This morning we welcomed to our pulpit The Rev. Catherine Zall, director of the New London Homeless Hospitality Center.
Cathy was our beloved Associate Minister from 2002 to 2007.
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Luke 10:25-37
A Story Shows the Way
It is a pleasure to be here today—it always feels like coming home because this church has had a very special place in my life.
- Twenty-five years ago, when I moved to Old Lyme I was introduced to a new way of understanding Christianity through preaching I heard at this church.
- Fifteen years ago I was moved to go to divinity school based on my experiences here and the work I did through this church at Koinonia Farm in Georgia.
- For five years I had the pleasure of serving as a minister here.
- Over the past dozen years, this church and so many individual members of this community have been by our side supporting the work of the Homeless Hospitality Center.
So, I welcomed Carleen’s invitation to share a few thoughts with you this morning. Next question—what to talk about? Well many churches around the world follow something called the common lectionary which provides specific scripture passages for each Sunday of the year. I was excited to find that the lectionary scriptures selected for today include the very well-known parable of the Good Samaritan from the gospel of Luke.
Before diving into the parable, itself, we want to notice the framework it is set in. The passage starts with a question from a lawyer. “Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Every religious tradition seeks to provide answers to the questions “what must I do?”. We crave guidance on how to live the best possible life. In the time of Jesus, the advice provided by the religious establishment had become increasingly focused on a set rules that governed daily life, required rituals centering around sacrifices in the temple and mandated support of the temple establishment in the form of tithes. Throughout his ministry Jesus is running afoul of these rules.
The lawyer probably knew Jesus’ history and expected Jesus to offer an answer that would provide further ammunition to those who wanted to silence Jesus. But we see in our reading today that Jesus very skillfully employs the law itself to move beyond rules and requirements to something much deeper. 26 [Jesus] said to [the lawyer], “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 [The lawyer] answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
The deepest truth of every spiritual tradition is always, I think, about something much deeper that simply what we say, what we think, how closely we follow a set of rules or how faithfully we support religious institutions. And in our passage, Jesus goes to this deeper place when the lawyer himself must acknowledge that love is at the heart of the law. , “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
Now the word “love” can get us confused. I think Martin Luther King Jr. best captured the essence of the “love” Jesus is talking about when he wrote: “In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all [people].”
Let’s look at the parts:
Goodwill—wanting the best…wishing for the fullness of life…peace…happiness for all people even those we do not particularly like…even our enemies.
Understanding—recognizing the many factors that lead people to veer away from what is lifegiving and knowing what brings them back toward life.
Creative—actively working to achieve its life-giving purpose…doing what one can to bring life for others and ourselves.
Love as unconditional goodwill does not deny that actions have natural consequences. It does not say that people do not sometimes do almost unspeakable harm to each other. It does not deny that we are called to stop this harm where we can. Unconditional goodwill does not ask us to be naïve and deny that people’s, and our own, intentions and actions can be far from beneficial. But love as goodwill says that despite these realities, we can still work to shape our intentions…focus our hopes—for ourselves and others—in the directions of abundant life for all.
This unconditional goodwill is not just an end in itself. I hear Jesus saying that it is unconditional goodwill toward others that brings us closer to an abundant life in God. “Do this”—love–Jesus says and you will live. Live not in some future time but right now. The fullness of life is accessible in this very moment because it is love—unconditional goodwill– that helps us recognizing that we are one with a God who is love.
Why might this be? I believe practicing unconditional goodwill toward others draws us closer to God not because we earn something we could not otherwise have. Instead, practicing goodwill opens us to recognize what is already true.
God is, I believe, already only love… only unconditional goodwill—we are each already surrounded by…sustained by an unconditional eternal love.. a love that longs only for the fullness of life of all creation. This love, I believe, never ends…is always inviting us into union… sets no pre conditions… and wants only the good. God—in other words—is already and always creative, understanding, unconditional goodwill. There is nothing to prove, nothing to earn, nothing that can make God’s love greater or smaller. Jesus makes this point, I think, over and over when he says that the Kingdom of God is at hand.
