Journey (sermon, July 25, 2010)

Today's passage from the gospel of Luke is one that is familiar to many of us, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Today, as you read this translation from Eugene Peterson’s The Message, I want you to notice which character you most identify with in this story. So read now Peterson’s version of Luke 10:25-37.

So, in which character did you most clearly find yourself? The Levite and priest who cross to the other side of the road? The Samaritan himself who risks safety and sacrifices financial resources to help the injured man? Or perhaps you identified with the religious scholar who questions Jesus, hoping for some clear answers about how to best follow him on this journey of faith?

Well, if you found that you immediately identified with the priest and the Levite, who crossed to the other side of the road to avoid the injured man, you certainly would not be alone. In our culture we’ve had to go so far as to enact so-called “Good Samaritan” laws to protect those who help strangers from litigation. In an age of known and unknown diseases, we have been conditioned to think twice before allowing ourselves to come into contact with the blood of a stranger. The Levite and the priest are often depicted as the “bad guys” of this parable, or at least as the ones who obviously made the wrong decision. But could it be that there was more to their decision than can be contained in this brief story?


Early on in the Democratic Primary season in 2008, Barack Obama’s record appeared squeaky clean. He had attended some of the best schools in the country, worked in community organizer, civil rights lawyer and law professor, and served eight years in the Illinois senate before being elected to the U.S. Senate. He had a beautiful, smart and talented wife and two young daughters. And he had attended the same church in Chicago for twenty years.

But in March 2008, his church connection became no longer an asset but a liability; well, actually, not his church, but his pastor. It turns out that Jeremiah Wright, who had just recently retired as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ after 36 years, had, over the years, made some inflammatory statements in his sermons. When the videos of these remarks came out and went viral on television and internet, they prompted Obama to make a speech dedicated to the subject of race in America. In the speech, Obama said quite plainly that the harshest remarks made by Reverend Wright weren’t just misguided, they were wrong. These remarks, said Obama, “expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view...that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America...”

If you saw the clips of the Rev. Wright preaching at his most heated and angry, it was hard not to find it disturbing. It was one thing to hear that kind of rhetoric from Islamic jihadists, but from an American preacher? Likewise, it is appalling to us to think that two religious men, men with high standing in the community, one a priest and the other a Levite, a kind of Temple assistant, actually chose not to show compassion to a dying man. These are men who presumably know God’s laws as well as the religious scholar whose question prompted this story. They know that the most important command in all of scripture is to love the Lord with everything you are and love your neighbor as yourself. And yet...they not only walk by the dying man, they cross the road to the other side to avoid him.

Barack Obama’s speech didn’t end with his rejection of Rev. Wright. Instead, he took the time to explain that there was another side than the one the world had seen on television and You Tube. “The truth is,” Obama went on to say, “that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than 20 years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another, to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a United States Marine; ...who for over 30 years has led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth — by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.” (1)

Maybe there was more to Reverend Wright than we could glean from a three-minute video clip of a 30-minute sermon. And maybe there is more to the priest and the Levite than we can see in their brief appearance in this parable. You see, not only would the priests and Levite been aware of laws that called them to love their neighbors, which surely meant helping someone in need; because of their particular religious duties, they were also bound by strict purity laws. One of these forbade religious leaders to fulfill their temple responsibilities if they had contact with a corpse--and it would be impossible to know if the man by the side of the road was dead without making contact. So although it might be tempting for us to see the priest and the Levite as hopelessly misguided when it comes to their journey on this road and their journey with God, the truth is, they were making complicated decisions of the kind we make every day.

Would you stop and pick up a hitchhiker if you had your children or grandchildren in the car? No, because at that moment, your primary responsibility is the safety of the children in your care. Would you approve if your parents or grandparents gave all their life savings to a charity that provided food, vaccinations, and mosquito nets to impoverished African children? No, because it means your parents or grandparents will not have the resources to provide for themselves as they age. Life is full of such decisions and calculations, and in that respect we are all perhaps more like the Levite and the priest -- and maybe even Jeremiah Wright -- than we would care to admit.

