When were you rescued from the ditch?

     After I had finished riding and lifting yesterday in the wonderful heat and humidity, Karen had sent me an arm bar text that said if I picked up some specific things she needed, she would make us all some French Onion Soup.  I don’t think any Adventers have ever gotten to sample her French Onion because . . . well, because we McVey’s scarf it down!  Suffice it to say though, if she ever offers you any, say yes!  The point of that, though, is not her cooking.  Rather, I wanted you to be a bit more empathetic about the lady’s misgivings.  I was disheveled from my shower.  I had showered, but I had no brush.  Plus, even though I had spent some extended time in a cool shower trying to cool off, I had lifted and ridden about fifteen miles, I am certain I was still a bit flushed.  Three of those miles I had ridden had a mile of 8% and a mile of 9% gradient.  It was not the hardest climbing I will do this month, but it was rather painful.

     As I was walking into Publix, I noticed a lady struggling with her two boys.  One seemed about two and the other was under three months, or so I thought.  If you are new to Advent, I have seven kids, so I am pretty good for a guy noticing when babies can hold up their heads or schooch around or unbuckle themselves.  The toddler was simply being a boy, all boy I should say.  I don’t know if it was the heat, the low from tropical Storm Barry, missed nap time, or something else, but he was clearly a handful.  In the great tradition of the righteous Pharisee looking down on the sinner praying to God, I gave thanks to God that the toddler was not my handful that afternoon!

     Then I got the nudge.  She was really struggling.  I don’t think she would actually have killed her son despite her gallows’ humor in our later conversation, but he was an endangered species.  So I stopped and asked her if I could load her groceries into her car while she got the boys buckled in.  She looked at me as if . . . well, as if I was unkempt, flushed, and generally anyone who should be trusted.  I recognized that look and the worry I was a creep or criminal, so I told her I understood my appearance was not my best.  I had just worked out for a couple hours over at the Y and pointed in its direction so she knew I at least knew where the Y was.  I told her I normally have my cross on, as I was a priest, but I don’t wear it to work out.

     The war between dubious and needing help played out on her face.  She NEEDED the help, but only creeps do this kind of thing.  I was probably after her or her car or her kids or her groceries.  I told her that was my Suburban since my pilot was in the shop, so I was definitely not looking to trade down.  I had enough kids that I was not going to steal hers.  I was there for some specific items for my wife: Vidalia onions, gruyere, and French baguettes.  I’m not sure which objection weighed heaviest on her mind, but she gave me the dubious ok and set about buckling the boys in.  I should mention the toddler put up a great fight, but he lost out to safety and his own good in the end.  Ah, I see we have a number of parents who have been there, done that, too!

     As I was loading into the back of her minivan, she kept an eye on the boys and an eye on me.  She came back around after buckling them in to “make sure the bread and eggs” were on top.  My guess is that she was still half convinced I was there to steal groceries.  I suggested she start the car and turn on the A/C for the boys.  Neither of us wanted the police to show up with them in that car that hot.  I could see the headlines of no good deed going unpunished: parish priest and young mother arrested for kids being left in Nashville heat.

     She started the car, came back to watch me finish.  As I walked the cart over to the rack thing, she walked with me to ask a couple questions.  Why did you do this?  Are you really a priest?  Wait, if you’re a priest, how do you have a wife and kids?  You have two sets of kids born within 26 months of each other?  It really does get better?  Once I had explained I was an Episcopalian, Anglican, Church of England priest, that I had seven kids, and engaged her other questions, she apologized for not trusting me.  I reminded her that she needed to be a great steward of those boys, and I understood why she though men who looked like me might be sketchy.  I took no offense.

     Why?  I asked her what.  She said Why did you do this?  Nobody does stuff like this any more?  I told her it was a God thing.  I noticed her struggles and thanked Him that we had survived those struggles with our own.  He’d nudged me.  I guessed that part of it was empathy.  It was a real chore for Karen to get out with the kids sometimes.  I know how much she had wished I could be there to help, or at home to watch the kids while she escaped the asylum, or that someone would have helped her. 

