GO AND DO LIKEWISE
Scripture: Luke 10:25-37
FOCUS: We are called to so live that our life honors God and treats all others as neighbors.

It is a story most of us have heard and pondered more times than we can count. It  is so well know that it has even lent its name to the world’s largest camping club, the Good Sam Club, whose logo is a grinning camper wearing a halo. The media regularly use the term to speak of those who have done good deeds in the community. When others do good things for us or those we know we often speak of them as Good Samaritans. I did a Google search for “Good Samaritan organizations” and got nearly three million results. Everybody knows this is a parable about doing good. While doing good is certainly one of the important messages imbedded in this tale,  it has much more to offer. If we take time to dig a bit deeper we find new meaning. This morning I want us to dig. I want us to go beneath the surface. But I warn you, when you go digging you sometimes uncover stuff that you would just as soon leave buried, sometimes you even uncover junk you have buried yourself.

Sometimes knowing the right answer is simply not enough. Take for example “Do you know how fast you were going?” As some of us know from experience, in such situations having the right answer is not going to help us avoid being ticketed. Knowing we were going over the speed limit does not excuse our behavior, especially not in the eyes of the officer. Knowing we have been found lacking we may seek to make excuses. I’m running late for an appointment. Or, I’m a pastor and I’m on my way to the hospital. That one gets used a lot, even when we may only be going by the hospital on our way elsewhere.

The lawyer in today’s lesson knew the right answer to the question he would ask. Perhaps he went to Jesus to confirm his thinking concerning kingdom living, but likely also hoping to find a way around the parts of the truth he didn’t like. Isn’t that human nature? Isn’t that the American way? We know we have been speeding, but we seek to make excuses and try to avoid the consequences. We live unhealthy life styles and hope we can find some magic potion or easy plan which will rescue us over night from our poor decisions. We live beyond our means and then turn to unscrupulous schemes which claim to help us avoid paying all that we owe. We get stuck in a class where the instructor expects an extraordinarily high level of performance and expect him to scale the grades when we fail to properly prepare.

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The lawyer knew the correct answer. It was his job to know. What is often lost in our reading of passages which speak of lawyers is the fact that in Jesus’ day lawyers were not primarily experts in matters of political or civic affairs, rather they were those who were charged with interpreting God’s law. Chances are the lawyer had been asked the very same question by some of the good folk at his church. Jesus did what Jesus was accomplished at doing. He answered what was at least in part a loaded question with a question of his own. “Hey, you are the lawyer here, you know it all backwards and forwards, what does God’s law say?”  

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” In the Message we read, “love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence - and love your neighbor as well as you do yourself."

 “You are right on target.” Jesus replied. “Just do that and you will be OK! You will live” Notice that Jesus did not say “Do that and you will get eternal life.” he simply said “You will live.” The message here is not only that by living lives of love we will gain eternal salvation but also that by so doing we will gain real, meaningful, spiritual life, here and now.

That lawyer fellow recognized what we must all confront. It may be a simple and easy statement, but the living out of that affirmation is anything but easy or simple. Knowing he falls short the lawyer does what most of us would have done. He seeks to justify his failure, seeks to make excuses, looks for a way out. I suspect he knew the answer to his next questions as well, but he had to ask.

“Well tell me Jesus, who is my neighbor?” The parable we have read this morning is Jesus’ response. And the response was not what the lawyer hoped to hear. Further, the answer was a blistering indictment of the religious establishment of which he was an integral part.

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a dangerous path, frequently the scene of horrific and brutal crime. There were large rock formations all along the way which were ideal spots from which to launch ambush attacks. And one of the favorite tricks of the criminal trade involved setting up unsuspecting and kind folks by planting one of their number along the way disguised as a victim. Then when well meaning travelers stopped to help the rest of the gang would spring into action.

It would not be unusual along the road to Jericho for good folk to avoid those lying beside the road. Like many of us who hesitate to pick up hitchhikers for fear that by so doing we might be putting ourselves in harm’s way, it was easy, even logical to simply pass by on the other side. And for the priest and the Levite there were other excuses, places to be, and the fact that if the victim were dead to have touched him would have rendered them ritually unclean, unable to perform their religious duties for seven days.

So the good church folk passed by one of their own concerned, not without good reason, for their own welfare. Then, along comes one the two clerics, and probably the victim they passed by would have avoided like the plague had they met him on the road. Jews had no use for Samaritans. But it was this outsider who was moved to compassionate care. There, lying in a ditch by the side of the road, an innocent victim discovered who his real neighbor was. It wasn’t the priest from his temple, it wasn’t the Levite who sought to keep his flock in line by quoting scripture, it was the hated foreigner, the outcast, who dared chance the consequences of loving a nameless neighbor. That is often the way life plays out. It is when we find ourselves lying in one of life’s ditches that we discover who our real neighbors are. And they are often not the folks we would have chosen on our own.   

Jesus says to the lawyer, “You have heard the story. Now which of the three was a neighbor to the man who was the victim of thieves?” Notice the lawyer couldn’t bring himself to fully identify the neighbor. Just wasn’t in him to speak favorably of a Samaritan, so he simply said, “The one who had mercy on him.”          

