Sermon for June 10th 2007

The Service on June 4th was lead by one of our Church Members ... I was away at the AGM of Conference ...

I’m not sure why, but this last week I’ve been thinking about, and encountering the story of the Good Samaritan quite frequently … I have a rule of thumb that when I encounter reference to a book more than three times in short order, I track it down and read it … I regard such things as a gift of the spirit.

So, this week, as I’ve encountered The Good Samaritan, I had to wonder why … As I read the reading of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath and Jesus and the widow of Nain, I wondered even more …

The Good Samaritan story is a good story. It has all the elements one needs for high drama, but more than all of that – it has a powerful lesson about our expectations running hard aground on God’s expectations.

To remind you – the story of the Good Samaritan is a parable told by Jesus that is about a man who is traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. It was in Jesus day a commonly traveled route – it was one of the main thoroughfares from the Jerusalem to Galilee in the north and Arabia in the east and the empires that lie in the modern countries of Syria and Jordan. It was traveled by many people – and along its path lurked many bandits who thought nothing of attacking you, beating you and leaving you for dead …

So in this context Jesus posited his most powerful and enduring parable. A man was traveling along this road when he was attacked by thieves. The robbed hin, beat him severely and left him for dead by the side of the road …

Soon another traveler came along the road. It was a priest, perhaps on his way to work in the temple in Jerusalem. He paused briefly and saw the man, but moved to the other side of the road – perhaps he feared for his own safety, wondering if the wounded man was a decoy placed there to attract other travelers … he went on his journey and ignored the wounded man …

Next came a Levite. A Levite is another priestly man, a worker in the Temple, one who over sees the vast and complex operations of the enormous temple compound. A Levite is one of those who enforces, maintains and interprets the law. He saw the man and he too passed by on the other side of the road. He perhaps feared being rendered unclean, and thereby unable to perform his office when he arrived in Jerusalem. He had his career to consider after all. Someone else would stop and help this man …

The third traveler in Jesus’ story was a Samaritan. An outcast – an outsider – someone who doesn’t fit in and who doesn’t belong. He is the guy that if arrived at coffee tomorrow morning, everyone would stare at … people would move out of his way … if he dared to sit at your table, you would get up and move away …

Yet it was the Samaritan – the outsider – the out cast – the cast off, who stopped and helped the man. He tended his wounds on the side of the road then carried him to the next town where he placed him in the care of an innkeeper and promised to pay the bill when he next passed through town …

Jesus ended his parable asking the question – “Who was a neighbour to this man?”

The broader question becomes – how can we emulate the lesson of the Samaritan, and not only be like him, but recognize when we are like the priest and the Levite, but on a deeper level – recognize and do something about those moments when we would reject the Samaritans in our midst?

I can remember using the parable of the Good Samaritan with a group of High School Students at a Catholic High School in Kingston when I was a Theology Student. I asked them to put the story in a modern context and place real people in each place … The traveler was a man traveling from Kingston to Toronto. The priest was first cast as Father Brian the Oblate who served as chaplain to the school – then one of the boys said – “Oh come on, Father Brian wouldn’t walk past someone on the road … he’s be the first one to help …”

So the priest and the Levite became the Principal and the Teacher of the class … It took some time for the kids to find a person to be the Samaritan. They suggested the Korean store owner down the block, they suggested an turbaned immigrant, they ran through a long list of possibles until deciding it would be a leather clad Hell’s Angel biker.

What struck me was the way in which the kids were very aware of the outsiders in their own communities – the outcasts. The immigrants, the newcomers, the marginalized … with each choice they named the “isms” that operate so easily in our society.

By the end of the session – they got it. They really understood on a deep level the lesson of the Good Samaritan – not only are we called to be a neighbour to the wounded we find on the road, we are called to be a neighbour to the outsider and the cast offs amongst us too …

As I read our scripture stories today that class came back to me because they saw the NEED for the boundaries that divide humanity to not just fall, but to be actively removed. The stories of Elijah and Jesus are more than quaint stories. They are powerful moments where the status quo is not only challenged – the status quo gets dumped on its ear.

Elijah was housed, fed and hosted by a widow – a NON-JEWISH widow … Elijah was fed once by Ravens – the big black and ritually unclean and non-Kosher birds … and now he is being fed by a non-Jewish widow. This woman is a Samaritan in Elijah’s world, and yet here he is sitting at table with her sharing her meal and not only offering her the miracle of flour and oil lasting until the famine passes, he raises her son from the dead as well …

This is a story that causes us to say – “hey, what’s up with that??”

As a good Jew, we would want to call out – “what about us? We’re faithful? We’re good. We’re deserving. Why don’t we get some of that?”

Then we turn to the story of Jesus enacting a similar miracle in Nain, a village in the Galilean region. And we would ask the same questions … “what about me?”

These stories are NOT fair … They are not right … the outsiders get the blessings …

We could engage in theological gymnastics and say – “oh, if they are getting those kinds of blessings and are SO undeserving, think of the depth of blessings, WE THE GOOD PEOPLE, will get …” But that’s not the point.

The psalm reading we shared a moment ago speaks of God’s abundance in the many many blessings of Creation. It is a psalm that speaks words of praise for those many blessings …

That is the point … God’s love … God’s miracles … God’s compassion … God’s caring … God’s living presence is SO abundant and so vast, that EVERYONE is included and everyone is a recipient and everyone experiences these things AS GOD SEES FIT.

This about God’s blessings – not ours …

The challenge is for us to open our eyes, our hearts, our spirits and our lives to not only hear the words of these stories - but to live them. Two of God’s messengers – Elijah and Jesus, challenged the status quo by bestowing the blessing of LIFE in the face of death on the outcasts … God’s blessings are for ALL people, not just those we like and whose ways appeal to us …

The story of the good Samaritan challenges the status quo by condemning those who can’t move beyond their self interests, and by challenging us to be open to God’s work being enacted by the least likely, least expected and perhaps most reviled …

God’s blessings are there for all people in abundance … the challenge for us, is to lift our limits and our restrictions and let the spirit flow …

A flour jar that has no bottom … an oil jar that keeps flowing … life restored in the face of death … a kindly traveler … all of it are simply examples of where God’s love pours through in abundance … in the stories before us, the recipients were the unlikely and the unwanted … Such are the vagaries of God and God’s unending Grace …

The challenge for us is to let God’s Grace and love flow …

May we have the faith to wisdom to have it happen …

Thanks be to God … Let us pray …