The Church of St.
Paul & Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
July 14, 2019
Year C, Proper 10:
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Amos 7:7-17
Psalm 82
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
Real Life Mercy
It
was great to get away for a few days of vacation last week. And, although I
wouldn’t have said no to a little more time off, it’s good to be back here with
all of you.
I
know some people don’t like to travel. Maybe that includes some of you. There’s
the hassle of traffic and long lines, the squeezing into tight seats on a
plane, the discomfort of being in unfamiliar places, and all the rest of it. I
get all of that but I really do like traveling.
I
even like the airport – by now Sue has adjusted to my need to get to the
airport well ahead of our departure time, in part because I’m just like that,
and in part because I enjoy the people-watching, seeing all of the sometimes
excited and sometimes frazzled people as they prepare to travel across the
country or around the world.
And,
while not deliberately eavesdropping, of course, sometimes you overhear a
little bit of conversation that sounds funny or leaves you scratching your
head.
Since
we traveled to a resort, our whole vacation was kind of like that – surrounded
by strangers of all kinds – and overhearing snippets of what people were
talking about.
Of
course, people being what they are, this was not always pleasant.
For
example, one afternoon we were having lunch while next to us there was a couple
(from Scotland, it turned out), and next to them were two American guys who, it
seemed to me, were well into a mostly liquid lunch.
Anyway,
these two guys struck up a conversation with the Scottish couple, telling them
how great the Scots are, how they can
take a joke about themselves (I guess unlike some unnamed other ethnicities…).
At
one point, the louder of the liquid lunch guys asked, “What language do you
speak in Scotland?”
Before
the couple could answer, the quieter liquid lunch guy said with a hint of
embarrassment, “English.”
His
louder friend nodded, saying, “I was going to say that your English was really
good!”
So,
this was excruciating.
But, it got even
worse because eventually the conversation turned to… politics and the current
administration in Washington.
I
thought I could feel the Scots tense up.
But, that might
have just been me.
The
louder liquid lunch guy began talking about the humanitarian crisis at our
southern border, where, as you know, many thousands of children and adults are
being held in very poor conditions, with severe overcrowding and limited or no
access to showers or not even a toothbrush and toothpaste.
The
louder liquid lunch guy’s monologue about immigration went on for a bit and
while I couldn’t hear everything that he was saying, his general attitude about
this national disgrace was along the lines of “regrettable, but whadda ya gonna
do, right?”
But,
here’s what he said to justify what we’re doing at the border – here’s
what I heard loud and clear – here’s have been thinking about ever since.
He said:
“We
can’t run the country like a church.”
“We
can’t run the country like a church.”
I
have to admit when I first registered what he said, I smiled a little bit,
because anyone who’s ever had to deal with institutional church bureaucracy
would never think it would be a good idea to run a country like we run the
church.
There’s
no bureaucracy like a church bureaucracy!
But,
of course, loud liquid lunch guy wasn’t offering the poor Scottish couple a
witty commentary on the inefficiencies of the church.
No,
what he was saying was that all of that nice Christian talk about welcoming the
stranger and loving your neighbor as yourself and turning the other cheek, all
of that “soft” stuff is just fine for behind church doors or in the pages of
the Bible, but in the “real world” – in “real life” – we’ve got to be cold, and
calculating, and, yes, sometimes even cruel.
“We
can’t run the country like a church.”
And, if we’re
honest with ourselves, I wonder how many of us believe exactly the same
thing – not just about how we run our country but also about how we run our
lives.
Today’s
gospel lesson begins with a lawyer asking Jesus a not very good question:
“Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
It’s
a not very good question because eternal life is not something that is earned
by good deeds – and it’s certainly not something that is “inherited” – eternal
life is a gracious gift from God.
But,
Jesus plays along with the lawyer, asking him about what is found in Jewish Law
and the lawyer gives the correct answer: love of God and love of neighbor.
Jesus
congratulates him on getting it right but the lawyer doesn’t quit there. No, he
asks another question, a much more interesting question:
“And
who is my neighbor?”
