Luke 10:25-37
2nd
Sunday after Epiphany
Elizabeth M. Deibert
January 20, 2013
In 1964, in
a sermon entitled, “Who is My Neighbor?” preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church in
Atlanta, King discerned a philosophy or motivating principle expressed in the
actions of three sets of the parable’s characters – the robbers, the religious
professionals, and the merciful stranger. He said, "Everyone within the sound of
my voice today lives by one of these three philosophies." I believe the same is still true today. Let us pray silently for God’s Spirit to
illumine us as we hear this familiar parable…..
Luke 10:25-37
25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.
"Teacher," he said,
"what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
26 He said to him, "What is written in the law?
What do you read there?"
27 He answered, "You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind;
and your neighbor as yourself."
28 And he said to him, "You have given the right
answer; do this, and you will live."
29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus,
"And who is my neighbor?"
30 Jesus replied, "A man was going down from
Jerusalem to Jericho,
and fell into the hands of robbers,
who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.
31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road;
and when he saw him,
he passed by on the other side.
32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place
and saw him,
passed by on the other side.
33 But a Samaritan while traveling came near him;
and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.
34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having
poured oil and wine on them.
Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of
him.
35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to
the innkeeper, and said,
'Take care of him; and when I come back,
I will repay you whatever more you spend.'
36 Which of these three, do you think,
was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"
37 He said, "The one who showed him mercy."
Jesus said to him, "Go and do
likewise."
I was in my car searching for a parking place at Publix this week when a
woman tripped over her own flip flops, and landed on the pavement. It was hard to tell whether she had sprained
her ankle, skinned her knees, or broken a wrist at first. Several of us came running. It was easy to help. But we were not Good Samaritans, because
Good Samaritans have to risk more than we did. When we were traveling to N. Carolina over
the Christmas holidays, we came to an intersection near Ocala, where we take
Hwy 301, and there are usually people there asking for money. I often hand a dollar to folks like
that. You may believe you are
contributing to a system of workers or to a problem of substance abuse. But the point is, my helping with a dollar
or a granola bar in that circumstance is not really being a Good Samaritan
either. Giving a little something is
no real sacrifice. No, we have
domesticated the story too much when we make those comparisons.
Let’s consider MLK’s interpretation.
After all, by championing a peaceful but demanding approach to civil
rights for African Americans, he made many sacrifices and finally the ultimate
one – his life. King looks at the
parable from the perspective of three different character groups.
First, the robbers.
Predatory
behavior has bedeviled human history, and King gave a number of examples
ancient and modern: slavery, colonialism, street crime, even preachers’ playing
on people's religious desires in order to line their pockets. King’s fury was
evident as he recited again and again the robber’s credo: "What is thine
is MINE! And if you don’t give it to me, I’ll take it from you."
Second, the
religious authorities.
The priest
and the Levite evoke some sympathy. Not only does King understand something
about religious professionals, they seem to have very ordinary motivations. The
Jericho road through the Judean wilderness was known for its dangers. Are the
robbers still near? Is this a trap? If they touch the man, whether he is dead
or alive, they will become unclean and thus unfit for their duties at the end
of their journey.
And if the
man is dead already, what sense is there in stopping? All this is very understandable and makes
great sense. "And so the first question that the priest asked, the first
question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will
happen to me?" (King, April 3, 1968).
We know this
philosophy, this way of living. Yet King indicts this attitude of cautious
self-preservation, using Biblical stories, including his favorite parable of
the rich man and Lazarus. (King inherited much of his thinking on this parable
from the great preacher Vernon Johns, his predecessor at Montgomery’s Dexter
Avenue Baptist Church.) It was not his wealth
which sent the rich man to hell, but his failure to see the plight of his
neighbor Lazarus, whom he passed by every day.
Whether
unconscious or studied, indifference to the needs of our neighbors fixes a
great gulf between us and our neighbor, and thus between us and God. King
expressed this as the working out of a familiar idea: “What is mine is mine,
and what is thine is thine.” This
country was founded on the good principles of individual rights, but sometimes
individualism can be taken too far.
