministry team meeting. 

 And then, just as the wounded guy was starting to give up hope, over walked______. 

 Now—time out.  We must stop for a moment.  For you see, when Jesus said “Samaritan” to the lawyer and the crowd in that original parable, people were probably horrified.  Samaritans were hated.  They were the bitterly hated enemy and Jesus was making that bitterly hated enemy into the morally superior hero.  So I have to stop here in the telling because I have to let you, standing with the lawyer, take a moment and think of your enemy. 

 Whose name could I insert here that would cause you such great offense that you would almost want to leave the building and walk out on worship?  Whose name could I insert here that would have you setting up appointments with me next week so that you could make sure I knew how disappointed you were in my pastoral leadership?  Who is your Samaritan—not good Samaritan. “Good” is not in the parable. Just Samaritan?  Do you have that person in mind yet? 

 Well, strap on your seatbelts because Jesus continues the story and describes how your Samaritan ends up being the only one who loved the neighbor unconditionally.  Your Samaritan ends up being the one who not only bound up that unnamed man’s wounds, but who poured out the liturgical elements of wine and oil for his healing.  Your Samaritan ends up being the one who risked his own safety by taking that hurt man to the inn and staying with him all night in order to care for him.  Your Samaritan ends up making up for the sins of the robbers, the preacher and the elder.  Your Samaritan ends up being the hero, the one in whom God dwells, the one who fulfilled the law that you and I had just so deftly quoted.

 Now, what does that feel like to you?  What does it feel like having your enemy end up as the hero, the one from whom you are to learn[iii]?  I think we can assume it did not feel that good to the lawyer.  For when Jesus asked the lawyer to tell him which of those three was a neighbor to the wounded person, the lawyer could not even allow the words “The Samaritan” to form on his lips.  He could not even speak that name.  Rather, he simply answered the question by describing what the Samaritan did—the one who showed him mercy. 

 But then Jesus responded by telling the lawyer to go and do likewise.  Jesus told the lawyer to learn about the love of neighbor from his enemy.  He challenged him to see his enemy with new eyes, looking for what he might learn about compassion and faith and neighborliness from the very one whose name the lawyer could not even speak.  But Jesus promised if he could do so, he would find eternal life, beginning right then and there.  I wonder if the lawyer said anything else in response.  My guess is that he was completely stunned.  We don’t learn about discipleship, about following Jesus, from our enemies, right? 

 And Jesus leans in and thinks… now we’re getting somewhere....