A matter of perspective

In a movie watched long ago and whose name is long forgotten, a candidate for political office said, "What makes a living wage depends on whether you are the one paying it or the one receiving it."

Of course we know this to be true; it matters whose shoes you are wearing.  Or, in this case, whether you are the man in the ditch, or the traveler on the road.  It matters whether you consider yourself an important person, with an important job, with 'solid' moral standards and standing in the community, with a reputation to consider....or, if you are one of the anonymous ones, a person who would be painted in sepia tones, one of the folks whose name is never called out from the  podium for an honor.  It matters whether you consider yourself a person who gives to others, a source of charity, one of the generous ones.......or if you know yourself to be a receiver of the generosity of others.

It matters, although I don't think there is a definitive logarithm which can predict our behavior from bank balances or societal norms.  Sometimes the wealthy are generous and the poor stingy. But I think that what you think about yourself does matter when making decisions about strangers in a ditch.

So when Jesus spins the parable about the Good Samaritan*, we often feel hard pressed to explain the reaction of the priest and the Levite who chose to ignore the man in the ditch.  We might suspect that (quoting Dr. Seuss) that their hearts "were too sizes too small"**- although their lack of care and compassion might be chalked up to the bewildering need they met at every turn of the road (or standing at every street corner with a cardboard sign).  We are loathe to hold them too accountable for we have been them at one time or another, and for what we thought were good reasons.

Notice that Jesus doesn't condemn either because this isn't a story about judgment.

It is a story about mercy.
Not reason nor moral superiority, not use of wealth nor good 'up-bringing'.
It is a story about mercy.

Apparently mercy is the name of the road on which one discovers the 'kingdom of God'.

*the gospel of Luke, chapter 10
** How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Walking with ........the role of compassion

What does compassion require of us?  

For many, compassion is a sentiment which pulls at your heart strings, triggered by touching stories, personal injustices and at times, puppies and small children.  The weak or powerless move us to a compassionate response so we paste a link on Facebook,  write a check, or volunteer some hours to a cause. 

Taking the time to reflect on those people or situations that move us to compassion would be a good spiritual exercise.  Take a couple of days and make a running list of what has moved your heart, what has brought to the fore your 'that's not right' response.  

How many of your items were from your own neighborhood?  Your state?  The nation?  The world?

Who moved you to a compassionate response?  Were they children?  Women?  Teens?  Men?  The Elderly?  Did they all look like you?  Share the same beliefs?  Speak the same language?

What situations prompted your injustice meter?  Hunger?  Addiction?  Abandonment?  Violence?

Were there situations that only led you to argue quietly within?  The homeless person with a sign at the intersection for example.  Did you find yourself saying..."If I give them money, they will only use it for drugs"? "How do I know they are really homeless?"  "Why can't they get a job?"  Not that I am condemning these internal conversations, I am simply asking that we all be truthful with ourselves.

What did it take to move you beyond 'thoughts and prayers' to a concrete action to right the wrong and support the suffering?

At its core, the word compassion means ‘to suffer with or alongside’.  Although we might begin at a distance with a news story or chance encounter, compassion calls us to move closer.  We are to suffer  alongside those whose plight has challenged our sense of justice, to walk with them.  Compassion feels the pain of others, and ultimately, requires action on their behalf.  In the end, a life of compassion is a life of action for others. 

The quintessential example of this in the Bible is Luke's story of the Good Samaritan (chapter 10).  Lots of folks saw the beaten victim of robbery laying on the side of the road.  Priests and officials, plus, I would expect some ordinary citizens trying to get to the market.  They looked, they saw, and yet, 'passed by on the other side' of the road.  The Samaritan (who, BTW, every Israelite thought of as less worthy) stopped, bound up his wounds and provided for his care.  The Samaritan whom no one would have called 'neighbor' acted as neighbor to the anonymous man.

None of us can act every time, in every situation, with equal amounts of commitment and support.  From a spiritual perspective, the problem is not the demands of acting every time, but rather, the emptiness of never acting at all.

When Jesus walked the via dolorosa he provided us with the divine example of what it means to have compassion - to walk alongside those who are suffering, taking their suffering on your shoulders.  

