5th Sunday after Pentecost

The parable you just heard from the Gospel of Luke is probably the most widely known of all the stories Jesus told. Even the least churched among us recognize it. The language of the "Good Samaritan" is a part of our culture's working vocabulary. There are so-called Good Samaritan Laws in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They protect from liability anyone who chooses to help another person in distress, for example at the scene of an accident. It’s intended to encourage bystanders to assist strangers in need, to be Good Samaritans.

One thing that everyone who aspires to be a Lutheran pastor has to do is to serve as a chaplain for a summer, usually in a hospital. There’s really not a lot of preparation for the realities of what that means. You get a basic introduction. You get a couple of days to familiarize yourself with the hospital and proper policy and procedures. But then you’re off to the races: doing your assigned rounds, praying with people… You know, chaplain-y kinds of stuff. And then you get to be on call.

I’ll never forget my very first emergency call. It was to the maternity ward. The mother of a newborn had died. It wasn’t due to any kind of complications from the pregnancy or birth. She died of cancer. Cancer that she had known about from early on in the pregnancy. Cancer, of which she never said a word to her husband. She had also forbidden her doctors to say anything about it in his presence. He had no idea. And there I stood with the husband, Their three-year-old son, and her doctor. Fresh out of my first year in seminary. All of 22 years old. And my only thought was, “what the hell am I supposed to do here?” I stammered my way through the situation, tried to be present to the grieving husband. I did my best with what few tools I had available to me at the time.

Eventually the doctor left. And I left a few minutes later. Emotionally drained. Shaken. Glad just to be out of there. About 15 minutes later I was paged again. But this time I was asked to come to the front desk, which was odd because you don’t usually encounter patients at the front desk in the evening when the front desk is closed. Waiting there was the doctor from the previous call. He walked me outside. He asked me how I was doing. It was a total reversal of roles. He was taking care of me. I was receiving care from the last person I expected. He was my compassionate Samaritan on that night.

Compassion. Luke only uses it in two other instances, besides today’s story, The first is in chapter 7:

“11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12 As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ 14 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.” (Luke 7:11-15)

The other is in chapter 15:

“17 But when he came to himself [the younger brother] said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. (Luke 15:17-20)

Compassion is a defining characteristic for Jesus and the Father figure in the story of the wasteful son.

In the Annotated Jewish New Testament, Vanderbilt University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Dr. Amy-Jill Levine notes that, contrary to popular belief, the priest and the Levite do not “bypass the injured man because of ritual purity concerns… [Various sources] demonstrate the strong Jewish concern for the respectful treatment of the dead. [And the Talmud] insists that “even a high priest… [is permitted to] contract uncleanness because of a neglected corpse.” “Levites are simply not forbidden contact with corpses. Further suggesting the issue is not purity: the priest is not going up to Jerusalem, where impurity would have prevented him from participating in Temple service, but ‘down from’ the city.”

Jesus gives the priest and the Levite no excuse. Nor would any excuse be acceptable. Yet even though they are not the protagonists in the story, the priest and the Levite tell a truth that is important to hear: They had the Torah. They knew the calls to care for those in trouble. They had their own “go and do likewise,” if you will, but for whatever reason passed by the man.

The shock of the narrative is the unlikely protagonist. That the unclean, despised, hated, no-account Samaritan should be the one who, like Jesus, shows compassion to the one whom he is supposed to likewise despise, hate, and reject. But let’s not allow this shock to overshadow that the priest and the Levite -- who likewise have a call to care for others -- pass by.

The shock that hits closest to home for us is how frequently we are the ones who pass the other by. The command to “Go and do likewise,” extends about as far as the end of the story for us. We end up in the ditch between the Samaritan and his compassionate generosity and our tendency to ignore the cries of the downtrodden and disenfranchised.

Plenty of us want to be good Samaritans. Or rather, we like the idea of being a good Samaritan. Until we realize what that really means. What the compassionate Samaritan does is not just a one-and-done, kind of deal. He’s obviously on a longer journey, because he’s got stores with him: a supply of wine and oil that he uses to cleanse and bind up the wounds of the man. Precious, costly items that he now has less of. He puts the man on his own animal, meaning he now walks. He spends two days wages, 1/3 of his weekly income, to have him kept at the inn and promises to pay anything else upon his return. His compassion leads him not just to take care of the immediate crisis, but to invest in the long-term well-being of the injured man. He does more than simply salve his conscience. He is committed to the healing and wholeness of the stranger.

