A sermon
preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 10 July 2016,
the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, by the Rev. Dr. Judy Chan. The scripture readings that day
were Luke 10:25-40
Good
morning. A month ago when
I checked the lectionary readings for July 10th, I found out the Gospel lesson was
the parable of the Good Samaritan. My initial reaction was – Oh good, there’s
plenty to say about that. Then later I began to panic a bit – Oh dear, what can
I say that hasn’t been said a million times already? In fact, I tried to
remember if I’ve ever preached on the Good Samaritan in my whole life. I can’t
remember, so I figured if I can’t remember, maybe you won’t either, and we just
start fresh.
Still, most
of us have heard a lot of sermons on this parable in Luke’s Gospel. It’s
familiar to those even outside the church. The term ‘Good Samaritan’ is popular
around the world. It describes kind people who come to the aid of a stranger in
distress. There are Good Samaritan hospitals, charities, missionary societies and even a Good Samaritan Donkey
Sanctuary in Australia. Yes, they take care of abused or neglected donkeys,
which is a nice extension of the Bible story, because animals can suffer trauma
just like humans.
But the focus of today’s story in Luke 10 is not the donkey. The focus
is on four characters – a man who was robbed and beaten on the road from
Jerusalem to Jericho, a priest who passes by the other side, an assistant
priest who also passes by the other side, and our Good Samaritan.
The moral of the story seems to be that we should care for those in need
no matter who they are. Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? So, we have to ask
ourselves, why did Jesus need to tell this parable in the first place? Wasn’t
it just common decency to help someone in obvious distress? Wasn’t he talking
to people of faith who naturally would help their fellow citizen or even a
stranger if it came down to that? Wasn’t he talking to good people like you and
me? So what are we supposed to learn?
To understand just how radical the parable of the Good Samaritan is, we
have to remember some of the details.
Jesus is responding to questions from a lawyer, an expert in religion.
The lawyer asked what must he do to inherit eternal life. And Jesus says, “You
tell me.” The lawyer answers, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
soul, strength and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.” “Good,” says
Jesus. “Do this and you will live.” But the lawyer can’t let go of it. He needs
to be sure, maybe about himself, maybe about Jesus. So he asks a follow up
question: “And who is my neighbor?”
It is in response to that question that Jesus tells the story of the
Good Samaritan. Now you remember for the Jews, there was no such thing as a
‘good’ Samaritan. They were all bad, theologically and politically, and no
self-respecting Jew would have anything to do with these sworn enemies of their
people. Even Jesus’ disciples felt the same way. So when Jesus starts telling a
tale of a poor man robbed and left half dead on a dangerous road, his listeners
are likely expecting the hero to be an ordinary Jewish layman. That’s the way
Jewish stories always went – a priest, a Levite and an Israelite. Imagine their
shock then when the worst person they could think of turns out to be the savior
of the day!
Do you see what Jesus is doing here? He’s taking the lawyer’s question
and turning it around. Instead of telling the lawyer who he has to love as much
as he loves himself, he tells the lawyer (and us) what that kind of love looks
like.
▪
A love that stops to help even when no one else
does.
▪
A love that is costly, not only in terms of time
and money, but personal safety.
▪
A love that promises to return again and again
until we are completely healed.
When Jesus puts it like that, we realize this ‘loving your neighbor’
business is a lot harder than we thought. And, you know, for the Samaritan it
was an even greater risk than for the priest or the Levite. In order for the
Samaritan to get this man to an inn, he’d have to go to Jericho, which is
Jewish territory. He could have been beaten up or even killed when he arrived
in town. In other words, the Samaritan put his own life on the line to care for
someone he didn’t even know, someone who might not even be thankful once he
found out who had rescued him.
That risk we take to love our neighbor still exists today. That’s why
some cities and countries have what are called “Good Samaritan” laws. These
laws protect ordinary citizens from being sued if something goes wrong when
they help a stranger during an emergency. Good Samaritan laws have been in
force in many Western countries, and more recently in mainland China because of
some famous or infamous cases. In one situation in Nanjing, a student who
helped an elderly woman in an accident was sued after she claimed he had
knocked her down on purpose. The facts in that case remain a bit unclear. In
another situation in Foshan, a two year girl was run over twice by vehicles in
a busy market area. 18 people walked past the dying toddler before someone ran
into the street to help her. When the others were asked why they didn’t stop to
help the poor child, their response? “I was afraid of getting into
trouble.”
I think fear is big part of what stops us from coming to the aid of a
stranger. Martin Luther King, Jr said the first thought that likely came to the
mind of the priest and Levite in Luke 10 was: “If I stop to help this man, what
will happen to me?” But the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the
question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to
him?" Dr. King applied the parable to the situation facing his own people
during the height of the Civil Rights movement in 1968. He was urging his
audience to support black sanitation workers on strike in Memphis by joining a
citywide work stoppage in protest. It was a dangerous thing to do. But Dr. King
challenged his listeners to seek the moral high ground. “That's the question
before you tonight,” he said. Not, ‘If I stop to help the sanitation workers,
what will happen to my job?’ Not, ‘If I stop to help the sanitation workers,
what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every
day and every week as a pastor?’ The question is not, ‘If I stop to help this
man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not
stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?"
If I do not stop to help, what will happen to them?
That’s the question at the heart of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
That’s our claim to the moral high ground. But, you know, even those who may
have written this parable on their heart might falter under certain
circumstances. I heard of a study carried out among theological students in the
1970s. Students at Princeton Seminary were paid a few US dollars each to participate.