Compassion is not about the weeping that accompanies a poignant TV commercial; it is about taking up your cross with your neighbor.

What if it is Jesus in the ditch?

We can't tell for sure, and that is the way it is intended to be because that is how parables work. We can't tell for sure which character is intended to represent Jesus, and so let us consider that it is Jesus who is lying in that ditch, wounded and in need of life-saving help.

 What could we learn from that?

Clearly we aren't going to 'save' Jesus.  Clearly Jesus can 'save' himself if needed.  So why put the face of Jesus on that anonymous man in the ditch?

Perhaps so that whenever we look upon the wounded and abandoned people of our world we will see the face of Jesus.  Perhaps so when we encounter the lost, the lonely and the unwanted ones - especially the ones which will require some sacrificial giving on our part - we will see the face of Jesus, the wounded one.  Perhaps so we will begin to understand that to love God is to love that anonymous neighbor in need.  It is an understanding of the heart and not the head: we are reaching out not only in Jesus' name but we are reaching out to Jesus himself.

That's the way love works.  It generates deep compassion for those around us.  God's love for us in Jesus, the one who reached out to give us life and wholeness becomes the compassion with which we reach out to our neighbors.  The life Jesus gives us wells up into life-giving compassion for our neighbors in a never ending circle.  Love God - love neighbor - be loved by God - go love neighbor - love God.

One biblical author asks, How can you love the God you cannot see when you do not love the neighbor who is right there in front of your face? (clearly a paraphrase).

All this to come to the answer of the lawyer's question  Who is my neighbor?

The answer is Yes.

Looking up from a roadside ditch.......

At some point in every parable you have to decide which character you identify with.  A good interpretive approach is to move around in the story: be one character first, and then trade places and consider the story from another character's point of view. Today, we are going to lay down in that ditch (from the parable of the Good Samaritan Luke10) and consider the world and this story from that point of view.

It had been a nothing-unusual kind of day for this anonymous traveler, although the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was always a bit dangerous.  It was busy most days and so it was also a favorite of highway robbers.

That's how we ended up in the ditch: mugged, stripped, robbed.  Wounded and left without even our dignity, we now lay there and pray that someone ...anyone....will come to our aid.    We can hear the feet of passing travelers, yet they continue on.  Once, twice.  Without someone's help, we are lost.

Of all the things we know or think we know about this story, let me highlight what we don't know.  We don't know if the guy in the ditch was a Republican or a Democrat.  We don't know if he was a CEO or welfare recipient; whether he was a convicted felon or model citizen; whether he was straight or gay; whether he was a wife beater or in a happy and long marriage.  We don't know if he was brilliant or just barely literate; whether he was depressed or happy; whether he was a drug addict or in perfect health, whether he was a couch potato or a tri-athelete.  We don't know anything about this man in the ditch except this:  he was a person in desperate need of help.  It was life or death.  It was now or never.

So it wasn't politics or currying favor or identifying adequate credentials that led to a hand reaching out to that desperate, dying man.  It was compassion - the deep stirring of the heart which recognized a fellow human being abandoned by the world - that powered that act of mercy.  The wounds of the victim caused equal pain to the rescuer and he reached across the divide of 'all that my mother taught me' and gave life-saving aid.

I can only imagine the gratitude of the wounded man, but I imagine it as enormous, indescribable, and, truth be told, totally unexpected.  All that could be known about this wounded man was his wounded state and deep need....and apparently, that was enough for this unknown Samaritan.

Who reaches out to wounded people simply because they are in need?  Who is willing to do the hard work of bandaging and transporting him to an inn, nursing him for a couple days and then be willing to pay whatever it costs to bring him back to health?  Who cares that much?  Who can muster up that kind of compassion?  Who acts like that?

Jesus.  Want to know the breadth of God's love for God's creation?  Look at Jesus.  Want to know what kind of God has come to be among us?  Look at Jesus.  Want to know how God acts towards the anonymous,wounded people of this world?  Look at Jesus.

It is hard to tell what is more scandalous in this parable - that a hated Samaritan embarrassed observant Jews by living out the compassion of the Torah's teaching by loving the neighbor....