The Peace
Movie Night had many of us weeping at the end of a poignant film about the life
of an Hispanic immigrant and his 14 year old son, born in the USA. The power of the film was in cultivating
compassion for the struggle of this good-hearted, hard-working,
well-intentioned man who was just trying to give his boy a better life. It is easy for those of who are middle
class citizens of the USA to forget how hard it is for some of our neighbors,
the ones who do the landscaping work in our neighborhoods and who pick our
fruit and vegetables and work in our poultry plants, it is easy to forget how
hard their lives can be. That tendency
to think that I get mine and you get yours is sometimes lacking in compassion
for those who never had a good starting place in life, but get stuck playing
catch up and the American Dream seems always beyond their reach.
Finally, we
consider the character of the unlikely good neighbor. You know the lawyer wanted Jesus to define
who is the neighbor whom I must love as I love myself. But Jesus turned that question on its head
by defining what it means to be a good neighbor. He
does so using the example of a generous, merciful act done by one not
ordinarily trusted, one seen as unclean, unworthy.
Of course,
the parable makes clear that the Samaritan, the one who does not pass by, the
one who risks himself and gives of himself, is the true neighbor of the wounded
traveler. King, noting that the
merciful stranger was of a different race, or at least was of a less
respectable, less trusted ethnic group than the wounded traveler, also notes
that he lives by a different principle from that of the robber or the
passersby. This Samaritan, this good neighbor has somehow come to know that
"What is mine is thine." The
Samaritan understands that "all humanity is tied together." Neither
predators nor passersby can be safe in a world where misery, famine, plague,
and hatred are the scourge of millions. These ills are contagious, you know...
"[The
one] who lives by this philosophy lives in the kingdom [of heaven] NOW!",
not in some distant day to come. This is the witness of Jesus, "who said
in his own life 'what is mine is thine, I’ll give it to you, you don’t have to
beg me for it.'
This is why
the cross is more than some meaningless drama taking place on the stage of
history. In a real sense, it is a telescope through which we look out into the
long vista of eternity and see the love of God breaking forth in the night....
It is God saying 'I will reach out and bridge the gulf that separates me from
you.'"
For King,
the Samaritan neighbor has flipped the implicit question asked by the passersby
(what will happen to me if I help?) and acts on the question "what will
happen to the wounded stranger if I don’t help?" It is this, and his
effective action to render aid, take the wounded traveler to safety, and
subsidize his treatment that makes the Samaritan a good neighbor.
But there is
one more point that King makes about this parable that is worth our time. We might call it the “Good Neighbor”
philosophy, or a God’s eye view.
King said of
his trip to the Holy Lands, "I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in
Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as
soon as we got on that road I said to my wife, 'I can see why Jesus used this
as the setting for his parable.' It's a winding, meandering road. It's really
conducive for ambushing. [The road descends nearly 3000 feet in elevation over
only 20 miles between Jerusalem and Jericho.] That's a dangerous road. In the
days of Jesus it came to be known as the 'Bloody Pass'" (King, April 3,
1968). King understood dangerous roads,
like the one from Selma to Montgomery, like all the paths to economic health,
civil rights, and justice for those who are on the margins of society. And his Christian faith led him to challenge
the social relationships and assumptions about social structure which separated
people from each other.
"A true
revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of
many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play
the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act.
One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so
that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their
journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a
beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs
restructuring" (King, April 4, 1967).
There are
many ways to improve the Jericho Road. One is to send Good Samaritans down it
to rescue those in trouble. Another might be better policing to protect
travelers. Another might fund a public works project to straighten out some of
the most dangerous spots. And still another might be the transformation of
society such that fewer people are tempted to become robbers. But it all begins by having God change our
minds about who is valuable in this world.
The calling
to be a good neighbor can mean a personal and collective effort at transforming
a society such that compassion is cultivated in all people for
all people -- the people who are different from you, the people who scare you,
the people who look down on you, the people who challenge your way of
thinking. At a church named Peace, I
hope we will always make an extra effort in a polarized culture to creatively cultivate
compassion which crosses over the chasms of our differences so that we may
truly care for others by suffering with them.
Thank you for all your acts of compassion toward the Deibert family in
the last two weeks. We are grateful to
have such good neighbors, people who share with us the love of Christ.
Let us now
pray as we sing the folk song from Ghana, a country on the east coast of
Africa, not far from Mali and Algeria, where
prayers for peace are needed.
Jesu, Jesu, Fill us with your love, show us how to serve the neighbors
we have from you.
All the references to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s
perspective on this parable are borrowed from Paul Bellan-Boyer at http://citycalledheaven.org/2010/07/martin-luther-king-and-good-samaritan.html
