The Neighborhood of Love
Sermon by The Rev. Wallace Adams-Riley
Rector, St. Paul's Episcopal Church
July 11, 2010 - The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Listen to the Sermon
The Neighborhood of Love, July 11, 2010
Sermon Text
Dear God, take my lips, and speak through them;
take our minds, and think through them;
take our hearts, and, we pray,
open them, dear Lord, open them
Amen
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Tuesday a week ago, my brothers received from me a video, by e-mail, of me talking with Fin, our eight month old. He (Fin) babbles away happily, as I interview him, and I ask him how it was that he let us run out of gas, on the side of the highway.
Meanwhile you can hear cars whipping by in the background.
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In our drive up to New England, we were only an hour north of Richmond.
All I can say is that Fin didn't really have a good explanation.
(I told him not to worry about it.)
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Anyway, meanwhile we had called AAA and, at AAA's suggestion, the highway patrol, since we were, in actuality, in something of a dangerous situation, the shoulder of the road being rather narrow, where we had to pull off.
Well, it couldn't have been more than ten or so minutes and up pulled a Virginia DOT truck, with a big blinking light board, warning people away from where we were parked.
(Just having that truck in place was something of a relief.)
A moment later, the-driver-of-that-DOT-truck, came up alongside our car to check in with us: We explained the situation (we didn't bother mentioning Fin's part in the debacle); the cheerful felluh teased us a little bit; and then he went back to his truck to get, and use, the gas can he had.
Soon he returned, and had me sign a form, acknowledging receipt of the gas. I then asked if we could pay. No, we couldn't. Well then, "Well, at least let us give you a tip..." I held out the money. And he wouldn't take it.
So, we thanked him. And off he went.
And off we went, watching the gas gauge more carefully than usual for the rest of the trip.
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Of course: he was doing his job. On the other hand, he wasn't "just doing his job."
He didn't have to be as kind as he was.
And he certainly could have accepted a tip, even if some rule somewhere says he's not supposed to.
Nor did he have to be so cheerful, for that matter. Or prompt.
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The story Jesus tells, of course, really isn't about roadside assistance.
It's about going out of our way. Going out of our way, for the other; for another, another person; indeed, for any person, regardless of who they are.
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And, as we may well know, to Jesus' hearers, talk of a Samaritan did not at all suggest good and charitable works, as it does to us. Quite to the contrary, the Samaritans were distant cousins to the Jewish people, who had, over time, become very much estranged. And the norm for Jewish-Samaritan relations was mutual scorn; even contempt. Each saw the other as having defiled the true religion. Each saw the other as impure and inferior.
Well, isn't it just like Jesus to go and have it be a Samaritan (of all people) who shows up with the kind smile and the gas can?
His fellow Jews, gathered around, were likely aghast, and certainly surprised, and quite possibly offended.
A Samaritan? A Samaritan? Are you serious, Jesus?
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Actually a friend of mine wrote a paper while in seminary, exploring the possibility that Jesus' parable here was, perhaps in fact, based on an ethnic joke. You know, you can feel the rhythm of it: "Hey, have you heard the one about the man left by the side of the road. Yeah, this priest walks by, and totally ignores him. Then this Levite just walks by, and does nothin'. Yeah, and then... and then..."
Well, who knows how that joke might have originally ended, but Jesus goes and throws us one of his curve balls at the end.
And it would have been bad enough had it been a Samaritan who was helped. That would have made the point. But Jesus has to go and make it a Samaritan who gives the help!
As Rodney Dangerfield might say, "You're killing me, Jesus, you're killing me."
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So, are we willing to ask ourselves, whom would we leave, by the side of the road?
Well, nobody, right? I mean, surely that's the answer, that's obvious... And we mean it!
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I'll never forget an experiment that was done in Sewanee, while I was serving as lay chaplain there. A psychology major (in the college) recruited a dozen or so seminarians, some of whom I knew, to be subjects in an experiment that she was doing, as her final project before graduation.
Over the course of a couple of hours, these seminarians made their way around campus, visiting a series of stations, accomplishing various tasks, being interviewed, etc. in the process.
Well, little did the seminarians know, but the real crux of the experiment was that, in between two of the stations, the experiment designer had positioned someone acting as though they were in great emotional distress (crying and so forth). And so, the real experiment was to see which, if any, of these people (these seminarians) would actually stop to see if the troubled person needed help.
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As I recall, one of the seminarians stopped. Maybe it was two.
I also remember hearing word of how aggravated the other seminarians were, embarrassed, and even offended, as it was reported to me.
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So, whom would we stop for? And whom wouldn't we stop for?
Whom would we go out of our way for? Whom would we not go out of our way for?
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Or maybe, to drive it home Jesus-style, we might ask ourselves: if Jesus were telling us this parable, who would he have stopping to help the man by the side of the road?
Better still, what if Jesus were telling us personally (individually,) this parable?
Who would he have stopping to help the man by the side of the road?
Who would that be for us? Who would it be? In whom we would be most surprised to find that kind of goodness? Such generosity, such neighborliness?
Who would it be?
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So then, so then, Jesus says to us:
"Yes, even he is, even she is, even they are, capable of such love.
And, yes, yes, so are you. "So are you," Jesus says. "So are you."
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There is no one beyond the boundaries. Indeed, there are no boundaries, Jesus says.
There is only one neighborhood.
Only one neighborhood.
The neighborhood of love.
