Sermons are way better to listen to...and it will probably take you the same amount of time to listen!
Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from the Holy Trinity. Amen.
Today we read the parable of the Good Samaritan, possibly the most popular, or at least the most familiar parable that Jesus ever told.
Which makes it tempting to preach on the other readings, since this story of the Good Samaratin is so woven into our cultural fabric, into our cliches, and into the aisles of Hallmark, Precious Moments stores, and those Willow Tree Angel figurines. The town I grew up in is pretty famous for its Christmas light displays and one house had an elaborate display of moving lights and a story that you could listen to as you watched the lights change by tuning your car radio to a specific frequency. It was the story of the Good Samaritan, surrounded on both ends by the birth of Jesus...essentially telling us by the ending line of the script that Jesus was our good samaritan, and would help us with all our woes. It was schmaltzy to say the least.
So the Good Samaritan isn’t exactly that revolutionary of a story...since it is a story about doing good things for other people.
And it has spawned a lot of good – or at least the term Good Samaritan has been adopted by organizations that have done a lot of Good....there are Good Samaritan laws which protect caregivers from lawsuits, there are Good Samaritan hospitals, which do a lot of work for medically underprivileged folks. There are Samaritan houses which are shelters for folks who don’t have homes of their own. I even saw on Google that there is a Good Samaritan pet shelter for furry friends who find themselves lost on the side of the road.
I don’t want to belittle this work, because it is indeed work that is worthy of praise and support, and I don’t at all want to say that this is an incorrect understanding of this parable. It’s just that Jesus doesn’t tell the story of the Good Samaritan in order to say that to inherit eternal life is to do good. He tell this story in response to the question, “who is my neighbor?”
So, Jesus’ answer to the question who is our neighbor was pretty revolutionary at the time...it meant that your neighbor wasn’t just those in your own community, but your neighbor was simply anyone who wasn’t yourself. People you love and people you hate. It still means that, and it still is pretty revolutionary. I’d much rather stay at home with a glass of wine and a good book than go out and risk finding a connection with the person who has exactly all the opposite beliefs from me. And yet, Jesus calls us to love our neighbor, which for me probably especially means that I need to work on my relationship with the GOP.
But, this week, as I was reading the story of the Good Samaritan, a story of how a guy gets beaten up and left for dead on the side of the road while a priest and a holy man walk past because they can’t be bothered with helping him, before a foreigner finally helps the guy out by taking him to an inn and pays for all of his medical expenses, it dawned on me that maybe this story is ALSO about something else besides just doing good things for people you’d rather see suffer...or just ignore all together.
And the beauty with parables is that you get to put yourself somewhere in the story, and I didn’t want to put myself in the shoes of the good samaritan because I’ve heard enough sermons in my life about how this story means I need to go do more things for other people and how bad I am at loving my neighbor that I didn’t want to subject you to the same thing...so that left me with the innkeeper who was paid to help him, the priest and holy man that couldn’t be bothered, the robbers who beat the guy up in the first place, or the man on the side of the road.
And after thinking about myself in each of these positions, I realized that I at times play the role of each one, but found myself drawn to the story of the man who was left by the side of the road, beaten, and left for dead.
I’m not attempting to glorify suffering, or any stupid thing like that, but I feel like being left on the side of the road might be a pretty common feeling. Maybe sometimes you feel like you’re the beaten man by Churches that have forced you to do all the work and you got burnt out. Or by parents that have literally kicked you out of the house and cut you off because you came out. Or by people who have bullied you into not speaking out on Facebook, or in real life. Or by bosses who give you unfair performance evaluations.
But, I know for me, when other people lay into me, I am able to bounce back up, with the help of the friends, therapists, and family members...who help me to get back on my feet, psychologically, and move on without too much lasting damage or regret or fear of the person who hurt me. But that is where I EXPECT that help to come from.
I wonder if the man in the story expected the priest and the holy man to help him. Since they were supposed to be people who were good and followed the law, and presumably would have compassion...and that's what priests are for, right?
I had written earlier this week that it was difficult to understand exactly what Samaritans were like in the first century...but I think that is untrue. Samaritans, like black kids who walk down the streets of white neighborhoods at night, were subjected to false stereotypes, stereotypes that placed them outside the circles of compassion and kept them there. Samaritans were the people you didn’t want to hang around with because they were different, the people that, as they were walking toward you on the same sidewalk, made you cross the street...and you certainly wouldn’t expect Samaritans to help you at all.
And yet, that is who helped the man on the side of the road. The unexpected person, the man who no one would imagine would help a local. The grace that the beaten man received came from the last person he would have expected.
Which is the nature of grace, isn't it? Sometimes grace comes from the most unexpected places, instead of the places we want it to come from. Maybe you expect help to come in the form of everyone living up to your high standards...but then it comes when the world doesn’t end when you fail at something. Maybe you expect help to come from a church that won't let you down and won't disappoint you....but it really comes when you are forgiven by passing the peace with the person you resent. Maybe you expect help to come in the form of everyone loving you and thinking you are put together and successful...but it really comes when you are loved for who you really, really are instead of for some shiny improved version of yourself.
Maybe the surprise of grace is finally just hearing the voice of God saying "you are worthy of being loved and I will walk through the darkest parts of your life with you so you don't have to do it alone"...instead of running to the fridge when no one is watching or the boyfriend who won’t love you well, or the ‘emergency cigarette’ pack that is your third one this week. Maybe grace looks like eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ and being transformed and feeling something change in you....instead of trying to take on the whole world on your own, discounting that you are created and loved, in the image of God.
You see, the thing about grace is....it often doesn't look like what we want or expect it to look like. Which is good, because if grace looked like perfect churches, or our own willpower, or other people doing exactly what we want them to do, the world would be less like the kingdom of God and more like the kingdom of us. Instead, in spite of our expectations for what grace looks like, grace ends up often being like the Samaritan: exactly the opposite of what we are hoping for, and yet more freeing than we could ever imagine. Amen.
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