On the Sundays I don't bring a message to my Quaker meeting, I'll be sharing a message on Substack by David Owen. David was a Methodist minister who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke prophetically to the powerful, cared for the lonely and poor, and embodied all the principles we Christians claim to cherish.
David preached this message at North United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana on April 6, 2003.
- Philip Gulley
For more information on David Owen and, When You Don't Know the Length of the Race, visit the Owen Legacy Project by clicking below.
Luke 10:25-37
“Behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘What is written in the law, how do you read?’ And he answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have answered right. Do this, and you will live.’ But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ Jesus answered, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half-dead. Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road and, when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So, likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was and, when he saw him, he had compassion and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring oil and wine upon them. Then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying “Take care of him and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.” ‘Which of these three,’ asked Jesus, ‘Do you think proved neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?’ And the lawyer said, ‘The one who showed mercy on him.’ And Jesus said, ‘Go and do likewise.’” This is the Gospel of our Christ. Thanks be to God.
I remember being asked, “Are you a follower of Jesus?” When I answered, “Yes,” the cleverness of the follow-up question made me smile. For then I was asked, “At what distance?” Good questions. Good questions for Christians at any time, but certainly during the reflective season of Lent. Are you a follower of Jesus? If so, at what distance?
On the night Jesus was arrested on the Mount of Olives after praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and was being taken by soldiers to the High Priest Caiaphas’s house, the Bible tells us that Peter was still a disciple, but that he was following at a distance. You might want to close your eyes and imagine or visualize the distance at which you, at this time in your life, are now following Jesus. What images appear? What do you see? Are you walking beside him, or can you see him on the road up ahead? Or is he on the far horizon of your life, a small figure fading into twilight? Or has he gone on so far ahead that you can no longer see him and are now searching for footprints on a dusty road afraid that the trail has grown cold? Or have you stopped looking for him altogether? What do you see when you imagine your relationship with Jesus? Is yours a distant relationship, or are you close to him?
It’s not necessarily true, but it’s possible that, if we are standing back from Jesus, we are also standing back from other important elements of our lives, being more withdrawn than engaged, more isolated than involved, more indifferent than participating. One difficult aspect of being a human being is that life keeps confronting us with forks in the road. Where a possibility emerges, a danger is born. A door opens, and we are forced to decide which way we will go. Often one of those roads will lead us deeper and deeper into life. The other may cause us to slip backward or just maintain our status quo. The safe one may not be as good for us or for others as the risky one would be. It helps if Jesus is close to us when we are deciding, and picking a course of action. When that kind of fork appears, it’s always worthy of prayer. Jesus, which way would you have me go?
Jesus gave some guidance in the parable of the Good Samaritan. He is saying, in part, that the decision to move toward a person in need, even when that person is a stranger, the decision to move toward a person in need is also a decision to move toward life. Here, love is not a thought or just a feeling, but love is an action. Jesus understood that thoughts and feelings alone do not lead us to life. He said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he or she who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
We know that the Samaritan is not just thinking or feeling, but he is doing because he changes his life direction. He’s not exercising tunnel vision whereby he seeks to journey through life looking just straight ahead, doing his best not to see any of the hardships or uglinesses that may be on either side. We know that he does not allow himself to drift to the side of the road as the priest and the Levite did. He was not blinding himself to the repugnance of the man who had been beaten but went directly toward him. The priest and the Levite withdraw themselves. They shield themselves from this tragedy and suffering, but the Samaritan decides to be open, receptive, involved, and engaged. He has never met Jesus, but somehow he embodies Jesus’s way of life. For so often, when Jesus saw a person in need, he went directly toward him or her or said to the disciples, “Call him to me.”
What causes the kind of indifference we see in the priest and the Levite in Jesus’s story? Bible scholars suggest that much of their reluctance may have been religious. The man at the side of the road was dying, perhaps dead. Maybe if they went and he did die and they had touched a man who was dead, they would, according to their religious law, have been made unclean. However, uncleanliness was not something that would have been upon them forever. There were ritualistic ways to again become clean. Still, for men so sensitive to what is clean and unclean in life, stopping to help a man who was nearly beaten to death at the side of the road might have felt like picking up a possum that had been lying dead at the side of the road. Most human beings are not attracted to roadkill. Maybe they walked by because the situation seemed so unsavory. Other commenters say that they had hurried by because of possible danger. The robbers who had beaten this man might have still been lurking nearby.
