Proper 10C                        R. Lundquist                         7/15/07

Deuteronomy 30:9-14   http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=51446540

Luke 10:25-37   http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=51446570

“Go and do likewise.”

The 1991 film “Grand Canyon” begins with a white guy’s car breaking down in a deserted warehouse  part of LA.  It’s scary, and being in an age before cell phones they can’t reach AAA.  A car full of black thugs slows down, to look, and circles the block.  A black tow truck driver drives by and sizes up the situation.  He stops and hooks up the car.  Thugs come back  with a gun, and they confront the driver – “What’s a brother like you doing standing up for these white dudes?”.  Simon, truck driver, successfully faces them down, saving Mack from being robbed or worse.  It’s a brilliant contemporary illustration of today’s gospel parable.

“Good Samaritan” – it’s an oxymoron.  Like “jumbo shrimp,” “military intelligence,” or “deafening silence.”  To the Jews the Samaritans were a bastard race, heretical, ritually unclean, for more than 700 years before Jesus.  So this is the background to the story…

A lawyer quizzes Jesus:  “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  At Jesus’ prompting he gives what we now know as the summary of the Law – love God, and love your neighbor as self.  “But who is my neighbor?” he presses, looking for a legal exclusion.

Author Frederick Buechner imagines the desired answer:  “A neighbor, hereinafter referred to as the party of the 1^st part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than 3 statue miles from one’s own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the 2^nd part) living closer to the party of the 1^st part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the 2^nd part is to be construed as neighbor to the party of the 1^st part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever.”

The lawyer wanted a list, an exclusive list.  “How large/small is my responsibility under the Law?”

So Jesus tells a story.  A story of not who the neighbor is, but of what a neighbor does.  (“What must I do?...”)  A neighbor is one who acts. 

            “The 1^st question which the priest & Levite asked was, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”  But… the Good Samaritan reversed the questions:  “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”            ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

            It’s all in the perspective, the lens one uses to understand the situation.  “So who was neighbor to this man?”  asked Jesus.  Unable to say “the Samaritan,” the lawyer stammers, “The one who helped him.”  And the Jesus’ kicker:  “Go & do likewise.”

            What a strange phrase.  We rarely hear that word “likewise.”  It’s brilliant.  Neither “do the same as” or “do whatever,” likewise requires the hearer to digest the story and draw from it the next action.  Jesus’ entire life & teaching might be summed up in these words – “Go & do likewise.”

            It’s the small things.  Years ago a mother told me story of attending a children’s program with her son at the local library.  At the end she noticed one child remaining, tears in his eyes. She spoke with him, and learned that his mother wasn’t there to get him – he was alone and scared.  The librarian curtly told the mother, “Oh, someone will come for him.  So the mother sat her son and the stranded child.  She finally asked librarian to phone child’s mother – who showed up 20 minutes later.  “I lost track of time and didn’t realize the program was over!”  But the child was now all smiles, walking hand-in-hand with his mother into the parking lot.  The teller of the story related it to me as a growing experience for her – it didn’t occur to her that her compassion overrode her prejudice.  Because she is white, and the child was black.  She learned something about herself in this small re-enactment of the parable Jesus told.

            It’s so often the small things.  Think for a moment of the frequently forgotten character in Jesus’ story – the innkeeper.  He’s not part of the admittedly dramatic rescue – no he’s the long-term caretaker.  And this is often us, you and me, in the picture.  Not the hero, but the nurturer.  Part of the team.  Part of the Body of Christ.  For behold – you are the Body of Christ; become the Body of Christ.

            In your Baptismal Covenant you promised to “seek & serve Christ in all persons, loving neighbor as self.”  Do you remember the response?  “I will, w/ God’s help.”  You’re not alone.  Alone you and I can do nothing of this kind.  We are not alone.

Let us pray:  Gracious God, open our hearts and minds to you, and to Jesus’ life and teaching.  Empower us to see Christ in each other and respond to each other’s needs.  Enable us to hear the story of the good Samaritan, and to go & do likewise, in the power of your Spirit and in the holy name of Jesus.  Amen.