.....or that Jesus presents himself as a Samaritan: one of the hated ones; one of the unclean ones.
But the one, who in the end, poured out all he had and all he was for the sake of a wounded and dying humanity.

Love God, love your neighbor

The two great commandments: Love God, love your neighbor.  The lawyer who was questioning Jesus accurately stated the teaching of Torah, the law of the people of Israel.  Any child could have given the same answer.  The devil was in the details.  What does love of God look like?  How am I to love my neighbor?  How much?  How often?  To what degree?

And, in the end, Who counts as my neighbor?

That was what the lawyer wanted to know.  Define who my neighbor is and I will then go about 'loving' that person and thus fulfill my obligation to God.  [parable of the Good Samaritan Luke 10]

Now, I am glad he was concerned about being in right relationship with God.  I don't think it is either fair or accurate to assume he was attempting to minimize the challenge of his commitment to following God nor to assign nefarious intent in his request for precision.  Not that there weren't darker intentions lurking behind all the questions:  we all have darker intentions, we all are looking for a way to ease our conscience, we all sin.  So let's not beat up on the lawyer.  He wanted to get it right.

But of course, you can't get the neighbor thing right if you don't get the 'love' part right, and love can be a slippery thing.  Love is a very deep well.  It is both cotton candy (very sweet, floating all over the place and sticking to everything) and as strong as steel.  Usually there are shared values, regard for the other's welfare, and a commitment to each other that defies outside forces.  It's about trust, respect and sacrifice.  Love is that which remains when all that is ephemeral disappears.  It is the hot core at the center of it all.

So, I think that we have a major problem before we even get to the neighbor question.  The demands of love are enormous and, truthfully, we don't act with love continually.  Sometimes the sacrifice that love demands is far greater than we are able or willing to give.  Yet, even as we cry out "I just can't!" we turn again and seek to 'love' again, giving it one more try.  Humans are inconsistent lovers.

Given the difficulty of love (whether it be God or neighbor) we move on to the difficulty of 'neighbor.'  Somehow we can convince ourselves that we 'love' God - deeply, consistently, with honesty.  This is easier because we don't run into God when we go to the market or pump our gas.  We don't have to talk to God before we have our morning coffee or at the water cooler at work (that isn't true, but that's a discussion for another day.)  Neighbors, however, are a much different subject.  We might love neighbors in the abstract, but people in the flesh are much harder to take.  With or without our morning coffee.

I understand the lawyer's desire to figure out who he is obligated to love as his neighbor.  Otherwise this whole 'love' thing could get out of hand; he needs some boundaries.  Who then is my neighbor?
It's one of those questions that if you have to ask, you don't understand what you are talking about.

And of course he doesn't understand what he is asking because we all live in a quid pro quo world and Jesus is talking about God's coming kingdom.  We live in a world where looking out for yourself, your family and then your friends is our primary focus and often more than we can handle.  We seek our advantage because, frankly, no one else will.  We separate some folks because we have about as much as we can handle here. The demands of providing are killing us now; we cannot be asked to provide for every other human being we encounter.

And he is right, of course.  We can't feed all the hungry or clothe all the teenagers or hire all the unemployed or find housing for all the homeless.  We can't do it all.  All of this 'loving' is killing us; there have to be limits.

Or maybe, it is all this 'not loving' that is killing us.  Maybe if there was a little more love in our relationships that man wouldn't have ended up in the ditch.  Perhaps he is left as good as dead because 'loving our neighbor' isn't a guiding principle for everyone.  We get another reminder of this as two - two! - apparently religious men see his plight and avoid responsibility by passing by on the other side - as far away from this 'neighbor' as they can get.

So now we are ready to hear how Jesus thinks about this, how God looks at this, and how God's heart responds to this Child of God lying in the mud by the road.

Be prepared for some sacrifice here.

Love God, love your neighbor

The two great commandments: Love God, love your neighbor.  The lawyer who was questioning Jesus accurately stated the teaching of Torah, the law of the people of Israel.  Any child could have given the same answer.  The devil was in the details.  What does love of God look like?  How am I to love my neighbor?  How much?  How often?  To what degree?

