Our Neighbors, Our Souls
Luke 10.25-37
January 19, 2020
Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott
St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church

At St. Charles, we have entered a season of fundraising. If you’re visiting with us for the first time or haven’t been around here in awhile, the short version is: we’re raising another $90,000 to fully fund the St. Charles Center for Faith + Action, our new nonprofit working at the intersection of sacred story and social justice. We’re also looking toward 100 years in this historic building and raising at least $2 million toward its preservation and continued use for the common good. And next week we will officially make our pledges toward both of these projects in addition to the 2020 operating budget.

Whatever brought you here today, I suspect you’re not here to talk about money—either gathering it up or giving it away; asking for it or being asked for it. Most likely, it’s not the talk of old buildings and their adaptive reuse that has your heart aching right now. Of all the things burdening your mind, fairly low on the list are dwindling congregations in historic sanctuaries designed to seat 1000. And that’s not exactly what we’re talking about today, but it’s on the feasting table before us. See, there’s a central role money plays in the life and work of any organization, and in an organization like ours, money is more than just a necessary, behind-the-scenes afterthought that makes the rest of life possible. The way we talk about and think about finances brings with it a central invitation to a particular way of life. The posture of sharing, hoarding, grasping for, or seeking money will extend to you a perspective of scarcity or abundance, of possibility or of fear. What we are considering, especially this week and next, is how the way we talk about money and fundraising and gathering and spending is an act of faith—is embodying our spirituality—is living out the very things we hold most deeply and claim to believe.

That is happening in Luke’s gospel today. We know the parable but skip the context: Jesus has called a closest group of disciples, but by Luke 10 has expanded their teams and sent them out in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. Whether or not they are properly equipped, trained, and ready is not really part of the story. They are called. And they are sent. And Jesus is fully confident, even if they are not, that they have what it takes to represent the love of God as they go. No amount of processing and preparing and problem-solving is going to make them ready. They must make that loving road by walking it.

The 70 go out, do as they are told, amazing things happen, they can hardly believe it, then come back to share with Jesus what happened on their travels. In processing the storytelling with the 70, Jesus turns back to the original small group of students and says just to them, ““Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

Just then, a lawyer asks a question. In Luke’s gospel, this is comedic timing. No sooner has Jesus spoken these words about prophets and kings who desired to see than we have a lawyer with unanswered questions. This is me sitting down at the end of the day, putting my feet up on a stool, preferred comforting beverage in hand, and immediately hearing, “Hey, Mom!?” We don’t know who this one is who is raising questions and wanting clarification of terms, but we get him. In fact, we probably better understand him than we do the ones that went out and saw and heard *all the things* so clearly. How do I inherit eternal life? What does it mean to love? And who is my neighbor? How far are we really taking all of this? You say a lot of things. What do I need to write down as the actual details of this Way you’re describing? And we know that the questions come just as Jesus has turned to his original disciples in this group of 70 to say, “You’re blessed for seeing what you see and hearing what you hear. There are many others who don’t get it.”

Now the lawyer doesn’t get what Jesus is teaching and what Jesus is about, and answering from within the most vital texts of their own Jewish tradition doesn’t seem to clarify anything, either. So Jesus tells a story about a man who has been left for dead but within sight of able-bodied people. And Jesus talks about all of these “good men” who seem like the right candidates for helping but, instead, pass by a person desperately in need. And then there is the one person who stopped to help him—the one person who stopped was the least likely to do so, and the ones who passed by were the ones we expect a whole lot more from. It’s one of Jesus’ classic reversal stories that gets lost across time and doesn’t carry the same cultural zing to it that it would have for the lawyer asking questions that day. It’s kind of like explaining a joke. If you have to explain it, you aren’t going to laugh. 

Nevertheless, we’re invited to read ourselves into this ancient story. We’re meant to ask these same questions about eternal life and love and neighbor. We’re meant to ask in the hiddenness of our hearts if we pass by, if we stop and help, if we tend and care-give. And perhaps we’re also meant to ask if we’re more likely to be the oppressive one who leaves someone for dead on the side of the road or the one who is victimized and suffering. This story touches our imaginations and invites us to consider more about ourselves, the world, the order of things, the world as it is, the world as it could be, the power structures and rules that guide us, and the “what ifs” of choosing a different path. This parable will guide us in our imagination through the work we do, the money we raise, the way we prioritize and organize ourselves, and the ways we live out our faith. 