We might feel the same reluctance to get out of our cars and help someone on an unfamiliar street in a neighborhood that we consider dangerous. That can be an issue. I notice that, in this neighborhood at night, often two police cars are lined up behind a car stopped for traffic violations. The police must feel safer with two. But in the biblical story, I don’t quite see how the priest and the Levite could have been safer just by drifting across this narrow road. We’re not talking about a six-lane superhighway here. But I would understand if they hurried on simply because they were frightened. That could have been a matter of priorities. It might not be that they never stopped to help anyone who was in need, but on this occasion, the time was not right. Maybe they had stopped on the road several times before, and they thought it’s got to be someone else’s turn this time. Or maybe they’d skipped first-aid class in high school and knew that, if they had stopped, they would have had no idea of what to do. Or maybe they saw how serious the situation was and did not want to get dragged in or get entangled too deeply. Or perhaps they were disgusted with the civil and political order and were muttering to themselves that someone should invent 911 and cell phones. Or maybe they had given already at the office or even at the church. There are many reasons to remain indifferent.
Why, then, did the Samaritan stop? Did he just happen to have some time and money on his hands? Was this a repayment for someone who had stopped for him in his time of need? Had he had parents who modeled this behavior when he was a child? Did his religion urge him toward people who were suffering, rather than away from them? Or was there some principle within him that was more important than his own time, his own money, his own priorities, his own sensitivities, or his own safety? It’s always hard to know why someone chooses to actively care for one toward whom he or she could have remained indifferent.
In this regard, I was touched emotionally, as many of you likely were, by the rescue of prisoner-of-war Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi Hospital in Nasiriyah last Wednesday. Even before her rescue, I had been moved by her story when she was among those ambushed and listed as missing in action and quite possibly dead when an ambush killed several others in her supply convoy. I read then that Jessica Lynch is just nineteen years old, and that she entered the military because there were no other jobs in her county. That said something to me about what motivated many who are now fighting on our behalf. Unbeknownst to the military, she was taken to the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Nasiriyah. You may have read or heard about her rescue. I hope I can add a few details.
An Iraqi lawyer named Mohammed, an alias I suspect, aged thirty-two, was visiting the hospital because his wife worked there as a nurse. A friend of his was a doctor on staff. The doctor said, “There’s a prisoner-of-war in the emergency room,” and Mohammed went by and looked into the emergency room. And there he saw Private First Class Jessica Lynch, a bandage on her head, her arm in a sling, both legs broken, two bullet wounds in one leg. And she was being interrogated by a colonel who was repeatedly slapping her in the face.
An old hymn, written by Charles Wesley in 1749, begins like this: “I want a principle within of watchful Godly fear, a sensibility of sin, of pain to see it near.”
Mohammed had such a sensibility to sin, and he felt the pain when it was near. And instead of walking down the hallway trying to forget what he had felt and seen when the colonel was gone, he slipped back into Jessica’s room even though there were forty-one dreaded members of the fedayeen still in the hospital, and four of them in civilian garb carrying AK-47s, that were guarding the room. He stepped to her bed and quietly said, “Good morning, and don’t worry.” Mohammed later went to his wife and urged her to leave the hospital quickly, to take their six-year-old daughter from their home, and to go to a safe place. He said that, when he saw the prisoner being slapped, it cut his heart and he felt he must do something. So he walked for six hours to the United States lines with artillery shells and small-arms fire around him. When he came to the Marine camp, he entered with his hands above his head and told them that a prisoner was still alive and where she was being kept. The Marines asked him to go back the six miles to Nasiriyah, to draw a map, to tell them exactly where she was, to pinpoint, if he could, where the fedayeen were within the hospital. He drew five maps, and the next morning walked back the six miles again and presented them to the Marines. This time bombs were falling as he walked. Suspicious of him, the fedayeen raided his house. They took all of his belongings. His neighbor was shot, and her body was dragged through the city streets because she had been seen waving to a helicopter. Somehow Mohammed and his family were able to escape Nasiriyah just two hours before this remarkable rescue. Now they are in a refugee camp temporarily, hoping to return, as soon as possible, to their home. Jessica Lynch, as you know, was flown to a hospital, to safety in Germany, and very soon all of Palestine, West Virginia, was rejoicing.