     She admitted it was really weird.  Kind of in frustration and kinda out of desperation, she’d prayed to God for help.  She was going to kill the older one or worse, lose it on him in the parking lot.  I laughed with her and told her we’d all been there.  She asked if it ever really ends.  I told her with boys it ends between 3-5, but then come the teen years.  When they are not eating you out of house and home, they have attitude to spare.  She laughed nervously that I was not really making motherhood sound any better.  I told her my kids were not that old yet.  When she asked how old my oldest was and I told her 26, she lost it laughing, as did I.

     As she was making to leave, she had me approach her in the car closer.  She offered me some money “for my church.”  I went to take it and then had a better idea.  I told her to keep the money.  How about instead, when those energetic boys are pre-teens or teens and you notice an older couple, an older man or older woman, or another young mother or young father struggling like yourself today, you send them over to help them.  When they ask you why, you tell them how the older one nearly died this hot and humid day until God sent this nutty priest with seven kids to help me and save you/him.  Come on, that wasn’t God! 

     Really, you said yourself you’d said a prayer just before I helped.  I told you I was exhausted and thankful that was not my life now.  You happened to be coming out as I happened to be going in.  You happened to catch the eye of one of the many priests in Nashville with seven kids, who could empathize with the very feelings you were experiencing, not give you some ridiculous platitude about rearing children or worse, tell you their behavior was your proof you were a bad mother.  The world is so full of good deeds nowadays, that it never occurred to you to think I was a thief, a rapist, or a con man.

     Ok.  Ok.  I get it.  But it’s not like it was a real miracle?  Really, this happens all the time in your life?  She laughed ruefully again but argued it’s the powerful miracles that cause people to believe in God.  I challenged that assumption, as y’all have heard me do over and over again.  We live on this side of the Resurrection, the greatest miracle ever, and how many of us find ourselves walking apart from God in our own lives?  All of us!  If we truly believed, if we truly accepted the Resurrection, if we truly believed that God was who He said He is and will act always for our redemptive benefit, how would our lives be different?  This young mother started with she’d probably go to church more.  We rattled off a couple quick changes.  I sneaked in my help of her.  Again, she fought it was an act of God.  So I reminded her the coincidences that had to take place for it NOT to be an act of God.

     She admitted I gave her something to think about.  I invited her to come and think about it with us at Advent.  Who knows what will happen?  But I reminded her that, at the very least, she needed to pay the coincidence forward and share the story with her boys.  I told her I was certain this encounter had happened because He’d wanted it to.  Maybe it was for my benefit; but I suspected it was for the benefit of several people, including her young sons.  My sons?  I told her that in the years ahead, when her sons struggled with whether God was real and loved them, she had THE story to share with them of His loving and graceful providence toward them.  It might allay all their doubts, but the fact that she would be the one sharing the story would cause that seed to be planted deep.

     You may be wondering why I started off with a story like that today.  Usually, my practice is to share the story and its context and then to find the modern applications or illustrations.  Part of the reason that Jesus uses parables, though, as a means of instruction is that they encourage us to identify with characters in the story and learn from their perspective.  Some of the parables are known by different names depending on the emphasis of the one preaching or reading or listening.  Is the story of the older son who spends his inheritance in dissolute living before returning to his loving father the parable of the Prodigal Son or of the Loving Father or of the heard-hearted older brother?  It is each of those, right?

     Good, I see the nods.  Similarly, the parable that Jesus uses today can be engaged with from the perspective of different characters in the Bible.  It is often seen only from the perspective of the Good Samaritan, but that is by no means the way it would have been understood by the audience that heard Jesus share it.  You are cursed or blessed, depending on your perspective I suppose, from Amy Jill Levine’s work with us clergy this past spring.  Dr. Levine is a 1^st Century Temple expert at Vanderbilt.  Fortunately for all of us, she knows a number of Christians.  She shared with us that she revels in challenging the assumptions of those who claim to follow Christ and yet do not live as if they believe the Resurrection.  This is one of those passages that illustrated a larger message from different perspectives.  What did she mean?

     Who hear has heard that the lawyer in question is the bad guy or foil?  Does Jesus condemn him in the telling of this story?  No.  Is Jesus ever shy about calling people to the carpet for self-righteous, ungodly behavior?  Again, no.  So, let’s look at this, if possible, with 1^st Century Jewish eyes and hear it with their ears.

