The Eliot Church of Newton

World Communion Sunday
Texts: Psalm 8; Luke 10:25-37

I “went off lectionary” today, as us clergy types are wont to call
            our occasional liturgical deviations.
I chose for our Gospel text for this World Communion Sunday
            one of the best parables in the Bible: Jesus’ story of the “Good Samaritan”.

This Samaritan only appears in Luke’s Gospel, and because of the arrangement
      of the Lectionary of Sunday readings, that text usually only comes around
            once every three years, in the middle of July. 
Do you know how many people are here in church to hear it
      on a Sunday morning in the middle of July?   
We need to hear it more often!

The problem a preacher has with a great parable like this
      is that it’s a whole sermon unto itself.
It makes its point so graphically and so well,
      that any attempt to preach a sermon around it is almost redundant.

Still, there is much to be explored in this story
Perhaps the first thing to be said is that we need to shake off
      the very title of “the Good Samaritan”
Jesus never uses the term “Good Samaritan” and the Bible never mentions the phrase
      – it’s just the tag that generations of Christians have put on this parable.

For this lawyer, and for everyone in Jesus’ audience, a “good Samaritan”
      was about as huge a contradiction as one could get. It would have been an oxymoron.
I won’t go into all the ethnic animosity, prejudice and disdain
      between Samaritans and Jews in the ancient world,
            but suffice it to say that the phrase “a good Samaritan”
            made about as much sense as saying ‘an honest thief’, or ‘a gentle thug’,
                  or ‘a kind-hearted terrorist’.

So the lawyer asks his legalistic trick question: 
“Yes, I know God commands me to love my neighbor as myself,
      but tell me, just who is and who is not my neighbor. 
Who do I have to care about, and who can I ignore? 
Who must I love, and who can I hate?
Where is the boundary? 
Who is in and who is out of my neighborhood?”

And Jesus gives an answer that says “Boundary? Who said anything about a boundary? 
There are no borders to God’s neighborhood! There is no us or them.”
And then he tells the story of a Samaritan having compassion on a Jew,
      and literally saving his life.

I love the quote from William Sloane Coffin that is printed
      as a Thought for Reflection in today’s bulletin:
“It seems to me that in joining a church you leave home and home town
      to join a larger world. 
The whole world is your new neighborhood and all who dwell therein
      —black, white, yellow, red, stuffed and starving, smart and stupid, mighty and lowly,
            criminal and self-respecting, American or Russian
—all become your sisters and brothers in the new family formed in Jesus. 
By joining a church you declare your individuality in the most radical way
      in order to affirm community on the widest possible scale.”

Mother Teresa of Calcutta said it this way:
      “Because we cannot see Christ, we cannot express our love to him;
            but our neighbors we can always see, and we can do to them what,
                  if we saw him, we would like to do to Christ.
      Here in the slums, in the broken body, in the children, we see Christ and we touch him.”

The contemporary Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether said it this way:
"Religious convictions that don't express themselves in working for justice
are not religious convictions."

This is love in the doing. 
      Not love as a feeling, not love as fervor of ecstasy, or a statement of conviction. 
Is there a person in need? There is your neighbor.
Is there someone who has been abused, taken advantage of, beaten down?
There is your neighbor.
Is there someone who has been left abandoned, uncared for, neglected or avoided?
There is your neighbor.
Is there someone who has been maligned, despised, caricatured, and rejected?
There is your neighbor.

Is there someone who needs to be taken to an inn, a house of healing,
      maybe even invited to your church, so they can be bathed in the love of God,
            and meet the people of God?
There is your neighbor.

Your neighbor may be that pleasant, perky PTO parent down the block,
      or the pal at work that you like to hang out with at lunch time.

But of course, your neighbors aren’t always the pretty people, or the polite people,
      or the friendly, helpful neighbors. 
Sometimes, their friendless, helpless neighbors.
Sometimes, it’s the very character and condition of that neighbor
      that makes this commandment so difficult. 
We all remember that famous Charles Schultz quote from Peanuts years ago: 
      “I love mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.” 
But this is love for the particular, individual neighbor: 
      The co-worker, the employee (and the employer) the janitor, the teenager,
            the homeless, the stranger, the immigrant, the alien, even the enemy. 
And it isn’t always easy,
      But it is always the ultimate test of holiness, and always will be.

A few years ago, as part of the summer poetry sermon series. 
      I came across a poet’s meditation on this text, and I offer it to you now.
It is by Boston author Linda Dini Jenkins, and appears in her book
      “Journey of a Returning Christian.” and it’s titled “Go and Do the Same”

I think if there were mountains or a desert
or a narrow dirt road...

If there were people in muslin cloaks
and leather thongs...

A shepherd with his sheep…

Then the man with his hand out, hair a mess,
trousers torn, smelling like landfill,
would be easier to help.  More in context.
Closer to a miracle,
perhaps, than this man at a city crossroads
coming at you with angry words, jabbing
his dirty finger in your back, following you
down the street, shouting, telling you to have
a good day, anyway, God bless you, anyway, in a way
that makes you feel like dirt.

In the shadow of a church on the corner, you might
close your eyes or look down or walk a little faster
or maybe even cross the street to get away, like
the priest did, and the Levite did, long ago on
the road to Jericho. You might even ask yourself ‘Is he my neighbor?’

Some nights in the shadow of the church on the corner
there is a woman sitting on a sidewalk with a handmade
sign that says "Hungry senior," but she looks hard, like no
one's grandmother, and you don't know what to believe
so you pretend not to see. You don't know what to believe
but if you were brought up to believe anything at all, you
just wish this would go away.

Wish she didn't have to sit there, wish she didn't look
the way she did. wish you didn't hear that muffled bit
of confrontation, hope you can move fast enough, avoid
their eyes. You regret not having stayed at the office
longer or not coming out of the subway on the other
side of the street.

What shall we do to inherit eternal life?
Like the lawyer, we know the words to the answer.
We know what the Samaritan did. We know
about mercy. But who is our neighbor today? The
drunk, the lame, the crazy, the mothers, the addicts,
the children, the homeless, the hungry: the veterans, the
ill, the lazy: the conners, the criminals, the weak, the poor,
the honest ones down on their luck?

There is a story about a man who picked up a hitchhiker
somewhere in the middle of winter and, when he saw
how cold he was, the man pulled into a parking lot,
went into a store, and bought the hitchhiker a coat.
He would have given him the coat off his back if
he'd owned one at the time. The driver
was my husband. I was angry.
A kindness could kill you today.

I think if there were mountains or a desert
or a narrow dirt road ....

A rural path somehow feels safer than these city streets.

For now, I will try to stay
on the side of the street
where the need is.
I will try to consider it holy.
I will try to find the courage to care.