Jesus is calling us to do is to see how we can be more like the compassionate Samaritan. How do we move beyond doing the occasional nice thing that makes us feel good, while meeting an immediate need? How do we invest Calvary’s gifts and passions in this community? How are we called to cleanse and bind the wounds, seen and unseen, of the people around us? How are we called to help bear them to a place of rest and healing? How are we called to invest in the long-term well-being of the community? How are we called to commit ourselves to the healing and wholeness of the stranger?

What does the compassionate Samaritan do? First, he sees the man in need, when he was invisible to the priest and Levite who passed him by. Actually, they did see him, and then promptly ignored him. They saw him, but not as a neighbor. Instead, they saw him as a burden, and maybe even a threat. How often, in conversations about the undocumented, for example, have we been tempted to see them as burdens and potential threats, instead of as human beings created in God’s image?

Second, the Samaritan not only sees the man in need as a neighbor, but he draws near to him, coming over to help. The other two gave this man in need a wide berth, creating even more distance between them. The Samaritan goes to him, becoming vulnerable in that closeness. Vulnerable, because he opens himself to see the injured man’s pain, misery, and need. How often are we frightened to come close to others simply because we do not want to bear their pain, to be open to their need? How often do we draw near to an unhoused person whom we might see? Our tendency tends, at the very least, to be to look the other way.

Third, after seeing him and coming close, the Samaritan has compassion on him, tending his wounds, transporting him to the inn, and making sure he is taken care of. Seeing is vital. Drawing near is imperative. But the final and meaningful gesture is that the Samaritan actually does something. Compassion is pointless if it isn’t put into action.

These three movements – seeing, drawing near, and having compassion – is what it means to be Christ-like. God, in Jesus, saw our vulnerability and need, drew near in the Incarnation to embrace us, and in the cross took action by identifying with us to the very end, rising again so that death could no longer dominate us.

Jesus chose a Samaritan to make his point to the lawyer painfully clear: If even a Samaritan can act this way, certainly you, trained in the law of scripture, who say you seek eternal life should be able to do likewise. It’s a very pointed lesson. Notice that when asked who treated the beaten man like a neighbor, the lawyer can’t even bring himself to name the Samaritan, but instead replies only, “The one who showed mercy.”

It’s profound as it is audacious. Jesus chooses a Samaritan to act like he would act in this parable. Jesus chooses an outcast to play his role in this morality play. Jesus chooses someone rejected by his audience to demonstrate God’s grace-filled action in the world. And all this after a group of Samaritans rejected Jesus and refused to give him a place to stay in the verses from chapter nine that we read two weeks ago. Talk about help coming from an unexpected place.

God often shows up where we least expect God to be. No one expected God to reveal God’s glory through the disgrace of the cross. And no one expected, or even wanted, God to reveal God’s power through vulnerability and suffering. But that’s what happened. Jesus chose a Samaritan, to remind this self-justifying lawyer that self-justification is impossible, because the moment we can justify ourselves we no longer need to care about those around us. The consequence of justifying ourselves is to struggle to recognize the presence of God in our neighbors and, even harder, in our enemies. When we fail to see, draw near, and help those we mistrust or fear or just want to ignore, we risk missing the saving presence of God in our lives and in the world.

So, who do we have the hardest time imagining God working through? We should probably expect God to do just that.

It’s not just a lesson: it’s also a promise. God comes where we least expect God to be because God comes for all. The self-justifying lawyer and the outcast Samaritan; the undocumented and those who want to keep them out; the unhoused and those who would like nothing more than for them to disappear; those in need, those who help them, and those who turn away. No one is beyond God’s mercy, grace, and redemption. And if we’re not sure, keep in mind that Jesus, as we heard two weeks ago, has set his face to go to Jerusalem, and there he will not only suffer and die on the cross to show us just how far God will go to demonstrate God’s love, but he also forgives those who crucify him.

No one is beyond the reach of God’s love. No one. And Jesus brings this home by choosing the most unlikely of characters to serve as the instrument of God’s mercy and grace and to exemplify Christ-like behavior. That’s what God does: God chooses people no one expects and does amazing things through them. Even a Samaritan. Even unhoused people. Even Democrats. Even Republicans. Even you. Even me. It was true two thousand years ago, and it’s still true. God works through our humble, fragile, fallible efforts to do great things. Regardless of who or what we are. And thanks be to God for that.

 AMEN