First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Luke 10

“Getting the Joke”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

July 15, 2007

It wasn’t that hard to cast stones. Ducks in a barrel is a good description of the recent celebrity attempt to save us. It was called Live Earth. Twenty four hours of entertainment to save the world. It was a bit unique from the Farm Aid or benefit concert in that it wasn’t to help anyone in particular. The point of having a group of celebrities sing and share was to raise awareness, paint a picture, create a vision as it were, of how little it would take to start making a difference.

The New York Times characterized the rather unique offering by quoting the actress Cameron Diaz who suggested people could save the earth, keep it live, by turning “off the shower while shaving their legs.” Since I’ve never tried to shave my legs with the shower running or not, I will have to take her word for this. Another star, Rachel Weisz, said, “every tiny, tiny, tiny little thing adds up to something.” The reporter let a few more paragraphs conceal her contempt before she let loose. How can people who drive Escalades, fly in private jets, and live in McMansions chastise the rest of us for not carpooling to work? A bit too true. Ducks in a barrel.

Al Gore, who organized the event, will be immune to such questions as a global effort makes you impervious to critique. But this was a moment where the emperor had no clothes. The reporter went on to say, “the ‘think small’ sermon was perhaps the only one that could register with a society so unused to sacrifice.” In other words, when asking our peers and fellow citizens to turn off a light in a room when exiting, when such a small request is given with pause, is there any point in asking the question let alone asking for more?

From time to time I have felt a bit out of sync with the world; from time to time I have wondered am I way off or has everyone wandered? I just don’t get the sense of entitlement. I don’t! Perhaps it is reading too much Calvin, but I never feel worthy; I feel lucky, blessed. I feel that God has done so much more for me than I could have asked and after giving thanks and praise all I can do is laugh or cry. It’s like some sort of Divine Comedy.

I read that book. Only I stopped when I got to Paradise. I peeked for a few sections, but I couldn’t keep going. I felt much more at home in Purgatory. And I wanted to see Beatrice for myself instead of having Dante describe her. Irony of ironies.

All sarcasm aside, I do though feel disconnected and even disturbed by the idea that a little bit of reserve is all that is needed to bring salvation. Salvation to me is when you are taken from death to life; being saved, rescued, is when you were lost, but now you are found; it is when you teeter at the brink of death and yet are brought back. The idea that I could be saved, rescued, if someone simply stopped shaving their legs with water running hits me kind of weird.

When Jesus left Galilee and made the journey to Jerusalem, he passed through Samaria. Luke records a long series of exchanges and sayings that are unique to this land and people. Samaria is the “no man’s land” between Galilee in the North and Judea in the South. Samaritans were a remnant of people who were left behind by the Babylonians in the sixth century. When the Babylonians carted everyone off from Palestine the unfortunate, the abandoned were left to fend for themselves.

A century passed and the remnant intermarried with others, with non-Jews who came to the land laid waste by Nebuchadnezzar. These now polluted and forgotten co-mingled the Jewish faith with the idols and practices of others and created a terrible problem for the Jews who returned to Jerusalem with Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth century before Jesus. The ones who were zealous enough to return to a promise land laid waste were appalled by their blended brothers and sisters.

Five hundred years later (I know; we need to pause here), five hundred years later the Jews still didn’t know what to do with their blended remnant of half-breed cousins called Samaritans. The land of Samaria, between Galilee to the North and Judea to the South, was a kind of cultural “hold your breath.” The people of the North needed to pass through here to worship at the temple in Jerusalem and the people in Jerusalem were just happy they didn’t have to think of Samaria at all. At all, that is, if the Samaritans stayed in Samaria.

You need to know these things to get the joke, the jab, the “in your face” of the parable we call “The Good Samaritan.” First a Samaritan walking between Jericho and Jerusalem was a kind of cultural “no-no”. These people were supposed to stay on their side of the fence. The road from Jericho to Jerusalem was an ancient path and trade highway of Judea. A Samaritan here would not be welcome and would be segregated to sleeping in poor quarters, outside of the inn. A Samaritan in Jericho was as welcome as a black student was in the white high schools of Alabama prior to 1954. We think we saw segregation in the South: the land of Israel at the time of Jesus was even more deeply divided.

So when the “Good Samaritan” takes the wounded traveler and pays for his room he wouldn’t have asked for a room for himself. He didn’t ask because he wasn’t welcome. Just like the signs that said “No Colored” there were signs, as it were, that said, no Samaritans. He would have slept somewhere else, maybe outside, maybe in the places better left unsaid. He didn’t say, “add it to my bill” because he was staying some place else.

