Sermon 10 July, 'The God who does not pass us by'

1st READING: Psalm 25:1-10  
2nd READING: Luke 10:25-37

THINKING ABOUT... time for reflection:
'The road to Jericho'
Today we tell – and dwell on – a familiar tale,
the story of the Good Samaritan...
and in the sermon a little later, we’ll think about caring as a vulnerable venture,
risking all for love -
and we’ll be thinking about what it feels like to be vulnerable.... And so, in order to do a little pre-sermon scene-setting, I wonder now if we might retell the story:
to imagine the story as if we were the one who was passed by,
the one left by the side of the road...
to try to imagine how that might feel?
It might help, as we try to enter into the story, to close our eyes,
to picture the scene in our mind’s eye.
And, as we place ourselves in that picture...
to feel the heat,
and taste the dust,
as we pick our way through the stony, twisting path....
the ruts, and the rocks...

Although your pace is steady you already feel exhausted.
Wiping sweat away, you keep walking.

A stony road,
a scorching day,
a long but necessary journey.
White sunlight splitting the rocks by the roadside;
Heat ...shimmers and dances in the distance
under a hard, blue sky.
All is quiet,
yet    not    a peaceful quiet.
The air crackles with expectation.
An almost imperceptible sound
as a pebble falls onto sand...
Hair prickles at the back of your neck
as you feel eyes watch your every move.

Picking up the pace, you curse yourself for travelling alone.
It had seemed important at the time, to make this trip...
but now you wonder if it was such a good idea.
The road twists and turns and the journey feels unforgiving.
Around a bend there are people standing, watching, waiting.
You push down your fear and keep moving.
No use.
Mocking laughter as they block your way.
Four of them -
and you lick your lips nervously
waiting for what you know instinctively
will be a bad outcome.

It begins.
Harsh words.
Pushing, shoving.
Fists and feet connecting with flesh;
pain raining down upon your fallen body
until you just can't move.
Blood and agony.
Stripped, robbed.
Left for dead.
Utterly alone.
Utterly helpless.

Time  
drifts.
In the distance,
footsteps.
You groan,
waiting for them to finish off the job.
But these footsteps quicken and are gone.
The shadows begin to stretch.
Someone else passes by...
and is gone.

Later – much later -
cool water is pressed to your lips.
Wounds washed and dressed amidst kind words.
Although, you notice something odd about the way they speak.
You feel hot tears falling down your face.
And then, just as everything swims out of focus
and into blackness, you see a donkey....

Waking up several days later on a comfortable bed,
the innkeeper's wife tells you the story
of the one who didn't pass by.
Surprised, your world-view is challenged
as you realise that the one you thought of
as an enemy...
is ...human.

SERMON/ ‘The God who does not pass us by’

It was a few years back now, but I remember the story well:
A very dramatic story of courage...
A split second act of utter bravery:
The act, you might say of a Good Samaritan.
It was winter in New York.
A man was standing with his two wee girls on the
platform of a subway station waiting on the train.
Suddenly another man on the platform, apparently suffering from a seizure,
stumbled and fell off the platform and landed on the tracks.                                    
At that same moment the headlights of a rapidly approaching train appeared.
Acting quickly, and with no thought for himself, the father of two
jumped down onto the tracks to rescue the fallen man
by dragging him out of the way of the train.
But he immediately realized that it was coming too fast to get the man off the tracks
And so he pressed the man into the hollowed-out space between the rails,
spread his own body over him,
protecting him as the train passed over
the both of them.                                                
With just mere inches, the train passed above them,
coming close enough to leave grease marks on the rescuer’s knitted cap.
When the train came to a halt, he called up to the frightened onlookers on the platform.
"There are two little girls up there. Let them know their Daddy’s OK."

The rescuer became a national hero.
What he had done was remarkable:
he had no obvious reason to help this stranger.
He didn't know the man.
He had his young daughters to think about.
What he did was at severe risk to his own life.
But a human being was in desperate need,
and the man, seeing this need, was moved with compassion,
and did what he could to save him.
People were deeply moved by his selflessness, and they marvelled at his bravery.
"The Subway Superman"- that's what the press called him...
But one newspaper headline described the man in biblical terms.
It read, "Good Samaritan Saves Man on Subway Tracks."

I remember the story - this story of this subway Samaritan
I remember the conversations around it.
And I remember the question that came up time and again in these conversations:
‘What would I have done, if that had been me – would I have done what he did?
Would I have been a 'Good Samaritan' that day?’

In thinking about our gospel reading this morning
and of that so-very-familiar story of the good Samaritan, I suspect
that a lot of people think that this is exactly Jesus’ point:
the question he asks in the parable is a way of getting us
to examine if we would be willing to help,
to take the risk,
to be like the Samaritan.
But I wonder if that's what Jesus was really saying?
Let's take another look at it.
The story is told by Jesus on his way to Jerusalem in response
to a lawyer’s questions about inheriting eternal life and trying,
in his precise lawyerly way, to work out exactly what was meant by the term ‘neighbour’.
How far did neighbourliness extend – in effect:
what did Jesus determine to be the reasonable limits of what it was to be a neighbour?

