Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.[a] ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ 26 He said to him, ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ 27 He 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.’ 28 And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’
29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’ 30 Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii,[b] gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.” 36 Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ 37 He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
On a morning in April of 2010 a 31-year-old Guatemalan immigrant by the name of Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was walking on a street in Queens. The streets were familiar to him. New York had become his adopted home. He found day work as he could. Many nights he slept on those streets. But he knew his way around.
That morning as the city was starting wake up, and people were going about their day, he happened to witness a woman being attacked by a man. And clearly wanting to stop the attack, Tale-Yax interceded and jumped in to try to spare her any further harm.
In so doing, he himself was attacked by her attacker. She took the opportunity to get away and took off running. Her attacker then stabbed Tale-Yax and took off in the other direction. And Tale-Yax stumbled a few steps before falling on the sidewalk of that NY street.
For one hour and twenty minutes, New Yorkers walked by Hugo Tale-Yax on that sidewalk. Well, most of them walked by. One actually stopped and kind of turned him over to see what was going on. And then kept going. Another guy took out his cell phone and took a picture of him. And then he too kept walking. By the time someone actually decided to call the police and the police arrived it was too late. And Tale-Yax had died.
This story fascinated our nation. There were headlines everywhere, people wondering how could something like this happen? The only reason we even know that it happened was because there happened to be a surveillance camera mounted on a building in front of this scene and the entire hour and 20 minutes was recorded on that surveillance camera.
And there - kind of like Adam and Eve laid bare before God - humanity was laid bare in its inability to come to the aid of a man who had risked his life to come to the aid of someone else, a stranger.
Now everyone had lots of questions from reporters, to theologians, to psychologists, to people who worked with immigrants. Everyone had lots of questions about how this could happen. And there were groups wanted to throw in their two cents about why it happened the way it did.
People who work with immigrants said, well people who are immigrants themselves might have seen him but might have been so afraid of the police that they didn’t want to get involved.
Psychologists thought well maybe New Yorkers have become so numb to seeing drunk, homeless people lying on the street that that it just didn’t phase them. And they probably thought he was really okay and that he just needed to sleep it off.
And then there were people who called it a symptom of city living. So many people saw him as they all rushed by on their way to school and work and the gym and all the places they were going, they thought surely somebody would call police, somebody else would be the one to call police and get help. Because surely somebody else sees besides me this.
But however it unfolded, there he lay on the sidewalk: a modern day Good Samaritan himself with no one to come to his aid.
And then we as people of God begin to ask ourselves questions: like how does that happen? What would we do? Does scripture help us, does it inform us to help to process, to form an understanding about what happened on that street that morning. Yes – it does. Scripture informs us in lots of ways. We can acknowledge that.
Even before the people called Israel struggling to get to the Promised Land they’d already gotten commandments from God about loving God and caring for one another. Six of those first Ten Commandments were about living in right relationship with one another: honoring parents, living faithfully with our spouses, not lying, not coveting or stealing what which does not belong to us, not killing each other. All those things tell us about right relationship.
No fewer than a dozen times in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy are the people called Israel told how it is that they are to provide for the least among them. If you see the widow, and the alien, and the orphan you are to care for them.
Why are you to care for them? Because God took care of you when you were enslaved and suffering. Today we might say “thou shalt pay it forward.” You were cared for and now you are to care for everyone else. That is our legacy.
Scripture is filled with the commandment to us to love and serve our God and one another. What went wrong that day in New York?
We turn to our gospel lesson today from Luke. We see a lawyer asking Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life. And Jesus might be thinking you’re a lawyer, don’t you know this? Surely you know this. And the lawyer responds yes, we’re to love God, we’re love our neighbor as ourselves. So Jesus says you know, so go do it. And all will be well. Just do the loving thing!
And then the lawyer, as we’re told in the text is seeking to justify himself, presses further by asking so “who is my neighbor?” And we’re wondering as he asks this question if he asks, is it that he already knows that he is struggling so deeply within himself to love someone that he can’t love, that he’s hoping that Jesus is going to give him a cover and an out. That Jesus is going to excuse him; that Jesus is going to say that person that you’re struggling with so much, that’s not really your neighbor. Don’t worry about it.
But instead Jesus comes back with an unlikely story: a man who has been beaten by robbers and left to die along a busy road. Two holy men walk by and cross and pass by on the other side. That’s not how that should happen, holy men are not supposed to walk away.
And then there is a Samaritan. Context is critical here. Remember that Jesus is telling this story in the Galilee, probably to an overwhelmingly Jewish group of listeners.
And we know from even a cursory read of scripture that there was great animosity of the Jews towards the Samaritans. What we don’t always hear – is that the feeling was mutual. Samaritans despised the Jews. In about 115 BC, Jews had destroyed the Samaritan’s temple, their holy space on Mount Gerizim.
The Jews were so overjoyed at what they did, the anniversary of that destruction became a holiday that was celebrated annually. Samaritans continued to worship on Mt. Gerizim. They worshipped in the ruins. They had a near constant reminder of the death and destruction wreaked on them and the terrible treatment that they receive at the hands of the Jews before and since that destruction.
In Jesus’ story, one of their own comes upon a terribly injured Jew. A Samaritan who might think - well so what if a Jew suffers and dies?
So of all the people for Jesus to hold up to the crowd as someone who does something to be imitated, a Samaritan is not the one. This isn’t the way this story is supposed to play out for these listeners. But it does. It is the Samaritan, the one who doesn’t look like the injured man, the one whose dialect is probably different from the injured man, the one who probably has the most to fear because the injured man might reject him.
It’s the Samaritan who stops. The Good Samaritan is moved with pity and takes the injured man, gets him off this dangerous road so that nothing else can happen to him. It’s a Samaritan whose actions Jesus tells the lawyer to imitate. Go and do likewise. Go and be like this Samaritan.
We are called today to go and do likewise. We are called to go and show mercy. We are called to go into place where we are least expect to show up, among people who least expect to see us. And no, we may not look like them, we may not sound like them, or dress like them. But we are called to show mercy.
We are called to take risks, open our hearts and our lives to those who need us. To bandage the wounds of the injured, shelter the homeless, demand justice for the persecuted. To walk along with those who are grieving and hurt, to shine the light of Christ to the lost. We are called to go and do likewise.
The harvest is plentiful. The opportunities are numerous, even overwhelming. Where will we go this day? Who among God’s people will we serve? Amen.