Same Kind of Different As Me

Luke 10:25-35

Rev. Kelley L. Dick

The night started off beautifully. The children and adults were singing, and dancing all having a blast together. I loved watching the way they interacted with one other.  There was a deep sense of care that was so apparent you felt the joy in the room. I was just tickled at the way VBS was going this year.  Laughter was in the air, fueled by excitement. Today was a good day I thought to myself. Good day for all people

            The snack that was called for during this evening of Baobab Blast Vacation Bible School was sliced up cucumbers in water. An odd snack for young children, I’ll admit, but the connection was to be made to the Good Samaritan, and how something like cucumbers in water, really was quite good, surprisingly good, even to young children. Yet, the other adults and I wasn’t quite sure about this selection for the snack, we thought of many other options. I mean after all it was the Good Samaritan story. Everyone has heard it a million times, and there were so many other snack ideas to show how something to everyone was “not good” but to God and the one in need, it was “very good”.

            Out of the corner of my eye I see a woman walk in carrying a baby in car seat, and a young boy holding her hand.  She looked tired, hot, and irritated. She couldn’t have been more than 10 steps inside the door, when adults in the hallway greeted her, conversation was initiated and my name was called. 

            So, as Jesus tells us, a man who was traveling to Jerusalem from Jericho he was traveling this road alone and sure enough, the thieves got him and left him “half dead” on the side of the road.  A priest and a Levite, both holy men, walk right by the dying victim.  They sound evil, but it’s not as if the priest and the Levite were simply bad people.  They had legitimate reasons for acting as they did.  Any contact with blood or a dead body would have rendered them unclean according to their purity laws.  No one who was “unclean” could enter the holy places of the temple.  So, walking over and touching this dying or dead man, even just to see if he was alive, was out of the question.  It would have disqualified them from their religious duties.

            It might be the world's most famous story about showing compassion for people we may not like: a nice little story with a nice little moral. It’s a story that crosses all boundaries of religion, ethnicity, gender, political lines and the like. It even enters into late night television. Jay Leno had a segment on his late night show called “Into the streets” He would ask random people on the street, random questions.

            And once the question was “Who is the good Samaritan.” What he discovered was that everyone he asked knew the story, very few knew it was from the Bible, and all thought it was really hard to do.

We have to be sure that this well known; well versed, well loved, commonly used story doesn’t breed contempt.  For you see, the parable doesn’t make our stomach churn or offend our sensibilities; like it did to the audience Jesus preached it too. The fact that a Samaritan helped a Jewish person was crossing serious, deep-seated, roots.

  In fact, we may hear it with an almost satisfied ear, as if we believe we too would surely do what the "Good" Samaritan did.

Yet, in New York, just 3 months ago a man laid face down, unmoving, on the sidewalk outside an apartment building, obvious blood from knife wounds pooling underneath his body.

            One person passed by in the early morning, then another, and another. Video

footage from a surveillance camera showed at least seven people who went by, some turned their heads to look, others stopped to gawk, one took a picture on his cell phone, and one even lifted the man's body, exposing what appeared to be blood on the sidewalk underneath him, before he walked away. All of them hurried past the suffering man. They all had their priorities that kept them from compassion.  It wasn't until after the man had been lying there for an hour and half that emergency workers arrived, and by then, it was too late.  He had already died.

            What were the people waiting for?

            Everyone knows this story. It’s been around for 2000 years.

            Could this story be true to us too?

            Maybe we don’t have enough confidence in ourselves to feel as if we can love our neighbor.

            Maybe we hope someone else would help.

            Maybe we are too busy to care about others.

            Maybe this story is bigger, deeper, and richer than we originally thought, and that we are fearful of truly living it out. Knowing the right thing to and actually doing the right thing are two very different things. For when we help, when we allow God to stir in us the place of compassion, we become different. We see the world differently, and sometimes, we just like the way things are going, we don’t want to change.

            That’s what sets the Good Samaritan apart.  That’s what makes this story more than just a nice little story with a nice little moral.

            He had plenty of reasons to do as the priest and Levite did, passing by on the other side of the road. He was a Samaritan. That’s like saying he was a ____fill in the blank with person/ or group of people that just cause our heart to race and our palms to sweat with anger.

            And he was traveling minding his own business; he needed to get to his destination as soon as he could just like everyone else.

            How did he know that the dying man wasn’t a trap used to lure him into an ambush by thieves?  Any number of things could have gotten in the way of his compassion…  but for some reason, they didn’t.  He did the unthinkable.  He stopped, putting himself at risk.  He touched the man and bandaged his wounds, rendering himself unclean.  He put him on his own horse, slowing his journey on the treacherous road.  He took him to an inn and cared for him, devoting more of his precious travel time.  He paid the innkeeper to take care of him and remarkably, none of these things got in the way of his compassion.

            Now friends, that is hard!! I don’t want to diminish or belittle or water down how incredibly hard it was from the Samaritan do to all of theses things, and Jesus, tells the lawyer and us, to go and do the same. He isn’t saying fix all of my people, or find how why they are in the situation, or how long they have been there. Jesus just says; Help my people. So that through compassion, God may be shown.

