July 14, 2019, Siren and Lewis UMC, Pastor Rebecca Ellenson, “Do This!”
I’m happy to be the guest preacher here, today. My husband Steve and I attend worship in Webster during the summer months. I’m a pastor with a part time position for part of the year. I serve a congregation in Mazatlán, Mexico each winter. A Mexican Congregational church there opens their doors to the community of snowbirds from the US and Canada. They’ve called me to preach in English to about 150 people from a variety of denominations and locations. It’s a terrific call for me and I feel very blessed.
When I tell people that we live in Mexico for six months each year the nearly universal response is– “Oh aren’t you afraid?” Of course, there are dangerous places in Mexico and since Mazatlán is a city of about 700,000 people we exercise the same kind of caution we would in any urban center. One difference is that we don’t drive at night. It’s not because there are bandits on the roads, like there were in the gospel for today. It’s because the grazing land is open range and if you hit a farm animal you go to jail until the farmer has been paid damage.
We feel quite safe. In fact, we’ve found the Mexican people to be extremely helpful, welcoming, and generous. We love participating in outreach and service work when we are there. One of our favorite projects is a mobile medical/dental/and optical clinic the Mexican congregation operates each year in a very poor area of the city. We sterilize equipment, hold lights for the dentists, or fit people with reading glasses. But the most remarkable parts of our experiences there have to do with the generosity and sincere welcome we feel from the Mexican people.
Mazatlán is host to one of the biggest Mardi-Gras festivals in the world, they call it Carnaval. The week before Ash Wednesday is a blowout celebration of epic proportions. We live on the parade route. Last year, on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday the floats were lined up along the ocean. I had a terrible cold and should have stayed inside, but it was a nice afternoon, sunny and about 70 degrees when we left the apartment. We wandered up the street to watch the dancers, the marchers, the bands, and the floats as they prepared. We found a spot just off the sidewalk in front of a traveling vendor who was selling, among other things, coffee cups that featured naked ladies.
By this time the sun was setting, the wind had picked up, and it had cooled off a bit. It was elbow to elbow, standing room only. As the parade started to move, I had a coughing spell. The vendor scowled at Steve and said to me in Spanish, “You are sick, you should have a coat on!” I was wearing capri’s and a lightweight tunic-like top. I assured him I was fine and turned back to watch the parade. Before long I started coughing again. Then, the vendor removed his coat, took off his button-down canvas shirt, put his coat back on over his tee shirt layer and handed me his shirt. “This is clean, take it. Put it on,” he insisted with another scowl at my clearly negligent husband. After another 5 minutes or so we decided to leave. I tried to give him back his shirt but he smiled a gap-toothed gentle smile at me and said, “No, it’s yours. God bless you!” I have to say it’s the only time a stranger has given me the shirt off his back.
A good Samaritan is a stranger who helps a person in need. In our story the Samaritan is the one who SEES the need, DRAWS NEAR, is MOVED WITH COMPASSION, and ACTS on behalf of the other.
We’re conditioned to be wary aren’t we, to fear the stranger, to protect ourselves. What happens when we encounter someone stranded, injured, or in need? One time, many summers ago, I was driving back to Duluth from my parents’ lake home with my two kids. They were about 4 and 9 years old I suppose. My daughter Cora was strapped into her booster seat in the backseat of our SUV. It was dusk, about this time of year. I’m sure it was after 9 pm and she wanted me to recline her seat. So, I pulled over to the side of highway 210, near Motley MN. I went around to the rear passenger side door and was kneeling on the seat, one knee on either side or her legs, awkwardly reaching over her to recline the seat.
Suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, a great big man dressed in a sleeveless tee shirt and gym shorts appeared in the open doorway, just an arms-length from me. He smelled of sweat and alcohol and asked me in a slurred and smarmy voice if I needed help. I said no, and he stepped in closer. I was a woman alone on the roadside with my children. I was also a red-belt level karate student at the time. Without even thinking, I chambered my left fist to my waist, ready to defend us if I needed too. Just then our little dog, a Brittany spaniel, stepped right over Cora between us, growling at the man. He backed away and I pulled the door shut and locked it, crawling over the front seat and peeling out onto the highway.
A few miles down the road, my son Peter said to me, “That was really scary mom.” My son was also a karate student and he bravely told me that he would have side kicked the man if he had been in my place. I said, “Well, Peter, I was kneeling so I couldn’t do that. I thought a palm heel strike to his face would work, though.” Later on, when we’d calmed down and I had time to think about it I considered what could have happened, what the newspaper headlines might have read: “Pastor attacks Good Samaritan by the roadside.”
As Luke tells the story, an expert in Jewish Law asks Jesus a testing question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” I don’t think it was a “how do I get to go to heaven when I die?” question. He wanted to know the true meaning of life, how to live fully.