I was introduced to Kerry Robinson’s work a few years ago, specifically her book, Imagining Abundance, in which she points to the work of St. Augustine in studying this parable as a portrait of hospitality. Yes, it’s a story about helping and doing the right thing. Got it. We come up with simple answers for complex questions and move on really quickly. Read the story: be a Samaritan. Check. But the parable is so much more: not only do we have the least likely person stopping to help the mortally wounded man on the side of the road, he brings in a partner by finding an inn, paying an innkeeper, and making a promise (a pledge) of more funds to cover the work to be done of bringing this man back to life. An inn takes time, energy, and money to run. An inn gets leaks in the roof and needs repair. The stay of this wounded man does not have a timeline attached to it, and the direct care and support for the man’s recovery will now rest on the shoulders of the innkeeper. A relationship has been established between these three, and the Samaritan becomes the visionary funder while the innkeeper in the active worker in providing care and hospitality.

St. Augustine wrote, “This is what I, what all of us are doing; we are performing the duties of the innkeeper.” What happens when we imagine this place, this physical plant and the spiritual communities it houses, as an inn along the Jericho Road where the wounded are cared for, and the innkeepers meet their needs? What creative shift happens in thinking about money and fundraising and asking for support when we see ourselves as innkeepers looking for Samaritan neighbors who partner with us in the work and in the support of caregiving? The money in this story is deeply rooted in a relationship, in a promise, in the hard work of healing, and in making something right even if you were not directly the one who wronged. A lot is going on here.

The traditional model of giving in organizations like churches is distant—an arm’s length or a check signature away from an actual human connection. We hear about a problem, we feel guilt or pain or shame or sadness in our bodies because of what we have heard, and we make payment to end the connection. The ask stops. The connection to the story ends. The donation is not part of a relationship. The giving in this parable is visionary and active. The work of repairing, restoring, loving, and healing takes multiple people, takes money, takes time, and requires direct action.

And while I want to let us ruminate on those interpretive possibilities alone, I would be remiss not to challenge us even further to consider all that the parable invites us to grasp about the radical love of God. Tomorrow we remember the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who would be marking 91 years had he not been killed on April 4, 1968. Dr. King famously told his colleague, Andrew Young, “I think the Good Samaritan is a great individual. I of course, like and respect the Good Samaritan….but I don’t want to be a Good Samaritan…I am tired of picking up people along the Jericho Road. I am tired of seeing people battered and bruised and bloody, injured and jumped on, along the Jericho Roads of life. This road is dangerous. I don’t want to pick up anyone else, along this Jericho Road; I want to fix… the Jericho Road. I want to pave the Jericho Road, add street lights to the Jericho Road; make the Jericho Road safe (for passage) by everybody….”

The day before he was killed, he preached these words:

“Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus, and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters of life. At points he wanted to trick Jesus, and show him that he knew a little more than Jesus knew and throw him off base….

Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid-air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn’t stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But he got down with him, administered first aid, and helped the man in need. Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the ’I’ into the ‘thou,’ and to be concerned about his brother.

Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn’t stop. At times we say they were busy going to a church meeting, an ecclesiastical gathering, and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn’t be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that ‘One who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony.’ And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jerusalem — or down to Jericho, rather to organize a ‘Jericho Road Improvement Association.’ That’s a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effect.

But I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, ‘I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable.’ It’s a winding, meandering road. It’s really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about…1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you’re about 2200 feet below sea level. That’s a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the ‘Bloody Pass.’ And you know, it’s possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it’s possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked — the first question that the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”

Meditate on this parable in the next week. Read yourself into the story. Allow it to expand your imagination. Hear the invitation for radical, strategic partnerships that bring healing to the world. Consider the call on this place, these people, to transform the systems and structures of this world by transforming the way we use our space, our resources, our time, our relationships, and our money. Hold these possibilities with me as we listen for the ways God is calling us now. Amen.