What Am I Doing To
Help The Less Fortunate?

Homily 07 14 2013
15th Sunday OT - C

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A little boy returned home from Sunday School, and his mother asked him what lesson the teacher taught. He said, "It was about two preachers who saw a man in a ditch, but they didn't stop because he had already been robbed."

A little girl was in a Sunday School class and the teacher was teaching the Good Samaritan story. He said, "Now if you saw a person lying in a ditch, beaten up, lying in his own blood, his teeth knocked out and his scalp hanging from his head, what would you do?" The little girl spoke up and said, "I think I would throw up."

It happened on the Jericho Road. It always happens on the Jericho Road.

The Jericho Road is the 17 mile road that connects Jerusalem to Jericho. That road drops 3600 feet in those 17 miles. It is a steep, winding, descending, remote road that for centuries has been a place of robberies.

It is 17 miles of violence and oppression. It is the strip of suffering. The Jericho Road? It's a symbol. It's a symbol of suffering in the world.

The Jericho Road through hospitals and nursing homes, through homes for the handicapped. The Jericho Road is a place of suffering...The Jericho Road!

It is the seventeen blocks on First Avenue South in downtown Seattle, where many people live who are mentally handicapped or teenagers on the run a many homeless people are found there.

The Jericho Road is the 17 mile border between warring nations.

You see, the Jericho Road is any place where there is violence; it is any place where there is oppression; it is any place where people are robbed of the dignity and robbed of their love and robbed on their food and robbed of their freedom.

The Jericho Road is always with us.

Become Involved With People Needing Help

Now the story of the Good Samaritan is one of the greatest stories that has ever graced this earth, and it is told by Jesus of Nazareth.

The first lesson that is to be learned from this parable of Jesus is that it is an attack on non-involvement towards people in need. It's an attack against "non-involvement".

As an example, I remember a story about a test being given at a seminary. It was a very clever test. Now, when you go to the seminary it helps that you be smart and these smart theological students took a course entitled, "Christians and Society."

The professor had created a test that was three hours long. It was a tough test on "Being a Moral Christian in An Immoral Society."

Half way through the test, he arranged for a break, where the students could take a ten-minute break. The students were to leave the room for ten minutes, get fresh air, and then come back and take the last hour and a half of the test.

The students were writing as fast and furiously as they could, writing down all their knowledge of morality, what does it mean to be a moral person in an immoral society. But now it was break time and the students went out into the courtyard, where there was ice tea and cookies.

Out there in the courtyard was another part of the test, although the students didn't know it. This was the real test.

There was a man, all beaten up, there in the courtyard. He was there, and the students looked at him and drank their tea and ate their cookies and said to themselves, "What should we do? We have this test to take."

All the students went back into the classroom to finish the written part of the text. The professor flunked them all.

Do you under-stand? Do you understand the real test?

So often we in the Church flunk the real tests in real life, because we are so busy. The real tests are on the Jericho Road.

You see, this parable is essentially a parable about people not wanting to get involved with people who are suffering because of safety, because of money, because of time, because of inconvenience, because of busyness with churchy activities.

Jesus expects that all Christians are good Samaritans. You cannot be a Christian and not be involved with people on the Jericho Road. In fact, Christians are people who are always cruising on the Jericho Road.

Jesus Invites Us To Be Kind And Merciful To Those In Need

Well, if this parable is a condemnation of non-involvement, this parable is also an invitation for us to be merciful and kind to those in need. We are invited to be people who have a gentle heart of generosity, kindness, mercy and tenderness when we see people suffering. You can't pay anyone to do that. You can pay money to get the floor shined, and the bedpans changed and the linens changed, but you can't pay money to have a heart of love.

This parable of Jesus is to invite all of us to have hearts of love, to have hearts of love for anybody who is hurting on any of the Jericho Roads of life.

Jesus is inviting us to have hearts of love.

But this parable is also an invitation to be kind and merciful and loving to... our enemies. Yes, our enemies, people we would love to hate.

Let me explain...

As you know, the Jews and the Samaritans during the time of Jesus didn't like each other. In fact, they hated each other. They didn't talk with each other. So when Jesus said that there was a Jew down there on the road to Samaria and he was hurt and a Samaritan came along and took care of him, everyone was shocked.

Jews and Samaritans didn't talk to each other. A Samaritan helping a Jew? Impossible! So this was an invitation for Jews to take care of Samaritans and Samaritans to take care of Jews, their historic enemies. This is an invitation for us today, and for people of all time, to love our enemies or to love people we would like to hate.

I would like to suggest to you that there are many people who find it hard to love their enemies. They would rather bomb their enemies; they would rather get revenge on their enemies. But Jesus, in this parable, is inviting us to love people that we think that we have a right to hate.

Parable Calls Us To Have A Heart Of Love For ALL People

The purpose of the parable is for us to have a heart of love for all people, including our historic enemies or any people we feel we have a right to hate. As history has proven again and again, yesterday's enemies are today's friends and partners. This is true of England, Mexico, Germany, Japan, Russia, and other countries. Enemies in the past but friends and allies today.

Who are your enemies? Who are the people you like to hate? The story of the Good Samaritan changes our hearts of hate into hearts of love.

Vince Lombardi, former coach of the Green Bay Packers after a game that was a great loss, the next day, and the team gathered around him. He took an object filled with air, a football, and said: This is a football. We must again begin with basics.

The gospel today is a reminder that Jesus gave us the Story of the Good Samaritan. He gave us the Scriptures, and whether we are single or married, young or elderly, female or male, let's take this gospel and really contemplate today upon the basics of who we are.

Today we are challenged to be a neighbor to any human being on the road of life, to anyone in need. We are called to risk helping people in poverty, with Aids, illiteracy, immigration, and discrimination. We cannot all "hurry by" and so continue to live self-centered lives.

jjl

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