Title: The Kindness of Strangers
Text: Luke 10:25-37
Thesis: Every follower of Christ is called to be a “Good” Samaritan.
Introduction:
I do not want to begin this talk with a disclaimer but I feel I must. Despite my desire to be altruistic with an absolutely unselfish regard for the welfare of others – the years have taught me that not everyone who says they are in need, is in need.
However, despite my cynicism, one of the most profound teachings in scripture is this: What we do, i.e., action, is the measure of our spiritual maturity and knowledge of God. In other words, the more we know about God and the more we know God, that knowledge produces the likeness of God in us.
The bible says, “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, “I know God,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” I John 2:3-6
Some would say that the most amazing thing about the first followers of Jesus Christ were the signs and wonders… the miracles of healing and the exorcism of spirits. Certainly the dramatic and miraculous signs and wonders were attention getting.
But for me, the most amazing thing about the first followers of Christ was the change in the lives of the followers of Christ. Those folks walked the walk. Their lives were characterized by loving kindness and generosity. In Acts 4 it says, “All the believers were of one heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had… there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.” Acts 4:32-35 The way they practiced their faith was radical and boggles our minds.
There was no mistaking who those people were and whose teachings they followed. They were living just as Jesus lived and adhering closely to the things he taught. The story of the Good Samaritan ranks among the most memorable of his teaching.
I would like to unpack that story this morning by examining the characters in the story.
I. Samaritans
A. What does it mean to be a “Bad” Samaritan?
In our story there are two individuals who ignored the wounded victim lying in the ditch. One man was a priest and the other a Levite. They are both Jewish and they are both religious. They both saw the man lying in the ditch, ignored him and continued on their journey. That is all we know about them. However the implication is, they should have helped the victim who was presumably Jewish by race and religion.
They were not Samaritans but we think of them as “Bad” Samaritans because they chose to not lend assistance to a person in desperate need. It would probably be more accurate to refer to them as a “Bad” Priest and a “Bad” Levite.
B. What does it mean to be a “Semi-Good” Samaritan?
Sometimes I think most Christians fall into the category of the “Semi-Good” Samaritan. As “Semi-Good” Samaritans we are willing to be “Good Samaritans” in certain circumstances.
In 2008 the chief editor of Christianity Today Magazine attended the “Loving God and Neighbor Together” dialogue between Christians and Muslims held at Yale University. While there he noticed a critical difference between the Christian and Muslim understanding of love, compassion and mercy...
The Christian participants had been taught by Jesus that love should be indiscriminate and conditioned on nothing other than the wounded man’s need.
The Muslim participants startled the Christians when they explained that their religion places limits on compassion for others. They felt that orphans and widows and others in need through no fault of their own deserve compassion. But Islamic ethics implies that there is no obligation to help a person whose unwise choices and behavior has put them in need.
The essential difference is that one religion teaches that God is a generous God and the other that God is a stingy God. In one religion mercy is conditioned by justice and in the other justice is conditioned by mercy. In other words, in one religion, if a person makes a bed he has to sleep in it. There is no obligation on the part of others to help that person. The other religion acknowledges that people do dumb things but their folly and their mistakes do not disqualify them from receiving mercy and grace.
It would seem at times, that our practice as Christians adheres more closely to the teaching of Islam than to the teaching of Christ.
Psalm 103 clearly describes God as a God who does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. God is not a stingy God when it comes to demonstrating mercy and compassion for others.
C. What does it mean to be a “Good” Samaritan?
The story of the “Good” Samaritan clearly identifies the person who sees and intervenes in behalf of a person in need as the “Good” Samaritan. The “Good” Samaritan is the person who makes a personal sacrifice in terms of time, energy and resources to help another person in need.
However, there is another level beyond defining what it means to be a “Good” Samaritan. The next level of consideration is to reflect on how we perceive strangers. It is our perception of the stranger that will determine whether we are capable of being “Good” Samaritans or not.
II. Strangers
But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Luke10:29
Clearly, the expert in religious law wanted Jesus to clarify the meaning of neighbor. In his mind he believed there were relational boundaries. In his mind there were relational limits to personal responsibility for the well-being of others. Perhaps his narrow definition of neighbor included: Immediate family. Extended family. Friends. Next door neighbors.
In his mind a “neighbor” was someone he knew and considered as family or friend.
What that kind of narrow definition does is establish a reasonable boundary in which he could fulfill his obligation to God and others. Anyone who was not a friend was a stranger and as such, outside his circle of responsibility. If the definition of neighbor is narrow enough, even a Rabbi or a Levite could be excused from responsibility for a stranger lying in a ditch along the road.
I’ve mentioned watching Deadliest Catch which is a reality shop about crab fishermen on the Berring Sea. Crab fishermen have a very unique way of fishing… they stew our strings of crab pots, marked by buoys. And when they return to pick up the posts which have been lying on the floor of the sea, they are hopefully filled with crab. Crab pots do not attract other kinds of fish… just crab.
Growing up in Iowa where farm ponds are common we would occasionally decide to seine a pond… when you seine a pond you stretch a wide net and you drag the pond with the net. And when you pull in the net you have caught anything and everything swimming in that pond.