But, and this is a very big BUT, we must choose to accept God’s invitation into unconditional love and many, many self-imposed barriers stand in the way of our wholeheartedly accepting this invitation. And I think Jesus is saying here that we open ourselves to accepting the invitation into the ever-present love of God when we act with goodwill toward our neighbor.
So how do we move toward “doing” active creative and unconditional goodwill toward our neighbor? The story Jesus tells today gives us some critical clues.
The setting of Jesus’ parable is the dangerous, steep winding road that linked Jerusalem to Jericho. It was known as the “bloody path” because travelers were so often attacked and robbed as they travelled this road. It would not have surprised the priest, the Levite or the Samaritan to pass a fellow traveler who had fallen into the hands of bandits.
We, luckily have little experience with traveling a road like the one in the parable. And yet, there are millions of our fellow travelers today who have been left half dead on the roadside by modern day bandits of various kinds. Some of these bandits are individuals who harm and abuse and mistreat others.
Some of these bandits are institutions: armies, gangs, governments and even unfortunately sometimes schools and churches. And some of these bandits are unjust systems such as poverty or racism.
But whatever the type of bandit, we all know that the roadside of life is still littered with the wounded. Jesus’ parable lays out the path to exercising creative goodwill in the face of this reality. The story, I propose, calls us to: see, care and help.
First on seeing. While the modern roadside is littered with victims, I would argue that for many of us modern life keeps the roadside wounded at a distance. Most of us today live in a social bubble surrounded on a day to day basis mainly by people who are very much like us. It is easy—and sometimes psychologically necessary—too tune out the barrage of suffering that comes our way through modern media. We are left aware of the roadside casualties but often without really seeing the real human beings involved.
Several years ago, I heard the single most powerful talk I have ever heard. The speaker was Bryan Stevenson the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. He was at CT College when his book Just Mercy about mass incarceration and the death penalty was the One Book One Region selection in our area. The theme of his talk was: what will it take to change the world? He has given this talk elsewhere and you can find more details on the internet.
Not surprisingly, the changed world he imagines looks very much like a world in which we “love our neighbors as ourselves”. One of his four points on how to work toward this goal is directly relevant here. Bryan argues that real change will require us to “get proximate” to the people on the road side— that is, get closer to the people impacted by modern day bandits. There is he says “power in proximity.” He argues: “If you are willing to get closer to people who are suffering, you will find the power to change the world.” Proximity motivates us to action. Proximity provides deeper insights into a challenge’s causes and possible solutions. Proximity builds relationships that are key to lasting change.
This church has understood the power of getting proximate for many years—with the people of Israel/Palestine, native Americans, people experiencing homelessness, immigrants, people facing financial hardships, victims of discrimination and so many more. As many of you have experienced, when you have sat in the living room of a Palestinian father grieving for his child, or take part in a sweat lodge or walk beside a family who’s loved one has been deported or talked with a person experiencing homelessness you are proximate and engaged.
Every day I have the privilege of feeling the power of getting proximate to people experiencing homelessness. Recently one of our guests was helping me reorganize our supply closets. We got to talking and before long I saw just a bit of the path that had left him quite literally by the side of the road beaten up and robed of almost everything by a substance use disorder. I could connect at a deeply human level to this now grown man still struggling with his experience as a small child helpless in the face of a violent father. I could sense both the power of motivation to new life and the deep downward pull of regret and history. Through this proximity, my motivation to action was refilled and, I hope, my understanding of what was needed deepened.
Now not all of us have the capacity to travel on mission trips but all of us can take steps to get more proximate to people experiencing challenges we care about. To love our neighbors, we must know our neighbors. And to know our neighbors we must really see them. Jesus’ parable calls us to this seeing.
