You Are NOT the Samaritan!
Pastor Mathew Magera – 7/17/16 – Sermon 176
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
"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 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" I'm not sure Jesus
could have spoken this any better. This is great advice. Do this and you will
inherit eternal life. I mean, don't we always seek out to be a neighbor to
others, helping them when we can, sacrificing some of our time, our wealth,
ourselves? It's just human decency to be available for someone who spilled a
bunch of papers on the floor or to help a neighbor get to a doctor’s
appointment or to pray with someone who is hurting. Yes, we want to be like
that.
We’re about to send eight of
us down to Caldwell, Ohio where we will be serving some of the needs of the
community as well as learning about disaster response, how the NALC responds to
disaster-ridden areas and how we might be able to bring knowledge back to
Michigan in the event we have some kind of disaster here. I’ve been on a
mission trip before when I started high school. We went to western Pennsylvania
with an organization called Youthworks, which still organizes great mission
trips today. I remember helping to paint two different houses while we were
there. One of the owners was this sweet old lady who loved iced tea. She would
always have iced tea waiting for us. If she came out and saw us taking a break,
“make sure you drink some iced tea.” It was great to be able to do what we did
on that trip. I learned a lot. It feels good to be a good neighbor to someone.
But, as I got older, I started learning that not everything we do for others is
for their good.
When I was in seminary I was
in a six week class on stewardship and one of my classmates was from South
Africa and he was telling us a story about his ministry work in central Africa
and the difference between being a steward and being a good steward. He said
that when you got into the remote areas of Africa, you run into tribal
communities that have been around for years and have thrived. You might not
know it when you see it because they continue to look so primitive. Anyway, in
this story, a group of westerners show up in this remote community and notice
that these people have no bathrooms, not even a hole in the ground. The people
would go outside of town, do what they need to do and return. Well, these
westerners decided it would be helpful to the community if they at least
brought in portable toilets for the people to use. After a while, the people
started getting sick and their community began to die. It turns out that, and
this might seem a little gross to us, a matriarch of the community would spend
time outside of town checking through the waste that people deposited there.
She could tell what the people were eating, what was lacking in their diet and
would be able to prepare food in certain ways as to maximize the health of the
community. With the presence of these portable toilets, this matriarch was
unable to determine the health of her people and they began to die off.
The point of telling you
that story is to say that we like to help. We want to come to the rescue but in
many ways, the only way we are helping is by doing what we think is right, not
what is necessary. Coupling that with not wanting to get involved in certain
situations, we are, therefore, NOT the Good Samaritan that we have always
wanted to be because we just can’t seem to get it right. We are the ones in the
story who walk by on the other side. We change the channel when we see yet
another shooting on TV. We turn our ears and eyes and thoughts away from the
negativity. We turn ourselves away in order to keep our distance. We don’t want
to endanger ourselves. We don’t want to take unnecessary risk. We don’t want to
help someone who doesn’t like us. Why would they want our help? We think of
what is best for us at the time. When we do that, it is as if we are ignoring
all that is going on around us and just skirting by as if it is not there, not
really wanting to look into the deeper problem. Love is not natural for us and
we walk on by. But, where love is not shown, sin enters in and when sin comes
in it beats us down and we become like the man who is bloodied and beaten on
the side of the road. That is where we lie, in the ditch, with the trash, the
filth and other things that the world rejects and tosses aside, that is where
we really are, battered down by the same forces that cause some people to blow
up buildings or to shoot police officers or unarmed citizens. We are beaten
down by those same forces as those in the world who we just can’t stand.
We are far from being good
neighbors to anyone but Jesus knows that. Jesus knows it is not easy to love
our neighbor. If everything was okay he wouldn't have had to die for us,
forgiving for our sins so that we can go out and try again. So, it's great to
be told to love your neighbor as yourself, and to just get up, dust yourself
off and try again, but it can't possibly mean anything to us until we see what
a neighbor we have in Jesus.
You see, Samaritans were not
just the people you avoided on your way somewhere. They were people who did not
practice faith like Jews did. They were people who twisted God's Word. They
were people who didn't have anything the Jewish people needed. They were just
the bad neighbors to whom you would do anything in your power to make them move
out or at least you would build a fence between your yards so you wouldn't have
to even look at them. It is likely that the beaten man on the road has had some
choice words for Samaritans at some point, yet here is one helping him up. It's
likely the beaten man on the road has laughed at Samaritans, sneered at
Samaritans, told jokes about Samaritans and yet it is but a Samaritan who comes
to his side when he is in need.
Do we know people like these
Samaritans that we have negative feelings toward? I know we do. I mean even
recently, some of us may feel hostility toward police officers. Some of us may
be on the other side and have hostility toward African Americans. I’m sure many
of us have hostility toward people in authority who don’t appear to be
responding to all of the violence in our country. It may not feel the same when
it is not in our community, but I know those feelings are brewing deep within
us. And isn't it true that if we have these negative feelings and actions
towards them that we have offered the same negative feelings and actions toward
Jesus? But, how is it possible to be a good neighbor to someone who shoots
another human being at point blank range? How is it possible to be a good
neighbor to someone who is out to destroy innocent people? How is it possible
to be a good neighbor to someone who looks suspicious? How is it possible to be
a good neighbor to someone who we might have prejudice against because of their
life choices? How is it possible to be a good neighbor to any of these people?
Jesus was that neighbor to
us. Our sinful selves are the failed products of God’s good creation that deserve
nothing but to be thrown away if not for the grace of God in Jesus Christ who
sees beyond the outward failure and sees beauty shine forth from within. When
we were on the road, beaten by sin, death and the devil, Jesus came and picked
us up. Jesus carried us. When we can't understand how it is possible to love
someone because of their actions, feelings, looks, personality, culture,
ethnicity, Jesus comes and heals us. If Jesus has love for sinners like us, we
can love somebody and be a good neighbor to them. If a Samaritan can love and
take care of a man who probably spent a majority of their life complaining
about Samaritan culture and if Jesus can love and take care of us who spend a
lot of our time doing the same thing to others, then perhaps we can love our
neighbor too.
Jesus, in this parable is
teaching about what he is doing to the entire human race by forgiving sins and
freeing from death. Just like the Israelites view the Samaritans in such a
negative way, we are not so keen either on things that Jesus does. He does
things we don’t expect. He loves people when we don’t understand why he would
love them. I don’t think Jesus is trying to be tolerant of what the Samaritans
did or believed, but rather used them as an example saying to us that if we
could think of the last person on earth that would be of any help to us, that
person would actually become that saving grace. So then we who have much
smaller problems can be a good neighbor to everyone. We soon see that he loved
us too and we, like every other person in this world, has been beaten around by
sin and left for dead. It is only when Jesus comes and picks us up that we can
see how important love really is.
Jesus is our Good Samaritan
who comes to our aid, who can free us from the sinful people that we have
become and can be our example for living out our life as best as we can knowing
that when we screw up again Jesus will be right there offering the same
forgiveness and sending us out again and again. That’s why we keep coming back
because we know Jesus is always waiting for us, arms wide open. We may not be
able to be the Good Samaritan at times, but fortunately we know the true Good
Samaritan is with us, fighting for the beauty deep within that exemplifies us
as God’s precious children. Thank you, Jesus, for being our Good Samaritan. To
God be the glory, now and always. Amen.