A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

Look Past Passports

Luke 10:25-37, Preached at the Congregational Church of Boca Raton, March 11, 2007

Recently a Scotsman was admitted to Oxford University. He moved into a dormitory. His mother worried, though, how he’d do being in a strange land with all those snobbish Brits. She gave him a month to settle in, and then called him. “How do you find the English students, Donald?” she asked. “Oh Mother,” he said, "They are strange and noisy people. The one on this side bangs his head against the wall all night and won’t stop. The one on that side screams and curses until the sun comes up at dawn.”  “Oh Donald,” she said, “How do you put up with such rude, noisy people?” “I ignore them, Mother. I just sit here quietly each night, playing my bagpipes.” Perhaps in a perfect world, we would all play the bagpipes or none of us would. But we live in the real world.

Our passage for the day is about becoming a good neighbor. Now we know what it means to be a good neighbor: Loan sugar, return the tools, and as Benjamin Franklin said in 1754 in his Poor Richard’s Almanac, “Love thy Neighbour; yet don’t pull down your Hedge;” the proverb we now know as “good fences make good neighbors.” Respect, care for but don’t intrude—these make a good neighbor. But sometimes we need to do and be more.

Reminds me of the eventful elevator ride that Dan Rather recalls. “After having flown in late during the night,” he says, “I am now up early to go downstairs and make a speech before several thousand people. I am not in a good mood. In the elevator I feel all eyes on me. ‘Didn’t any of these people’s mothers teach them that it’s rude to stare?’ I am thinking. Soon the elevator reaches the lobby. As it empties, a woman gently takes hold of my sleeve. ‘Mr. Rather,’ she says quietly, ‘I don’t mean to intrude.’ ‘Then why are you?’ I say to myself. She looks around, making sure no one else is listening. ‘I don’t want this to be embarrassing. But your fly is unzipped and a piece of your shirttail is sticking out through it,’ she says. Then she smiles and strides away.”

What I am trying to get us to see by studying Luke for several weeks are the unique directions he points us toward as Christians. He does this by pointing out a unique Jesus Christ, a bit different than the three other pictures of Christ. The last two weeks have shown the importance of prayer for Luke’s Jesus and Christ’s life of miracles, a life that began with the miracle of a virgin birth. But here’s the thing: Luke’s Jesus is not just about spiritual, miracles matters. He is the one who courageously stares down major social and political issues, the racism and sexism in his world, and boldly opens up new realities and relationships. After all, you don’t think he was killed because he prayed a lot, do you? Look, Jesus was a strong believer in justice. But even more importantly than that, Jesus believed in the God whose kingdom had dimensions larger than our confining loyalties. If you want to follow Christ, you have to step beyond some borders. You’re going to remove some barriers between you and other people. Don’t always play it safe. Build a bridge. Step across the chasm that keeps you far apart from someone else. On the other side, is one whose creator is the one who created you, the Lord our God. Remember, as scripture says, “The measure you give will be the measure you get.”

What we want to see this morning is to the extent that you extend yourself, you fulfill Jesus’ intentions when he told the Good Samaritan story.

What I mean is that we each grow up with a certain view of others, of whose in and whose out, whose good and whose not; and this view has its natural, at least to us, limits. Now, we are taught these limits in the natural person. When Christ tells us that we must be born again or born anew or born from above, it’s because he is commanding us to grow into our spiritual, ethical person. This person comes from above, as Christ did, and sees from above, as the Spirit does, and judges things from above, as God does: “Justice and judgment are the habitation of your throne, (O God); mercy and truth shall go before your face.” Ps.89.14 This spiritual person has a broad, new view of who to value and how we do so.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is working overtime to get his listeners to lower barriers and cross borders. Luke alone tells the story of the Good Samaritan. The one grateful leper of the ten is a Samaritan. John’s Gospel may have a saying that Jews have no dealings with Samaritans, but Luke doesn’t shut the door on anyone. But it’s not just Samaritans that Luke incorporates into God’s blessings, Jesus speaks with approval of gentiles, people Orthodox Jews would have considered unclean. The Roman centurion in Luke 7.9 is praised for the greatness of his faith. Luke shows Jesus citing the Old Testament story of Naaman the Syrian as a shining example.  And then there are Jesus’ ringing words in Luke 13.29,   “(People) will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at the table in the kingdom of God.” Wm. Barclay This isn’t a reference to the four corners of Israel; this is taking in the four corners of the known world. So when you’re wondering how to understand someone who is in your sights, take a new look. Be tolerant. Judge humbly. See her or him as your faith tells you God would want you to see. Have the mind of Christ, who didn’t value people for what they could do for him nor for what they had done right, or for that matter, wrong, but, as he said, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” Jn.7.24

Life would have been so much easier for Jesus if he had kept people in their boxes. If he would have just kept them categorized: Samaritans are bad. Jews good. Romans bad, Jews good. He should have remembered that prostitutes were to be scorned, and leaders to be exalted. If he could have just kept straight how to play ball, he could have gone places. But he didn’t. Instead, like Job, he could say, “The cause which I knew not I searched out.” Job 29.16 and “I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame.” Job 29.15 The cause of Christ is to minister to others, not to be ministered to. The courageous Jesus showed just how far and broad and wide are the dimensions of the kingdom of God, and by doing so brought us within its life.

