A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — July 11, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Deuteronomy 6:4-9;  Luke 10:25-37

[The lawyer said], “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.”
…[then he asked Jesus], “And who is my neighbor?” — Luke 10:23, 29

How can we hear this story with new ears?  We know it too well.  We’ve named it “The Good Samaritan,” and that name has become a watchword for care-giving.  We have Good Sam hospitals and civic awards, as well as Good Samaritan laws to protect people who offer first aid.  If you stop to give someone you don’t know a helping hand, you’re a Good Samaritan.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with doing that.  But we’ve watered down the story Jesus told when a lawyer asked him, “Who is my neighbor?”  Perhaps if Jesus were telling his story today, he might tell this true story from 2007 about a car accident in the Arizona desert.

While driving on a U.S. Forest Service Road, a 45-year-old mother lost control of her van, which went off a curve, rolled into a canyon, and ended up 300 feet off the road with the mother pinned inside.  Her 9-year-old son was unhurt and able to crawl back up to the road for help.  For several hours no one came by.  Finally someone came walking down the road.  His name was Jesus… Jesus Manuel Cordova, to be precise.  He’d come across the border from Mexico illegally and had been walking for two days.  It wasn’t in his best interest to linger or call attention to himself.  But the boy clearly needed help.  So Jesus stopped.  How did they communicate—a boy who knew no Spanish and a traveler from the wrong side of the border who knew almost no English?  Perhaps because both understood the language of need.  Unable to pull the mother out of the van, Jesus stayed with boy, giving him his jacket and building a bonfire as the temperature dropped with nightfall.  Sometime in the night, the mother died.  Finally in the morning some hunters came by and called for help.  The boy was airlifted to a hospital in Tucson, and Jesus Manuel Cordova was taken into custody by Border Patrol agents who were the first to respond to the call for help.  He was deported. ¹

 

We forget that the words “good” and “Samaritan” put side-by-side are meant to slap us in the face and make us sit up and take notice.  Popular piety has made the Samaritan into a “good guy.”  But Jesus’ story was a shocking challenge to the lawyer.  In that time, Samaritans were hated, despised, even feared, treated as outcasts and outlaws, since they lived outside the religious laws.  So here is Jesus once again speaking against drawing dividing lines between people.

In Leviticus 19:17-18, where the original command to love your neighbor as yourself appears, neighbors are specified as “your kin” and “any of your people.”  Yet Jesus offers a story that extends the “neighborhood boundary” beyond belief.  If Samaritans (of all people) are in, what about illegal immigrants… or radical Muslims… or homosexuals with AIDS… or drug addicts… or anyone who is despised and reviled?  In his Cotton Patch Version of Luke, Clarence Jordan made the Samaritan a traveling black man who stops to care for the injured white man.  As he does so he talks to himself:  “Sombody’s robbed you; yeah, I know about that, I been robbed, too.  And they done beat you up bad; yeah, I know, I been beat up, too.  And everybody just go right on by and leave you laying here hurting.  Yeah, I know.  They pass me by, too." ²

Did the Samaritan—or Jesus Manuel Cordova, or the traveling black man—stop because he recognized himself lying there in the ditch?  Stopping and helping a stranger seems harder if first you must see and recognize yourself in the one who is in need.  But then the second part of the Great Commandment is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Again and again Jesus responds to questions by telling stories.  How different that is from what usually happens when you ask a question.  The wonderful thing about stories is that they meet and teach questioners right where they are.  They do the same even for people who are, for whatever reason, unwilling to ask their questions aloud.  Stories are inviting.  A straightforward answer in contrast can be jarring.  It can go right over your head… or it can shut you down by implying that you were mistaken or wrong or ignorant or pigheaded in your question.

Many commentaries and sermons chastise the lawyer for asking Jesus that question, “Who is my neighbor?”  But don’t go putting him down for asking a question.  The commandment does say, “You shall love the Lord your God… with all your mind.”  Loving God with your mind means being willing to ask questions.  Yet all too often we hold our tongue for fear of looking dumb or being put down.  One of the real problems with all fundamentalisms is how their rigid certainty about all the answers discourages real questions and stifles the inquiring spirit.

The lawyer asks a question, and he gets a story, a parable.  Storyteller Megan McKenna refers to parables as “the arrows of God.”  In part, she means that they point to the kingdom of God, but she also has in mind an old story about arrows.

Once there was a king whose dearest desire was to become a perfect bowman, able to hit every target dead center with his arrow.  The king worked hard on his strength, his stance, his coordination, his concentration.  A master archer taught him how to center himself and become one with the arrow and the bow.  Yet he never shot better than 90% or so.  Then one day the king was riding through a small village, and wherever he looked was a target with an arrow dead center in the bull’s-eye.  The king stopped and asked and found to his surprise that the archer was a young girl, but 12 years old.  The king sought her out and asked her help in becoming a perfect archer.  Immediately the young girl agreed and took him to find a barn.  She was pleased that the king knew how to stand, how to concentrate, how to become one with the arrow and the bow.  She told him to take aim at the barn, breathe deeply, and let the arrow fly.  The king took aim, but then stopped and turned to the girl.  “But there is no target,” he said.  “I know,” she replied. “That’s the best part.  After you let the arrow go, you paint the target around the arrow." ³

Stories—parables—are the arrows of God… always on center.  And Megan McKenna adds:  “All stories are true; and some of them even really happened.”  What she means is that all stories meet us exactly where we are and tell us something true about who we are… or are not.  This is where our transformation must begin.

