Sermons

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The View From The Ditch
May 8 , 2005
Sermon Series on the Gospel of Luke
7th Sunday in Easter
Pastor Dan Baumgartnerr
Luke 10:25-37

“Teacher…what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

It’s a test for Jesus from an expert of the Law (lawyer). The lawyer wants the list. Just show me the list of do’s and don’ts. Jesus calmly hits a smooth backhand back over the net:

“You are the scripture expert. What does the law say? How do you understand it?”

The lawyer’s answer is a good one, right out of the law, from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, just like we read earlier:

“Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus responds,

“Well done. You’ve given the right answer. You know what the law says. Just do that.”

Now before we rush past this little exchange to get to the parable of the Good Samaritan, we need to stop long enough to let Jesus words sink in.

“If you are interested in what you do to get to heaven... All you need to do is love the Lord your God with every fiber of your being, with everything you have and are and possess, everything…and treat the people around you the way you wish to be treated.”

That’s all.

That’s all? I don’t know about you…but I don’t have to wonder very long about how I do at those things. I fail. I’m not sure that the lawyer knows what he has just said. He may not understand that what he just listed out is monumentally impossible. Jesus might as well have said,

“If you think it’s about your Doing, a List…you have already failed.”

But the lawyer presses on:

"But Who is my neighbor? Who am I obligated to love?"

It’s cold in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The three years we lived there, even in the spring, the evenings get cold. And it’s really cold if you are laying on a cement sidewalk.

That’s where the man was when I saw him. He was a large man, and he had at the very least passed out, in the middle of a sidewalk in a crummy part of town where there were lots of taverns and storefront sales of Lotto tickets and cheap beer, and people milling around.

It was late in the evening, after dark and as I drove by in my car I saw him lying there. There were people stepping around him, but he wasn’t moving.

I looked in my rear view mirror after I had driven by and stopped at the light. He was still laying there. I was late for a meeting. A church meeting, not so ironically.

I’d never been in that exact part of town, and knew it only by reputation. And I sat and rationalized: other people had obviously seen this guy. Surely someone had called 9-1-1. Or what if it was a trick to get some naïve stranger to stop, and then a couple of his friends roll out of the alley and rob me? And after all, I was already late for church.

I wondered later…if the man’s eyes had been open at all, what would he have seen? Perhaps just feet moving around him and my car tires passing by on the other side.

Who is my neighbor?

Charles Dickens starts out A Christmas Carol by having the narrator say “Before you even read this story, you need to know that Marley was dead, really truly dead. If you don’t understand that Marley (old Ebenezer Scrooge’s partner) was dead, you won’t understand the wonder of the story.”

We’re in the same boat this morning. If we don’t understand something about Jews and Samaritans in Jesus’ day, we won’t understand this story. So hang with me.

By the time of Jesus, “bitter enmity” was about all that could describe the relationship between Samaritans and Jews. It was bad. Samaritans came from the same religious and cultural background as Jews. But they lived to the north and west of Jerusalem in the area called Samaria.

Long, long before Jesus, in the 8th century BC, when Assyria had conquered the northern country of Israel, they deported almost 30,000 folks to other places, and then filled in the land with people from Mesopotamia. The Jews believed that over the years the natives of Samaria had adapted those new religions and cultures so extensively that they no longer believed in the God of Israel.

For their part, Samaritans read the Hebrew Bible, but only the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Old Testament. No history, no poetry, no prophets. They developed their own priesthood and places of worship. And other things had gone on over the years:

• Periodic skirmishes.
• A ban on Samaritans in the temple in Jerusalem.
• An incident where Samaritans had defiled the Jerusalem temple.

Jews and Samaritans considered each other “unclean.”

If it sounds like today’s Palestinians and Jews, or Irish Protestants and Catholics…it was.

In fact, so much did the Jews despise the Samaritans that when they traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem, they would usually cross over to the other side of the Jordan from Samaria, travel down, and then cross back over to Jerusalem so they could totally avoid the Samaritans.

And so it makes sense that when Jesus’ enemies wanted to mock him in John 8, they said “You’re a Samaritan, aren’t you?” And in Luke 9, as Jesus set his face to journey to Jerusalem, a Samaritan village rejected him because of his destination. Suffice it to say there was a deep, long, bitter enmity between Jew and Samaritan.

The lawyer asked Jesus,

“Who is my neighbor? Who am I obligated to love?”

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.

I don’t know if you are like me, but when it comes to reading a map…I can be a little challenged. To me, it seems obvious that if Jericho is north of Jerusalem (which it is, north and east) then you must go up from Jerusalem to Jericho…I mean, it’s up on the map, right?!

But in fact, you do go down from Jerusalem to Jericho. In fact, you go down a long way. Jerusalem is 2500 feet up in the air, and Jericho is 800 feet below sea level, near the Dead Sea. So over the course of about 18 miles, you go down some 3300 feet.

Basically, you go down a winding road from the top of Snoqualmie Pass to North Bend. And that winding road was well, well-known as a perfect place for thieves and robbers.

In fact, for centuries, it was feared as a place of frequent crimes, marauding bands of criminals and violence. You only went in broad daylight, and only together.

But the man in the story is alone. Suddenly in this dangerous place, it happens. Out of nowhere, robbers come, take his things, beat him to unconsciousness, strip his clothes off and disappear.

Kenneth Bailey is a scholar who lived in the Middle East for years, and has written volumes and volumes about the culture there. He describes this area in the time of Jesus as an amazing mix of ethnic & religious communities, intermingled and complicated. A traveler identified strangers in one of two ways:

• speech - There were a dozen major languages, and any number of minor ones, but the dialect could be pretty instantly identified.
• clothing - The difference between Jewish and non-Jewish dress was instantly identifiable, even down to differences from village to village.

