“GOD’S NEIGHBORHOOD”
Text: Luke 10:25-38
Faith United
July 15, 2007
Well, this is about the time you might decide
to go to sleep or turn off your brain—zone out
Ah, Good Samaritan,
I know that one… I know how it ends
Everybody knows THAT story
You don’t even have to go to church
to know that story
The bad guy turns out to be the hero
Typical Jesus story
The person you least suspect
or the person you least like
turns out to be the good one
And the preacher will make a point
that you gotta love the ones you don’t like
It can be called the Good Iraqi,
The Good Homosexual, The Good Homeless Person
The Good Teenager Who Had an Abortion
You pick it
It’s the same story
Blah blah blah …
Another lesson in Jesus’ impossible teachings….
I’m not fond of this story
It’s a great Chicken Soup for the Soul story,
but it doesn’t move me
because it’s just too familiar
What does it have to do with real life?
Well, first of all, let’s ditch the title
There is no title to the story
when Jesus tells it
Jesus does not start off saying,
“I’m going to tell you the Good Samaritan story”
Someone else put the title in
and it stuck
The story is actually about a lawyer who comes to Jesus
You know the type
The kid in school who wanted to get As in everything
So he always did extra credit
always raised his hand in class
always had the right answer
Even though he was already getting an A,
He did all the essay questions at the end of the test
that gave him bonus points
So he could get an A-PLUS
Didn’t you hate that kid?
Well, our lawyer friend here is kind of like that
Tell me, Jesus, what can I do to get eternal life?
What can I do to get the grand prize?
To get the best grade in the class?
If I were Jesus,
I would’ve questioned his motives
I would have said, that’s not the point
You’re asking the wrong question
But Jesus wasn’t like that
Maybe inside he was rolling his eyes,
but outside, he said, ok…
What does it say in the law?
The lawyer was so excited
He knew the answer, he could impress the teacher
“I know that one! Love God with all your heart, mind, soul
and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Bingo!
Jesus smiled
“Yep, good answer. You got that right. Do it,
and you’ll be fine.”
Yeah, ok, the lawyer says,
I got that part,
but the part I’m stuck on is uh… well,
Who exactly is my neighbor?
Who do I have to be nice to?
I mean, you know, there’s some real jerks in this world
and there’s just some people I can’t stand, really,
so, who exactly would you say is technically my neighbor?
HMMM?
Again, Jesus refrains from rolling his eyes
“Ok, “ he said, “let me tell you a story.”
And at this point,
maybe the lawyer rolled HIS eyes
Looked at his watch, and thought, man, c’mon,
I just need an answer, I gotta get going…
Just give me the answer….
But instead, he sighed and listened as Jesus went on with the story
Maybe the lawyer laughed when Jesus got to the part
where the preacher and the Christian College professor
took one look at the guy in the ditch
and self-consciously cleared their throats
and pretended they didn’t see him
Conveniently shuffled over to the opposite sides of the street
Yeah, those preachers,
All talk and no action,
I got you, Jesus, they’re paid to be good
Just a bunch of hot air, those preachers…
They don’t have a clue, yeah, I get it….
Then Jesus talks about the Samaritan man
Which, I guess, would be to us,
Like Jesus mentioning an Iraqi or Iranian
Any Middle-Eastern person, for that matter,
especially a middle-Easterner who is a Muslim
The lawyer starts to get uncomfortable
As Jesus goes on with the details of the story
Perhaps he’s thinking to himself,
Yeah, liberal preacher, probably a Democrat
That’s why he tells the story that way …
And Jesus says at the end of the story
“Which of the three: the preacher, the Christian College professor,
or the middle eastern Muslim;
which of those three proved to be a good neighbor?’’
And the lawyer quietly says,
“The one who showed mercy.”
Go and do the same, Jesus said
But I expect by that time, the lawyer had lost all respect
for Jesus
deduced that he was just one of those radical liberals
with an agenda
and so he decided he didn’t need to take
Jesus seriously
It’s just another story, right?
It’s just another one of those impossible teachings
of Jesus,
And since it’s impossible to live up to,
then we can just ignore it..
The Samaritan was not necessarily good
He was good that day
He did what Jesus tells us to do
In that moment he was an example of Jesus’ teachings
We don’t know if he was good or not
That’s not the point
Peter Arnett, a reporter who used to be a commentator on CNN,
Once told a story
about a time he was in Israel, in a small town on the West Bank
A bomb went off
He saw bodies blown through the air
He saw the horror, the blood, the desperation and destruction
the chaos
He heard the screams of the wounded
Suddenly a man came running up to him
holding a bloodied girl in his arms
he pleaded with Arnett,
“please, mister, I can’t get her to a hospital!
The Israeli troops have sealed off the area
No one can get in or out, but you’re press
You can get through, they’ll let you through
Please help me get her to a hospital
If you don’t help me, she’ll die!”
Arnett told how he and the stranger put the girl in the car
got through the sealed area
and rushed the girl to a hospital in Jerusalem
The whole time they were hurtling through the streets
the man in the back seat, holding the girl,
kept pleading, “Can’t you go faster??
Please, we’re losing her! We’re losing her!”
When they finally got to the hospital,
the girl was rushed to the operating room
The two men were directed to the waiting room
and sat on the bench
Arnett tells of how he and the man just sat there in silence
too exhausted to even talk
After a short time, the doctor came out
And grimly told them, “she’s gone.”
The stranger collapsed in tears
while Arnett put his arms around him to comfort him
and said, “I don’t know what to say,
I can’t imagine what you’re going through.