Okay, so how many of you saw yourselves in the religious scholar, peppering Jesus with questions? As Eugene Peterson indicates in his translation, the scholar, who was actually a kind of religious lawyer, an expert in Jewish law, was doing what lawyers do best -- parsing, defining, looking for a loophole -- when he ask Jesus to clarify exactly who was his neighbor. He knew the importance of loving God and neighbor, but he was looking for a way to make caring for his neighbor seem more manageable. He’s hoping, in other words, for a straightforward answer. Your neighbor is everyone who lives on your particular city block...or within a one mile radius of your house...or all the people you encounter between your workplace and the temple. He wanted something concrete. He wanted to know who he had to care for so that he would also know who he wasn’t responsible for.

But as most of us have no doubt discovered, Jesus doesn’t usually give straightforward answers, and this parable is no exception. Because after the priest and the Levite pass by the beaten man, the one who comes along next is none other than one who is in every way an enemy of the Jews: a Samaritan. If you identified most with this character, then that’s great, but you should know that to depict a Samaritan as the good guy in a story told to a group of faithful Jews would be like saying to a group of Americans that Osama bin-Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came walking down a desert road and saw an American lying in the dirt half-dead. And instead of laughing or ranting about how he deserved what had happened to him, instead of finding a rock and finishing him off once and for all, this mortal enemy kneeled in the sand, cleaned the man’s wounds, put bandages on him, gently lifted him into a car, took him to the nearest luxury hotel and paid for his recuperation. Jesus wasn’t just pointing out that the Samaritan did the right thing by showing mercy, he was defying all expectations by making a Samaritan the hero of this story.

In North Carolina in 1963, a Methodist minister named Vernon Tyson invited Dr. Samuel Proctor, a black man and college president to preach in Vernon’s all-white church. Proctor accepted.

When the church leaders found out about the invitation and word trickled into the community, Rev. Tyson began to receive death threats. Despite his best attempts to smooth over the situation and encourage his parishioners to open their hearts and their minds, the majority of his congregation remained firmly opposed.

The night before Dr. Proctor was scheduled to preach, an emergency meeting of the church’s board was held, during which members of the board asked Rev. Tyson whether this one service was really worth tearing the church apart. Then, Miss Amy Womble, an elderly schoolteacher who had taught most people in the room, told this story. “Recently up near Chapel Hill, a teenage boy was killed in a car crash, or so they thought. He was by the side of the road and they were waiting for an ambulance to come and take him to the funeral home. But then an airman from the air force base stopped. He saw the boy lying there and ran to him and opened the boy’s mouth. He saw the boy’s tongue stuck in his throat, so he pulled it out and then gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. By the time the ambulance arrived, the boy was walking around alive. The next week they had a big community dinner for the airman, celebrating how he’d saved that boy’s life.

“What I haven’t told you,” Miss Amy continued, “is that the boy in the wreck was white and the airman was black. And I want all you fathers to tell me something. Which one of you would have said to that airman, ‘Now don’t you stick your black fingers on my boy’s tongue’? Which one of you would have told him, ‘Don’t you put your black lips on my boy’s mouth.’?”

The board voted to stand with their pastor and welcome Dr. Proctor the next day. After that late Saturday night meeting at which Miss Amy Womble spoke, three different members of the board, all white males, called Rev. Tyson in tears, repentant of the prejudice that had gripped them. One of them told his minister, “Something happened to me tonight. When Miss Amy was talking, something happened that ain’t ever happened before. Old Love just come up in my heart.” (2)