And, in the end, Who counts as my neighbor?

That was what the lawyer wanted to know.  Define who my neighbor is and I will then go about 'loving' that person and thus fulfill my obligation to God.  [parable of the Good Samaritan Luke 10]

Now, I am glad he was concerned about being in right relationship with God.  I don't think it is either fair or accurate to assume he was attempting to minimize the challenge of his commitment to following God nor to assign nefarious intent in his request for precision.  Not that there weren't darker intentions lurking behind all the questions:  we all have darker intentions, we all are looking for a way to ease our conscience, we all sin.  So let's not beat up on the lawyer.  He wanted to get it right.

But of course, you can't get the neighbor thing right if you don't get the 'love' part right, and love can be a slippery thing.  Love is a very deep well.  It is both cotton candy (very sweet, floating all over the place and sticking to everything) and as strong as steel.  Usually there are shared values, regard for the other's welfare, and a commitment to each other that defies outside forces.  It's about trust, respect and sacrifice.  Love is that which remains when all that is ephemeral disappears.  It is the hot core at the center of it all.

So, I think that we have a major problem before we even get to the neighbor question.  The demands of love are enormous and, truthfully, we don't act with love continually.  Sometimes the sacrifice that love demands is far greater than we are able or willing to give.  Yet, even as we cry out "I just can't!" we turn again and seek to 'love' again, giving it one more try.  Humans are inconsistent lovers.

Given the difficulty of love (whether it be God or neighbor) we move on to the difficulty of 'neighbor.'  Somehow we can convince ourselves that we 'love' God - deeply, consistently, with honesty.  This is easier because we don't run into God when we go to the market or pump our gas.  We don't have to talk to God before we have our morning coffee or at the water cooler at work (that isn't true, but that's a discussion for another day.)  Neighbors, however, are a much different subject.  We might love neighbors in the abstract, but people in the flesh are much harder to take.  With or without our morning coffee.

I understand the lawyer's desire to figure out who he is obligated to love as his neighbor.  Otherwise this whole 'love' thing could get out of hand; he needs some boundaries.  Who then is my neighbor?
It's one of those questions that if you have to ask, you don't understand what you are talking about.

And of course he doesn't understand what he is asking because we all live in a quid pro quo world and Jesus is talking about God's coming kingdom.  We live in a world where looking out for yourself, your family and then your friends is our primary focus and often more than we can handle.  We seek our advantage because, frankly, no one else will.  We separate some folks because we have about as much as we can handle here. The demands of providing are killing us now; we cannot be asked to provide for every other human being we encounter.

And he is right, of course.  We can't feed all the hungry or clothe all the teenagers or hire all the unemployed or find housing for all the homeless.  We can't do it all.  All of this 'loving' is killing us; there have to be limits.

Or maybe, it is all this 'not loving' that is killing us.  Maybe if there was a little more love in our relationships that man wouldn't have ended up in the ditch.  Perhaps he is left as good as dead because 'loving our neighbor' isn't a guiding principle for everyone.  We get another reminder of this as two - two! - apparently religious men see his plight and avoid responsibility by passing by on the other side - as far away from this 'neighbor' as they can get.

So now we are ready to hear how Jesus thinks about this, how God looks at this, and how God's heart responds to this Child of God lying in the mud by the road.

Be prepared for some sacrifice here.

A little help goes a long way.........

Atheists know  the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan, even if they have no idea that the original story is biblical or what exactly a Samaritan is.  For the record, a Good Samaritan is someone who goes out of her way to help someone she could just as easily ignore - a stranded motorist, an injured animal, anyone in need.  In many states, Good Samaritan laws protect a benevolent individual from liability when in the end, they weren't exactly the perfect help at all.

So we have some idea of what a Good Samaritan is, and since we Christians have some idea that we have a duty towards our neighbors, we expect that the point of the parable is our duty to be out there giving help to those in need.  And not just a little help, but extravagant help in dangerous situations and without regard to cost.