But this poor man who fell to robbers was “stripped, beaten, and left half-dead.”

Who is he?

No idea, he can’t talk nor does he have clothes.

All anyone could know for sure?

He was a human being in great need.

That is his most basic identity. He is left at the side of the road, laying in a ditch. Perhaps the last thing he saw from there was the feet of the robbers, fleeing. Time passes.

If the man could have opened his eyes, or heard anything…it would be footsteps approaching. And into view came the well-shod feet of a priest.

Mostly likely, the priest was traveling from Jerusalem back to his home in Jericho. Because the active priests tended to be people of some affluence and influence, there was a good chance:

• he was riding, and got off his animal to look.
• he was just finishing up a couple of weeks in the temple, serving
• he was hurrying to get back to his family.

Perhaps he is fearful that robbers are still around, and though he might hope his position would give him some protection, he too was alone.

The priest is ritually “clean.” He doesn’t know if this body laying here is a Jew or someone else, he doesn’t know if it qualifies as a neighbor. He doesn’t know if the man is dead or alive. He’d have to get close to tell.

If it is a dead person, and he gets within four yards (would have to just to see,) then he becomes ritually “unclean.” To take care of that is a week-long process that would cost him a heifer for sacrifice. He won’t be able to collect tithes, so his income and family will suffer.

[Before we are too hard on the priest, we need to think of the last time we were too busy or didn’t want to part with the resources to help someone, when it was inconvenient].

The priest knows the List of Do’s and Don’ts. He is legally entitled to pass by. Who is my neighbor? Who am I obligated to love? Is he worth it?

The man in the ditch never wonders if he is worth helping. If he sees anything, it is only the feet of the priest crossing the road and continuing on his way. Time passes.

Another pair of feet comes down the hill into focus. A Levite, who also has duties at the temple in Jerusalem, also going back home.

Levites were generally a lower class than priests, so perhaps he was on foot. The Levite doesn’t have to be as concerned with ritual cleanliness, and the repercussions are less costly for him.

He comes to the place.

He looks.

The powerful priest ahead of him did nothing, what could he do? He has no animal, what can he do? Plus…he again can’t tell what the man is. Is this my neighbor? Is this on the List of obligations?

If the man in the ditch sees anything, he sees only the feet of the Levite crossing the road and continuing on his way. Time passes.

And another pair of feet come into focus. They draw nearer.

This is, of course, the Samaritan. The hated, despised enemy. The one who doesn’t have the right beliefs. The one the world has trained to turn away.

The wrong guy stops, and Jesus’ listeners would have been deeply offended that the Samaritan is the hero.

Everything changes now. We are supposed to note the contrast. Everything is different, everything. The priest saw and left. The Levite saw and came closer, then left. Then the Samaritan sees, and comes closer…and stays. He also is in danger, he also does not have the slightest idea who this is.

The first two pass by on the other side. The Samaritan is moved with compassion. The first two do nothing. The Samaritan does everything. Listen to the verbs:

• came to the man
• cleans his wounds [and hear the irony: the priest and Levite would have used wine and oil in their ministry of sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem…the Samaritan uses the same things to help someone]
• bandages him
• puts him on his animal
• brings him to an inn
• cares for him overnight
• stays with him
• gives money to the innkeeper
• gives his promise for future care

The Samaritan does the things that a servant would do for a master.

If the man in the ditch sees anything…he sees not just the feet, but the hands of compassion. Let’s not cover up the simplicity of this story:

Jesus wants us to be Samaritans.

There are people lying at the side of the road everywhere in our lives.

- Only some of them look wounded on the outside.

- Often the more difficult ones to serve are those broken inside.

- Those who are angry or bitter or disappointed and lash out., sometimes at us.

Jesus is not saying “here’s another thing to add to the do list.

He’s not saying “do this: do not kill, do not commit adultery, always stop on a downhill slant if there’s a human body laying in the ditch.”

He’s saying become the Samaritan kind of person! Be a Kingdom of God person. The kind of person that:

• loves by risking
• breaks down barriers
• feels compassion
• sees other people first and foremost as creatures of God who need help.

Be the kind of person whose neighbor is everywhere. Be this kind of person.

It’s always a lot easier to come up with a list…than it is to be a different a person.

At our house, we’re very interested in colleges right now. Since our oldest child will head off next fall, we read everything we can about higher education.

This week I read a quote from David Brooks of the NY Times who said about the university environment,

“Highly educated young people are tutored, taught, and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building…And they find themselves in a world of unprecedented ambiguity…where it’s not clear if anything can be said to be absolutely true.”

If you had to choose, parents, what would you wish? That your young person headed off into life with a List of rules intact that would keep them more or less intact? Or with a heart that broke with compassion for people in pain, and that would risk themselves for the sake of another?

“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

“ The one who showed him mercy.”

Jesus said to him,

“Go and do likewise.”

I circled the block in Minneapolis three times, noting with disappointment each time that the man was still on the ground and unattended. Finally I went and parked and called in, and was told a paramedic was almost there.

But do you know what I wish I’d done?

I wish that my very first drive down the street, I had slammed on my brakes, put the car in park, jammed the flashers on, jumped out of my car and ran over to that man to make sure he was cared for without a thought or care about what might happen to me.

That’s what I wish I’d done.

Why?

Because I believe with all my heart, soul, mind and strength that Jesus has done that for me…and you.

And I don’t think that we will be people who love our neighbors like that unless we see that we are the ones laying in the ditch, in total need of being rescued.

And as we lay there, a pair of sandals appear through our blurred vision...

The feet of Jesus, who was also an outsider, “scorned and rejected by men,”

The hands of Jesus, which gently binds up our wounds, carries us and assures us that we are beloved…and that he will never, ever abandon us.

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