AVOIDING THE DITCH (July 25, 2012)
Text: Luke 10:30 -35
Luke 10:30-35 Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. (31) Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. (32) So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. (33) But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. (34) He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. (35) The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' (NRSV).
Someone (Thomas Keating) once said “Grace brings us to an ever-increasing awareness that under certain circumstances, we are capable of every evil.” (Thomas Keating. The Kingdom Of God Is Like … . New York: Crossroad, 1994, p. 20). The parable of the Good Samaritan is a story that illustrates that point. We usually tend to think of stories having a good guy and a bad guy. The good guy is always the hero and the bad guy is always the villain. This story adds a third dimension that makes us uncomfortable which is the indifferent category.
FENCES
In 1914, Robert Frost once a poem entitled Mending Wall. That poem has a line that describes human behavior in both this parable and in our world.
1) The line that I am talking about is the line that says “Good fences make good neighbors”.
2) That line speaks volumes about our insecurities. It seems, that we tend to put up fences to have control where we feel our having control might be threatened.
3) Do our fences really restrain those who we feel might threaten us?
4) Or, do our fences create potential for barriers and division where it should not exist or where it did not use to exist?
5) Do good fences really make good neighbors or do they isolate us from our neighbors?
Have we ever built fences that kept us from being our brother’s keeper?
1) The elder brother of the prodigal son did.
2) The priest and the Levite in this story did.
3) Political parties do and more than likely always will.
4) Even though Christians are called to be different, we can still demonstrate God's love. .
WALLS
Another infamous line from Frost’s poem, The Mending Wall, is "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."
1) What happens when we contrast God’s grace with man made walls?
2) We like walls and prison bars when they keep us separated from criminals.
3) We like to keep the sheep separated from the wolves for obvious reasons. Hey wait a minute! Wasn’t it criminals that beat this innocent traveler and left him for dead in this story of the Good Samaritan?
4) What about other walls? Are there other walls or barriers that have our safety in mind? We like walls and barriers when they divide opposing lanes of traffic. We certainly like barriers when we go to the zoo and see animals and reptiles that would be a threat to us if they were not restrained.
5) Walls and barriers are a good thing if they designed with our safety in mind.
6) Walls and barriers are a bad thing if they prevent unity.
7) When walls and barriers hinder the forwarding of God’s kingdom here on earth, then there is no doubt that they are contrary to God’s will.
Jesus once asked this question: “What good are we if we love only those just like us?”
1) The priest and the Levite did not want to get involved in helping this victim because they were afraid of getting dirty!
2) According to the priest and the Levite, they were obeying God’s law, right?
3) Was their religion more about rules?
4) What about how loving God and loving our neighbor are connected?
5) Were they concerned about a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Isn’t that sometimes what we are afraid of? Obviously, we need to be cautious.
LOVE
What is the odd thing about love in this story?
1) One of the odd things about this story is that we have an alleged bad guy who becomes the hero.
2) Normally, Samaritans and Jews would not have anything to do with each other. Why? There was a cultural barrier between them.
3) The ditch in this story is a place of someone who is in need. Both Samaritans and Jews would more than likely avoid the ditch because they would not have anything to do with each other.
4) In God’s kingdom, love cannot avoid the ditch!
Love changes everything. Loves changes everything because it takes the risk of getting dirty. Does our love take that kind of a risk? Think about it. What does our risk factor actually look like?
Today high school students can get through biology class without smelling like formaldehyde. That’s because they can now dissect frogs digitally.
Digital Frog International Inc. sells an interactive CD-ROM for $170 that allows students to probe a croaker’s internal workings without lifting a scalpel. The impetus behind the digital frog program was company co-founder Simon Clark’s squeamishness over cutting critters as a veterinarian student. Clark disliked dissection so much that he decided to find a less distasteful way to teach students anatomy and physiology.
Thanks to this program, students in more than nine hundred schools across North America are now making incisions into virtual frogs with a computer mouse. Throughout the virtual dissection, the computer program’s speech component explains various organ function s while the program’s three-dimensional animation allows the user to add cartilage and muscle to the frog’s skeleton and get a beneath-the-skin view of how the amphibian moves.
The advantages of using this program are obvious: mistakes made on virtual frogs are easily corrected, no real frogs are hurt, and, perhaps best of all, students don’t get their hands dirty. The whole procedure remains distant and antiseptic.
What is possible with biology is impossible with evangelism. We cannot do effective evangelism without touching the messy lives of sinners. (— J. Kent Edwards, “No Antiseptic Evangelism,” PreachingToday.com). Did Jesus not get dirty when He came from heaven to earth to get us from earth to heaven as our Savior? Can we avoid the ditch? Do we fulfill the law by walking to the other side? Consider Romans 13:8: “Be under obligation to no one---the only obligation you have is to love one another. Whoever does this has obeyed the Law” (GNB).
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