            It’s a change from the inside out. It’s a transformation in the way we view the world. For when we help someone in need, we provide radical hospitality. And that is what it’s all about. The revoluntionary way of looking at others as created in God’s image and then loving them unconditionally as we embrace their differences. They in turn, are the same kind of different as me.

            I would like to think that we do what we can, when we can. And because we are all different people, that takes many different forms. I feel certain that God does not play favorites with any of God’s children, but at times God shows love differently. If we, as children of God are to be in this world, we must be willing to be challenged to live our lives empowered by the Holy Spirit and fueled by the table of grace.

            It means we must be uncomfortable, uneasy, unsure, and sometimes brought to tears. 

In Fredick Buechner book “Telling the Truth, The Gospel as Tragedy Comedy and Fairy Tale he says

            It would help us all if we would keep track of the times and events in our lives that brought us to tears. They      may be happy or sad moments. Because when we are stirred to such depths of emotions he says these are   place that God is at work in our lives. These occasions are like windows through which God’s love gets to us, really gets to us and challenges us to grow.”

            Luke 10:25-37 is a parable to help us recognize the image of God in others and the power we posses with each other. It’s more than just a story of helping others, it’s a story of the journey.

            When we gather every Sunday for communion we have a reminder of God’s love, and grace.

            When we take the ordinary bread and ordinary cup, we make them extraordinary when we realize that God has poured Godself in our hearts and minds in a dangerous world. God didn’t do this so we can rest knowing that God is in our hearts and minds, but rather so we can be driven to uneasiness, So we can love our neighbor as ourselves, so we can remember all of Jesus’ parables, his teachings, his actions, his love, and his sacrifice We are to be inspired by God’s love so that we can change the world. And it takes us all, doing what we can, where we can to provide radical hospitably to all we come in contact.

            Ruby Hewlett as told in Guidepost worked in a post office in Indianapolis. The newspaper in the community had done a survey of the post offices in Indianapolis and they had determined which the post office in the community was the rudest, and the post office where Ruby worked, won hands down.  She was annoyed when she read the newspaper and saw the article and said:

            "Hmph, it’s not our fault. Our customers are the rudest customers there are, and they deserve everything they’re getting."        

            So she and her colleagues put the blame on the ‘neighbors’ who visited the Post Office.  She didn’t bother to think about how angry she was when people wanted the stamps you lick instead of the ones that stick, or when people didn’t have exact change. Ruby, was not a big fan of herself and it showed.

            Until one day she was in the local grocery store before her shift at the post office and the person behind the counter was extremely rude to her. She walked away feeling horrible, she sat in her car and cried, and that very afternoon she began to do things a little bit different.

            She said, "After my lunch break, I imagined that my window was a mirror and the person on the other side would reflect my demeanor.

            Ruby’s first customer looked glum. While digging in her purse for her wallet, she mumbled her order. Ruby felt awkward, but when she looked up to pay, Ruby forced a smile. One side of her mouth curled up slightly. She’s trying too, Ruby thought.

            For the rest of the week she concentrated on getting to know her customers, addressing them by name when she could. She wasn’t nearly as angry with them or herself when she began thinking of them as people, just like her, with problems and worries and good news and bad news within their lives

  The road to Jericho from Jerusalem doesn't run through comfortable, familiar territory. Instead, travelers find themselves on dangerous ground, uncertain and often, alone. We would rather stay home in Jerusalem, with our own kind, where the temple and the walls of the cities surround us, providing what we need. We find our identity there and that comforts us. We don’t always know how or what to do, we often don’t want to take risks. We don’t want to take the chance of God actually showing up, because when God does, amazing things happen.

I walked over, and heard her story, and to be honest, I was waiting for a story I had already heard 3 times today.

            “I have gone to three different churches, all of them say they can’t help us, all of them look at my children and say they don’t have anyway to help us.  No one will help us. When my son says, I thought God loved me, doesn’t that mean the churches should help us, isn’t the church where God is, what do I say to him.

             All I’m asking for is food, formula and gas. We’ve got to get back to Ohio. Before I could invite her in to Carter Hall to sit down, people were making food bags, finding formula, fixing the young boy and his mom a sandwich, finding the baby something to drink, and embracing the family. The power of God that was present on that night was amazing. Youth and Children talked to the young boy, adults reached out to the woman, the baby charmed all with his smiles.

            Around a common table, love was poured out as we shared in communion with travelers.

            I’ll never forget how excited the young boy was when his sandwich was made, and sitting next to it, was cut up cucumbers. With eyes as big as quarters, he ate the cucumbers before his sandwich, and asked for more.  It was like the heavens opened up, and the choir of angles sang as we all at once, looked at each other with tears in our eyes.

             The snack that was called for during this evening of Baobab Blast Vacation Bible School was sliced up cucumbers in water. An odd snack for young children, I’ll admit, but the connection was to be made to the Good Samaritan, and how something like cucumber water, really was quite good, surprisingly good, even to young children.