Luke 10:25-37
Laura Collins
July 11, 2004
Did you hear about the guy a few weeks ago who had just gotten off the metro and was walking home? Apparently, he was coming from a morning spent helping to build on a new Habitat for Humanity house. He was that kind of guy – good citizen, nice family here in Takoma Park, member of a St. Andrew’s Episcopal. Suddenly, from behind the new construction near the stop, two robbers jumped him, robbed him and beat him up. They left him lying in the alley next to the Electric Maid.
A few minutes later, coming from downtown and heading for the metro was a social activist on his way to Capitol Hill to testify about a very important bill on poverty reduction. He saw the body lying in the alley and was stunned for a moment. He looked at his watch and seeing that he was already running late for his presentation, he made the difficult decision to catch the next train. He felt really bad, but since it was the middle of the day he was sure someone else had probably already seen the guy in the alley and called the ambulance.
A few minutes later another person came hurrying out of the 7-11 toward the metro, running to make sure she got to her church’s choir festival which was being held that day as a fund-raiser for a local youth center. It looked like someone was lying in the alley across the street. She wasn’t sure if it was just a drunk who had fallen asleep or someone who was hurt. Unfortunately, she didn’t have time to check because she had a solo in the first piece and couldn’t afford to be late. Besides, being a woman alone, she didn’t want to take too many risks.
About the same time, a young man from one of the construction crews was just getting off work and was walking to catch a bus. As he left the construction site, he saw the man in the alley. He paused, looked around, was confused about what to do. See, while he seemed like a hard-worker, what his new employers didn’t know was that he was a member of Al-Qaeda. He had been reading the Koran a lot recently and knew that Islam insisted on caring for those who were in need. So even though he’d been trying to keep a low profile, he decided he had to help. He checked on the guy. When he realized he was still alive, but badly hurt, he flagged down a cab and asked for help from the driver getting him into the car. They took him to Washington Adventist as quickly as they could and the cabbie dropped them off at the emergency room. The young man only had the rest of that week’s paycheck in his pocket, two days worth of wages, but he paid the cabbie. Then he took the beaten man in where he soon was whisked away into a room. The personnel in the lobby tried to find out more about the beaten man, but his wallet had been taken, so he didn’t have any ID.
The young Al-Qaeda operative decided he needed to stay at the hospital until the man’s relatives could be located. As the day wore on, he was able to go back and check on the beaten man. They had bandaged him up pretty well, but he was still pretty out of it. He said he was thirsty, but then lapsed back into sleep before he could give any more information. The young man bought him some juice and a sandwich and took it to his room in case he woke up again and needed something. He ended up staying there all night and even missing work the next day, until finally, the family figured out where their father was and came to take over. Then the young construction worker slipped away before the family could thank him, because he didn’t want to share too much about himself.
Who, Jesus asked, was a neighbor to this man?
The story of the Good Samaritan is so familiar that it is hard to hear it any more. What we forget is that this phrase we now use as short-hand for anyone who is helpful was an oxymoron to the original audience. To them using “Good” and “Samaritan” in the same sentence was as absurd as us saying “Good Al-Qaeda operative.” Samaritans were considered to be heretical, unclean and generally suspect. They were the enemies of the Jews. And while it is easy now to lean back and condemn the Priest and the Levite in the story as overly pietistic and shallow in their religious understanding, to those first listeners they were as committed to their religious and social duties as the choir member and social activist. It wasn’t that they were choosing something self-centered over something compassionate. They were choosing between two sacred duties and believed in the moment that while other people might be available to care for the man, nobody else could fill in for the tasks they had in front of them.
Jesus told this familiar story in answer to a series of questions from a lawyer – and you lawyers know better than any of us how you love to wiggle around with language and find the loophole! This man answered all Jesus’s questions with the right answer. He never gave a wrong one. Why then, do we leave the text feeling like he was in the wrong?
Because living the faith is never about having the right answers.
The embodiment of faith is compassion. Don’t tell me what you believe, Jesus is saying, show me. And what do we learn about the nature of compassionate action in this parable? That it is costly, time-consuming and inconvenient. It is not something we schedule into our spare time. It is not what we do with our left-over money, after the summer camps and vacations are paid for. It is how we act and what we are willing to sacrifice in the moment when we are faced with the very real needs of a very hurting world. A beaten up, robbed, left-to-die world. A world made up of individuals and communities and whole nations who fall into that category. A world that breaks into our plans and messes up our schedules and causes us enormous inconvenience ... if we let it.
And all of us here know that we are perfectly justified when we don’t let it do that. Because our schedules and our plans and our money are already being put to very good use – not just selfish enterprises, but things that we believe are of great benefit to this hurting world and to our families and to our neighbors.
Neighbors. Who are our neighbors? This is the question the lawyer posed, looking for a loophole in the commandment to love. My re-telling of the parable tried to reinstate the shock value of hearing that the best neighbor was not the one we might expect, but the least likely character. But, obviously, I made up my version of the parable. In real life, who are our neighbors? How about the person who murdered a loved one?
After the recent execution by the state of Maryland of a convicted murderer, I read in the Post about the various people holding vigil outside the prison. On one side were those eagerly awaiting the news of the death, glad that it was finally happening. On the other side were those standing in opposition to the death penalty. Having been part of a death-penalty vigil outside a prison before, I vividly remembered the jeers hurled by those who were across the road to cheer the execution. I remember standing with a broken heart, not only and even primarily for the woman about to lose her life inside the prison, but for the ugliness of the emotions unleashed by state-sanctioned killing. It spoke to the very worst in human nature.
For this death, I sat in the comfort of my kitchen, reading the next day reports. A relative of the murder victim was quoted as saying, “At last our family can have some peace.” And this is the story we tell ourselves about revenge. Getting even brings peace. I wondered, reading the paper, whether the journalist might return to that man a year later and see whether he had found the peace he was seeking in the execution.
Ricardo Villalobos lives in Takoma Park and has dedicated much of his life to abolishing the death penalty. He does so not because he is some naive liberal who thinks everybody deserves a second chance, but because his grandfather was murdered and his family’s decision not to seek vengeance permeated the rest of his life and gave him a perspective that he wanted to share with others.
Aba Gayle’s daughter was murdered at the age of 19. Her murderer was caught, convicted and sent to death row. She says, “I struggled through many years of grief, anger, rage and a lust for revenge. I believed the ‘big lie’ given me by the district attorney that I would be healed by the execution of the man responsible for all my grief and pain. After twelve years of studying the world’s major religions I found myself suddenly able to forgive. I wrote a letter to the man who murdered Catherine. I offered forgiveness and sent blessing from the Christ in me to the Christ in him. The act of mailing this letter gave me instant release from the deep anger and rage.”
Who is my neighbor?
There are no loopholes and no shortcuts in the answer to that question. The right answer will involve sacrifice and surprises, inconvenience and incomprehensible joy. But the right answer is not the one spoken. It is the one lived.
The greatest commandment is this: Love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.
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