Loving Action + Proper 10C + 7.14.13

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Amos 7:7-17, Ps 82, Col. 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37)

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength; and your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:27).”

The young lawyer, or scribe, got it right!  If there is a theme to last week’s collect and this week’s scripture, it is this, our golden rule.  Loving God and neighbor.  But then the rubber meets the road.  How do we do it?   Who is our neighbor?  And that is what this week’s scripture speaks to.  But first, I was reminded that in Matthew, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:43-44).”   I think that Jesus’ words about neighbor and enemy-love here are important.  How exactly do we love our neighbor well?  And how do we love this enemy that we may have?

Today’s parable, “The Good Samaritan,” tries to talk about how to love our neighbor well, and both what is needed for real, true neighbor-love, and what is not needed.  There are no doubt many interesting re-tellings of this parable.  One such is in Spanish singer Marcos Vidal’s song “Parabola.”  In the song, he mentions that a guy gets beat up and is left languishing.  And the pastor comes along with his wife, so focused on getting to the meeting and keeping the upper hand in the argument that he walks right by.  Then the worship leader comes along, and he is so laden with the equipment for the music and so forth that he cruises right past, not able to see the guy’s pain.  And then, a gypsy comes along, a bit ruffled looking, but no matter, because he sees the guy in the gutter, and his heart is moved, and he helps him out.  As you know, gypsies in Spain are historically low on the totem pole, just as Samaritans were to the Jews of Jesus’ day, so Vidal asks us, what would this parable look like today?  How can we learn from it?

So let’s look again at the ancient parable and see what it might say to us, not in 1990s Spain or in 1^st Century Israel and Palestine, but in Oxnard in 2013. 

So this fellow, presumably a Jew since it is not otherwise noted,[1] gets beat up, and bad.  He is stripped, left practically for dead, on this dangerous road. Because this road from Jerusalem to Jericho was sketchy.  Known for being full of thieves, and probably, just like some sketchy parts of our modern cities, there was almost a sense that if you went there you were at your own risk.  Many people probably were used to watching their own backs and not worrying about others while on the road. 

So the priest walks right by. This is the religious leader, the pastor, the person who “should” care.  And perhaps he is worried about ritual purity—or another task, but note that he actually almost walks into the injured man and has to cross over to the other side to avoid him.  This isn’t just he didn’t catch sight of him, this is direct avoidance.  The Greek word here for the priest’s action, as well as the Levite’s later action, is antiparelphen, which means, “passed by on the opposite side,” as translated, but the root word, parerchomai, can mean to ignore something in the interest of other matters.  Interesting, huh?  The priest and then the Levite, the lay leader in the temple, a responsible person, a bit like the Senior Warden for us, deliberately pass by on the other side even though God and circumstance have presented them with a need.  They place their will and agenda in front of whatever the loving or Godly response would be.  Wow, how many times have I done that?
But the Samaritan felt compassion.  Okay, we say, we’re used to this part.  But here’s where the scripture from Matthew comes into play.  The Samaritans were almost enemies to the Jews.  There was no love lost.  In my understanding, they were at odds in some ways because they had things in common.  Both the Jews and the Samaritans worshiped Yahweh, but due to some forced migration that happened way back, each group really had its own culture, both religious and secular.[2]  Jesus is telling us in Matthew to love our enemies, but what happens here in this parable, but we see an enemy showing love to a Jew!  The Samaritan’s heart was stirred.  He felt compassion.  In Vidal’s parable, the gypsy, the outsider, the unruly one, perhaps the ungodly one in terms of strict religious rules—feels the pain of the injured person in his heart, and helps.  We should, too.

Because, as theologian Michael Himes points out, shockingly, Jesus talks about the sorting out of the sheep and the goats in Matthew, and he doesn’t talk about how you identified or how well you prayed or if you had perfect attendance in church.[3]  He cares about what we did.  When a person who was hungry approached us, did we feed them as best we could?  Did we give water to the thirsty or visit those sick or in prison? 
What are we doing?  Not because our works earn us salvation, but because acting in love is the only way we really show we are God’s people.  Where can we be neighbors here in Oxnard?  A lot of people in the Oxnard community of late have been talking about promoting peace and preventing Black on Brown (or vice versa) violence. 

Would a modern day Good Samaritan tale tell of a Latino kid getting jumped and the pastor walking by talking on his cell phone about the church roof, followed by the city councilmember averting her eyes because she’s afraid to get involved, followed by an African-American man who stooped down to help and take the kid to the urgent care?  Or do you imagine another scenario?  Perhaps what we can do is pay attention to those around us, not to do everything we might humanly do, but to see where God is nudging our heart to help another.  But it will take some inconvenience, some shifting in our schedule.  Note that the Priest and the Levite stuck to their agenda, and this scribe wants to stick to the letter of the law and prove himself righteous, but the true Christ-follower is much more directed by responding in love than adhering to the letter of the religious law. 
Acting in love is the way to show we are Christians, and in Colossians, the writer says that to conduct yourself worthy of God is to try to do good works, increasing in knowledge.  It is exactly this way, through opening our hearts in love that we are made worthy followers of Christ. 

Now, the good news is that we don’t have to go out of our way to find ways to follow Christ by showing this love.  God will present us with these situations.  Note that the priest and the Levite were each presented with a situation that could have called them to loving action, but they went out of their way to avoid it. 

The Samaritan just does the logical next step—he shows love.  And sure, it does result in an inconvenience—note that he stays overnight at the inn with the wounded man—an extra expense and extra night in his journey I’m sure he didn’t bargain for.  By contrast, the priest and Levite were no doubt home for supper, with their money still in their pockets, something they may well have counted as a success.  They survived that thieving road!  But Jesus says this hard thing: No, don’t protect yourself and your money and your time so much that your heart gets cold. 
Let your way be guided by the Spirit and don’t turn back when your heart is moved to love. 

This doesn’t mean pleasing everyone and anyone.  Sometimes it means not helping everyone who asks in the way they ask—sometimes your heart tells you to buy food rather than give cash.  It’s about following your heart to the next logical step.

Jalal- adin Rumi, a 13^th century mystic Sufi poet, says, “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of that which you really love.”[4]  And that is so true.  Jesus doesn’t call us to be drawn into all the rules and regulations of our lives, although they have their place.  Jesus calls us to tap into that which is loving and kind, to act on that. God calls us to love. 

And love, what we God-followers believe in, is something to be done, lived into, powerfully, ecstatically, fully, self-emptyingly, every day and every moment, until we are emptied into God’s self and we no longer see the alternative between love and any other course of action.  Amen.

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[1] Matthew L. Skinner, “Exegetical Perspective: Luke 10:25-37), FOTW Year C, Vol. 3, 241.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Michael Himes, Doing the Truth in Love (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 50-51.

[4] http://experiencelife.com/meditation/let-yourself-be-silently-drawn-by-the-stronger-pull-of-what-you-really-love/.