The 7th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 10C sermon

7th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 10C
July 11, 2010
I wonder what it was like for the lawyer in today’s story from Luke’s gospel on the day after he had his conversation with Jesus? I imagine him tossing and turning most of the night as he relived the encounter and the story it provoked.
He would start with the beginning, how he started out to test Jesus, but in his effort to test him, he asked Jesus a question of deep concern to him, one that he thought he had already figured out: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
When Jesus posed his own question, the lawyer was pleased because he knew this one; he could even recite the Scripture by heart. “What is written in the law? Why it is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself.”
He knew it was right when he answered, and Jesus affirmed him, patting him on the shoulder and telling him if he did this then he will live. But suddenly, in that moment, being right and knowing the law just weren’t enough anymore. Instead, he felt something. Was it doubt? Uncertainty? A fear that maybe he didn’t have this whole salvation thing figured out after all and sewn up in a nifty slogan? Maybe it was discomfort or a hunger for something more, something deeper? Suddenly, in his insecurity, he needed justification from this man that he had set out to test.
So he opened his mouth and asked Jesus the question that would truly change his life, transform and haunt him. “Who is my neighbor?”
Thinking back on that moment, he especially remembered the look on Jesus’s face. It was a such a strange and disarming mixture—with the glint of singleness of purpose in his eye coupled with the softness of love and compassion that framed his eyes and mouth like parentheses and the peace that stretched through the expanse of his brow and cheeks.
Then Jesus began to tell him the story of a man, much like himself, who was attacked by robbers while traveling a lonely road and who was beaten, robbed, and left in a bloody heap on the side of the road.
As he lay there, two men witnessed his suffering, his humiliation, and each passed by on the other side of the road. Finally a third man stopped and the lawyer again felt his initial unease as he heard Jesus say that this third man who stopped was a Samaritan. To good Jews, Samaritans were despised as being heretics and breakers of the ceremonial law. They were looked down upon and treated with great contempt.
He remembered his discomfort as Jesus described the familiarity of the Samaritan’s ministrations to the man, the care and affection that was poured out upon stranger by a stranger. He was even shocked at the lengths to which the Samaritan would go to help the man, how he not only paid money on the front end but promised repayment of whatever was spent on the man’s care, as if they were family—father and son or brothers, instead of bitter enemies.
He remembered the moment when Jesus asked him, “which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
And he paused in his struggle to answer. He remembered thinking that if it were him lying bloody and helpless in a ditch, then he’d rather die than receive help from a Samaritan, let alone receive such an abundance of compassion. And he thought that he’d rather die than have to reciprocate such for one he despised.
So when Jesus asked him the question, again, he knew the answer, but this time he couldn’t simply say it. He couldn’t answer “the Samaritan” because it was just too hard, too impossible, and the words stuck in his throat. Instead of naming the hated Samaritan heretic as the one who was fulfilling the Jewish law, the lawyer found a loophole and answered, after his long, tortured pause: “The one who was a neighbor was the one who showed him mercy.”
And he would never forget until the end of his days how Jesus nodded and looked him squarely in the eyes and said, “Go and do likewise.”
It wasn’t until he was at home in his own bed that night trying to sleep when he realized that he had been transformed. When he’d thought he’d had all the answers, had the path to eternal life all figured out, suddenly Jesus sneaked up on him and he was faced with more and more questions about his life and his faith.
What is this mercy which Jesus has called me to replicate? And how do I show it to people whom I distrust, dislike, and even despise?
Again and again, he remembered Jesus face as he looked at him; he remembered all the times he had prayer to God asking for mercy…
And he knew in the deepest depths of his being what mercy is….that it’s not just the forgiveness of a debt or an offense or the flip side of justice. It’s about “blessing and unwarranted compassion as well as leniency. It’s about pardon, kindness, strength, and even rescue and generosity.”[1]
An offer of mercy, he discovered, is an offer of kindness, care, risk, and even intimacy, and it may be willingly and joyfully received in a way that transforms both the giver and the receiver, or it may be rejected. In mercy, we give of ourselves and we are unprotected, defenseless. Mercy is moving and active; it is intervening and interceding, and it always results in a change of relationship, a change of status.
“So that’s mercy,” thought the lawyer, “but how do I live into that? Where on earth do I start?”
And as he looked outside to see the pink edges of dawn creeping across the face of the world, he remembered Jesus’s parting words to him: “Go and do likewise.”
Go…and do likewise.
[1] Lord, Jennifer L. Reflections on the Lectionary. The Christian Century, June 29, 2010, p 19.