Pentecost VII

By The Rev. Martha Frances+
Year C, Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 10
15 July 2007

Text: Luke 10: 25-37, Other Readings:  Amos 7: 7-17; Colossians 1: 1-14; Psalm 82

            Our Gospel is the 1^st two parts of a story we will continue next week. Stay tuned until next Sunday for a story of Mary & Martha.  The chapter & verses are listed in your pew bulletin, so perhaps you can look over the lessons before you get here.

            Let’s first pay some attention to Jesus’ conversation with the lawyer who comes forward to test him.   This lawyer is tempting Jesus to compromise values Jesus says are necessary to a life of integrity & honor.  The lawyer wants to know how hard he has to work to gain eternal life.  He wants to earn God’s love through following the Jewish law, not an unusual concept for an attorney. 

Jesus answers by asking the lawyer to state the summary of the law.  The lawyer combines both of the great commandments—loving God & loving neighbor—& Jesus says he’s exactly right.  But Jesus pushes beyond just what is required, like studying for a test in order to pass with a 70%.  No, Jesus wants the lawyer—& all the rest of us, too—to love God with every bit of our lives:  with all our heart means in our innermost being; with all our soul includes our individual identity—our personality; with all our might means with our energy, our strength, our resolve, & our resources; & with all our mind means with all our understanding & intellect.  Jesus doesn’t want us to hold anything back; he calls us to turn our will & our lives over to the care of a loving God. 

By loving God that fully, then, of course we’re going to

love our neighbors just as God loves them, aren’t we?  That’s why both commandments go together, because fulfilling one by its very nature fulfills the other. 

The lawyer, still trying to figure out the limits to what he has to do, asks “And who is my neighbor?”  How far does this loving of neighbor have to go.  Frederick Buechner, in his book Wishful Thinking, says the lawyer was looking for a legal definition like this:  “A neighbor (herein referred to as the party of the 1st part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than 3 statute miles from one’s own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the 2^nd part) living closer to the party of the 1^st part & then one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever.” (65-66)

Who in here can honestly say that she or he has never tried to figure out the minimum daily requirement to get what we want, so we can do the least possible & still get by?  This lawyer wanted Jesus to say only certain people like him were his neighbors, & he only need act lovingly toward those select few, those who won’t make him uncomfortable or have to make a leap of faith.

Jesus doesn’t answer the lawyer directly but tells him a story, a parable.  By now, we know Jesus’ parables can make us squirm, make us ask what Jesus expects of us.  And his parables always have an unexpected twist.  A man about whom we know nothing travels a notoriously dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho, descending nearly 3300 feet in 17 miles.  No one hearing Jesus’ parable was surprised that robbers left half dead.  Neither would both the priest & the Levite’s passing him by on the other side surprise Jesus’ audience.  After all, if these important men in the community touch this man & he dies, they will be ritually unclean, unable to fulfill the duties for which they are paid.   The person they expect to rescue the injured man should be another faithful Israelite. 

But who comes along & responds to the wounded man?  A Samaritan!  A hated Samaritan!  Samaritans are unclean—descendants of mixed marriages—they don’t even have the sense to go to Jerusalem for worship like good Jews do.  No good self-respecting Jew will have anything to do with a Samaritan.  Who would be as despised as a Samaritan in today’s society?  The dark-skinned Middle Easterner, probably from Iraq, who might be a terrorist?  The woman just out of prison without a place to live or a job?  The homosexual man whom we’re convinced is out to ensnare an unsuspecting teenager?  Or perhaps the teenager with spiked hair & constant ear-splitting music?  An undocumented immigrant holding a job some deserving American should have? Who do we believe would be the last person in the world we would like to accept help from?  That’s who the Samaritan would be in our society.

Look at how the Samaritan cares for the unfortunate traveler:  the Samaritan sees him, is moved with pity, goes to him, bandaging his wounds & pouring oil & wine on them.  Then, putting him on his own animal, he takes him to an inn where his immediate needs can be addressed.  Even though the Samaritan must leave, he makes provision for the innkeeper to care for him further, promising to pay for his trouble.  The Samaritan does more than we would ever expect to care for the injured man.  Even the lawyer admits it is the Samaritan who proves to be the neighbor, the one who shows mercy to the injured man.

Now I’ve spent all my life listening to this story, studying it, but it wasn’t until preparing for this sermon that I realized Jesus is not the Samaritan himself but rather the injured man.  We all must receive help from the unlikeliest of people from time to time.  And you know what?  God loves that other person just as much as God loves you & me.  We’re all precious in God’s sight.  That’s part of what being neighbors is all about:  sometimes we’re the givers & sometimes we’re the takers.  We must learn to do both with grace & dignity, across all boundaries that we humans keep insisting on setting up.  Many of us don’t want to give up the power position & be as vulnerable as we feel when we’re the receivers.  Jesus’ love reaches beyond all barriers to draw us all in to give & receive, treasuring each other as Jesus treasures us. 

What Jesus tells the lawyer about the requirements for inheriting eternal life is to let go of all the judgments & divisions we set up to separate ourselves from others.  Jesus asks us to care for each other as brothers & sisters whether the others are like us at all, even regardless of whether the others like us or whether we like them.  It’s not our feelings toward others that matter at all; it’s rather Jesus’ love for them, for all of us. 

And how on earth can we accomplish this neighborliness?  How can we love those we don’t like at all, & whom we don’t even trust?  We can’t; not on our own.  We’re not expected to do so.  We’re totally dependent on God’s grace & power to accomplish such love of others.  That’s what we prayed for in the collect for today:  to know & understand what we ought to do & to have the grace & power to accomplish it.  Grace & power don’t happen on our own; they’re gifts from God, & we do well to utter that prayer often, for we cannot manufacture those qualities ourselves; we must rely upon God to provide them. 

But that’s the whole point of loving God with our whole being:  heart, soul, strength, & mind.  We must turn our whole will & lives over to the care of a loving God.  Ah-ha!  We’re back to the 1^st commandment, aren’t we?  This business of loving God & neighbor really does go together, doesn’t it? 

How do we go about loving without reservation?  We can’t do it all alone.  That’s why we need the community.  That’s why we come together week after week to worship God in praise, in song, in prayer, & in hearing & meditating on God’s word together.  That’s why we gather at this altar, offering our prayers of praise & thanksgiving, offering our lives again & again to God, strengthened by the body & blood of Christ in this banquet we share together.  We need each other, & we need to be nourished by this Eucharistic dinner regularly as we practice being a community of disciples together. 

But we must always remember that the community is not complete.  Someone once said if we want equality, we must work for justice—others’ as well as our own.  There are always neighbors out there for us to invite into the banquet with us.  And sometimes we share at our neighbors’ banquet table.  Jesus shows us in other places that there’ll be an abundance as long as we’re giving freely.  Let’s all celebrate with the neighbors present here, ever praying that Christ show us the neighbors we do not yet recognize.  Amen.