Year C

Proper 10 Luke 10:25:37

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

True Love Is Found on the Road

A few years ago, when I was 9 or 10 years old, and we were stationed in Paris, France, we were driving to the Army base one day in our rambler station wagon that my father had shipped over from the states, when we came upon a man who had been thrown off his moped motor cycle into a jagged rock wall. My father, a nurse anesthetist, stopped to offer help. I remember this man was bleeding very badly and all we had with us was a towel that my father used to help stop the bleeding until an ambulance got there. My mother tried to keep me and my brothers from looking out the back window but I saw enough that it made an impression on me. My father stayed by this mans side until he was inside the ambulance which was good because I don’t remember any other people stopping to offer help. At some point later on upon hearing today’s gospel text, the very familiar story or parable of the Good Samaritan, I realized my father was a Good Samaritan that day and on other days as he was called to help his neighbor on many occasions.

There are probably not many of us here this morning that have not been helped at some time in our life by a Good Samaritan, or have been the Good Samaritan for someone else. Thank God for Good Samaritans because without them there would be less compassion, less love in the world. Compassion means to ‘suffer with’. It is the feeling of being touched by the pain of another, and it often leads us to help another. What really counts in moments of pain and suffering is someone touched by our pain and stays with us. Compassion is you and I at our best being good neighbors to those in need. Our example is the God we love and serve who is a compassionate God and the mystery of God’s compassion becomes visible in the stories of the Gospels.

When Jesus saw the crowd harassed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd he felt with them in the center of his being. When he saw the blind, the paralyzed and the deaf being brought to him from all directions; he trembled from within and experienced their pains in his own heart. When he noticed that the thousands who had followed him for days were tired and hungry, he said, I am moved with compassion. But the greatest mystery revealed to us in this, is that Jesus chose in total freedom to suffer fully our pains on the cross and thus to let us discover the true nature of our own passions. In him, we see and experience the people we truly are and the way we are to live our lives with a compassion that demands love for others.

I am pretty sure it was out of love that Jesus took time to try to set the lawyer right in our gospel text today. Jesus has set his face to Jerusalem when he meets this scholar of the law who asks him a key question: what must I do to inherit eternal life? He responds to the lawyer who would already know the answer by asking him a question, “What is written in the law? The lawyer then quotes the law. The law is the means by which he knows and loves God and his neighbor. He understands the law as gospel. This prompts Jesus to tell the lawyer a story, a story of the gospel as law. With a parable Jesus seeks to reorient this man’s understand that eternal life is not a law, it is a way of life, a process, a journey. It is a journey of loving God and neighbor. We begin this journey of eternal life when we accept Christ into our lives. God becomes a part of our very being and in our actions with our neighbors.

To the question: who is our neighbor? Our neighbor is anyone in need and when touched by their need and act on their behalf, Jesus says, there eternal life is found. God is there. God is in our actions.     The lawyer wanted to define who deserved his love, but this parable suggests that love seeks out neighbors to receive compassion and care, even when established boundaries or prejudices conspire against it. For Jesus’ listeners that day, the Samaritan, was an enemy, and would not have been seen as anyone with the potential to become a hero, let alone someone whose actions would illustrate the kingdom of God. So how ironic that one of “them” ministered to the man, and in the middle of this ironical stuff, Jesus says, you find the Kingdom! Be careful who you hate. That very one may turn out to be the one who saves your life.

We live in a world where there has always been fear of “them”. Our fears tempt us to see people who are different then us as threats. This past week among many we saw this fear raise its ugly head. In a world of hierarchy, classes, races, and tribes, Jesus encourages us to question what the world holds in highest esteem and to look at what the world regards as shameful and lowest in order to find the kingdom of God. The lawyer learns about genuine love from the deeds of one whom he regards as his enemy. The question is not, “Is such and such a person worthy of my love?” but rather, “Am I willing to take what I have, what I know, and what I can do and place all this at the disposal of another person’s needs or growth? Yet, this is challenging for us. What keeps us from loving God with heart, mind, soul and strength and neighbor as self?
In terms of the parable, why was it the Samaritan, not the priest or Levite, who stopped to help the stricken man? There could have been several reasons. It could have been a matter of courage or fear. Fear does cast out love. It has a way of contracting our vision to ourselves and ourselves alone. On the other hand, love is what enables us to cast out fear and create courage. Paul Tillich, theologian and scholar claimed that courage was the foundational virtue, and that we are not likely to get very far in loving God, neighbor, or ourselves unless we are empowered by courage. Whatever the reasons the main point of the parable is; “To love God is to love neighbor is to love God.  This ongoing flow of love allows eternal life to begin even now, as the parable confirms. The power of this parable does not end there, for as we begin to imagine its larger meaning, we can’t help but place ourselves in the ditch as the victim who is at the mercy of the very outsider who has been rejected.

This story is a scriptural GPS, routing us in the only direction God desires—the way of love and compassion for others. I never thought to ask my father before he died, why he stopped that day to help the stranger who was hurt probably because, I already knew my father as a helping person who had compassion for others. I’m glad he did because it made a lasting impression on my life. His actions and the Good Samaritans pointed to the role of Christ himself. Therefore, take time to remember and give thanks for the Good Samaritans in your life. Then “Go and do likewise, Jesus said” Have courage, show love for God and neighbor, then you will know fullness of life, eternal life, here, now, and forever more.