They were gathered in a room and told their assignment was to prepare a short
talk on the Parable of the Good Samaritan. When it was time for each student to
go deliver the talk, the researcher said, “We’re a little short on space in
this building, so you have to go to the other side of the campus to record your
talk. But you don’t have much time. They’re waiting for you over there. Here’s
a map and good luck!” One by one, the aspiring preachers were sent out of the
building. But little did they know that the researchers had planted an actor in
the alley between the two locations. The person was dressed in shabby clothes,
slumped on the ground near a doorway, and obviously in some kind of distress.
Did our future men and women of the cloth take this opportunity to be a Good
Samaritan in real life?
I’m sorry to say, folks, most of the seminary students did not stop to
help. In fact, a few even were seen stepping over the man to get to their
appointment on time! Later the students were told what the experiment was
really about. Most of them were a bit embarrassed, but to their defense, they
said meeting the requirements of the test overwhelmed everything else. After
all, they were being paid and the researchers were counting on them. The study
concluded that thinking about the Good Samaritan didn’t appear to increase
helping behavior, but being in a hurry certainly decreased it!
So what are good people like you and me to do in this fearful, hurried
world we live in? Will we be the one who always stops when no one else does?
Will we be the first to sacrifice our time, money and personal safety when
someone needs help? Will we keep returning again and again no matter how bad
the situation is? It seems a lot to ask, doesn’t it?
If it makes you feel any better, Christians have always struggled to
live up to those demands in this parable. So maybe it helps to know how the
early Christians understood this story. By and large, those who converted to
the faith didn’t initially see themselves as the Good Samaritan. They saw
themselves instead as the wounded man, someone in such desperate straits that
if help hadn’t come, they surely would have died. Because that was their real
life experience.
You have to remember that the whole Mediterranean region where Christianity
was born constantly suffered from drought, famine, disease, war. There were
huge migrations of people going from rural areas to urban centers. If the
Church hadn’t been there saving Christians and non-Christians alike, many more
would have been left stripped, beaten and all dead by the roadside.
That’s why when the early Christians read this story, they saw Jesus as their Good Samaritan. He’s the
one who stopped when everyone else passed them by. He’s the one who sacrificed
everything so they might know God’s mercy. He’s the one who came and will
return again so they might inherit eternal life. And he does the same for you
and me today.
Rev. Luke Powery says, “It took the rule of mercy, not judgment to save
you and me. God’s mercy seasoned his justice, so that we might live to ‘go and
do likewise’, to extend the same mercy to others that’s been extended to us.” “The rule of mercy,” says
Powery, “not only keeps us neighborly… it
keeps us human, close to the ground like the naked and robbed man on the road …It
reminds us where we
have come from and to where we will go.”
May the Lord have mercy on us all.
I’d like to
close with a story that I may have told you before. As I mentioned at the
beginning, I can’t remember what I’ve said from one sermon to the next these
days. But I share this story because it can help us remember some very basic
things about our being God’s
Good Samaritan in this day and age.
There was an examination
given by a professor in a local university. I don’t know what class it was but
it must have been something like philosophy or religion, because the final test
had only three questions:
1. What is the most
important time?
2. Who is the most
important person?
3. What is the most
important work?
Can you imagine the poor
students who had to take this examination? How could the teacher grade it?
Wouldn’t there be as many answers as there were pupils? If the students had
ever taken a literature course, however,
they might have recognized
the questions were very close to the ones asked in a famous folktale by Russian
writer Leo Tolstoy. He poses three similar questions in his story of a king
searching for answers so he might never fail in anything he undertook.
The king offered a reward
to anyone who would teach him what was the right time for every action, who
were the most necessary people, and how he might know what was the most
important thing to do. All sorts of people tried to give him
answers, but the king wasn’t satisfied. So he went in search of a hermit who
was widely renowned for his wisdom.
The hermit lived in the
woods and would only allow common people to see him. So the king put on plain
clothes, left his bodyguards at the edge of the woods, and went to see the
hermit by himself. When he approached the hermit’s hut, he saw the old man
digging the ground in front of his house.
The old man greeted him and
kept right on digging. The king told him why he had come and asked the three
questions. No reply. The old hermit kept digging and looked tired. The king
offered to take over for a while. After several hours of both of them digging,
the king began to get impatient. “I came to you, wise man, for an answer to my
questions. If you can’t answer them, tell me so, and I’ll go home.”
Just then the hermit said,
“Here comes someone running. Let’s see who it is.” It turned out to be a
bearded man coming out of the woods with blood pouring out of his side. The
king promptly attended to him. He dressed his wound and carried the injured man
inside the hut. When the man was revived, he revealed himself as the king’s
enemy. He had planned to kill the king when he returned from visiting the
hermit.
But the king didn’t come
back as scheduled, and the man was discovered and wounded by the king’s
bodyguards. The man thanked the king for saving his life and asked to make
peace between them.
The king went back to the
hermit after this eventful day. He asked once more the three questions. “You
have already been answered,” said the hermit. “Do you not see?”
There is only one important
time – now! It’s the most important time because it’s the only time when we
have any power. The most necessary person is one you are with, for no one knows
whether he or she will have dealings with anyone else. And the most important
business? To do that person good, because for that purpose alone were we sent
into this life.
So the answer to the
examination questions:
The most important time –
now.
The most important person –
the one next to you.
The most important work –
the good deed right at your hand.
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, July 10, 2016
