Just in case there is a possibility that some of you have the incorrect impression that I am a scoundrel, I want to immediately clear that idea up.
In fact, I am a wonderful, amazing, talented, handsome, and generous man! And did I mention humble? Just saying!
I don’t think of myself as a bad guy, and I suspect neither do most of you, of me, or of yourselves.
Which is why reading some of Jesus stories can be perilous. Why, because while Jesus’ intention in his stories is to put us on edge, we often decide that the character in the story we most identify with is the very person Jesus is suggesting we are not.
So, for example, the story in John’s gospel where the adulteress (not you noticed the adulterer) is brought before Jesus along with a religious crowd, we often identify with the woman, not those who wanted to see the woman stoned to death because of her sins.
She is a contagion that must be eliminated from their community. We don’t want bad people as our neighbors, because they make us look bad, feel bad, and evidently, some of us assume, do bad. They are like a virus. If your next-door neighbor has an affair with someone they are not married to, evident you will too!
The assumption seems to be that if your neighbor jumps off the Mid-Hudson bridge, you will to! So in order to fend off temptation, we eliminate it! But, then since Jesus seems to suggest that these good townspeople are bad, we choose to identify, if a bit reluctantly, with the woman.
We are not adulterers; we aren’t fooling around on the sides of our marriages. But the alternative in the story is to identify with the guys with the stones.
And while we don’t often consider ourselves to be sinners worthy of punishment, we don’t want to be those guys surrounding Jesus just waiting to lob the first rock either.
We don’t want to be thought badly of by Jesus!
So, the thinking goes, we aren’t like those guys, judgmental, biased, sexist, although judging by many folk’s Facebook posts, it seems we have become perfectly willing to cast the first stone online, or at least the second or third if someone goes first.
We don’t want to be like those men, angry and self-righteous who are willing to kill a woman in cold blood, searching for and finding the right heft of stone to cave in her sinful skull.
Yet, Jesus thinks we are. Oh, how well he knows us.
Jesus seems to think we are much more like the scribe and the priest and the Levite, all who wish to justify themselves or at least not get ceremonially unclean, or perhaps, just not willing to be mugged by the same gang of robbers that got to the guy laying still on the side of the road.
We are afraid to care, afraid to act, afraid to speak up because it might cost us our righteousness, or perhaps our standing in the community, or even our lives, even though Jesus suggests that by not loving our neighbor, no matter what they look like, or act like, or even smell like, we have pushed away not only a man beaten and robbed, but also pushed away God.
We worry about ourselves and in doing so, miss the opportunity to care about what God cares about.
Remember the man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.
He was a fellow Jew. He was a man of his times like you or I, but who had fallen on the worst of life’s mishaps.
And the priest and the Levite, were fellow Jews too like the man beaten and left for dead. They were neighbors and friends who too were like you or I.
They were, the elders in their church, or deacons perhaps, Sunday School teachers or youth leaders, all good solid citizens, but who out of fear didn’t want to make the necessary sacrifices.
So instead, they left him behind to die. And in doing so, did not care for God present in the man.
And then, imagine this, a heretic made the sacrifice.
Jesus made his point clear! We are the ones who fail the kingdom time and time again, not because we couldn’t succeed, but because we are unwilling to. We have been given the Holy Spirit. We have the power to heal, to cast out demons, even, if we listen to the Book of Acts, the power to raise the dead.
But because we give into fear that somehow God won’t protect us, God won’t provide for us, God won’t be with us when we choose to care for others that life has forced into poverty and illness, that have lives made more difficult by our unwillingness to share and care, we in fact leave them to die.
The Samaritan, however, instead of living in fear, lived with generosity, and hope, and a willingness to go out of his comfort zone and care for somebody not like him at all.
He went to help him, he bound up his wound, he administered appropriate antibiotics, wine and olive oil, and then he loaded the man on his four-legged ambulance and took him to a place where the man could rest and recover, and get this, the Samaritan paid for it all and offered the caregivers even more!
He saved the life of a heretic, of an enemy, of a person who had no reason to trust him or like him and one for whom the Samaritan had no reason to trust and like and care for. But he did.
Because deep in him was the unshakable belief that other people, even heretics, were worthy of being cared for.
Even if they cost you money!
Even if they rode on your four-legged ambulance!
Even if they used up your wine.
Even if they made you somehow unclean.
Because he knew deep in his soul it was the right thing to do.
And he refused to let fear control him.
The lawyer asked who is my neighbor?
Jesus asked who is it that acted like the neighbor.
The Samaritan. Now go, and be like him!
And all God’s people said, Amen!
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