Qualifying mercy

Text: Luke 10:25-37

So today we hear the story of The Good Samaritan, one of the most well-known and favorite stories that Jesus told. We tend to read ourselves into this familiar story in predictable ways. We determine that we are not supposed to be like the priest or the levite who pass by the beaten man but are supposed to be like the Samaritan who shows the man mercy.  

Good enough. 

But what happens when we turn the story around? What happens if we put ourselves in the beaten man’s place? Would we even be asking such a question as who is my neighbor?  

The lawyer is trying to qualify the term neighbor - to narrow it down - to determine to whom he owes attention and by implication whom can he ignore. He is looking for loopholes.  

But if you’re the man in the ditch, do you care about any of that? Do you think that you’d lie there in gentle understanding if someone were to shout over to you to explain that they can’t or won’t help you because you are not their neighbor? "Oh, ok, I’ll just lie here dying and wait until an appropriate neighbor comes along" ???

Or what about this? Are there people about whom you would say, “I’d rather die than let that person help me?  I’d rather just lie here and die than experience the compassion of someone I don’t know or don’t like or whose theology or politics differs from mine or who is of the wrong color or class or sexual orientation? Yeah, just go on and pass me by and I’ll wait for a more appropriate person to show me mercy.”

The message Jesus is driving home here is this: categories and rules simply don’t matter.  Think of the person in need. The person in need is the person who deserves your attention, whoever it might be.   Categories and rules do not apply. And this is so hard.  

We tend to want people to get what they deserve and deserve what they get. And there are so many people in need, all the time, everywhere.  So we look for ways to narrow things down, to make life manageable, to keep from being overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the world’s grief and lack and want and need. 

This is where I have compassion for the lawyer and can imagine myself in his shoes.  How on earth can I figure out what to do in the face of unrelenting poverty and brokenness?  I am bombarded daily with stories and images and the sight of people who are homeless and hungry and beaten and hopeless and addicted and dying. I am constantly being asked to help here or there, this cause or that situation.  

Surely there is some way in which I can determine whom I ought to help, who deserves my attention, among so much need, without simply becoming numb to it all.

But again, if I am in the ditch, do I care about any of that?  Does any of that matter?  Must I position myself as deserving in order to receive mercy?  

Does God parse us that way, so that only the deserving, the appropriate among us receive grace and mercy and the unfailing and unqualified love of God? 

So you see, this is not a straightforward story with good guys, bad guys, and a neat moral at the end.  We might try to make it one, and when we do I think it is because we know how difficult this whole concept is to work into one’s real life. We are intelligent, caring people, and what we see out there in the world is overwhelming need.  

And we know how powerless we often are to help, to make a difference. We are so often captive to our own fears, our uneasiness about strangers, our worries about our own safety.  We’ve heard stories about traps and setups and con men and we’ve heard propaganda about how people don’t deserve to be helped anyway and they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps et cetera et cetera.

But I will say again, God does not parse us that way. God does not divide us into deserving and undeserving.  Mercy is mercy and we do well to remember that whenever we draw a line, we will find God on the other side of it.  God stands with the helpless and the rejected, including those we reject.  

If you are in the ditch, God is with you.  If you are a Samaritan among Jews, God is with you. If you are in pain, grief, trouble -  God is with you…….

So how does one respond to the great need of the world?  The same as eating an elephant - one bite at a time.  We learn to see need when we come upon it.  It doesn’t have to be the entire world’s need.  It can’t be the entire world’s need - none of us has the capacity for that. 

 

The need that’s right in front of our nose, on our particular journey, today, is the need to which we are invited to respond.  We know we cannot help everybody, but we can show mercy to somebody.  We can put our beliefs into action without being overwhelmed ourselves by focusing on the one whose needs we can see now.  It takes practice and we may have to learn from those whom we never expected or do not wish to learn - those whose perspective is very different from ours.  The perspective of the one to whom harm has been done, even if we didn't cause or understand or wish for that harm, even if we think it has nothing to do with us.

But this is what we vowed at our baptisms: we will seek and serve Christ in all persons and love our neighbors as ourselves, with God’s help.  

The Samaritan had the eyes to see the suffering man in the ditch. He did not avert his gaze but allowed himself to feel compassion without applying any rules about it.  His focus was on performing the action of a neighbor, rather than discerning the identity of neighbor.

And with God’s help perhaps may we go out and do likewise.