A physician by the name of Ralph Crenshaw wrote an editorial in
the Journal of the American Medical Association. He began by telling
a true story from one of his travels. While he was on vacation
in Venice one year, he was awakened each night at precisely 3
a.m. by a strange scraping sound. When he investigated, Crenshaw
discovered outside his window an old bag lady digging through
the hotel garbage. Whenever she discovered some meat or fat scraps
she would scoop them into a small tin can. When she had a dozen
or so tin cans filled she would set them in a circle around her
feet, a sign to the dozens of homeless cats waiting in the shadows
that their daily meal was ready.
The good doctor reflects on the seeming foolishness of this nightly ritual. He compares it to the seeming foolishness of sixty of his medical colleagues in Oregon who have begun the hopeless task of reaching out to the homeless people who wait in the dark shadows of Portland. What good does it do to feed or heal mangy cats--or mangy people--when their misery is sure to be as desperate tomorrow as it certainly is today?
The lawyer in today's gospel lesson might be the first to object to such bleeding heart sentimentality. He is much more concerned about the logical and legal aspects of life--that which can be defined, categorized, solved and put to rest. So he begins a debate with Jesus. After finding out how to inherit eternal life, the lawyer is encouraged by Jesus to just get on with it--to go and love his neighbor. But our lawyer, unwilling to be disposed of so easily, reenters the fray. He asks another question: "Who is my neighbor?"
Robert McAfee Brown writes: "By asking the question that way, the lawyer gets the discussion back on to safe territory. The discussion need not involve being a neighbor but only defining a neighbor. An academic exploration can ensue, and the lawyer, his own lifestyle exempt from scrutiny, can look really good in the ensuing verbal exchange. A classic ploy--not only for all of us cerebral Christians who try to protect ourselves from the bite of the gospel by talking about faith instead of doing it."
Jesus of course, cuts through all this intellectual baloney. He refuses to play academic games. Instead he tells a story. The story is so familiar that most of us have stopped hearing it. In a way it's too bad that the story has inherited the title the "Good Samaritan"--for it all too easily becomes a goody two shoes morality tale. Such an interpretation misses the point--because this story isn't about morality--it is about mercy.
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is only 16 miles long--but in that relatively short span of highway, the road descends over 36 hundred feet. It is a dark, twisting, treacherous path--inhabited by thieves--and no one in their right mind travels it alone at night. The man in Jesus' story who was robbed and beaten and left for dead along the side of the road was nothing short of a fool. He should have known better than to have subjected himself to such dangers. He was just like some of the people today who are held responsible for their own suffering--Careless people who have never quit smoking, or who have not been vigilant against Aids, or welfare recipients who just need to work harder.or on and on.
Yes the victim in today's story was only reaping the consequences of his own irresponsible behavior. He shouldn't have been on that road alone to begin with. Such might have been the thoughts of the priest and the Levite--upright, moral, responsible religious leaders of their day--who hurried on by. They probably did feel some concern as they viewed this man's battered body. But hopefully, someone else would do something. They had other responsibilities up ahead. The Samaritan who passed by made a different decision. Samaritans, as you recall, were the enemies, the outcasts, the heretics among the good Jewish people in Jesus' day. They did not follow the dietary or cleanliness laws, they worshipped at a temple other than the one in Jerusalem and they even read a different Torah. Jesus purposely makes a point by focusing his story on a hated Samaritan. This social pariah becomes a savior--instinctively stopping to help, entering into the suffering of a stranger, sharing material as well as emotional gifts.
It is, my friends, the quality of mercy that separates the heathen Samaritan from the religious priest and Levite. All of which suggests that being faithful has little or nothing to do with piety or theological understanding or legalistic righteousness or denominational affiliation or racial-ethnic identity or social status or professional credentials. Instead, being faithful--being a neighbor to oneself and others--involves mercy--a way of seeing and acting that is shaped by certain habits of the heart. Sue Monk Kidd is a Christian writer who remembers back to an experience she had when she was twelve. It seems her mother insisted that she go visit a nursing home with her church youth group on the last day of summer vacation--when her best friends were enjoying their final freedom at the town swimming pool. She went to the nursing home with resentment smoldering in her eyes. She writes,
"Smarting from the inequity I stood
before this ancient looking woman holding a bouquet of crepe paper
flowersI thrust the bouquet at her. Then she spoke the words I
haven't forgotten for nearly thirty years. 'You didn't want to
come did you child"
The words stunned me. 'Oh yes I wanted to come.' I protested.
A smile lifted one side of her mouth. It's okay, she said, you
can't force the heart.."
She was right of course. We can't force the heart. We can't all of a sudden decide to become a generous Samaritan instead of a reluctant priest or Levite. But there are some habits of the heart that we can begin to cultivate--habits that can lead us closer to embracing this quality of mercy. The first habit is empathy--the effort to relate to the feelings of those who are suffering--to relate their feelings to our feelings--to realize that we too, know what it is like to be hungry or poor or scared or broken--maybe not in physical ways but in spiritual ways. The Samaritan could instinctively relate to the battered, rejected body of the man on the road. Why? Because he too felt battered by the rejection of those "Good" people who treated him like dirt. Instead of blaming the man on the road for being foolish and careless, the Samaritan identified with the victim's humanity. Can we do the same? Can we identify with the immigrant crossing the border illegally, the youth who gets pulled into a gang, the pain of people here in our own congregation who are reeling from pain or loss?
In other words, can we stop seeing the world as "us" and "them" and instead embrace a world of "we" where all human beings share the same humanity--the same needs, the same losses and the same hopes? Such is the nature of empathy. And out of this empathy grows the habit of compassion--the actual decision to suffer with those who suffer. Frederick Beuchner defines compassion this way, "Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it's like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.
Luke's text tells us that when the Samaritan
saw the man on the road "he was moved with compassion"--a
word that literally means "his heart melted within him."
Immediately he went to the victim, bandaged his wounds, poured
oil and wine on his battered skin, took him to an inn where he
left plenty of money. Compassion in this story involved more than
a warm feeling or a quick prayer. In involved touching, lifting,
sweating, paying and in a word committing to a relationship of
concrete care.
In his article about mercy--the one where he describes the lady
with the cats and the do-gooder doctors of Portland--Dr. Crenshaw
defines all of this as mercy. It is a combination of feeling and
action that involves identifying with the victim. Mercy then is
like a mirror. When we look deep into the heart of mercy, what
we see is ourselves.
The story of the Good Samaritan ends with a command, which is also an invitation. Jesus looks directly at the lawyer--Jesus looks directly at you and me and he says; "Go and do likewise." May it be so for the sake of our own souls and the soul of God's precious world.
(Based on Susan R. Andrews, Lectionary Homeletics)
Amen.