     What did Jewish lawyers do, at least in theory?  Those are all good answers, but you and I are supposed to think of righteousness in courtroom terms, right?  What were the significant courtroom battles for Jewish lawyers?  They argued over which person in a dispute more closely did as instructed by the torah.  Righteousness was perceived more as a relative term than an absolute term.  Yahweh alone was righteous.  Human beings could strive to act more as God instructed, but there was a presumption that human beings never really hit the mark.  In Paul’s language, they sinned.  Lawyers argued their clients’ cases before the elders or judges or kings or with other lawyers to try and figure out who was acting closer to God’s heart, at least that was the intent.  They argued their cases from Scripture.

     When the lawyer begins this section by asking a question of Jesus, he is publicly engaging in the behavior of his life’s calling.  Is this Jesus fellow from God?  Is He a prophet?  A charlatan?  Informed?  Ignorant?  Who is He?  We learn a bit about him because he expects eternal life as a reward—not everyone accepted that truth at that time.  Rather than chewing him out, Jesus asks what he reads there.  Idiomatically, Jesus is asking the lawyer testing Him how he interprets the Scriptures that they both read.

     The man responds with what his Jewish contemporaries know as the Shemah.  Those who came to the Bible Project last summer will remember that word, and it serves as a good commercial for our talks about wisdom literature this summer.  You and I know the shemah more as the Great Commandment and the Second as like unto it, all of us being good little Episcopalians, right?  It’s prominent in our Rite 1 liturgies.  Jesus affirms the lawyer’s interpretation and tells him he is correct.  Jesus goes on to instruct the lawyer that if he does as commanded by God, he will live.

     Again, the lawyer wants to justify himself.  You have probably heard many sermons about how Jesus is condemning the attitude of the lawyer.  Does He?  As you read this story again and again as I am preach, does Jesus call the man out for being a hypocrite?  Does Jesus provoke him in any way?  No.  Jesus seems to take the man and his questions seriously.  While we have heard it preached countless times that Jesus hated the self-righteous attitude of the lawyer, nowhere in the story does Jesus condemn his attitude.  The man’s heart seems to be aligned with his words.  Like lawyers were supposed to in his day, the man in question is truly seeking God’s will, God’s instruction.

     Though the man is not criticized by Jesus nor blasted for being a hypocrite, it does not mean the man is not in need of instruction.  Jesus tells the story of what has become the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Again, you know the story and its sermons well, right?  Who passes by first?  That’s right, the priest.  Why?  Right, because he has to lead worship.  Who passes the man by second?  That’s right, the Levite.  Why does he not stop to help the man?  Yep, he fears he is dead and does not want to be made unclean.  I’ve heard that sermon lots of times.  It makes sense.  Levites handled the vessels for worship.  Think of predecessors to our Altar Guild.  If they are unclean, they cannot handle the vessels of Temple worship properly. 

     I see the nods.  Everyone has heard a version where the crowd and lawyer would have assumed the priest and Levite had a good reason for refusing aid to the nearly dead traveler.  Then, along comes the half-breed to save the day and demonstrate to the mean Jews the heart of God, right?  Read it again.  Where are the priest and Levite headed?  Down the road to Jericho.  Are they on their way to work?  Are they on their way to lead or serve at worship?  No.  They seem to be heading home after work.  They are both going down the mountain.  Hmmmm.  If they are headed down to Jericho and have already led worship for the day, do they have a legitimate reason to ignore the need of the man in question?  Of course not.  And even were the victim dead, the priest and the Levite would still have no legitimate reason to ignore the dead!  Tobit and other mishnas as well as the historian Josephus are quick to remind us of the Jewish care for the dead and the allowances made for the care of corpses.  So, what’s going on?  What is the point Jesus is trying to drive home?