Thus is created a huge burden of conscience for many people of faith.  We are surrounded by people in need no matter where we live, which leads me to those folks who stand at the intersections of our major highways here in Syracuse with signs that read "A little help goes a long way...." If we choose to not help them out with some spare change or a sandwich, we usually drive away feeling at least a little guilty for doing nothing. Because we are supposed to, it is our duty, we are obligated.

So, with lightening speed, we manage to turn a parable of God's gracious mercy into a hammer of guilt.  We turn love and mercy into an obligation and God into a cosmic bean counter.  In this space where grace and mercy could bring life and healing, we have nothing because we know that we will not respond as the Samaritan did every time we come to the corner of 690 and Hiawatha Blvd.  We are left with only death: the death of our spirit and the hunger of the needy one.

So don't go there.  Don't start beating yourself up and making excuses and arguing with me from your desk computer.  We need to walk through this parable together and do it as people of faith, people who have come to know the power of life that is present in Jesus and available through the Holy Spirit.  The parables are not Aesop's Fables with a clearly stated moral at the end.  They are complex layered stories which are intended to challenge our thinking, provide a different point of view and lead us into a newer understanding of our complicated relationship with the Divine Creator.

A man was traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and he was robbed, stripped and thrown into a ditch, left for dead.  Probably not an unusual occurrence on that stretch of highway, and one of the main dangers of traveling alone.

Three men came upon this helpless victim in our story.  Two saw his plight yet chose to 'pass by on the other side.'  The third one stopped, gave aid, provided shelter and support until he was healed. It was an unheard of, extravagant act of kindness and has left people feeling guilty for hundreds of years.  Was that Jesus' intent?  Or was Jesus challenging us to see the world through different glasses, to shake off our egocentric thought process, to fully commit to God's point of view of love lived out in mercy and grace?  Are we being asked to see that stranger in the ditch with the same eyes that God sees us?

Just a few questions to get us started.  There is lots to talk about.  See you tomorrow.

Stingy at heart...a look at the Good Samaritan

Stingy - always counting the cost, cutting a corner, leaving stuff behind, refusing to share....is a condition of the heart.   Stinginess like generosity has little do with the state of your wallet.

There are lots of ways to be stingy - with our love, in our relationships, with our commitment, in our service or care of others.  There are an equal number of ways to be generous - always looking for a way to do more, leaving more behind for others, using our resources to ease the burden of another.

Underneath the parable of the Good Samaritan is this contrast between stingy and generous.  The lawyer was stingy.  In asking Jesus, 'Who then is my neighbor?' he reveals a very narrow worldview, one might even say a 'stingy' worldview where he is looking for people he can eliminate from his 'obligation to love' list.

Jesus answers his neighbor question with the parable of the Samaritan whose great outpouring of care and concern has made him a literary icon.  This Samaritan not only cares for an anonymous stranger - he goes over and beyond anything expected of him.  He secures the beaten man's safety and then secures his healing with his own money.  The lawyer is left looking very, very small while the Samaritan becomes larger than life.

The Good Samaritan is one way that Luke demonstrates God's abundant, over-the-top, never stingy love for those God has created.  When Jesus asks us to follow him this is the way he is going...down that road of generous, over-the-top, overflowing store of mercy, thankfulness and forgiveness.  Let us follow where he leads.

What must I do? the lawyer asks

It's not a bad question really.  It focuses the conversation and spells out the way forward. 
What must I do, Lord?

Now, as long as you are not substituting your work (you know, those good deeds which you convince yourself will make you acceptable in the sight of God) for the work of Jesus (who makes us acceptable on the cross, by forgiving and redeeming each and every one of us) then it is, in fact, a very good question.

Because God is meant to be practiced; not just talked about, but practiced.  Your core values are crystal clear in the deeds of your day to day life.  Jesus calls us to align our core values with God (to give life, to bring life to others, to forgive) - and then act out those core values every day.  To do God.

Like when you see a man beaten and robbed and left on the side of the road to die, and you choose to stop, bind him up and arrange for his care.   The lawyer who prompted this telling of the Good Samaritan parable started it all with the question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"  In the end, even the lawyer recognizes that the Samaritan, the one who did mercy was most closely aligned to God's purposes.

Go and do likewise.                                                                                        Luke10.25-37