July 18, 2010 Sermon

A Matter of Discernment      (Luke 10: 25-37)

Rev. Sally Harris

Holy One, come now to this place. Make your presence known.
Give us eyes to see your mystery. Ears to hear your Word.
And the courage to follow Your way of compassion. Amen

Most likely, we are familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Most likely, we have understood and interpreted this parable in terms of stereotypes – three bad guys and a Samaritan. The three bad guys being the lawyer, the priest and the Levite and of course the Good Samaritan. First there is the lawyer. He starts the whole discourse by asking first: “How do I inherit eternal life and then he asked the question that brought on the familiar parable: “Who is my neighbor?” Not bad questions. Was he trying to entrap Jesus or was he merely engaging in the common practice of academic discussion. Wasn’t he just investigating as a lawyer would? And Jesus, in typical rabbinical fashion, told a story. A story of a person traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who was robbed, beaten, stripped and left for dead.

The first to come along was the priest. Now a priest in those days followed very strict rules of protocol – there were certain things the priest could not do without putting his job in jeopardy. For example, according to Jewish law the priest could not come within 30 feet of the dead. If he did or if he touched a dead body, the priest would be considered ritually unclean and unable to do priestly functions for a long period of time. So was this priest, who walked on by, really an insensitive clod or was he merely following his religious duty? The priest was faced with an ethical and moral question: “If I go over and with my foot just turn the body over just to make certain he’s dead, and I become ritually unclean, then what good am I to the rest of my people? By touching this body, which in all probability I cannot help anyway I will be jeopardizing the welfare of the rest of those who are in need of me.” Now the chances are very good that 100% of the audience who was listening to this story agreed with the priest’s decision. It was sensible. It was best for the common good. It was the right thing to do. Yet Jesus opens the door to the possibility that the priest made a wrong ethical decision. Jesus suggests that the priest made the expected decision based on the legal issues of the day but that there was a better one based on a different way of discernment. Jesus offered compassion and justice as factors that might bear upon the priest’s decision and his moral quandary. A way of discerning justly and with compassion.

So what you have here is a good priest who is following the rules and Jesus comes along and says, “There may be other ways to measure your conduct.” Food for thought in our world that measures the bottom line in terms of dollars and productivity rather than human need and compassion. How often is our decision-making process based on the proper use of time and money and the pressure to get it all done right, according to the rules? Good business, common sense and efficient management for the common good is still the order of the day. But in this well-worn story Jesus continues to raise the ethical question: “But are good business and sensibility the only measurements?” To be compassionate, to be just, often doesn’t make good economic sense.

But that’s the way love is; justice is… – love and justice doesn’t necessarily make sense. You see we are often faced with the priest’s dilemma. Faced with a decision that will be in accordance with the status quo we say, “Well, this is the sensible thing to do. If we don’t do this, the organization won’t be following correct protocol or we will be making a bad decision… You see it becomes a moral dilemma. And the story challenges us by saying “There is another measurement besides common sense, economic sense and efficiency. It is compassion. It is justice. What is the most just thing to do? What is God asking of me?” … of us?

Next we have another good guy, the Levite. He comes down the road shortly after. He wasn’t a priest. He was more like a deacon or associate, an assistant or maybe like an active layperson. He certainly didn’t have the same authority in religious circles as a priest and yet he had a legitimate calling in church matters and was respected by the people. He knew the priest had gone ahead of him – in small villages people knew the whereabouts of the priest and also the common roads to travel. So the Levite comes along sees the naked, beaten man, who was apparently dead and thinks to himself, rightly, “Well, the priest went by and obviously didn’t stop, didn’t think it was right or necessary or even safe. And since the priest is the priest and knows the right rules of conduct and protocol for such situations why should I stop?” Which again makes very good sense. In fact it makes good sense in our world. Isn’t that the basis of our modern day organizational chart? If the person you defer to makes a decision then your responsibility is to follow that person’s lead. The chain of command they call it. Just following orders is the excuse. We all know the drill. If you’re a whistle-blower, you are liable to lose your job. This is the moral stance isn’t it? “That’s not my department. I’m not in charge. Don’t look at me. Don’t blame me. I didn’t know.” From the concentration camps of Germany to the present day Iraq war crimes, from ignoring the screams of domestic violence to ignoring racist and homophobic comments – we hear the words: “It’s not my fault. I’m only a Levite. I’m not responsible. I was just following orders.” And Jesus says, “That’s not good enough.” You see what’s wrapped up in this story? It’s not an evil Levite; it’s a good Levite who very sensibly said, “If the expert who knows the rules is doing that, why should I be any different? In fact I better not be any different.” But Jesus says, “There’s got to be a better measure than that.”

Finally, we have the Samaritan, the one who identified with the body because well, he understood what it meant to be on the side of the road, on the margin. He was an outcast. He could touch the body fifty times without jeopardizing anything because he was considered unclean, dead or alive. So you see Jesus touched on a sensitive topic here – prejudice – and the audience - how they must have squirmed. Anyway Jesus comes back to the question. “Now who was neighbor to the one who was robbed?” The lawyer’s reluctant admission is it must be the Samaritan, but his legal mind says the priest and the Levite were right. And Jesus has to concur. As far as they went, they were right. But what Jesus proposes is that we have to go farther. That is what’s in this familiar gospel story. It’s a story about ethics and morals. It’s a story about walking our faith. It’s a story that says that compassion comes over the law, and justice is over the practice, and integrity is over authority. And to live that way is to live a profoundly Christ-like life. To walk our faith is to live a life of risk. A life of daring and bold truths. A life of discerning with justice and compassion. A life of walking our talk – walking our faith.

We live in a world of accommodating behavior. We are familiar with the excused behavior of “that’s not my job,” “it’s not my responsibility,” “it’s not my fault.” And we know the benefits of common sense, like the priest and there’s a lot of merit to that. But our story says that we don’t live, we don’t think, we don’t discern like everyone else. It’s a beautiful and costly thing to walk the faith of this radical, compassionate, just gospel. And if you were the priest, as good as he was, he followed the law instead of showing compassion. And if you were the Levite, the good man that he was he hide behind the excuse that ‘everyone is doing it’ so it must be o.k. And Jesus says, “You have to jeopardize something to be a disciple. You have to risk the way of love. And discern the way of justice.” No this isn’t a story about three bad guys and a Samaritan. That sorta gets us off the hook. We can’t find ourselves in that kind of story. But we might find our place in a story about three fine, outstanding, respectable people – the lawyer, the priest and the Levite – who are being challenged, even invited to a new way of being. Yes, Jesus invites us all to be Samaritans – to live dangerously, creatively and wonderfully as great lovers in the world.

May it be so among us!         (Resource: William J. Bausch, Timely Homilies)

Print/Download this in Word.doc