So who are we… really?  Ask a question, get a story.  Here’s one that’s a lot like the Good Samaritan, except the three travelers are more like us… maybe.

Once there was a great country rich in beauty, but its people were very poor.  One day a visitor driving through the countryside saw a starving child in the ditch beside the road.  Moved to pity, he slowed down.  But such poverty was so common a sight, and he was driving to an important business meeting.  So on he went, thinking that surely someone else less busy would stop and care for the child.

At midday, another tourist came along.  The sight of the starving child also moved him to pity, so he stopped.  But then he thought of all that helping the child might involve.  There would be questions at the hospital, dealings with the police maybe even the U. S. Consulate.  He might even have to extend his vacation, which was not possible.  As much as he wanted to help, it would be too involved.  So he drove on, certain that someone else would stop.

At dusk, a third tourist drove by.  Seeing the child he stopped his car and hurried over and knelt down.  When he saw the pitiful condition of the child, he gasped.  The child’s hair was dirty and knotted; his clothes were filthy; his nose was running, and he smelled awful.  There was a stream nearby, so he said to the child, “I have food in the car.  I will go get some.  You just go to the stream to wash up.  When you return I will have something for you to eat.”

On the way to the stream, the child died. ⁴

I don’t like this story.  It hits too close to home—that part of me that seeks to help but also to hold back and limit my involvement.  What might happen if we were to see ourselves in the suffering of others and act out of true compassion?

Ask a question, get a story.  Here’s one from the Hindu tradition.  It’s called “The Guru and the Mantra of Life and Death.”

Once there was a teacher, a great master with many followers.  They came from near and far to learn at his feet, to become enlightened, and to be liberated from their desires and needs.  The learning was long and hard, and when they reached enlightenment the master would send them out as masters in their own right to share their knowledge and understanding with the world.

 

Just before they left, the master would give each student a gift—a special gift, for it was the mantra of life and death.  Phrase by phrase he’d teach it to them until it became a living part of them.  Then he would tell them that as long as they said this mantra faithfully, they would be blessed with insight and clarity and the ability to discern the truth even when surrounded by lies and shadows.  Its power would keep them from despair and give them hope in the midst of deprivation and misery.  Most of all the mantra would strengthen their faith, and one day it would save their souls and give them eternal life.  And as the students offered their thanks, the master would always close by warning them never to teach anyone else the mantra, for it was for them alone, those who had been enlightened.

And so it went for years, until one day a young man came to the master, ready to go out into the world.  The master taught him the mantra, and he too was humbled by the enormity of the gift he had been given.  However, when the master warned him not to share the mantra with anyone, he asked why.  The master looked at him long and hard.  “If you share this mantra with others,” he said, “then what it will do for you will be handed over to them.  It will be like tearing out a part of your very self, and you will live in darkness even when there is light all around you.  You will know only despair and misery of body and soul all your life.  You will stumble over the truth and know endless confusion.  Worst of all, you will lose your faith and eventually your soul, and you will be doomed forever.”

The young student turned white with fear.  Deeply troubled, he proceeded to the nearest city and gathered the multitudes about him, teaching and enthralling them with his stories and wisdom.  And then he taught them the mantra, line by line, phrase by phrase, as the master had taught it to him.  There was a hush, and the people left whispering the mantra in awe and wonder to themselves.

Now, several of the master’s other students were in the city, and they were horrified by what the young man had done by giving away the mantra to the unenlightened and ignorant masses.  They immediately went back to the master, told him what had happened, and asked, “Master, aren’t you going to punish him?”

The master shook his head sadly and said, “I do not have to.  He knew what his fate would be if he shared the mantra of life with those who were not enlightened.  He will now know it as the mantra of death and darkness and despair, for he must go on without hope or knowledge or truth.  He will live isolated, alone, without comfort or faith.  And he will die terribly and give up even his own soul.  How could I possibly punish him?  He knew what he was choosing.”  And with those words, the master rose and began gathering his few belongings.

“Where are you going, master?” asked one of the students.

“I am going to the man who gave away my gift,” said the master.

“But why?” they all chorused.

“Because,” the master said, “out of all my students, he alone learned wisdom and compassion.  Now he is my master.”  And he left them to follow the man who had chosen compassion over knowledge. ⁵

So, who are we in this story?  Ahhh… That’s up to us really.  Each of us must look to our own story.  The arrows of God are ever on target.  Amen and amen.

 

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 ¹ CBS News, 11/24/2007 (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/24/national/main3536135.shtml).

 ² Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Version of Luke & Acts (Clinton, NJ:  New Win Pub., 1969) p. 47.

 ³  Adapted from a story in Parables: The Arrows of God by Megan McKenna (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994) pp. 144-145.

 ⁴ Adapted from a story in Colors!: Stories of the Kingdom by John R. Aurelio [New York City: Crossroad, 1993] pp. 189-90.

 

 ⁵ Adapted from a story in Parables: The Arrows of God, pp. 158-160.