JUST DO IT!
by
Pat Edmonds
From July 14th 2019 service
Based on Luke 10: 25-37
Sometimes the most difficult passages to preach about are the very well-known ones and today’s parable of the Good Samaritan is no exception. As humans we have a tendency to become complacent about things we are overly familiar with. Each one of us here could probably stand up and give a fairly accurate account of this story without looking in the Bible or reviewing the facts. Basically a man is attacked by robbers and left injured at the side of the road. Several people, including a priest, pass by and leave him there until a Samaritan, a man from a group that usually treated the Jews with hostility, not only helps the traveler on the spot, but ensures he will be cared for until he is well enough to resume his travels. This is another of those nicey-nice stories we all like to hear and tell – some nice person did a nice thing for someone else and we can all feel nice about it!
But in order to reveal the real message of today’s passage we must examine the WHY – Why does Jesus tell this parable? – for Jesus always has a reason! He doesn’t tell parables to be nice. Jesus tells parables as indictments against the actions of people. Through parables He invites us to take a closer look at ourselves. Jesus is responding to a question from a learned man in society – a lawyer. In fact in this passage he answers two distinct questions.
First the lawyer asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And like a good educator Jesus turns the question back to the man. “What is written in the law? What do YOU read there?” It seems to me that the lawyer really knew the answer all the time for he quickly replies, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” “You’re right”, says Jesus. “DO this and you will live.”
So the answer is simply to LOVE. That’s not too difficult. We all know what love is. We use the word all the time. We love our spouses; we love our children; we love our new home; we love a book or a movie or a play or a new outfit. We in Canadian society are great lovers! I even used to tell my little dog that I loved him!
But let me tell you a little story about love. A psychology professor who had no children of his own would frequently reprove a neighbor who often scolded his child. “You should love your child, not punish him,” the professor said on several occasions. Then one hot summer day the professor worked hard repairing his concrete driveway. After several hours of work, the professor laid down his trowel, wiped the perspiration from his forehead and started toward the house for a well-deserved rest. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a mischievous little boy putting his foot in the fresh cement. He rushed over and started ranting and raving at the boy and was about to grab the culprit by the scruff of his neck, when the neighbor, the boy’s father, leaned from the window and said, “Watch it, professor! Don’t you remember? You must LOVE the child.” At this point the professor yelled back furiously, “I do love him, in the abstract, but not in the concrete!”
Sometimes, we too love in the abstract. Love is the topic of the day, something to discuss, something to think about, something to base reality TV shows on, something to write songs about or tell jokes about. We talk endlessly about it. We use it in commercials. It’s a lovely word we use to describe our feelings, our emotions, that tingly sensation we experience on those romantic occasions. But the love Jesus talks about is not a feeling. Love in general, that is love outside our family or intimate acquaintances, is not based on a feeling. Love goes beyond being nice, being friendly to the people we know. If not a feeling, what is this love Jesus asks of us? This love is one of ACTION. In a society where there is an abundance of love-talk, there seems to be a super absence of LOVE ACTION. The Golden Rule is not “FEEL about others as you FEEL about yourself.” The Golden Rule is, “DO unto others as you would have them DO unto you.” Real love takes a great deal of effort, and is often painful. It is an act of will. Jesus says in verse 28, “DO this and you will live!” Jesus is saying that love-talk is not enough. Love is something you DO.
True story: Picture a large secondary school lunchroom. A group of grade 10 girls are seated at a table eating lunch. At a nearby table is a group of students from the “special class” or the “handicapable class”. Some of the grade ten girls decide it would be fun to break off small pieces of food and throw them at the special students. One girl, however, does not consider this action funny or proper. She asks her friends to stop. Three times she asks them to stop. She feels that what they are doing is not right. But her friends continue. So what does she do? She stands up, picks up her lunch and goes to sit at a table with the special students who are being tormented. – And her friends then quickly get up and leave the cafeteria. It is one thing to say everyone is welcome, all are included, or it doesn’t matter how people look or how smart they are, but it is a different matter altogether to do something about it – to take action! This was love in action – the kind of love Jesus modeled.