     On the one hand, there is a sense of community that you and I cannot understand in our context.  How should the story have been told, were you one of those hearing the teaching live from Jesus?  Stumped.  Do not feel bad, you should be.  When Jesus begins this story, a priest and a Levite and ______ are walking down from Jerusalem, His audience would have filled in the blank in their heads.  There is a triad at work here that we simply miss.  If I started a sermon with “Larry, Moe and _______ have this scene where they . . . ,” all of you of a certain age would fill in Curly in your minds.  You younger Adventers will have to ask the more mature Adventers about the Three Stooges.  If I started a sermon joke with the “A priest, a Protestant minister, and a ______ walk into a bar,” many of you will fill in rabbi in your minds because you have heard so many of those kinds of jokes, right?  When Jesus begins this story in this way, everyone is expecting the third person to be mentioned to be an Israelite.  In Jewish culture, Jews basically fell into one of three groups.  There were those descended from Aaron, Moses’ brother, who became the priestly caste, those descended Levi, an ancestor of Aaron, and Israelites, those who were descended from any of Jacob’s children not named Levi.  Everybody listening to Jesus’ teaching as He starts the parable is getting a lesson about community.  They expect the Rabbi to say “A priest, a Levite, and an Israelite.”  He says instead of an Israelite, a Samaritan.

     Samaritans, of course, were despised by the Jews.  Think of their relationship like Alabama and Tennessee fans.  The Samaritans did the unthinkable and married among the Gentiles left or imported into the Promised Land of the Northern Kingdom in the aftermath of the Assyrian conquest in the late 700’s BC.  From the Jewish perspective, the “left behind” Jews betrayed them and God.  Ownership of the Land was, for lack of a better analogy to us, a sacramental experience.  Ownership of the Land promised to one’s forebears was the outward sign of the inward and spiritual grace that God was with them or His favor was on them or He was keeping His covenant.  The Samaritans made things worse, from a Jewish perspective, by having their own places of worship and their own copy of Moses’ Pentateuch.  When the Jews returned, the two groups were at odds, to put it mildly.  Think of Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well, to get a better understanding.  By including the Samaritan in place of the Israelite in the story, what is Jesus doing?  He is causing all present to think of those living around them as neighbors, regardless of their bloodlines.

     We understand His teaching on an intuitive level.  It’s a silly example, by comparison, but who is a Nashvillian?  Are they only folks who have lived here all their lives?  Are they folks that have lived here a decade?  Does Nashville stretch out to Antioch or Hendersonville or Green Hills or Cool Spring?  What if somebody was one of those 80 plus ethnic groups whose parents were settled here by the federal government as part of our refugee and immigration programs?  Does their spoken language need to be a slow drawl?  Must they have a love of country music, and not that rock country, but real, serious country music?  Can they be a Nahvillian and not like hot chicken?  Must they be horrible drivers?

     Y’all are laughing, and that’s good.  You understand that we are a complex, cosmopolitan area.  One man or one woman’s Nashville is another’s Franklin or Jackson or Clarksville.  Those in Jesus’ audience, however, had an incomplete understanding of the nature of community.  To them, their neighbors were people who were ethnically the same.  Jesus, unsurprising since He is and was the Son of God and a full participant in the Trinity, had a fuller understanding of community.  In His example, we are all community.  Everyone we encounter is our brother or sister, created by God in His image.  To mistreat them is to mistreat God.  To mock them is to mock God.  And to serve them, to love them, is to love and serve God.  Jesus expanded the sense of community for the lawyer in the story and those listening to the encounter.  To use modern language, we are all in this together.  Alabama fans, Tennessee fans, Samaritans, Jews, and whatever group you want to describe.

     There’s another important lesson in this parable, though, that gets overlooked far too often.  I talked earlier how we describe Jesus’ parables from the perspective in which we are telling them.  We have thought a bit about the perspective of the lawyer, we have placed ourselves a bit in the crowd, we have considered the Levite and the priest, who I hope you see now are not really foils for the lawyer in this story.  Whose perspective have we not considered?  God’s?  No, we know, thanks to the horizontal axis of the Cross we are all in this together, we are all in need of His saving grace, each and every one of us.  Whose perspective have we ignored?  That’s right.  The guy who was beaten, robbed, and left for dead.

