St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
November 10, 2024
Year B, Proper 26: The Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Psalm 127
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44
Generosity Begins in Our Hearts
Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking about one of Jesus’ greatest parables, the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
I’m sure many of you are familiar with it.
The set up is that a lawyer asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Rather than answering the lawyer directly, Jesus responds with a question:
“What is written in the law? What do you read there?”
Of course, the lawyer knows the law, and he responds,
“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.”
Jesus congratulates the lawyer for giving the correct answer.
But then the lawyer asks a follow-up question:
“And who is my neighbor?”
To answer that question, Jesus tells a story.
A man was going down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by robbers who stripped him, beat him, and left him for dead by the side of the road.
Now a priest came down the road. And when he saw the beaten man, he crossed to the other side and went on his way.
And then a Levite – the Levites played special roles in the Temple – then a Levite came along, saw the dying man, and he also crossed the road and went on his way.
And then a Samaritan came along.
Unlike the other two, he helps the poor man, bandaging his wounds, put him on his animal, and brought him to an inn. The Samaritan paid for his stay, giving him to time to heal and recover in safety.
The Samaritan was a neighbor to the beaten man by the side of the road.
This is what loving your neighbor as yourself looks like.
Even after two thousand years, this parable is still so powerful and challenging.
But for the first Jewish hearers of this parable, there would have been two great shocks.
First, although Jews and Samaritans were related to each other, they really didn’t get along – didn’t trust each other.
Jews could hardly imagine that a Samaritan might be “good.”
To get a feel for that initial reaction to the parable, simply replace “Samaritan” with the kind of person, or even the person, that you despise the most.
Imagine that’s the person who helps the stranger in need.
Go ahead. I’ll give you a moment.
And for Jesus’ first Jewish audience, the other shock of this story would have been the cowardly and selfish behavior of the priest and Levite.
I mean, of all people, these officially religious men would have known that God’s Law obligated them – required any Jew – to assist a person in need and distress.
That obligation would have been more important than potential risks to their personal safety, and certainly more important than wherever they were in such a rush to get to.
But, in this parable, as so often throughout history and still today, the official, professional religious people fail spectacularly, and it’s the most unlikely person – in this case the hated Samaritan – it’s the most unlikely person who obeys God most perfectly – it’s the most unlikely person who is a neighbor – it’s the most unlikely person who is generous.
I thought of the Parable of the Good Samaritan when I began to reflect on today’s gospel lesson, where Jesus makes some pointed criticisms of the religious establishment, making those criticisms while he is right in the heart of the religious establishment: the Temple.
None of his criticisms should be surprising. I mean, throughout the gospels, Jesus doesn’t have much good to say about the religious leaders of his time.
He dismisses them as hypocrites.
He condemns them for making life more difficult than necessary for people.
And every time Jesus criticizes the religious leaders of the first century, all of us who are religious leaders today should probably get at least a little bit uncomfortable.
I mean, I’d sure hate to be one of those guys… walking around in long robes…
And I definitely wouldn’t want to be the kind of person who… recites long prayers…
Or always sits in the best seats…
Well, at least as far as I know, I haven’t devoured any widow’s houses!
And then, after Jesus is done criticizing the holy men, as if on cue, a widow appears in the Temple.
In the English translation, she’s described as poor, but the Greek word is better translated as “destitute.”
This widow, destitute and vulnerable, appears in the Temple and makes her offering: two small copper coins.
One commentary said that was equal to 1/64th of the typical daily wage - a tiny, tiny amount of money. But it’s everything that she has.
And Jesus simply speaks the plain truth when he says that she has given far more than the others, who gave bigger amounts, yes, but they had plenty left over.
This passage is usually interpreted as Jesus praising the widow for her exceptional generosity.
And I suppose that’s true.
But we can’t forget what we heard just before we met this widow. We can’t forget Jesus’ critique of the system, his criticism of the priests taking advantage of the poor widows.
Does God really want her to give all that she has to the Temple?
And why is the widow destitute, anyway?
So, just for the record, please be as generous as you can be with the church. But please do not give everything you have to the church.
We are not interested in devouring anyone’s houses!
You know, asking you to be generous feels kind of funny because so many of you are incredibly generous with the church – giving so much of your time, talent, and treasure.
As I’ve said before, it’s deeply moving and inspiring.
The jampacked Thanksgiving bags began arriving last Sunday. I’m not sure how that happened since we just began distributing them last Sunday, but when you’re generous and determined you can make even seemingly impossible things happen!
And I know that most, if not all, of you are also generous with other institutions that do good work – schools and all sorts of charities.
And since it seems that, no matter our political persuasion, we all agree that in our very rich country so many of our neighbors are struggling to make ends meet, so many people have just a few coins rattling around in their pocket, so many people are lying in distress beside the road, I know that we will continue to be generous, continue to be a Servant Church.
Finally, I keep thinking about the priest and Levite who crossed the road to avoid the man left for dead by the side of the road.
And I think of the scribes who liked wearing their long robes and saying show-off prayers and taking the best seats and devouring the homes of widows.
They knew God’s law better than anybody and yet they lost their way.
How could this be?
But then, I think about my own life, the times that I’ve messed up, the times I’ve lost my way, the times I haven’t been as loving or generous or forgiving as I should have been, and the root cause of those mistakes has always been that I haven’t taken care of my heart.
I allowed my heart to get sick with fear or anger or grievance.
Without rest and renewal, I’ve given into compassion fatigue and become stingy and resentful and judgmental.
I mean, that man lying by the side of the road should’ve been more careful! He’s not my problem!
So, especially these days, when the news is practically pumped into our veins, clogging our spiritual arteries with poisons, we must care for our hearts.
Yes, we should be informed but that doesn’t have to be twenty-four hours a day.
At least sometimes, we should turn off the TV, put away the phone, shut down the computer, and just be quiet, just breathe, just look out the window, take a walk, open the Prayer Book and pray one of the prayers or psalms that will comfort and feed our soul.
For our own wellbeing, we need to care for our hearts.
And we need to care for our hearts because that’s where generosity begins.
Amen.
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