I’ve never lost a child.”
The man stopped sobbing for a moment
and looked up at Arnett,
looking a bit startled
He said, “Mister, that Palestinian girl was not my daughter.
I’m an Israeli settler.
That Palestinian girl is not mine…
But sir,” he said,
“there comes a time when each of us
must realize that every child,
regardless of that child’s background,
is a daughter or a son.
We must begin to realize that we are all family….”
One of my favorite Christian writers and preachers
is Frederick Buechner
and Buechner says that we should keep track of the times
in our lives that bring tears to our eyes
The times that break through the hardness
and cause us to weep
Remember those times and places where you weep, he says,
And you will see the places in your life
where God is getting through to you….
We can be so hardened by life
You see the caregiver of someone with Alzheimer’s
Or someone who works hospice
Or in the trauma center of a hospital
And maybe they’ve developed thick skin
in order to do their job day after day without collapsing
Or maybe we get hardened because it just hurts too much to care
We’ve been at war for 4 years
We can’t stop the war
We can’t stop the chaos
We can’t cure cancer or AIDS
We don’t have all the answers to make everything better
and if we allow ourselves to care
to weep for the pain of the world,
we might be afraid that we’ll never stop crying
The lawyer wanted the answer from Jesus
Just tell me the right answer
tell me how I can inherit eternal life
Give me the answer, so I can go on
knowing that I’m ok
But to Jesus eternal life is not some pie in the sky reward
It’s not the goal
The goal of all of Jesus teachings ‘
is not simply to get into heaven
Do this or do that or don’t do that
and you’ll get on God’s good side
You’ll avoid the eternal flames of hell
To Jesus eternal life is something that starts NOW
It’s about being a part of God’s Kingdom NOW
as well as for all eternity
It’s about knowing the depth and breadth of God’s grace
of God’s love and peace and joy
even as we walk the lonesome valleys of this world
It’s about knowing the beauty of God’s spirit
of catching glimpses of heaven here and there
every day
Of sharing that beauty with others who get it
of knowing that special bond with people
who are also seeking God’s kingdom
It’s about the spirit that we share here together
Or in the fellowship hall
Or in the hospital room
Or at the graveside
It’s about the life that goes beyond this life
It’s about living with the vision of God’s Kingdom
always shining in our eyes
and giving us the strength and the hope
and the love to carry on
Even as war rages on
Even as we get a devastating prognosis
Even as we lose someone we can’t live without
Even if we don’t have all the right answers
What are those times in your life
that brings you to tears?
Whether its tears of joy or tears of sorrow?
Those are the moments when God gets through to us
Because if we’ve forgotten how to weep
we have forgotten how to feel, how to care
how to be connected
There’s no formula for eternal life
there’s no easy answers as to how to be the kind of person
Jesus wants us to be
You can’t just follow instructions
You have to follow JESUS,
and allow him to slowly transform your heart
and mind and soul
You may notice that compassionate people
tend to be the ones who have been there
People who have scars
People who have bled
People who have hit rock bottom
and who have been the recipients of mercy
and grace
When I’m the person laying in that ditch
bloody and beaten down by life
I don’t want someone who has all the answers to come
and help me
I want someone who’s been in the ditch themselves
I want someone who doesn’t know exactly
why we get beaten up,
why God lets us bleed sometimes
and why we sometimes find ourselves
face down in the ditch
I want someone who will hold my hand
let me weep
and not leave me alone through the night
someone who will remind me that God is with me
even in the bloody ditch
Someone told me the story of a little boy
at the end of Vacation Bible School
He’d made his mother a little ceramic tray
He’d worked on it all week
and he couldn’t wait to give it to her
So he ran down the hallway
when she came to pick him up that last day
and while he was running, he bumped into another little kid
and the ceramic tray went flying
It shattered into a million pieces on the floor
All the teachers and helpers
tried to console the little boy as he sobbed
over the shattered gift
the thing he’d wanted to give his mom
It was gone
Finally, his mother got to him
and put her arms around the crying boy
She said, “It’s ok. Let’s pick up all the pieces
and take them home.
We’ll put them together
and see what we can make out of it.”
And this person said to me
that God is like that mother,
God comes to us and takes up the offering
of our broken lives
and says to us, “let’s pick up the pieces
and work together
and see what we can make out of them.”
I understand the lawyer
I want all the answers
I want to know why…
I want it to all be rational and workable and
I want all the brokenness to be fix-able
But we know, don’t we,
that sometimes life can’t be fixed
sometimes we don’t have the answers to all the questions
Jesus’ teachings are hard
Impossible even, we can’t do it
We can’t love our enemies
We can’t strive for peace
We can’t love the people we don’t like
We can’t do all the radical things
Jesus calls us to – it’s IMPOSSIBLE
So I think we’re kind of like that poor guy
laying in the ditch, beaten and bloodied
We can’t help ourselves
We can’t get ourselves out of the ditch
and save our own lives
We have to admit
that we are powerless on our own
that the only way we can get a glimpse
A taste of the sweetness and depth and beauty
of God’s eternal life
of the life that begins right now
and will carry us through forever…
The only way we can even begin to see it
and to live it
is to let God have the pieces of our crazy, broken lives
All we can do, every day,
is to put those pieces in God’s hands
and say, “help. I can’t do it without you.”
And God in his radical, impossible mercy
recieves us, receives our broken offerings
and says, “let’s see what we can do
Let’s get together and see what we can make out of this.”
Because you know, in God’s neighborhood
All things are possible
All things are beautiful….
eternally beautiful.
