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Back to Sermon ArchivesAugust 9,
2009
Rev. Judith Bither
Fruit of the Spirit: Kindness/Goodness
One of the many things that attracted me to this
church is the mission statement that sends us forth at the end of each service:
What does the Lord require of us? To do justice, love kindness and walk
humbly with God. Justice, kindness, humility. This seemed like the
perfect scripture for the fruits of kindness and goodness. But I realized how
nebulous that could seem to tell someone to live like that. What does it mean to
be kind and good? It seems to me it all boils down to how we treat each other.
Jesus told a story that answers the question very specifically.
Luke's story of the Good
Samaritan is quite familiar to all of us. Maybe too familiar. We’ve read or
heard this story so many times that we may have been eyeing our watch before we
got through the gospel reading. We've met the wounded man, the priest, the
Levite, and Samaritan in Sunday School, in sermons, on flannel boards and
thumb-tacked to the bulletin board. The Good Samaritan might be the Good News,
but its old news; it's grown stale through the years.
There is something odd
about this story; something that throws us off balance, that confuses and
shocks. We just have to hear it with new ears. First the lawyer begins the
conversation by asking a question. So does Jesus. Then the lawyer ventures an
answer. So does Jesus. Later the lawyer again asks another question and again,
so does Jesus. Finally, the story ends with the lawyer giving an answer. But so
does Jesus. The lawyer knows the right questions and gives the right answers to
the questions and Jesus heartily agrees with him. What could possibly be wrong
with this conversation? Four good questions, four good answers, and two men who
know how to agree. What could possibly be wrong? That's Luke's surprise for us.
We already know that the
lawyer has come to put Jesus on the spot. We know that because Luke has
whispered his insincerity: he wants to test Jesus. He is very learned and knows
how to answer wisely, but in one way he’s just like all of us: He wants to know
about eternal life, essentially how to get to heaven. We all want eternal life
and the keys to the kingdom.
So we've come to Jesus with the question, "what
shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus gives the textbook answer:
You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your strength,
with all your mind
and your neighbor as yourself.
"Do all of the above," Jesus says, "and you’ll
make it."
"Who is my neighbor?" can
tell us more about the person asking than the answer given. When asked by some
members of congress it means what’s the least amount of healthcare money we can
allot for older Americans. How can we get a tougher illegal alien policy on the
books and enforce it? Where do we draw the line between who is and who is not my
neighbor when we have more problems than we have resources to go around?
"Who is my neighbor?" the
lawyer asks Jesus. Jesus doesn't answer immediately, but turns to the famous
story:
A nameless man is beat
up by thugs. He lies under the sun in shock; looks dead, blood dripping and
drying, mouth dry, sweat running down sunburned face. He's stripped naked; can't
even cover his own shame; looks half dead; unconscious maybe. The priest and the
Levite, both professionals pass by, perhaps wanting to help, but they don't.
Probably torn between DUTY and duty: Duty to God and duty to the temple.
Other priests and Levites may have stopped, but these did not. Then comes the
Samaritan. Considered a half-breed by homeland Jews, and the most despised of
all peoples. A person not voted the most likely to succeed among his Palestinian
neighbors. I think we know the type. Samaritans are those people that we so
dislike that when we see them "our bellies go tight, and without thinking we
take a step back."
They're not our kind of
people. They're in our NOT-neighbors category. But that's the curve Jesus throws
us. He reaches deep inside our NOT-neighbor box, dredges the bottom and comes up
with his hero for the story.
This is not exactly what
we had in mind the last time we went shopping for heroes. A faithful church
member we could appreciate; an Iraq War veteran would suffice; but don't turn
some half-crazed cult member into a hero. So despicable was Jesus' hero in the
story that the lawyer chokes on the word, "Samaritan." He refuses to say the
word of his Not-Neighbor. Jesus asks, "Who was neighbor to the man who
fell into the hands of the robbers?" The lawyer grunts, "The one who showed him
mercy."