     How many times have you ever heard the parable described from His perspective?  When Dr. Levine asked that question of me this spring, I have to admit I could not think of a time.  Y’all are at the whims of us preachers, but we professional Christians read the Bible and the commentaries.  One of my ordination gifts was a print of this very parable, and until she asked that question that way that day, though, I must confess I had never given it much thought.  Oh, like you, I am sure the man appreciated the kindness of the Samaritan and the attentiveness of the innkeeper.  I’m sure he was probably depressed and despondent about being attacked on his way too or from Jerusalem.  How could God let this happen to him?  How would he replace or rebuild what was taken from him?  I bet there was a spiritual wedgie in being taken care of by a Samaritan.

     But, laying in the ditch and being left for dead.  Stripped of his clothes and valued possessions.  Hearing or seeing others pass by, especially if he knew they were of his tribe, what must have been going through his mind?  If no one helped him, what was the likely outcome.  Is this how I end?  Do I die here?

     We talk often about the purposes of church.  You should be coming each week primarily thank God for what He has done for you in Christ Jesus.  You should also be coming to church to be fed, taught, and fortified to do the work God has given you to do out in your patch of the wilderness.  But you should also be coming here for spiritual triage and care.  Every one of us who gathers to thank God for what He has done for us in Christ Jesus our Lord knows what it is like to have been beaten by sins.  Sometimes, it is the consequences of our own sins that leave us beaten and broken and lying beside the road of life just waiting, expecting to die; at other times, it is a consequence of the sins of those around us.  All of us know the deeper truth in this famous parable of Jesus.  Each of us has been forced to look at life through the eyes of the one left beaten by the robbers.

     In some ways, Jesus’ instruction to the lawyer and to us is very much about the Shemah, or Two Great Commandments.  Because we know the love of God, we should be thanking and worshiping and celebrating His saving grace with everything we are.  And because we recognize we are all in this thing we call life together, we recognize that all those around us are somewhere between broken and in the process of being healed.  Churches at their absolute best are communities that do minister to one another, that do help one another bear loads and crosses, that remember the saving work God has done in their lives, both individually and corporately.

     The parable points out, though, to use the language of CS Lewis, the deeper truth and older magic of God’s love for humanity.  When we were left dead and dying in sin, who came along?  The Outcast.  The One the world rejected.  And He did the heavy lifting; He did the real struggling.  It was His wounds that began that healing process in us.  It was His flesh given for us and His blood that was shed for us that initiated and promised His work would one day be completed.

    It was that same Lord who left us in the care of others, we call them churches.  Our communities are supposed to be faithful proclaimers of God’s grace and love in the world around them.  How better can we express that truth than through our attentive and understanding care of each other?

     And it is that same Lord who promised everyone, and especially the innkeepers we call churches, that He would return one glorious day to settle the accounts once and for all.  Yes, the healing has begun, thanks be to God.  Yes, the healing will one day be completed, again, thanks be to God.  But, for now, we live in that time in the inn, healing, helping, giving thanks to our Lord who had every right to pass us by and leave us suffering in the muck and mire of our sins, but who chose, instead, to extend love and grace, that we might in turn, demonstrate those same characteristics to a world in desperate need of them!  Even we, a group of mostly well-off, well -educated, well-paid Episcopalians in a blessed community of Nashville, even we know what it is to be the one left for dead. 

      Brothers and sisters, when were you left on the side of the rode to die?  When was it that you found yourself at the end of your wits or strength or resources or knowledge and expected, maybe even hoped, to die?  When did He come along and begin that healing process in you?  What was the stalking enemy that sought to claim you, from whose clutches He freed you?  When did you experience life and near death as taught by Jesus in this parable from the perspective of the man left dying by the road?  What is that event in your life that caused you to begin to care less about the distinctions between neighbors and strangers, and more about the loving grace that had been shown to you, that caused you to desire nothing more than to gather with other wounded healers in thanksgiving and in a desire to share His saving grace with all who have ears and a need, nay, a longing, to hear?  That my friends is your deepest testimony.  That my adopted brothers and sisters is your unique story among a group who shares in redemptive stories.  That, my fellow kings and queens in the world to come, is the grace He calls upon each of us to live as overtly as possible, to go and do likewise, that we might hear the whimpers of pain in the world around us, see the brokenness in the ditches around us, that we might tend to the pain and suffering as best as we are able, that He will, again and again, show His healing grace to the world, that all might accept that amazing offer of healing and love.

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†