We are on a journey and Jesus -- Old Love -- is walking with us. Sometimes we will be the priest and the Levite and make a calculated decision to cross over to the other side even though we know deep down in our hearts that compassion is needed. And Jesus will see us and Jesus will forgive us. Sometimes we will be the Samaritan -- whom, incidentally, Jesus never actually calls “good” -- who responds to the needs of another human being, even if it is someone we could barely be civil to if we met under any other circumstance. And Jesus will nod and smile. Sometimes we will be the religious scholar, questioning Jesus, desperate for some clear answers to life’s most perplexing questions. And Jesus will answer, but the answer will only lead to more questions. Then there will come a time for each of us on this journey -- if the time hasn’t come already -- when we will look around, only to discover that we are traveler in the ditch, in the wrong place at the wrong time, bleeding and hurting and in the depths of despair, and someone, maybe the person we least expect, maybe even the person we least want, will show us mercy. And in that person, whoever they might be, we will see the face of Jesus, and we will know for sure that we are not on this journey alone. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Read the entire speech here.
2. Tyson, Timothy, Blood Done Sign My Name. Three Rivers Press, 2005.

Independence Day, Take Two (sermon, July 4, 2010)

Matthew 25:31-46
Galatians 6:1-16

Today, we Americans celebrate Independence Day. This day commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress, which took place on July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence was primarily written by Thomas Jefferson, who himself said that it contained no original ideas. Instead, it simply reflected beliefs widely shared by the supporters of the American Revolution. As Jefferson explained nearly fifty years after it was written, the Declaration of Independence was “intended to be an expression of the American mind.” (1)

Well, here we sit, two hundred and thirty-four years later, and I can’t help but wonder: are there any words today that could serve as a single “expression of the American mind”? It seems that the United States of America today is not defined by unity but division. But of course, that’s not just true today. Back in 1776 there were divisions among the new American colonies as polarizing as the ones we face today; such divisions have existed for as long as human beings have attempted to communicate with one another. In fact, such divisions go back way farther than the founding of our country. How about the earliest days of our religion? Look at Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which reflects intense division between Paul and other Jesus followers, who had different ideas about what this new religion should look like and how it should be lived out. Divisions are nothing new.

On Independence Day we may wonder whether a country that feels so divided can ever truly be united. But as people of faith we are called every day to figure out how to overcome our divisions and live together as the family of God.

In this final chapter of Galatians, Paul gives us some ideas. He reminds us that although people in our communities of faith will disappoint us and may even offend us, we must treat them, not with contempt and anger, but with gentleness. We are to bear one another’s burdens, rather than simply becoming consumed with our own challenges and problems. We are to “work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.”

Sounds good, right? Hopefully, it sounds like what Christians do or at least what we should do and what, on our best days, we truly strive to do. It sounds good, but at times it can be confusing. What does it mean to “work for the good of all”? And who are the members of “the family of faith”?

That’s where this parable from the gospel of Matthew comes in. Last weekend at the Adult Bible School at Westminster Presbyterian in Akron, Amy Miracle used this passage in her talk about the life to come. She used it to focus on that part of the life to come most of us would rather not focus on at all: judgment. I’ll be honest, this is not one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It makes me squirm. But Amy pointed out several things about it that shed new light on it for me and actually helped me to see Paul’s argument in Galatians a little more clearly as well.

First, she pointed out that this story Jesus tells about the future judgment we will all face is a parable. It is not meant to be an exact prediction of the future; it is meant to helps us understand a little better how to be faithful disciples now.

So with that in mind, then what does faithful discipleship look like? Well, for one thing, if we want to know what Jesus might think about Paul’s command to “work for the good of all,” here it is: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” In other words, to work for the good of all means in particular to look out for those who are -- for whatever reason -- particularly needy and vulnerable. In the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament, we hear again and again from the prophets that God’s people have a responsibility to care for the widow, the orphan, and the poor among them -- precisely because they are God’s people too. “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

This is a hard passage. It can feel constricting and divisive with the sheep on one side and the goats on the other, and neither of them quite sure how they got there. But in it, Jesus sets us free by breaking wide open the divisions and categories we so eagerly establish. It doesn’t matter who is in need, he says. It doesn’t matter how they got that way. It doesn’t matter if they are baptized or circumcised or if they go to church every Sunday. My way is the way of love. So when someone is in need, you love them. One way or another, you find a way to love them. You can overcome whatever divisions might separate you because you are free to love.