Jesus turned the question back to the questioner. “What is written, how do you read?” The lawyer gave the correct answer. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Good answer Jesus said, “Do this, and you will live.”
But the lawyer wanted more clarification. I think the real question he was asking is “Who is Not my neighbor? How much love are we talking about? Where can I draw the line? Outside my door? The people I know? What about those other people? Other cultures, other races, other religions, other denominations, orientations, nationalities, political persuasions? There’s a limit, right? Remember, this man is a legal expert. I bet he’d love to get into a philosophical discussion and talk theoretically. But no, Jesus keeps it real. He tells a story
A man was walking down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by bandits. They robbed, beat, stripped, and left him for dead. Soon afterwards, a priest came by. Seeing the wounded man, he passed by on the other side of the road. A short while later, a Levite did likewise. But then a Samaritan came along. Seeing the stranded victim, he drew close, and felt deep compassion. He bandaged the man’s wounds, annointed them with oil and wine, carried him to the nearest inn on his own animal, paid the innkeeper for the victim’s further care, and promised to return with more money as needed.
“So. Which of the three was a neighbor to the man who was robbed?” Jesus asked. “The one who showed him mercy,” the lawyer replied. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus said again. “Do this and you will live.”
Be like the Samaritan, not the Priest or the Levite, right? It may not be easy, but at least it’s clear. Do this. See the one in need. Draw close. Feel with compassion. Show mercy. Extend kindness. Live out your theology in hands-on care for other people. Don’t just think love. Do it.
DebieThomas writes on a blog called “Journey With Jesus,” on the texts for the Sundays of the church year. She suggests that as is so often true with Jesus and his stories, just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, a morality story about serving others, there’s more to it than the surface level. It is more than just a “be good and generous” story.
You see, when Jesus told this story, the hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans was ancient, entrenched, and bitter. The two groups disagreed about everything that mattered: how to honor God, how to interpret the Scriptures, and where to worship. They practiced their faith in separate temples, read different versions of the Torah, and avoided social contact with each other whenever possible. Though we’re inclined to see the Good Samaritan as the ideal, Jesus’ choice of this particular hero was nothing less than shocking to first century ears.
After all, he was the Other. The enemy of the Jews. The object of their fear, their condescension, their disgust, and their judgment. He was the heretical outcast. To get the point today we might ask ourselves: Who is the last person on earth you’d ever want to deem “a good guy?” The last person you’d ask to save your life? Whom do you secretly hope to convert, fix, impress, control, or save — but never, ever need? A Mexican naked-lady-cup vendor? A disheveled but strong looking man who smells of sweat and alcohol on a rural MN highway? For the modern Israeli Jewish man it might be a Good Hamas member. Let’s say a liberal Democrat is robbed, and a Good conservative Republican saves her life. A white supremacist is robbed, and a Good black teenager saves his life. A transgender woman is robbed, and a Good anti-LGBTQ activist saves her life. An atheist is robbed, and a Good Christian fundamentalist saves his life.
Every time and place has agonizing differences that divide us. Those divisions are real, not theoretical, they are not easily negotiated; each side is fully convinced that the other is wrong. What Jesus did when he deemed the Samaritan “good” was radical and risky. No doubt it stunned his Jewish listeners. He was asking them to dream of a different kind of kingdom. He was inviting them to consider the possibility that a person might add up to more than the sum of her political, racial, cultural, and economic identities. He was calling them to put aside the history they knew, and the prejudices they nursed. He was asking them to leave room for divine and world-altering surprises.
Instead of identifying with the potential helpers on the road, what happens if we identify with the wounded, dying man on the road. When we put ourselves in the place of the broken one, grateful to anyone at all who will show us mercy — only then can we feel the unbounded compassion of the Good Samaritan. All divisions fall away on the broken road, out of necessity. When you’re lying bloody in a ditch, what matters is not whose help you’d prefer, whose way of practicing Christianity you like best, whose politics you agree with. What matters is whether or not anyone will stop to show you mercy before you die.
The brokenness happens in all sorts of ways. It may be in a hospital room, or at a graveside, or after a marriage fails, or when a cherished job goes bust. After the storm, the betrayal, the war, the injury, the diagnosis—at those times it won’t be our theology that saves us. It won’t be our cherished affiliations that matter. All that matters will be how quickly we swallow our pride and grab hold of whatever hand sees our need, draws near, has compassion and acts on our behalf.
“Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked. Your neighbor is the one who scandalizes you with compassion, Jesus answered. Your neighbor is the one who upends all the entrenched categories and shocks you with a fresh face of God. Your neighbor is the one who mercifully steps over the ancient, bloodied line separating “us” from “them,” and teaches you the real meaning of “Good.”
What shall I do to inherit eternal life? Do this. Do this and you will live.