Just One Thing
By Griff
Martin
A Sermon on Luke 10:25-37 and Psalm
82
For
The Fifth Sunday Following Pentecost
July 14, 2019
To
the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith
Incarnate and Resurrected God, we ask that you once
again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing new reality we
can all together experience. Make us aware of your presence here in this space
and in these words God, for if we are present to you then nothing else will
matter, but if we are not present to you then nothing else will matter. In the
name of the Creator, the Christ and the Comforter. Amen.
Another classic parable to start the sermon on one
of our favorite parables…. Many credit this first parable as being the height
of Plato’s writing. It is found in his Symposium where in the middle of this
elaborate banquet of food and speeches and philosophy, Aristophanes explains
love and the origin of love with a most interesting parable, playing loosely
with Greek mythology. The same warning that Aristophanes gives before the
speech, I give to you: this may sound a bit absurd at first but stick with me.
He paints a picture of human beings in primal times
when there were three genders: one all male, one all female, and one
androgynous which was half male, half female. All three genders had double
bodies with faces and limbs turned away from one another; picture it as being
joined to someone else by sharing a spine and both facing out towards opposite
sides. This was a person back then. Now that might seem far removed, so then he
gives us something we can grasp; they were constantly trying to scale Mount
Olympus and reach the heights where they, too could be gods. We might not
understand being joined together, but this quest to be godlike seems just like
us.
Zeus was not nearly as impressed as we thought Zeus
should be with our many attempts to become gods ourselves (the gods never think
our quest to be just like them is nearly as cute as we think it is). Zeus knew
some sort of punishment was in order, but he could not bear to kill us. So, he
sent lightening down instead and cut the beings into separate beings, right at
the spine.
Thus, instead of trying to scale the mountain to
become more godlike, we were destined to roam the earth looking for our other
half. He goes on to explain that when two finally find each other and fall in
love, the feeling is like a riddle and can never be adequately explained. His
ending line is truly beautiful: “After the division the two parts of man, each
desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one
another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one.”
It’s quite a parable, and there are some brilliant
writings regarding all that it teaches us about sex and love and gender and
belonging. And I think it is the perfect pairing to this parable today, the
parable of the Good Samaritan – a parable that reminds us that we are better
together as one and not separate.
Because today we are separated to an extreme. 35% of
Americans who are over 40 struggle with what is now medically called “chronic
loneliness.” Only 8% of Americans reported in the last year to having a
meaningful conversation with their neighbor. When asked about the greatest
spiritual issue facing their congregation, 76% of pastors said loneliness.
During his years as surgeon general, Vivek Murthy says, “During my years caring
for patients, the most common pathology I saw was not heat disease or diabetes,
it was loneliness.” If you need more evidence of this, since 1990 the US
suicide rate has risen by 30%, which seems high until you realize that if you
take that same study and narrow down the ages to ages 10-17, the suicide rate
rose by 70% among our young people. In fact, we are in our third consecutive
year that our average life span has decreased (last time it did this was 1915
with a war and flu epidemic). Today it’s known as the death of despair
(suicide, drug overdose, liver problems).
The facts speak a simple truth; we are lonely, and
here is why: somehow social media and technology have connected us in ways that
we never thought possible (talk about thinking we could scale Mount Olympus,
technology has given us a whole new level of being godlike... omnipresent,
omniscient). However, that same technology has failed to provide us real
relationships. We have exchanged real dialogue for shallow conversations. We
have exchanged places of community for echo chambers and when things get difficult,
we unfriend and unfollow and move further into our very small worlds.
A few months ago, I shared about a friend who is
constantly opposing me on Facebook. He and I disagree about just about everything,
but we have a beautiful shared history going back generations in our families.
So, I reached out and essentially said, “hey, I know we don’t agree on this and
this and this, and that is okay. However, I miss us being friends. You have
meant a lot to me and to my family; Can we find a way forward knowing that we
don’t agree but that we are bound?” No reply, radio silence until this week I
finally looked, and it appears he just unfriended me.
The loneliest place in the world is an echo chamber,
which might be how Jesus would tell the parable today. Instead of the Road to
Jericho, he would give us an echo chamber of folks who all think exactly the
same way.
And then Jesus would highlight one of the people
they disagree with, and he would do it in a very brilliant way. Pay attention
to the context of this parable. How it falls directly after an episode in
chapter 9 where the disciples and Jesus entered a village of Samaritans and the
people did not receive him or want him and it made the disciples so mad that
they wanted to call down fire from the heavens and destroy the Samaritans.
However, instead of destroying them, Jesus keeps journeying. But the stage has
been set, and if you are one of the first readers of Luke’s Gospel, you have
fire on the brain and you get to this parable expecting the destruction you so
want for a people you so despise.
And have despised for a long time. There is a long
history of bad blood between the Jews and Samaritans. It has to do with a long
feud when the Samaritans opposed rebuilding the temple, and Jerusalem is in the
land that was once theirs but is now occupied, a people who were willing to
intermarry and mix bloodlines and this has resulted in a group that is
considered unclean, social outcasts and religious heretics. And that goes both
ways; there is not love lost on either side here.
So, when a lawyer comes to Jesus with one question, “What
should I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds in good Jewish fashion
with another question: “What is written in the law?” Now, take note how this
man replies. He replies with the Greatest Command: love God and love others. Interesting,
because in Luke’s Gospel Jesus has not yet uttered these words, leading some
scholars to think that communities have already summed up all the law with
these two on their own. Good answer, Jesus says.