You may not typically think of professional basketball players as great examples of those who model Jesus’ call to love others and especially the least of these, but recently a former player died who had done just that. You probably never heard of him, because as basketball players go, he really wasn’t so great. Manute Bol was a giant on the court, standing seven feet, seven inches tall, and his greatest talent as a player was blocking shots. In spite of his mediocre game, he earned a small fortune playing basketball, but instead of spending it on fancy cars or ridiculously big mansions, he gave all of it to refugees in his home country of Sudan, refugees who have been suffering through a seemingly endless civil war. And he didn’t just send money, he went there in person to do relief work. While in Sudan, he contracted a skin disease that recently caused his death at the age of 47.

Manute Bol’s Christian faith compelled him to live a life of service to others. He said it like this: “God guided me to America and gave me a good job. But he also gave me a heart so I would look back.” (2)

To many people, Manute Bol’s life looks, if not foolish, then tragic. In the same manner, Paul is certain that the Jesus followers who arrived in Galatia after him and encouraged the new Galatian Christians to be circumcised had gotten totally confused about what it really means to follow Jesus. But here, as his letter draws to a close, he changes his mind: “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything,” he writes -- which is a little odd since he has spent so much time in this letter arguing about why it is so important that the Galatians remain uncircumcised. But at the end of the day, Paul knows that whether you are circumcised or not has nothing to do with your place in the kingdom of God. All that really matters is, do you know how much God loves you? Do you know what God has done for you? Do you know that you have been set free for love? And if you know it, do you act like it?

And you don’t have to be a millionaire professional ball player to love, either. Father Gregory Boyle tells the story of Speedy, a thrill seeker who lived in the projects and loved to take risks by going to neighborhoods where he did not belong, sticking his head in the mouth of the lion, so to speak.

One day, Speedy showed up in Father Boyle’s office and confessed that he had just walked home Karla, a girl he had a crush on, who lived in the neighborhood of Speedy’s worst enemies. Walking her home could have gotten both of them killed, and Father Boyle was furious. But before he could explode, Speedy quickly told him the rest of the story.

After walking Karla to her second-floor apartment, he heads down the stairs only to confront eight members of the dreaded rival gang. They aren’t just excited to see him, they are salivating.

Speedy takes off running and they chase him, throwing sticks, stones, bottles at him. But he wasn’t called Speedy for nothing. As he nears his own neighborhood, close enough to see it, he suddenly sees a woman from the parish named Yolanda. She doesn’t know Speedy well, but well enough to know that he shouldn’t be here.

“Come here,” she summons him. “What are you doing here?” He hangs his head. “Listen to me,” she says. “If anything happened to you, it would break my heart in two.” Now this woman, she barely knows him. She goes on, “I’ve seen you playing with your nephew in the park. What a good uncle you are. I’ve seen you feed the homeless at church. What a generous and good thing that is. If anything happened to you, it would break my heart in two.”

Speedy smiles at Father Boyle as he finishes the story. “You know,” he says, tapping his heart with his finger, “That made me feel good.” Eventually, because of people like Yolanda and Father Boyle who loved and valued Speedy, Speedy got out of the projects, got married, got a steady job, and raised three kids of his own. (3)

We have the freedom and the power to change people’s lives with love. Not because we are wealthy or privileged or smarter or better informed. Not because we are members of the right church or denomination. Not because we are Americans. We are empowered by the grace of God who loves us. That’s it, nothing else. Our freedom and power to love comes from God alone. Paul says it best: “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

Only God can set us free from the world with all its divisions and judgments. As Matthew 25 reminds us, only God will judge our actions. And our God loves us and sets us free to love others. Today may we know the true freedom that only God can give, freedom that overcomes divisions with love...love that has the power to unite the world. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Wikipedia entry “United States Declaration of Independence.” Read it here.
2. Jon A. Shields, “Manute Bol’s Radical Christianity,” Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2010. Read it here.
3. Father Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart. Free Press, 2010.