The entire conversation
comes down to how we ask the question, "who is my neighbor?" (Asked
hostilely)
I read recently of the
people who live in a small village in Eastern Europe. The government purchased
two homes in this village to be used as hospices for children who are in the
terminal stages of AIDS. Before the children even arrived, stones battered the
hospice; then the graffiti and then the entire village arrived in a show of
force to demonstrate their resistance to undesirables coming into their
neighborhood. Of course there are similar stories closer to home.
Yes, the question can be
asked with clenched fists and crossed arms. But the Good News of the Gospel is
that it can be asked with open arms and positive action, too. Meet a friend from
New Zealand whose name is Ann. She was one of the 44 interns I met in the summer
of 2007 when I spent my month’s vacation in an international program at Mercy
Center to become a spiritual director. Ann is a college professor, late-50’s who
walked with a cane. She was in a lot of pain needing a knee replacement, but she
decided to wait until after our internship to have the surgery.
One Saturday a half dozen of our
colleagues went to the Tenderloin District in San Francisco to participate in a
Holy Fools program with the homeless. Ann went along not realizing how
long she would be on her feet. The soup kitchen fed 400 people for lunch and
there was no place left to sit and her pain was getting unbearable. She decided
to hobble up to the Bart Station and wait for the others from Mercy Center
there. Ann told me this story at dinner that evening.
As she was sitting on a
step with her back up against a concrete wall, a man who appeared to be homeless
asked if he could sit next to her. “Of course”, she responded. He said
his name was Jim and asked for hers. She told him her name was Ann. First he
noticed her accent and asked where she was from: New Zealand. Then Jim noticed
her cane he asked her if she was okay. She explained about her knee and that she
was waiting for her friends. He pulled a small paper cup out of his pocket and
offered her something for the pain: it was cigar tobacco mixed with alcohol. She
told him “No thank you.” He said, “Ann, it’s okay, I didn’t spit in it.”
She still declined, very gently I’m sure.
A police officer came by who knew Jim
because he called him by name. Jim introduced the officer to his new friend Ann
from New Zealand. Knowing that everything was okay the officer moved on. Then
Jim asked Ann for a favor. Not for money, not for anything material. He asked
her if she would hold his hand just for a minute. It had been a long time since
a lovely lady held his hand. No one touched him any more.
Ann told me she looked at Jim’s dirty hand with
scabs on it and said “yes” anyway. Jim gently held Ann’s hand and closed his
eyes.
Here on a side walk of
the City sat a college professor from New Zealand holding the hand of a homeless
man who had offered to share his pain medication. She told me she never felt any
danger from Jim; she felt a lot of compassion for this new neighbor and so she
showed him kindness and goodness. She didn’t preach to him or pray with him; but
here was the intersection of two people sharing of a fragment of humanity with
another. No big deal, no halo; the professor was learning to ask the question in
a new way. That is the way of the Good Samaritan.
Ann didn't even know she
was a Good Samaritan. She found that she could be a “holy fool” not only in a
soup kitchen, but also at the Bart Station. She asked, "who is my neighbor"
in an open armed way.
What do Good
Samaritans look like? They're hard to pin down because they come in a large
variety of sizes and shapes and temperaments. He's the boy on the playground who
sits with the kid who's just been laughed at because he's overweight; they're
those special people who gather on Thursdays at noon to lift you and your
families in prayer. Good Samaritan types might be single parents, grandparents
raising their grandchildren, teenagers who volunteer at SSP, elderly on a fixed
income, laypersons, pastors, professionals, and receptionists. But the single
characteristic they share in common is in how they ask the question, "Who is
my neighbor?" They're the ones who have transformed the lawyer's question,
from a narrow, key-hole question to wide angle, open armed affirmation whose
task it is: to seek justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with God.
And Jesus' word to the
lawyer is his word to us. "Jesus said to him, "Go thou and do likewise."
Amen.
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