Now this would have been enough of a critique, enough of a “wake up call” for the Jewish community, but Jesus really hit the gas with this parable. There was a priest . . . there was a scribe . . . who passed him by. It’s easy to read this as religious hypocrisy or a kind of critique of the church become insular, but this was so much more. Had it been a dying man and a simple Jew helped the hurting, yes; but a Samaritan? This was a broadside at the whole culture of Rabbinic Judaism, of Palestine itself.

Jesus wasn’t suggesting that people turn off the water when they shave their legs or buy hybrid cars or install eco-friendly light bulbs; Jesus was saying, “you need to forsake the foolishness which has become your life.” Salvation is far from you. The priest and scribe were used to embody the dream of the Sabbath, the delusion of a flawless life. Jesus wasn’t painting a vision of a better world where we help one another; Jesus was confronting a world deeply mistaken. When we convince our self that just a tiny, tiny sacrifice saves ourselves and others, we are deeply mistaken.

Standing here and in Clayton on Friday I tried with a futile voice to offer this without the anger and barbs of the parable Jesus told. Five dollars can save a family. True. “But,” I said, “the real sacrifice is when you start to see people who suffer as your brother and sister”; or as it is with this parable, your neighbor.

The Supreme Court did something strange last week. They offered a parable in place of decision. A parable is something that seems good and lovely and true, but upon further inspection is meant to turn your life upside down. The parable was proffered by using Brown v. the Board of Education as an argument against an integration policy of a Seattle school district. The New York Times decried the bitter pill. The hallmark of liberal justification for every sort of scheme to save the world was used against a truly enlightened attempt to put white kids and black kids together.

In 1954 nine Supreme Court Justices all said segregation in schools will not be in the land of the free. They did this because white schools in the same city as black schools were so much better equipped and better staffed. They did this to force white city councils to create an educational opportunity that was color blind. Yet, in short order the desire for better schools gave way to a vision, or delusion, that schools could become a place where we easily defeat racism.

Bussing, magnet, grants, unified all became words to embody this simple dream. Along the way, better educational opportunities for black children were left aside and our public schools became a place of a grand scheme meant to foster an end to racism. And the result was to create no benefit for black children, but instill an ideal that if we just get the busses to run right all will be well.

The Supreme Court offered an uncomfortable parable just like Jesus offered the one of the Good Samaritan. It was meant to suggest that real salvation was about helping the hurting not perpetuating an ill-begotten delusion. The scribe and the priest were the emblem of this confusion; the school board believing that if we find enough black kids for each class and school, then white kids won’t think they are less than them. Fortunately, or unfortunately, kids are a lot smarter than this.

The sacrifice it will take to make the world a better place is not found on a bus or with less water during the shaving of legs or even tiny, tiny, tiny efforts. You have to give your life away if you want to see salvation. The Samaritan gave his money to an inn keeper who thought he was less than human to save someone who as far he knows thought the same. The money was the small sacrifice. The real sacrifice was giving his dignity away to someone who would, for all intents and purposes, hate him with a sense of deep justification.

It took many decades to create the moment of Brown v. the Board of Education. We lived with Jim Crow, with black people at the back of the bus, and segregated drinking fountains. We lived that way far too long. It took time to foster the resolve to listen to the parable of the Good Samaritan and say, “not on my watch. No one is going to be deemed less because of birth or creed or culture or color.”

If we listen to the Supreme Court, and I pray we do, we will hear a new twist on the Good Samaritan. We will hear an echo of an ancient, yet timeless, call to start doing what is right and let go of what is foolish. We will start asking the question of salvation.

What does it mean to be saved? Is it a small thing? Heavens no! Salvation is when you lay down your life for others in spite of them. Salvation is a moment where we are at the brink of death and someone says, “me for them; I will stand in the gap; I will forsake myself so they may live.” I take a deep breath and say that is what it will take if we want to provide opportunity for all. Not just the white kids, not just the truly Jewish, but for all.

The hope of the kingdom of God is grand and almost too far beyond our grasp so that we should laugh before we extend our hand and leap; but it is not a delusion. More importantly, though, it is not a small, tiny, tiny sacrifice. It is when you stand at the inn and say, I will pay for him to stay here and I will sleep in the alley because “I am trash.” Oh, I hope my generation is ready to say such words. For those are words of salvation. Irony of ironies. Amen.