Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. Luke 10.25-27
We know the bones of the story. A young man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds by asking him to consider what he knows of scripture. The young man knows that he must love God will his whole self and love his neighbor as he loves himself.
All well and good. But like many ambitious students who want to impress their professors, the young man goes further. Who is my neighbor, he asks. Jesus responds with the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of a traveler stopping by the side of a road to help a wounded man.
On its surface, of course, it is a great story of compassion and hospitality. A man lies bleeding on the roadside, robbed of his money and possessions, ignored by other travelers, among them religious leaders. He is finally helped by a stranger, who bandages his wounds and takes him to an inn and pays for his lodging until he has recovered.
There are other levels to the story, of course. Many of you will know that the wounded man was a Jew and his rescuer a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans, in a general sense, despised one another.
Jesus’ audience would have been shocked and scandalized to hear a Samaritan portrayed in such a positive light. Imagine a German stopping to help a beaten and bleeding Jews on a street in Munich in 1938. Or a native South African stopping to help an Afrikaaner at the heart of Apartheid era violence. Or imagine yourself driving along a road on our southern border today and seeing a young Mexican mother and her children sitting on the roadside, exhausted and dehydrated after days in the dessert without water or food. At any of these points, the challenge of the parable confronts us.
Who indeed is our neighbor? The people we choose. Or the people God chooses for us? The people yearning for healing and companionship that God places in our path.
Jesus intended to shock and to confuse his listeners with this story; perhaps even to offend their deeply-held sensibilities enough to invite a change in perspective.
The parable has great power to empower the church to look at our ministry and mission in new ways, because the Good Samaritan is not simply a story about how to live with compassion, but a story that challenges us to look differently at the world in which we live and with the people with whom we share God’s world.
Ultimately, the parable of the Good Samaritan is a word from God that invites us to expand our closely-held notion of who qualifies as a neighbor. No longer can the church afford to assume that our neighbors are those who look like we do, or speak the same language as we do. Or conform to the same way of expressing their faith as well.
Much has been written and said recently about the decline of the church. The mainline churches have lost our central role as shapers of public morality. We are no longer the first place people go when are looking for purpose and meaning. Some of this decline is our fault. Across the denominational spectrum, churches become too acculturated; the relationship with the worldly culture grew too cozy and comfortable. Part of our decline has been beyond our control, part of a larger movement of history over which we have little control.
But decline is not always ‘bad’ news. In every crisis lies the seed of opportunity. Someone wiser than me said that; someone who understood that the future of anything worth preserving does not lie in the pursuit of vanity. Or in paralyzing nostalgia for a past that was never really as good as we remember.
***************************
There is this grand Congregational church at the center of a town green in Connecticut. It was the founding church of that town; and has been there for nearly 400 years.
It has a Waterford crystal chandelier, and an enormous Tiffany stained-glass window portraying the town’s founder. Every spring, the graduating class of the local college processes around it. It survives in part by virtue of a generous endowment. It thrives because it has come to recognize that hand-in-hand with its justifiable pride in its historic place in its community’s as well as it current place amid the current struggles of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable residents. For several years, passersby would marvel at the spectacle of the tents and lean-tos erected along the sides of its glorious Federalist façade.
It is symbol both of the decline of mainline churches and a sign of our rebirth. It can be overly reliant on its history; but at the same time look out of its windows and see the demands of a changing world that invite a new vision of neighborhood and community … and so every year the church invited the homeless of the community to make their homes on its side and back lawns.
Christians make this odd and mysterious claim: God is incarnate in Jesus Christ. When Jesus offers the parable of the Good Samaritan, he merely reminds his church that we are created and called to model that same incarnational love. It might be stopping by the side of the road to attend to a wounded traveler. It may reaching across a counter to provide a meal to a welcome guest. It may be the simple willingness to broaden our sense of community. It may be nothing more than providing a wall to lean on.
If we give the time and attention to stories like the Good Samaritan, if we allow this ancient story to reshape our understanding of ourselves not as a community in decline, but as a fellowship prepared to reclaim ourselves as a place of radical love, extravagant hospitality and gracious and open welcome.
The United Church of Christ is often found of saying to those who gather with us in worship and mission that no matter who you are or where you find yourself on life’s journey, you are welcome in our churches. Our future lies in our willingness to claim the ancient church’s commitment to welcome and hospitality, to embracing Christ’s notion of an expansive and expanding neighborhood that extends to all the fellowship of God’s people. As the new church year begins and unfolds, perhaps in our conversations, our public meetings and private prayers, we can devote ourselves to how we might best look to this ancient story to shape our future together.
Out of the Wilderness 