And,
if you think about it, by asking, “who is my neighbor?” he’s really asking, “who is not my
neighbor?”
In
his usual Jesus-like way, Jesus doesn’t answer him directly but instead offers
what is now one of his best-known and most-loved parables.
Parables
are stories that are set in ordinary places and familiar situations, but are
meant to shock us and to get us thinking about the world and our lives in new
and different ways.
For
us here today, one of the challenges with the best-known and most-loved
parables is that it’s hard for us to be shocked by them anymore. We make the
mistake of thinking that since we’ve heard this many times in church that we’ve
got this story figured out, that we know what it “means.”
But,
for the Jewish people who first heard this story there would have been at least
two big shockers – and, if you don’t mind, I’m going to talk about these two
shockers out of order.
They
would not have been shocked by what happens to the poor man, presumably
a Jew, on the road down from Jerusalem to Jericho, which was notoriously
dangerous for travelers who could and often did fall victim to robbers.
But,
the second shocker in this story is that a Samaritan is the hero. As we talked
about just a couple of weeks ago, although they were related to each other and
read some of the same Scriptures, Jews and Samaritans had very different ideas
about worship, about the Messiah, and about lots of other things.
Like
many family feuds, it was bitter and it lasted a long time.
So,
many Jews would have had a hard time believing that there was even such a thing
as a “good Samaritan” and would have been shocked to hear about the great mercy
he showed to the injured man on the road.
It
would have been shocking to consider a Samaritan a neighbor and it would have
been shocking to consider that a Samaritan could treat a Jew as a neighbor.
So,
that’s shocker number two.
Shocker
number one is the behavior of the priest and the Levite, the first two people
who encounter the half-dead man and, instead of helping him, they cross over to
the other side of the road and hurry on their way.
For
centuries, Christians have heard this story and assumed that the priest and the
Levite didn’t help because they wanted to maintain their ritual purity - that
they didn’t want to be contaminated by blood or, even worse, a corpse.
And,
believing this, Christians have used the behavior of the priest and Levite as
an example of how Jews supposedly prefer law over love.
Wrong,
wrong, wrong.
The
first Jewish hearers of this story would have been shocked by the behavior of
these two religious men because Jewish law – God’s law – insists that helping a
person in need takes precedence over all other considerations, including ritual
purity, which was not an issue anyway since it seems that the priest and the
Levite were heading from Jerusalem to Jericho.
The
shocker is that these two men of faith did not fulfill the law.
And,
I wonder why.
I
can easily imagine that they were concerned about their own safety. After all,
the bandits who left the man half-dead might still be lurking around, waiting
for more victims.
Maybe
they were on a tight schedule and couldn’t “afford” a delay.
Maybe
they just didn’t want to get involved.
And,
maybe, just maybe, these two religious people made the choice they did because
consciously or unconsciously they thought that all of that love of God and love
of neighbor stuff was fine when they were safely worshiping in the Temple or comfortably
reading the Bible, but in the “real world” – in “real life” – where it will
really cost us, we’ve got to be cold, and calculating and, yes, sometimes even
cruel.
We can’t run the
country – we can’t run our lives - like a church.
Right?
I
don’t need to tell you that we are living through difficult times.
There
is cruelty and suffering all around us: along the southern border and also
closer to home in the Elizabeth detention center and in county jails, including
our own.
Of
course, the cruelty and suffering is not limited to undocumented immigrants.
Just
take a walk down Bergen Avenue or through Journal Square.
Or,
just turn on the news anytime.
And
so just like the loud liquid lunch guy and the lawyer, just like the priest and
the Levite and the Samaritan, we all face difficult choices.
Do
we see others as neighbors – especially the least and the lost - especially
people different from us - especially people we don’t particularly like or even
trust?
Do
we take the faith we say we believe
and the Good News we receive safely right here – do we take that love out into
the “real world,” out into our “real lives,” where it will almost certainly
cost us something?
Like
the Samaritan, do we show real life mercy?
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