John Fife is a Presbyterian pastor in Tucson, Arizona, now retired, who, in the early 1980s, was approached by an immigration lawyer working with Salvadoran refugees seeking refuge in the United States. It was a time, you will remember, when many in El Salvador were targets of their country’s military government and death squads. When that lawyer first approached, the pastor could not even locate El Salvador on the map. The congregation soon started a weekly prayer vigil for the people of Central America. They began to raise money to bail refugees out of detention and help relocate them. An unknown pastor suddenly became a national figure, and the fledgling sanctuary movement gathered support, spreading to hundreds of congregations across the nation. Soon they were helping establish an “underground railroad” for the fleeing refugees, enabling the refugees to move on to homes in other areas of the country. But it didn’t stop there. Eventually Southside Presbyterian offered sanctuary to refugees facing deportation. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service indicted John Fife and 15 others for harboring illegal aliens, and a trial ensued. Eight were convicted, but never imprisoned. All because John Fife and his congregation crossed the normal boundaries of their lives and allowed themselves to enter a new world. (Joel D. Kline, Ruined for life!)

On the other side, within other people, there is so much to find. Reach out to help. Grow big enough to serve. Relieve the burdens of others. Love mercy and do justice. It is the strong who must support the weak, and those who stand must raise the ones who fall. Do not turn a blind eye or a cold shoulder to the one who struggles. Instead, as scripture says, “Whenever we have an opportunity, do good to all people.” Gal. 6.10

There were two beggars sitting side by side on a street in Mexico City. One had a cross in front of him, the other one the Star of David. Many went by, looked at them, but only put money into the hat of the one sitting behind the cross. A priest came by, stopped and watched the people give money only to the beggar behind the cross. Finally he went over to the beggar behind the Star of David and said: “Don’t you understand? This is a Catholic country. People aren’t going to give you money if you sit there with a Star of David in front of you, especially when you’re sitting beside a beggar who has a cross. In fact, they would probably give to him just out of spite.” The Star of David beggar listened to the priest and then turning to the cross beggar, said: “Moishe, now look who’s trying to teach us marketing.” It’s funny but it’s so full of stereotypes that I am sure more than one of you is rightly offended. But let’s understand something else here: The fact is that groups of people do see the world differently than other groups. There is diversity in the world. In order to appreciate others, they should not have to become us.

 In Jesus’ day, there was bitter tension between the two groups of people. Samaritans were descendants of a mixed population of Jews and others from surrounding areas following the conquest by Assyria in 722 B.C., 700 years before Jesus was born. (Long history here.) They had opposed rebuilding the temple and Jerusalem after the Babylonians had sacked it; and they constructed their own place of worship on Mount Gerizim. When you add it all up, to the Jews, they were ceremonially unclean, socially outcast, and religiously heretics. They were not good. Now, in our scripture, the lawyer wants to know who his neighbor is, a question that can only be answered by describing the qualities of the other person in question. But Jesus, smarter than your average lawyer, turns the question around. At the end, the lawyer observes and comments on the quality, not of the victim, but on that of the benefactor, the Samaritan—the one he intensely dislikes. The question has been transformed to what makes someone a neighbor into what makes me neighborly. You see, it doesn’t matter who the person is lying, sitting, or standing in front of you. Their qualities aren’t in question. What they have or haven’t done doesn’t concern Jesus. What does concern him is whether or not we have the qualities, the character, the soul, to be a neighbor, to be as good of a neighbor as a “Samaritan.” It’s no longer about their qualifications to be cared for, but our qualifications to be neighbors.

Seeing it this way, we can no longer rest behind our borders because God doesn’t acknowledge our walls. God’s call for justice and his demand for righteousness know no boundaries. All our barriers are made of paper and dust.

For there is one God, the maker of us all; the one who watches over the downtrodden and the oppressed; the one who resists the proud and the uncaring; the one whose kingdom knows no end nor no limits. So seek to do good. Find your path to do what’s right. The Lord must have our hands and hearts to restore and revive the weak and needy. Let us be those who overcome prejudice and recognize worth. For where there is humanity, there is also divinity.  

 

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