A Fourth Church Sermon by Shannon J. Kershner

First Sunday in Lent, February 14, 2016 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 15
Luke 10:25–37

What is so wonderful about Lent is that
through being marked with the cross and
reminded of our own mortality we are free.
We are free to hear the song of our own salvation,
which tells of Christ who offers life and forgiveness.

Nadia Bolz-Weber

A church was having a small group Bible study one Wednesday morning. The leader asked those sitting in the circle, “Who has been Jesus for you in your life? Who has helped you see the face of Christ?” People grew quiet as they pondered who they might name—a grandmother, a father, a dear friend, a beloved pastor. One older woman spoke up. “I suppose I have to ask myself,” she began, “who has told me the truth about myself so completely that I wanted to kill him for it.” After that, no one else spoke.

That strong reaction to hearing authentic truth might have been how Jesus’ listeners felt when he finished telling this parable. The lawyer probably felt that way. Perhaps you are surprised by that prediction of such a strong, almost violent, reaction to this story. After all, it is the parable we call the Good Samaritan, even though the adjective “good” does not appear in the text. Over the years, though, that is how we have come to know this story. We might even feel like we already know the point: We are supposed to act like good Samaritans to anyone in need. We even have Good Samaritan laws built upon that particular moral, that lesson.

The problem, though, is parables were not meant to be morality plays. They were not spoken to bestow upon us one particular lesson. Parables, rather, are mysterious, paradoxical, imaginative immersions into God’s world. The purpose of these odd stories is less about us teaching something and more about doing something to us.

Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar of the New Testament, teaches that if we ever hear a parable and think “I really like that” or, worse, fail to hear any challenge in it whatsoever, then we are probably not listening deeply enough (AJ Levine, Short Stories by Jesus, p. 3). Given that perspective, we cannot just distill this parable down into the morality lesson that we need to act like good Samaritans. Therefore, what else might this parable do in our lives as disciples, in our life as a faith community?

You heard how Jesus told it, but here is the summary: A man is traveling down a dangerous road when he is attacked by bandits who rob him, beat him, strip him, and leave him lying in a ditch, half-dead. Two religious people come by, and we expect each one to stop and help, but neither does. Jesus does not tell us why they don’t stop. Martin Luther King Jr. wondered if their lack of action was because they were afraid (Levine, p. 102). He imagined they asked themselves, “If I stop, what might happen to me?” Jesus, though, simply tells us they walked on by.

But then a third person comes by and does stop. The third person is moved by compassion. The Greek word indicates a visceral reaction in his gut, and in response to that gut-level feeling, that person makes every effort to care and provide for the wounded stranger. The helper even goes so far as to pay for the wounded stranger’s stay at an inn, hoping he will heal. And, as some of you know, the real kicker to this story is that the third person is the most unlikely hero ever. It is a Samaritan, an enemy of the wounded man, who Jesus’ hearers would have surmised was a Jew.

Contextual pause: It is imperative we remember that at the time of Jesus, the Jewish people and the Samaritan people had been at odds for centuries. As Amy-Jill Levine writes, “Each [tradition] claimed they were the true descendant from Abraham, who had the true understanding of the Torah, the correct priesthood, and the right form of worship in the proper location” (Levine, pp. 106–107). Each group thought the other group was from the wrong side of the tracks. This means Jesus, a faithful Jew, chose a despised outsider—someone unfit for friendship or any kind of interaction—to be the major character in the story. His choice was intentionally shocking and scandalous.

Levine expands on an additional way Jesus scandalized his hearers. She writes that Jewish people typically fall into one of three groups: priests descended from Aaron, the first passerby; Levites descended from other children of Levi, the second passerby; and Israelites, descended from children of Jacob other than Levi. Therefore, when Jesus tells his hearers that a priest went by first and a Levite went by second, the Jewish audience would inevitably expect that the third person to come onto the scene would be an Israelite. It was the common folkloric pattern. Therefore when Jesus states that the enemy Samaritan was the third person to come upon the scene and the only person who went to care for the Jewish victim, he rocked the world of his listeners (AJ Levine, Jewish Annotated New Testament, p. 123).

Let us bring that home. Imagine one of your greatest enemies. That enemy you imagine is the hero of this parable. That enemy you imagine is the one who shows compassion and mercy. That enemy you imagine is the one who shows us how to live our faith. That enemy you imagine is the one to whom Jesus points and says, “Go and do likewise.” I could stop the sermon here and we would have plenty with which we could wrestle. Who would ever predict that Jesus would tell us we can learn about what it means to be a disciple, what it means to express Christ’s love, from our enemy?

The lawyer didn’t predict it. Though he recognized what Jesus was getting at, did you notice the word Samaritan did not pass his lips? He could not even bear to say that name out loud. When asked by Jesus, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man?” the lawyer could only describe the Samaritan by mentioning what he did, rather than who he was. “He was the one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus, with his injunction to “Go and do likewise,” does not seem to challenge that on that day. Jesus seemed to be OK to let the lawyer focus more on acting like a neighbor, rather than pushing the lawyer even further into reimagining and reframing the Samaritan as a person who is his neighbor. Perhaps Jesus thought the lawyer wasn’t ready for that kind of challenge, just yet.