The story, as we know, is about a person travelling to Jericho –
on what was a notorious stretch of road.
Beaten, robbed, left for dead.
In desperate need of help.
And who is passed by:
And, shocking to his listeners,
the very people who would have been expected to help... pass by.
But another shock is just around the bend.
The one who stops comes from a group despised both
racially and religiously by the Jews –
a Samaritan.
In the normal course of events these two groups of people
would have nothing to do with each other:
They are bitter enemies...
Better to die in a pool of blood on the road than to be touched by a Samaritan.
And yet, Jesus, in the telling of his story, casts as the hero...
one of ‘these’ enemies– a Samaritan.
A human being so moved by pity that he chooses not to walk by,
but who, instead, tenderly cares for the injured man...
who extends the boundaries of what it is to be a neighbour even to his enemies.

Having told that story, Jesus turns the question back to the lawyer,
asking him to define who the neighbour is.
So utterly hated are Samaritans, that the lawyer can’t even bring
himself to spit out the word "Samaritan."
He simply mumbles,
"The one who showed mercy."
"Go and do likewise," says Jesus.
Now, as I said before, some people think that what Jesus is saying in this story is,
"OK everybody, I want you to go out and be just like that Good Samaritan.
He cared for someone in need;
I want you to imitate him. Go and do likewise."
But there are two problems with this.

The first problem is that if this were really Jesus' point,
then he probably would have told the story differently.
He would have made it into a simple moral example
and left out all that troubling Samaritan business.
What he would have said is:
that there was a man in trouble,
and three people passed by who could have helped.
The first one didn't,
and neither did the second,
but the third one did,
so be like the third one and not like the first two.
...But this isn't a simple moral story.
It's a parable, and parables always have something shocking, surprising, unexpected,
something to be wrestled with and puzzled over, and in this story,
it’s the fact that an unwanted, rejected Samaritan is the one
who shows mercy to his enemy.
Now that really throws a monkey wrench into any simple explanation.
There's something deeper going on here than merely,
"OK folks, go out and be like that good Samaritan."

The second problem is even more significant.
If Jesus' point is that he wants us to imitate the courageous compassion
of the Good Samaritan, the sad fact is we can't do it.
That is why the story of our New York subway Samaritan is so remarkable
and almost incredible:
almost none of us would have done it.
In general, it is simply not in our nature to forget ourselves and risk everything for a stranger.
Quite a few years ago now, an experiment was conducted with some
ministry students in the United States.
Researchers gathered the students in a classroom and told them
that each of them had an assignment.
This assignment was to record a talk about the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
The thing was, the recordings were going to be done in a building on the
other side of the campus, and because of a tight schedule, they needed to hurry to that building.
Unbeknown to the students, on the path to the other building, the researchers
had planted an actor to play the part of a man in distress,
slumped in an alley, coughing and suffering.
And so the scene was set:
the students were going to make a presentation about the Good Samaritan.
But what would happen, the researchers wondered, when they actually
encountered a person in need?
Would they be Good Samaritans?
Well, no, as a matter of fact, they weren’t.
Almost all of them rushed past the hurting man.
One student even stepped over the man's body as he hurried to teach about the
Parable of the Good Samaritan...

It’s easy to look down at these students who couldn't put the
Parable of the Good Samaritan into practice, but really, I wonder
whether any of us would have done better?
Simply knowing in our minds what the right thing to do is,
doesn’t mean we can do it.

If we are going to be Good Samaritans, then this will mean
more than a change of mind.
It will take a change of heart.
And that's what this parable is about:
a change of heart.
And it raises a question – what makes some people more compassionate than others?

I suspect that we only really learn about compassion when, in a sense,
we’ve been like the person in the ditch – or on the subway tracks.
When, at a point of need in our lives, others were there for us...
Others who chose not to pass us by,
and in that act of showing compassion for us,
taught us how to be compassionate.
And that’s the point of Jesus' Parable of the Good Samaritan.
What the lawyer discovered -and what we discover, too-
is that we can’t stand on the side-lines and figure out how to be good,
defining our terms- is this person my neighbour or not-
figuring out just what we have to do to inherit eternal life.
Despite all of our religious virtues and attitudes, we just can’t do it.
We’re helpless to be Good Samaritans on our own strength.
In other words,
we are the person in the ditch,
the one who lies helpless and wounded beside the road,
the one who needs to be rescued.
And along comes a Good Samaritan,
a Good Samaritan named Jesus –
despised and rejected-
who comes to save us,
speaks tenderly to us,
lifts us into his arms,
and takes us to the place of healing:
while we were still God's enemies,
God saw us in the ditch and had compassion,
and in Jesus, came to save us.
So, the question is not the lawyer's,
"What is the definition of 'neighbour'?"
The question is:
who has been a neighbour to us?

Jesus Christ has been a neighbour to us.
The crucified one has been a neighbour to us.
God made flesh -
God, who does   not pass us by...
and whose Spirit,
gives us the strength -
the beginnings of an understanding about compassion,
to go ...
and do likewise.

Let’s pray:
Compassionate God
We are too often afraid of being vulnerable
Of not being in control
Of not having power.
We thank you that in Jesus
definitions have been overturned...
And that the true transforming power is not about might and strength,
but about having the courage to be vulnerable.
We thank you that you chose not to pass us by and have brought us to the place of healing...
May we, in turn, not pass by others.
In Jesus’ name.  Amen.