Sunday, July 10, 2016 | 4:00 p.m.

Oh, the Places You Will Not Go

Mark Eldred
Worship Coordinator and Interim Director of Adult Education

Psalm 25
Luke 10:25–37

Tuesday, July 5: thirty-seven-year-old Alton Sterling was killed by police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, outside of a convenience store on a road he had been on many times before selling “bootleg” CDs to earn some money. Wednesday, July 6: thirty-two-year-old Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer in St. Paul, Minnesota. On the road with him were his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter. Thursday, July 7: at a Black Lives Matter rally where protesters and police shared the road side by side, much like the protests that we have seen right out front here on our own Michigan Avenue, five police officers were killed—Brent Thompson, forty-three; Patrick Zamarripa, thirty-two; Michael Krol, forty; Michael Smith, fifty-five; and Lorne Ahrens, forty-eight—and seven wounded. These unfortunate deaths are added to the list of daily violence occurring in our city, in our country, and in our world. Can we please sit together in a moment of collective silence and individual prayer.

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In Luke 10:25–37 we read—

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” The lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said to the lawyer, “You have given the right answer, do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is your neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hand of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (NRSV)

In his book Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman states, “We begin with the simple historical fact that Jesus was a Jew. . . . It is impossible for Jesus to be understood outside of the sense of the community which Israel held with God” (Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, pp. 5–6). This is foundational in understanding the characters of today’s story. Jews and Samaritans did not get along. Every character in this story would have known that. Here are those characters: the lawyer (or scribe), Jesus, the crowd of onlookers, God, your neighbor, the beaten and robbed man, the robbers, the priest, the Levite, the Samaritan, the animal, and the innkeeper. Each of these characters has a role and a context. We don’t even know if the parable really happened, but we do know that Jesus’ audience would have been able to identify with these familiar characters. To us, this is a story within a story. Because Jesus and the lawyer were both experts in Torah, the surrounding crowd would have understood allusion to Leviticus and Deuteronomy as foundational to any debate or conversation.

“Good” has been superimposed over this parable by modern publishers. The Samaritan isn’t the “Good Samaritan” in the original Greek, but only “Samaritan.” Few, if any, of those standing listening to Jesus’ message would have heard the word Samaritan and thought to themselves good Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans simply didn’t get along.

I have read much about the priest and the Levite characters. They couldn’t touch a possible corpse if they were headed to work in the temple. And what of these robbers, their function in the story as being the bad ones? I don’t hear the robbers preached or discussed theologically, yet they are an integral character in this parable. There is the beaten man lying on the side of the road, and the animal and the innkeeper providing transportation and shelter for the beaten man, facilitated by a Samaritan who would have been the most unlikely character in the entire story to lend a hand to a Jewish person in need. Which character of this story do you naturally gravitate toward and why? What would it be like for us to take a turn walking in the shoes of each character of this story one at a time? Which shoes would fit?

Jesus speaks directly to a people who would have strongly understood their own context and geographical location. When you listen to the news today, do you understand the context and the location of every news story that you hear? Do we get a fair assessment of one’s context and location in our news? I speak for myself in that I have no idea what it is like to be a black or brown person in this country. Some of you here do. I speak for myself in that I sometimes have little knowledge of the details, the culture, and the specific context and location where the violence and shooting of our brothers and sisters often occurs. Some of you here today may have personal experience. We know that the Jericho road was dangerous. We know that the twenty-mile road from Jerusalem high on the mountain to Jericho below was unsafe. In his speech “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Martin Luther King Jr. talks about the literal danger of driving down the Jericho Road with his wife. “I can see why Jesus used this setting for his parable. It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive to ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is . . . 1,200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty miles later, you’re about 2,200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the ‘Bloody Pass.’”

Yet not knowing fully the context and history of a Jericho road that people traveled daily, this becomes an easy leap to make: “Hey, Priest and Levite, what is your problem? You are a people of God and you didn’t help. You simply walked away?” Unlike Martin Luther King Jr. who had been there, I can’t imagine a road that is so dangerous every day, the road that the priest and the Levite had to walk in order to get to the temple where they would do their work of serving God. My road to get here to this church isn’t dangerous. And if it was, would I be here? Maybe your road is dangerous to get here. Would I be here today standing talking to you fine people if I had to walk in and through danger and walk a long way by myself in vulnerability and a fear of being jumped or beaten? Would I be here? Would you be here if you had to continually travel that road?