After seeing, there is a second movement of the parable—caring. In the time of Jesus most would have assumed that the Priest and the Levite’ entrance ticket to abundant life would have been already punched. The priest and the Levite know all the religious rules, performed all the required rituals, offered all the required tithes and were respected members of society. And yet, for all their knowledge, faithfulness to the letter of the law and high standing in the community they fail care and walk by the man on the side of the road.
The Samaritan would have been hated by Jesus’ audience because he believed all the wrong things and belonged to a despised social group. And yet, despite following none of the rules and being a social outcast, the Samaritan moves closer to eternal life when he cares. The one with all the wrong views, all the wrong background and all the wrong history makes the choice that leads toward life, toward greater union with God by caring.
The call to caring—to compassion… to empathy is universal across religious traditions. This should not be news. So why is there so little care? Why are the roadsides littered with victims for whom there is seems to be so little care?
I know there are many explanations but maybe most fundamentally caring requires a radical shift in our focus. Caring requires us to move beyond ourselves…to see that it isn’t just about us. And here the Christian tradition has so much critical insight to offer. We don’t have time to go deep but when we say we are all children of God we acknowledge that we and every other human being and all of the created world are fundamentally linked in a web of love. The boundaries we perceive between ourselves and the world are constructs of our egos not facts of nature.
When those boundaries come down—when others are seen as beloved of God—when we see that we are one… that is when caring becomes a natural reaction. Our focus is no longer only on our own good but also on the good of those around us. Martin Luther King made this point. “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, he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’” And that different question made all the difference. ( I Have Been to the Mountain Top, April 3, 1968)
We are called to see and to care. But the final movement of this parable is also important. The Samaritan sees and cares but maybe most importantly he acts. And he acts extravagantly. He takes the risk of approaching the man who could, for all he knew, be a trap set by bandits. He takes a hands-on approach and bandages the man’s wounds. He does not simply stabilize him and tell him to call others for help, he places the wounded man on his own animal and takes him to an inn. He pays for his stay and promises to return and cover any other costs that might be incurred.
This is not “just enough” help. This is expansive, generous help. We have so little of this expansive generous help mindset in the way we offer help to the wounded on our roadside. I am often guilty of the tightness of limited resources that tries to offer the very least possible. That is not the spirit of this parable.
So: see, care and help. This story lays out a path that in many ways contradicts conventional wisdom. Get closer to the wounded on the road side? Radically expand our circle of care beyond ourselves and those close to us? Help more than seems reasonable? Really?
In closing therefore, I turn to the Buddha for some advice on weighing different answers to the question “what must I do?” The Buddha was traveling and reached the land of the Kalama’s. People approached him asking:
“There are some monks and brahmins, venerable sir, who visit. They expound and explain only their own doctrines; the doctrines of others they despise, revile, and pull to pieces. Some other monks and brahmins too, venerable sir, come…. They also expound and explain only their own doctrines; the doctrines of others they despise, revile, and pull to pieces. Venerable sir, there is doubt, there is uncertainty in us concerning them. Which of these reverend monks and brahmins spoke the truth and which falsehood?” (Kalama Sutra)
You may feel in a similar place as you ponder the advice that I propose is found in the gospel.
The Buddha responds by telling them to weigh the advice of teachers not by how often something is said, or upon tradition, or scripture, or how learned the teacher…but rather to base their assessment on their own experience of the fruits that the particular teaching bears.
Try out the advice the Buddha says and where “these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them” and “where these things lead to benefit and happiness, enter on and abide in them”. (Kalama Sutra)
What if we try being a half a shade bolder in getting outside our normal circle and closer to those at the road side?
What if we try being a half a shade more caring about people we hardly know?
What if we try being a half a shade more generous with our money, our time, our forgiveness and our attention?
Do these things bring life to others? Do these things make the kingdom of God more visible in our midst? Do these things help us enter into a deeper life with God?
I hope you will try and see for yourself.
Amen
Rev. Catherine Zall