If Jesus had told this story, instead of the story of the Good Samaritan that we know so well, it would be important to remember that he would be telling the story in response to the question: “And who is my neighbor?” The lawyer had asked that question hoping that Jesus would define for him the very small circle of human beings that anyone, even God, could rightfully expect him to care for actively; his wife, perhaps, certainly his children, maybe even Aunt Maude and Uncle Pete. But Jesus would not define a small circle. In fact, he reversed the question. And after telling the story, he asked the question: “Who do you believe was a neighbor to Private First Class Jessica Lynch? The interrogator who was slapping her; the many people in the hospital of 253 rooms who may have known that she was mistreated but did nothing out of fear; or this Muslim lawyer who decided to risk himself in the hopes that she would be saved?” The answer here is just as plain, just as obvious as in the ancient story. Of course, the one who risked himself for her.
Someone said to me, after the earlier service, in the New Testament, the lawyer raises the question, “Who is my neighbor?” In this contemporary story, the lawyer answers it. “My neighbor is anyone for whom I am willing to extend care and to risk my own life.” God sends many people into our lives, but we decide who we will treat as neighbors. Who are your neighbors? You and I cannot stop for every person in need who comes to our attention. There simply are too many people in need of that, but if we want to be followers of Jesus Christ, surely it is fitting that we would treat as many people as possible as though they are our neighbors. Sometimes I think that would just be a matter of being attuned, of being sensitive to what’s happening, seeing the little possibilities that occur in our daily lives where we could reach out as neighbors. Sometimes just a smile will do, a kind word in response to that opportunity.
Last Thursday I was in the community room where Bread and Bowl was just finishing up after having served lunch. Most of the people had eaten, and they were leaving. And I was struck by how many smiled and said, “Thank you.” Now, we don’t serve meals three times a week so that someone will smile at us and say thank you. We serve meals three times a week so that the people who come will be less hungry and in the hope that, through that ministry, they will sense God’s love for them. But things go so much better, meaning is added so nicely when people choose to be friendly. I started to say that you and I cannot meet every need that comes along, but I believe it is important that we open ourselves to having neighbors. Often a neighbor is a person. Sometimes a neighbor can be a cause. This week two ways of being neighbors, new to me, were brought to my attention in conversation with Robin Jackson, our Director of Community Ministries.
First, she told me about a new training and service opportunity that begins not this week, but next week, Tuesday, the 15th. Thanks to her initiative, we are now seeking to respond to older people, primarily, in the neighborhood who are having trouble managing their finances. Some have eyes that are so dim they can’t read the fine print on the bills. Some have handwriting so shaky they can’t really write checks. Many of them need the skill of juggling accounts so the utilities can stay on for one more month. Thanks to Robin, there is now training in place, being offered to people from around the city, that will help those who want to be a neighbor, to help one person each month in managing their finances, writing their checks, whatever is needed. Fifty people from around the city will participate in that training here next week, five from North Church. Perhaps, you would like, in this way, to be a neighbor. I also learned from Robin about a way of trying to be a neighbor which would be much more difficult, possibly to people you could never meet, would never meet. We are seeing a recurrent problem as people come to the church for help with concerns about what is called Section 8 housing. Sometime back the government decided it was too expensive for them to build more housing for the poor, and that it might be better if qualified persons had their rents supplemented in private homes or apartments; that is to say, if the rent in an apartment was $400, perhaps the qualified person would pay only $50, and the government would pay the landlord $350. It sounds like a remarkable blessing. But so often what happens is that the Section 8 landlords do not care for their property, so that it quickly becomes substandard. It may mean having that inexpensive rent, but also living without heat in the wintertime or with windows broken or sewage backing up or water running down the hallway. And tenants who complain are often evicted the same day. What would you do in that situation? Would you complain about inadequate housing and be risking the fact you would soon have no housing once again? It’s an unjust situation. Landlords are benefiting; tenants are being neglected and abused. It would take a big chunk out of anyone’s life if he or she decided to do something about this, by making such tenants your neighbors. But surely Jesus is calling someone to become involved, rather than remaining ignorant and aloof, maybe somebody here. To whom are you being a neighbor?
I realized, when I started preparing for this morning’s sermon, that to stand up and say that the journey toward Christ likeness includes moving from indifference to involvement or from aloofness to engagement, to say that is really quite a no-brainer. I mean, we all know—we knew before we came in—that Jesus would call us to greater participation in the life of the world and certainly in the lives of those who are suffering. I can in no way decide for you who Christ would ask you to consider as a neighbor. Only he can tell you that. All I can do is raise the questions with which I began: “Are you a follower of Jesus Christ? And if so, at what distance?”
The promise is that if we draw closer to him, he will draw near to us and that he will lead us, not only to more and more neighbors but also to more and more life.
- In the name of the Christ. Amen.
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Wow! What a wonderful sermon and challenge for today! Thank you!