But we are. I think we are ready to hear a challenge that pushes us from acting into being. Maybe that’s because I am still trying to process some of what we learned in our Michigan Avenue forums about mass incarceration and the “school to prison” pipeline. Or maybe it’s because I had lunch a week ago sitting next to Father Pfleger and he told me there is not a day that goes by when he does not walk down the stairs of his rectory and find a young man, age of eighteen to twenty-five, sleeping on his doorstep and asking for something to eat. Father Pfleger told me in the last forty years of his ministry here, he has never seen two people fighting over dumpster food, but he saw it last month. That has stuck with me.

I don’t think we can end where the lawyer ends, with a focus only on acting like neighbors to one another, even if we are pushed to act like a neighbor even to our enemies. It is a good first step, but we still have some distance to travel. It is like giving a meal to someone who is hungry. That is acting like a neighbor. That is seeing the need of the person and trying to do what Jesus would have us do. But the act of acting neighborly does not necessarily result in our seeing the hungry person as an actual neighbor and not just the object of our charitable, neighborly action.

To put it another way, I hear this parable not just challenging the way we act inside and outside of our neighborhood. I wonder if, with this parable, Jesus is also challenging the size of our neighborhood in the first place. At the end of the parable, notice Jesus did not say “Now which of these three do you think acted like a neighbor to the man?” Jesus asked “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man?” Other translations say “became” a neighbor to the man.

In other words, Jesus is asking who in this story reimagined and expanded his neighborhood to include this wounded man as actual neighbor—this man who would normally not be welcomed through the gates or at the BBQ in the back yard or around the dinner table at home? Who, in this parable, did not just act like a neighbor to an enemy, but who was the one who broke through all the sin-imposed, human barriers and saw an actual neighbor lying in a ditch and therefore was moved with gut-deep compassion to help his brother. Who was that?

I wonder if Jesus hoped one thing this parable would do to us would be to challenge the size of our neighborhoods. Our neighborhood cannot just be Gold Coast or Kenwood or Rogers Park. Our neighborhood cannot even be just North Side or South Side. Don’t we believe God created all people in God’s image? In this season of Lent, aren’t we making our way to the cross where we affirm that Jesus Christ died for the sake of the world?

And don’t God’s actions of creation and redemption signal to us, then, that at the very heart of our Christian faith is the central belief that all people have inherent worth and dignity? (Questions based David Lose’s “Craft of Preaching” on www.workingpreacher.org). That all people, therefore, are our neighbors? Not just the priests. Not just the Levites. Not just the Israelites. But also the Samaritans, whoever the Samaritans are for us these days.

If on more days than not we do believe those things—if we do believe that our God-given neighborhood is really and truly no less than the whole world and that our neighbors are really and truly no less than all people—then we cannot keep walking by our wounded neighbors in the ditch without stopping to be compassionate, to do our very best to make space with them for God’s healing to occur, to give our time and attention to that one who waits for us on the porch and asks for her portion of the bread. We are called not just to act like a neighbor to them, but to be a neighbor with them.

Furthermore, when we find ourselves wounded in the ditch, then if we believe that our God-given neighborhood is really and truly no less than the whole world and that our neighbors are really and truly no less than all people, then we, ourselves, cannot refuse someone’s offer of help or turn away from their compassion for us, even from those we might not normally see as being like us. We are to be neighbors with them.

So one more thing this parable might be doing to us is provoking us to ask, who are the ones who could help us expand our vision of our neighborhood if only we would give them a chance, if only we made a place for them at the table, if only we went and sought them out purposefully? For until our vision of the neighborhood grows as large as God’s vision of the neighborhood, we’ll probably keep doing our best to act like neighbors to people who need help, but we won’t actually see a neighbor in those folks.

If we don’t invite God to help us do the hard work of reimagining and expanding our neighborhood to better reflect God’s dream for us, God’s dream for the world, we might just keep doing what the lawyer did: stop with our neighborly actions, probably even feeling OK about it, but knowing deep down we are still not whole. Our neighborhood is still not whole.

I want to end today with a poem. It was written by Micah Bournes, but it could have been spoken by that Samaritan after his experience in becoming a neighbor with the wounded Jewish man in the ditch. Listen:

. . . When it comes to justice,
       it seems like you just can’t get ahead.
. . .
Something always tips and
       people always ask “Is it even worth it?”
. . .
It rarely comes from people who labored
       for years and have good reason to ask it.
And you know why they never ask?
Those types of people become friends
       with those who suffer, family even.
Because it’s one thing to wonder
       if someone else’s freedom
       is worth fighting for.
But when you begin to identify
       with someone else,
       commune with them,
that’s when the question is no longer worth asking.
That’s when it becomes offensive even.
What do you mean is it worth my time? That doesn’t even deserve an answer.
I don’t care how long it takes.
I don’t care how many times we fail.
I don’t care how little progress is made. You never stop fighting for your own.

(Micah Bournes, “Is Justice Worth It?” To listen to the entire poem, visit http://vimeo.com/60349898)

For your neighbor. For God’s vision of the neighborhood. Go and be likewise. Amen.