The lawyer though, needs more. In fact, it’s some of
the most damning words in Scripture, the lawyer “desiring to justify himself,”
according to Luke, asks another question. Let me just say, I think anytime the
phrase “desiring to justify himself” is required, we are probably somewhere we
don’t belong. Nothing good comes from the place of having to justify yourself;
those are dangerous waters.
The lawyer, desiring to justify himself, asks
another question: “So, who exactly is my neighbor?” Cue the parable we all know
by heart.
It starts on the road to Jericho, and someone gets
beat up badly, left to die. A Priest and a Levite walk by, but they do nothing.
Now, we want to judge this, but I think that is dangerous to do without knowing
everything. After all, what if this was a set up and they stop to help and then
they themselves are robbed and beaten up? It’s a trick that has been used
before. Or what if they had already been attacked on this road, and they walked
it with the attitude of eyes closed, no eye contact, just make it out alive? Or
what if they had somewhere really important to be? Actually, a fascinating case
study was done on this text. Seminary students were taught this parable, and
then the teacher realized they needed someone to go teach the same lesson
across campus. The teacher asked a student to do it, and on the way there a
scene has been staged with someone falling and needing help. The majority of
students who had just studied the parable and were going to teach it did not
stop because they had an important timely task that had to be done. None of
those reasons make someone bad, so let’s hold our judgement off a bit longer
and keep listening.
Now the Samaritan appears, and if you lean in you
can hear the reaction; the disdain and hate is audible in the listening crowd.
If the Priest and the Levite passed by, what will the Samaritan do? Probably
rob him of whatever is left and then Jesus is going to judge the Samaritan,
right? Except, it’s just the opposite. The Samaritan has compassion and he
risks his own safety, delays his own journey, puts off whatever is next for him
and then he gives at least 2 days’ worth of his own salary to provide for this
man.
And the parable ends with Jesus’ great question:
Which of these was a good neighbor?
And the lawyer responds with, “the one who showed
mercy.” And pay attention there, because there is more to that answer. In fact,
I think it actually might be the wrong answer. Because you know what he still
can’t say… the Samaritan.
His echo chamber is so deep that he can’t utter the
name Jesus is asking him for.
Which just might change the whole parable for us,
because instead of being called to go and be the Good Samaritan and try to see
ourselves as the hero of the story, the story might ask us a very different
question. It might ask this, “Who is the last person who you want to save your
life?”
Who is the person you would maybe rather die than
let them help save you? It’s amazing how quick that name or stereotype comes to
mind, isn’t it?
Jesus might be calling to tell you that if you lose
their humanity, you will lose your own. Jesus is calling to remind you that
that person who you just thought of, that is the person you are missing in your
life right now.
I am going to step into it this morning, so get
ready. You know the problem I have with the awful words we keep hearing, “There
is good on both sides?” My problem is not just that obvious and horrible lie,
but the reaction to that lie. The whole thing divides us more and more. Because
it discounts another’s humanity, and each time we discount another’s humanity,
we discount our own. I don’t believe under any circumstances that there
is good on both sides, but I do believe there are human beings on both
sides, and as the church our role is to not only stand up for the victims and
for those power has forgotten or is abusing (our first job), but to love the
others in a truer way of seeing them. Because part of standing up to the hate
is loving people enough to rid them of their hate. Because if Jesus does not
exclude them, we can’t either. We can exclude their views and stand up against
their views, but we can’t exclude their very being.
Because I can tell you my story, and the many times
I have been on the wrong side of an issue, the exclusive side of an issue, the
all too powerful white cisgender male side of an issue, the White Male Power
Over side, and I was certainly on the wrong side of the issues. But saints from
the other side still saw my humanity and built me a bridge of love to show me
more.
Who is the person you would rather die than let them
help you? Well, often those are the people who have saved me; they are still
the people saving me.
And the minute we write someone off and dismiss
their very humanity, we lose our ability to build bridges of love and to walk
others further into what we know is truly the Kingdom of God, where all people
exist at one table back together, just like God designed.
And our calling is to build that world where all
people is all people.
The text reads differently if you read it from the
ditch, doesn’t it? If you see it as being unable to save yourself and the
person reaching down to lift you up is the one you don’t want to make eye
contact with? But maybe if we see ourselves as the one in the ditch, knowing
who is coming to rescue us, perhaps it might call us to fix the broken
relationship and reach out before we are forced to find ourselves in a ditch in
the first place. In fact, maybe fixing the broken and divided world would
remove the ditches.
Because salvation is not building walls, it is
joining hands.
And First Austin, there is a calling for us in that.
Go back to the early part of the text where the lawyer has the right answer.
Jesus even says, “you have answered correctly.” I think Jesus looks at the
words on the front of our building and says, “you have answered correctly.”
But don’t miss the follow up: “You have answered
correctly, do this and you will live.”
Just putting the words on our building is not enough;
it’s now living them.
And it’s living them by loving the person you so
want to hate.
Go and do this and you will live. Be brave and kind…brave
and kind enough to give help, to receive help and to reach across any division
to build bridges
Amen and Amen.
*artwork: The Good Samaritan, by Maximilien Luce, 1896, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilien_Luce
0 comments:
Post a Comment