Episcopal Church of the Messiah
Worship Service Sermons
July 11, 2010
The Reverend Carolyn Estrada
Proper 10C
A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho…
Hearing Jesus begin his story like that, I get the same feeling I used to get as a child when my mother would begin, "Once upon a time…" and I want to wrap myself in an afghan and snuggle up close and allow myself to be caught up in the magic of the words…
Stories have always played an important role in culture: they are a record of the history of a people, a purveyor of values, and an attempt not only to describe, but to explain or find meaning in, the world.
Among the Phaeacians of Greek mythology it was believed that each person lived out his life as a character in a story told by someone unknown and unknowable, and that who they were and what they did were all part of being caught up in that person’s narrative…
It’s an intriguing – and depressing! – thought, to have who we are and what we do and what happens to us all controlled by events outside ourselves, beyond our control – a victim of someone else’s whims or fantasy! (It may well still be reflected in the attitude we sometimes experience today when people shrug and say, "I can’t help it! That’s just the way I am!")
But I am struck by how unlike it is to the story that we live as Christians! We, too believe that our lives are part of a story – but ours is a story in which we are active participants! No one scripts us from the outside – it is our relationships, with God and one another, that shape us – and our story!
Frederick Buechner reminds us that "we can’t really hear what the stories of the Bible are saying until we hear them as stories about ourselves." But these stories are not directive! As Barbara Brown Taylor points out, "they do not come at the ear in the same way advice and exhortation do. Although they are, I believe, even more persuasive, perhaps this is because they create a quiet space where one may lay down one’s defenses for a while. A story does not ask for a decision; instead, it asks for identification, which is how transformation begins."
One of the challenges of getting caught up in one of Jesus’ stories – particularly a story as familiar to us as that of the Good Samaritan – is the identification, is finding ourselves in that story… and generally finding ourselves, not just as a single character, but as many or all of them, in such as way that it ask ourselves: am I the person I want to be? How is my life reflected in this story? What different choices can I make?
Consider all the characters in the story Jesus tells today…
The lawyer, wanting to justify himself… Who among us doesn’t protest mightily, blinded by our own circumstances, not willing or able to see beyond? "But…but…but…" we might say. "I was only doing what I was told…" Or – "I didn’t do anything that was against the law…"
The unknown man (notice – he’s never given any identifying characteristics – is he Samaritan or Jew – or Roman? We don’t know!), going down from Jerusalem to Jericho… The victim, the person whose need – whose woundedness – makes him or her vulnerable and open to another’s ministry and compassion, open to a connection that transcends identifying labels or markers.
The robbers…" The perpetrator, the wrong-doer. This is NOT the character we want to play in the story – and rarely do we put ourselves in this category – but how easily we, too, can be wrong-doers, perhaps not actively, not consciously, but passively or inadvertently… As much as we DON’T want to be the victim, even less do we want to be the perpetrator. I remember hearing a Hasidic rabbi saying about the holocaust: "It could have been worse. We could have been the murderers."
"Now by chance a priest was going down that road…" "Likewise a Levite…passed by on the other side." I think of the priest and the Levite every time I avoid eye contact with the homeless, turn off the news when the images get too painful, or decide my own agenda takes priority over the immediate need of another… How hard it is to engage the immediate need, even when it is right in front of us – even if we are good and law-abiding people!
"But a Samaritan…" The person, an outsider, who responded compassionately, the person we are when we are able to set aside all the layers and demands and distractions and fears and anxieties that have wrapped themselves around our lives, and make a connection to that broken place in someone else, no matter how different or "other" he or she might be.
And the innkeeper. Do we even think about the innkeeper? A supporting player, he certainly doesn’t get "top billing" as far as the story goes, and yet consider how instrumental he is in what follows: receiving the wounded man, agreeing to take on the responsibility for his care, taking on faith the Samaritan’s promise of money sufficient for the expenses incurred, or, implicitly, being willing to take on the cost of that care himself…
I feel these characters living in me, each jostling for space, trying to assert herself in my life story, demanding attention. How can this awareness transform me, help me to recognize my neighbor – and to see myself in relationship to him or her? How can this story help move me closer to God and to God’s creation? How can finding myself in this story shape MY story?
Several years ago, when I was in Berkeley on study leave, I heard a story which illustrates this point. It doesn’t have the "feel good" flavor of Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan – perhaps because it is something with which we can identify a bit more readily – and the characters, as 20th century Jews, were probably not even familiar with Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan – but I think the teaching is the same.
A rabbi told the story of his grandfather.
His grandfather was born in Germany in 1900, and conscripted into the German army during World War I.
His grandfather told of life in the trenches: crawling through the mud and dirt; the smell of fear in men’s sweat; the popping sound of gas canisters as they were lobbed into the trenches across the field.
He told of sitting in his trench on the night before a battle, wondering if he or his companions would be alive the next day, and knowing that there were men in the opposing trenches, tasting the same fear, wondering the same thing.
He told of the surreal experience of going into battle, knowing that his own officers’ guns were pointed at them from behind as they gave the order to "Charge!" into the bullets which were coming at them from in front, and of seeing his friends, his neighbors, his fellow soldiers, fall around him.
He told of leaping into a trench, bayonet poised, and engaging in a life-or-death struggle with an Allied soldier – his enemy – knowing that only one of them would survive: it was kill or be killed.
He told of how evenly matched they were, and the struggle between them that went on for a long time – so long that the trench was soon emptied of the living, and home only to their desperate battle for life in the midst of those who had already died.
He told of finally winning the struggle, of inflicting his enemy with a fatal wound, and the wave of relief that accompanied knowing that he had survived.
He told of seeing the man’s head roll back, and then his shock at hearing him with his dying breath begin to pray Schema Ysrael Adonaii Elohenu Adonaii Ehad… Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One… He was reciting the Schema, the prayer around which every Jew organizes his worship life, the prayer one says before dying.
He told, then, of looking in the eyes of this dying man, this enemy, and seeing him in a way he had not seen him during their conflict.
He saw his neighbor.
He told of holding the man, this man he had killed, and praying along with him as he died. Schema Ysrael Adonaii Elohenu Adonaii Ehad… Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
He told then of putting down his gun and walking into the woods, walking away from the war, deserting.
And finally, he told how, every day of his life afterwards, when he prayed that prayer: Schema Ysrael Adonaii Elohenu Adonaii Ehad… Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One… he prayed, not only for himself, but for this man, his neighbor, whose name he never knew. And how he taught his children and his children’s children to pray the Schema in that way, to pray the Schema not just for themselves, but for that man, that neighbor, and for all people.
I wonder if it is easier for us to celebrate his recognition of "neighbor" in this man, and his deserting in the midst of the war, because he was a German soldier, fighting on the side of the Axis?
How would we feel about this story if the roles were reversed, and it was an American who had had that experience and responded by laying down his arms and walking out of the war and into the woods?
Or, if one soldier were a Christian? Or a Muslim?
There are no easy answers – but then, with Jesus there never are!
Jesus’ story today challenges us to ask ourselves:
Who is my neighbor?
Where am I challenged to recognize my neighbor?
How am I challenged to respond?
Amen.