A lawyer came to Jesus. He, like the Levite and the priest was a religious leader, professional clergy so to speak. All three of the Jewish characters in this scripture were folk committed full time to religious pursuits. All three were those who, in theory, should have understood what God expects more fully than the average Jew. Yet we discover that in this story not only was it an ordinary lay person who understand God’s will better than the religious establishment, it is a dreaded Samaritan layman, one who in the eyes of the lawyer, the priest, the Levite was, by birth, a heathen.

As we listen to Jesus tell this tale we are called to recognize more than a good deed done by a surprising hero. We are called to ponder the danger of being religious folk. The lawyer was a well respected authority in religious matters, the priest prided himself on his calling, the Levite considered himself to be especially privileged and chosen of God. No question about it these were three religious guys. But Jesus was far more interested in spirituality than in religion.

So what is the difference? We often use the terms interchangeably. We speak of religious folks. We applaud their spirituality. Now I am convinced that we can never be truly spiritual without being religious, but I suspect all of us know folks who are religious without being truly spiritual. The fact that we are here today means we are most likely religious or at least more than mildly interested in things religious. Religion is about creeds, theology, rules and tradition. Such things are important, that is why we are spending the next couple of months exploring what it means to be United Methodist Christians in the Wesleyan Sunday School class. But religion is a means to an end, not a destination.

We are called to be religious folk in order to nurture true spirituality. It is interesting that we all know today’s parable as the tale of the Good Samaritan. Scripture doesn’t use that term. Jesus neither calls the Samaritan good nor the Jewish trio bad.  The contrast in this tale is not between good and bad rather between those for whom religion was primary and one for whom spirituality set the course. The inference is that the priest and the Levite passed by out of fear combined with a genuine concern for the law and perhaps for their temple responsibilities. I can hear the Levite saying, “Oh poor guy, there but for the grace of God go I. Surely there will be a patrol car to come by soon. I’ll pray for this guy as I head to Jericho, but a religious guy like me knows better than to help him out for to do so would require that I touch him, and then if I find out he is already dead I would be made unclean and couldn’t be about my work for a week.”  

Perhaps the priest was on his way to lead a revival in the neighboring town of Jericho. I imagine him thinking that he feels for the one on the side of the road, but he also fears that this might be a set up. Besides, there were folks expecting him. The covered dish dinner would be waiting, the people were anticipating his sermon, and it was one of his best if he did say so himself. So he addresses the unfortunate soul as he walks by, “God bless you brother, the Lord will take care of you.”

We don’t know much about the Samaritan, only his ethnicity. Implied in that however is the notion that his religion would not be acceptable to any good Jew. He worshipped in a temple which good Jews considered to be unworthy, simply because it was not in Jerusalem. His interpretation of scripture would not have matched the Levite’s. His notion of what it means to obey Mosaic Law would probably have been called radical by the priest. In the eyes of the good lawyer he would certainly have been deemed to insufficiently religious. But this is not a parable about being religious, it is all about being spiritual.

Spirituality is concerned with more than rules, more than theology. True spirituality is being led by God’s Spirit and living in such a way that we reflect God’s love and grace. It is about moving from lives marked by self-preoccupation, even with good things, to lives marked by a profound concern for others and for matters of God’s kingdom. In general it is a good thing for priests and preachers to be diligent in their efforts to be present and on time for services of worship. In general it is a good thing to be concerned about following the traditions and customs of our faith. But when schedules trump compassion, when following the rules blinds us to human need we may still be deeply religious, but our spirituality is sadly lacking.

We hear a good bit these days about things holistic. There is holistic medicine, holistic diets, holistic life style. I think Jesus would approve, for he was absolutely holistic in everything he did and in all that he taught. We tend to be fractured folk. We live far too much of the time in the world of black and white. We fail to recognize that there may well be value on both sides of a good many of life’s proverbial coins.

It is important to note the context for the parable we have explored this morning. Immediately before Jesus is encountered by the lawyer we find seventy folk he sent out into the world to minister coming to him and reporting that they have been wildly successful in bring folks into the fold, in reaping a harvest for the kingdom. Then we have this story which might seem to imply that what matters most is taking care of the physical needs of our neighbors. But read on and immediately following the parable we find the encounter of Jesus with Mary and Martha. Remember what happened? Martha was frantically slaving away in the kitchen working to preparing a fine meal for their guest. She was furious with her sister Mary who had left all the work to her. Mary was not lifting a finger, rather she was sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to what he had to say, learning from him of matters of the kingdom. But Jesus tells Martha that Mary has paid attention to what is most important that day.

Taken as a whole the tenth chapter of Luke paints a holistic picture of what it means to be true citizens of the kingdom, to be genuinely spiritual. It is a reminder that the choice we must make is not whether to endorse the social gospel or the evangelistic gospel, not whether we are called to serve or to sit at Jesus feet. As we were reminded several weeks ago the choice we have before us is the one posed by Joshua to a people who were confused and seeking to serve both God and pagan deities. “Chose this day whom you will serve.” Joshua said.

Jesus made it clear by his life and ministry that we are called to embrace neither a social gospel nor an evangelical one. We are called to a holistic faith, a complete spirituality which is both socially oriented and evangelical, which seeks to mend both broken lives and wounded spirits. We are called to live lives which seek out ways to serve both friend and foe alike, recognizing that all are our neighbors, while also making time to sit quietly and to listen attentively for the voice of God.