But Jesus did not let the expert in Jewish law get by with a narrow-net definition of neighbor. Jesus cast instead a very wide net which included anyone who was in need, even if they were a total stranger toward whom you might harbor a racial or ethnic or religious prejudice.
In 1973 pollsters conducted a research project at Princeton Theological Seminary. Divinity students were told to prepare a homily on the Parable of the Good Samaritan to be presented to the class of fellow theologians.
On the day of the presentations the seminarians arrived at classroom to present their talks to each other but when they arrived they were told that the meeting place had been changed to a chapel across the campus and that they were to go there to make their presentations.
Meanwhile the researchers had enlisted the help of an actor to play the role of a person who had fallen ill and in need of assistance along the route to the chapel. Ninety percent of the seminarians on their way to the chapel ignored the sick man in their haste to get to the give their talks on the Parable of the Good Samaritan. One literally stepped over the victim as he hurried away. (Marshall Goldsmith, “Goal 1, Mission 0,” Fast Company, August 2004)
So does being late to give a talk about the Good Samaritan preempt any obligation to lend assistance to a total stranger?
So, how do we perceive strangers?
The story of The Good Samaritan puts a whole new spin on how we perceive strangers.
III. Neighbors
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Luke 1036-37
From the perspective of the man in the ditch the Samaritan was his neighbor and that the others – those geographically, ethnically religiously similar, were not.
Jesus is concerned that we redefine our definition of neighbor to include the stranger and the outsider… and that the stranger and the outsider perceive us as good Samaritans.
Haddon Robinson tells a story about his son Troy. They were on their way home from church and Haddon had asked Troy what he had learned in Sunday School that morning. Troy proceeded to give him a blow by blow account of the story of the Good Samaritan. He sensed that Troy was pretty much into the drama of the robbers lying in wait to rob the traveler. So, pressing his son further he asked, “What was the spiritual lesson of the story?”
The boy had not been thinking so much about what the story meant but after a minute he said, “Whenever I’m in trouble, you have to help me.” (Haddon Robinson, A Case Study of a Mugging, Preaching Today, Tape No. 102)
Not everyone in the world interprets and understands the parable of the Good Samaritan as we do. We here in the “western world” understand the story of the Good Samaritan to be about our being Good Samaritans and giving help to anyone who is in need. As Good Samaritans, we harbor no prejudices about who we will or will not help.
But Christians in Tanzania understand the parable from the perspective of the victim. From the Tanzanian Christian’s perspective, the person who has been beaten, robbed and left for dead cannot afford the luxury of prejudice. They will and should accept help from whoever offers it. They believe that God helps us in all kinds of ways and sometimes unexpected and surprising ways. So when a truck load of grain is delivered to a village of starving people, they do not care if it was sent by the Red Cross, Catholic Charities, Covenant World Relief, Islamic Charities, Jewish World Services or the United Nations. The Tanzanians believe God can work through anyone including those we might regard as heretics, i.e., the lowly Samaritan. (Mark Allan Powell, What Do They Hear? Bridging the Gap Between Pulpit and Pew, Abingdon Press, 2007)
During the time of Christ Jews and Samaritans generally detested each other with the greater detesting on the part of the Jewish community. The Samaritans were half-breed Jews who had intermarried with the gentiles living in Samaria. They were regarded as scum.
So the answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” may be “Whoever needs my help.” But it may also be, “Whoever helps me.”
So the issue in part is not only how we perceive people in need of help but also about how people in need perceive us. Do we see others as our neighbors? Does our compassion for others cause others to see us as their neighbors?
Conclusion:
I am a reader of Mental Floss Magazine and receive the Mental Floss e-newsletter. I was intrigued a few weeks ago when I saw an article entitled: The Kindness of Strangers. The author had been out of town at a wedding and when he came home he found a bag on his doorstep and in the bag was a bottle of wine and taped to the bottle of wine was a note that read, “I parked and blocked your driveway. Thanks for not towing me.” We generally think of someone blocks our driveway as an inconsiderate jerk… but this person was actually a thoughtful and thankful person. He was impressed.
So as the creative juices began to flow, he asked his readers to respond online to this question: What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?” Three days later there were one hundred and ninety-five comments making The Kindness of Strangers the most popular post.
The stories were many and varied. One person said that when he went through the drive-thru at Starbucks the person in front of him had paid for his order. He said, “It made my day!” Another wrote of a stranger who jumped in front of a moving car to push a baby stroller out of the way of danger. One young man wrote of being stranded in the subway without any money and while he was trying to figure out how to walk to his destination a man came up to him and gave him a subway pass. (Ranson Riggs, Mental-Floss Newsletter, Issue 247, June 17, 2010)
None of those things was huge… they were simply strangers doing random acts of kindness.
The lawyer asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
And Jesus answered his question with a question: “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”
And the lawyer said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus then said, “You have answered correctly, do this and you will live.”
“But who is my neighbor?” asked the lawyer.
And Jesus told a story about an unlikely stranger who stopped to care for another stranger who was in trouble which prompted the lawyer to rethink his narrow definition of neighbor and to cast a wider net that includes anyone and everyone who needs help… including total strangers.
This is what Jesus says to us today: “Go and do likewise.” Luke 10:37