The lawyer in today’s scripture has another very important question to ask. Even though he appeared to know the answer to the first question before asking it, lawyers being lawyers, he had to get the facts straight. So he asks of Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
In my grandfather’s time and to some extent my parents’ time this was a very easy question to answer. The neighbor was the farmer and his family on the next farm; the people you saw at church each Sunday; the men you talked to down at the general store or the feed mill; the farmer whose barn you helped rebuild after a fire; the lady down the road you borrowed a cup of sugar from. It was very clear who your neighbors were. They were the people who looked a lot like you, dressed in a similar fashion to you, experienced many of the economic and social difficulties you did, worshipped with you and raised their children with similar rules and moral values.
But the world has changed a great deal since then. As modern transportation and communications have caused the planet to shrink, our world has expanded. Our neighbors are no longer” just like us”. Our grandchildren attend classes where they as “white Anglo-Saxon Protestants” may indeed be in the minority. They walk to school with children who dress very differently than they do, have very different food, customs and religious practices. Due to the miracle of television and computers, at an early age they have knowledge of peoples and lifestyles, wars and violence half a world away. They know about refugees, immigrants, boat people, those with AIDS, welfare bums and even criminals. They are taught to “Never Talk to Strangers”. Police, teachers and parents work hard to street-proof this generation and keep them safe. All of this makes “Who is my neighbor?” a little more complicated to answer. It is not always easy because while we know the answer in our hearts, real life in the 21st century keeps getting in the way. Yet I cannot help but see the similarity between the “neighbor” in this story today and the neighbors we are being asked to love. For the Samaritan who came to the aid of the traveler was not the most like him, in fact was quite possibly someone he hated for the usual reasons of racial prejudice and stereotyping. Perhaps Jesus envisioned the kind of world that might evolve and chose the characters carefully so we could relate to them in our 21st century world. There are many folks today who do not act like our neighbors, or the neighbors of anyone else, folks who are very different from us. People who do not show love to us or anyone else we care for. That is the way it is in the world around us. But we are not children of the world. We are children of God, loved unconditionally by God. As Christians we are called to live differently, to think differently, to do differently. We are called to be neighbors to those who are not our neighbors; to love those who do not necessarily love us back; to give to those who may not ever give back to us.
Last week as these thoughts of “Who is my neighbor?” were going through my head, I walked into the Sunday School room and there on the wall was the answer – in the form of a puzzle sheet, source unknown. The question is clear, but the answer had to be decoded using the symbols provided. And it is – ANYONE WHO NEEDS MY HELP! – the same answer Jesus gave to the lawyer so long ago.
There is no magic that transforms us into the kind of loving person who can and will do this. The secret is not to make ourselves loving persons, but to allow ourselves to be channels of God’s love. Loving is letting God love us and then letting that love flow through. Sue Lavery, a Canadian minister, shares the five rules given to her by her grandmother for dealing with people she disliked. They are:1. Remind yourself that the other person is a well-loved child of God. 2. See if you can discover why the other person is difficult. 3. Pray for the person. 4. Do a service for the other person. And 5. If you can, allow the other person to do a service for you.
Acting out our faith and sharing God’s love with those we come in contact with either personally or through the media, is its own reward. When we choose to follow God’s ways, our relationship with God deepens and as we share and care, our lives are enriched. In a world of Good Samaritans, there would be no war, poverty or suicide bombings. This is the world we are called to build by expressing our faith by our actions. I found this poster the other day. For me it sums up the story from Luke chapter 10, PEOPLE MAY DOUBT WHAT YOU SAY, BUT THEY WILL ALWAYS BELIEVE WHAT YOU DO. Thanks be to God for loving the world so much that he sent his Son to show us the way.