At minimum, I walk past five to ten people in need every single day, and I can’t say that looking them in the eye and saying “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything on me today” is helping all that much. Why is my path easy? In the path that I take to church, why do I have no daily fear? If my call in this world is to walk every day a little more like Jesus, then plodding along this easy path without taking an honest look at those other paths, those other paths around me where I simply don’t go or never have to go, is simply a misuse of theology and God’s will for me in this world.

If you are a person waiting around for someone to help you or a people to notice you, how important is your location? Jesus makes the man in need visible in this parable. Despite their unwillingness or inability to assist in the situation, the priest and the Levite clearly saw the man and walked by him on the other side of the road. The beaten and robbed man wasn’t in the ditch where no one could see him. He was visible.

The violence of this past week is visible. In this age of video, you can see for yourself. This isn’t Martin Luther King Jr.’s time, when the same things were happening but no video or witness was present to immediately share it with the public. We live in a grossly technological and fast time. Right or wrong, true or false, a story can spread across this world in seconds.

Like the beaten and robbed man on the side of the Jericho Road, these news stories require something new of each of us. Are we going to watch the news and make some attempts in our own minds to unsee what is right there for all to see? Are we going to continue to put justice on a to-do list hundreds of items long and continually reprioritize justice as less important than any number of other things? Are we going to deny the Jericho Road that so many of our black- and brown-skinned brothers and sisters have been traveling not just this past week but for their entire lives? Are we going to continue to lump the acts of a few challenged and struggling children of God onto the larger group of people of the same color of skin or onto all the police who serve daily in this country? Michelle Alexander, author of the book The New Jim Crow, said it best on her Facebook page this week. She said, “I think we all know, deep down, something more is required of us now.”

Jesus’ charge to “Go and do likewise”—meaning to show the world the truth of the abundance of God’s mercy—is extremely demanding. This is a bit more challenging, contextually, than a call to “go out and do good for those in need.” This church, and many churches in this country, is already very good at that. I applaud it, and please keep doing the good deeds! But I feel like Jesus is asking more with this “Go and do likewise!” It is a more demanding charge than a single good deed. The Samaritan had to enter his own personal danger to fulfill the charge. Sharing God’s mercy is losing-sleep demanding. Sharing God’s mercy is setting-self-aside demanding. Sharing God’s mercy is uncomfortable demanding. Sharing God’s mercy is seeking-to-hear-and-learn-things-from-those-different-than-you demanding. Sharing God’s mercy can be dangerous demanding. Sharing God’s mercy is owning-that-in-some-places-and-times-I-have-actually-played-the-character-of-the-robber-on-the-Jericho-Road demanding. Sharing God’s mercy is carrying-our-own-cross demanding. Sharing God’s mercy is radically-seeking-and-exposing-truth demanding.

As a white Christian male, I can’t ever know what it was like to be Jesus, to be the Samaritan, to be a black or brown person in today’s world, to be continually afraid in a world where not everyone has to be afraid. It is a time in our world to seek and to listen to the voices who understand the context of being black and brown, allowing truth to free itself. It is a time to admit that for those who are privileged, a path to truth may be a new and dangerous Jericho Road.

That, my friends, is the importance of church. As we sit here in the safety of the brick and mortar that holds up this high ceiling and those open doors, this is the place to fully name our limited understanding of each other. This is the place to share in the fear, the anger, the hurt, the grief, the sorrow, the rage, the exhaustion. This is the place to ask the hard questions. This is the place to ask, “Where are we limiting God’s mercy in this world?” This is the place to cry, “Why, God, does it feel like we have no end to the pain?” This is the place to cry, “Why, God, do people have to continue to die in this world? Church is the place to beg of God, “Why are we not able to be active but paralyzed in our ability to share the mercy freely given?”

Where are we limiting God’s mercy in this world? Where was God’s mercy limited this week? Spreading God’s mercy is a lifetime of work. Spreading God’s mercy is a lifetime of work greater than any single good deed.

The Gospel of Luke is an open invitation to each of you. This parable is an open invitation and isn’t over: if the charge of Jesus to spread God’s mercy ends, we have no purpose for church. Listen for voices outside of your context. Resist turning inward. Bring your whole self here and out into this world and let God show you the way. Share God’s mercy freely given to each and to all of us, and know that God, and this church family, will be right there holding your hand. Amen.