Monday, July 15, 2019


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

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