Will You Cross the Road?

Rev. Debbie Cato
Fairfield Community Church
Luke 10:25:37
July 10, 2022 

Our hope is in you, Lord, and in  your gospel, the word of truth that you bring to us. May it bear abundant fruit in our lives. As we grow in faith, help us truly comprehend your grace, O God; help us understand this amazing grace, as we seek to lead lives worthy of you, O Lord. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

Will You Cross the Road?

 

You have likely heard this passage many, many times.  If you grew up in the church, you heard it as a child.  In fact, you may have tuned out as I read this Scripture passage just now and thought about your grocery list or what you are going to do after church, or maybe you just let your mind wander.  And I guess I wouldn’t blame you.  Sometimes we need to take a mental break.  And after all,  you’ve heard this before.

We use this passage to teach about being nice.  You may have even used it to teach your own children about what it means to be nice.  To help someone.  To be kind.  But what if I told you that I think that Jesus is trying to teach about something much bigger than just being nice.  I think he is trying to teach about transforming the world. 

Jesus is teaching when he is asked by a lawyer who is once again trying to trick him, “And who is my neighbor?”  Or as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, “And just how would you define neighbor?”  You see, that is the big question isn’t it:  Just how would you define neighbor? I think Jesus is responding to the question by teaching that there were three kinds of people traveling along that road between Jerusalem and Jericho.  Depending on which kind of person you are, you can transform the world. Because Jesus defines neighbor differently than we do.

The first type are the robbers, whose ethic suggests that “what is yours is mine at whatever cost”.  The robbers will take whatever they need through violence, coercion and whatever means necessary. These are the people who will leave us physically, mentally and emotionally beaten and bruised along life’s road with nothing left but our shallow breath.

The first type are not just those who are physically harmful.  Or even those who take physical belongings that do not belong to them. They are also the ones who beat us down emotionally or mentally so that they can move ahead of us or control us relationally.   They are the bullies of the world.  The narcissists.  The cheaters.  The, “I’ll do whatever it takes to get what I want, “ people.  I’m sure we’ve all met someone like this.  Perhaps even been hurt by someone like this.

The second type of person to walk along the dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho is represented by the priest and the Levite, whose ethic suggests that “what is mine is mine and I must protect it even if it means you get hurt in the process”. They aren’t bad people. Both the priest and the Levite are deeply respected in their communities. They very likely follow all the societal rules and norms. They sit on local boards. They pay their taxes on time and likely coach their son’s or daughter’s teams. They also show a great deal of love to those within their immediate families and immediate communities, but because of what crossing the road to help might cost them, they put their head down and go about their own business. So, without even recognizing it, they do more harm than good. Their focus is inward toward their needs and the needs of those who are most like them. It’s an ethic that leads the good and decent priest and Levite toward a life of valuing their reputations instead of relationships. And it often results with them choosing their own individual rights over the health and well-being of their neighbors. Especially neighbors that are different than they are.

Unfortunately, this is the category where I fall most often throughout my life. And if we’re all being honest, I’d say it’s the category that most of us fall into more than we care to admit. It’s much easier to go out on a limb for people we know, for people we already care about, for people that are just like us than for strangers, especially strangers that are different from us.  People that Jesus says are our neighbors. 

Then there is the Samaritan, whose ethic is love. And walking along one of the most dangerous roads in all of history seems to live by a code that says

“what is mine is yours…if you have need of it, I will give it to you”.

“My safety is yours…if you need it, I will offer it to you.”

“My security is yours…if you need it, it is yours.”

“My resources are yours…if you need them, I will give them to you.”

“My health is tied to your health, I want you to be healthy if I’m to be healthy.”

“My well-being is tied to your well-being, I cannot be whole if you are not whole.”

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on this text often and once said that the real difference between the priest and the Levite from the Samaritan is the question that each must have asked themselves. The priest and the Levite likely asked, “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”. The Samaritan likely asked a very different question - “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” Do you hear the difference?   If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?  If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?

Fear has a way of making us all behave badly. It was true for the priest and the Levite, and it is still true for us today. When fear is the ethic of our lives, we tend to cling to our own safety and our own individual rights.

When fear is the ethic of our lives, we retreat, we mind our own business and we rarely cross to the other side of the road to help. And when fear is the ethic of our lives, we end up placing our hope in mottos like “We Must Defend Our Rights” or “We Must Protect Ourselves” as opposed to Jesus’ greatest commandment to “Love God and Love Your Neighbor”.

It doesn’t take looking out the window for very long to know that we are all on a road somewhere between Jerusalem and Jericho right now. It’s dangerous out there. The heart-break and exhaustion are real. It’s the pandemic, the  political division, the economy.  It’s all the shootings. 

There was another massacre on the 4^th of July at a parade in Chicago.  People out celebrating, watching a parade.  Seven people were killed and more than 30 injured.  The suspect legally purchased the guns and planned the attack for weeks. After firing more than 70 rounds, he exited the roof, dropped the rifle, slipped into the crowd, and went to his mother’s house. 

There was an article about a two-year old boy named Aiden who was found under his dad’s dying body.  Both his parents had been shot and killed.  His dad had shielded Aiden from the gun fire and saved his life. Aidan’s socks and shoes were socked with their blood but other than that he was not harmed.  Let me restate that.  He was not physically harmed.  The emotional trauma Aiden suffered at 2-years old cannot be understated.  Strangers saw Aiden’s father struggling to breathe and stopped to help him.  They found Aidan and picked him up.  They were escaping the chaos.  They were running from the massacre.  But they put their safety on hold and stopped to help anyway and found this precious child, picked him up, and took him to safety.

I would like to think I would have done the same.  I would like to think that if I were running from the shooting with my precious almost four-year-old Clara and one and a half-year-old beautiful Caleb, I would have still stopped and picked up this child.  I would like to hope that his safety would be as important to me as my own precious grandchildren. 

I thank God that I have not had to find out.  But I pray I would cross that treacherous road from Jerusalem to Jericho and help that child just like those strangers did on this horrible 4^th of July.

Grocery stores, churches, schools, parades. Pure horror.  Fear is everywhere. It’s layers and layers of being beaten and bruised along a dry, hard road.

But we have Jesus teaches us that we have choices to make. We can choose to make our decisions with an ethic of fear. And for a time, choices based on fear have a way of making us feel safe, but that is fleeting at best.

The other choice is to cross the road to help our neighbor. When we cross to the other side, we’ll get a glimpse of something Jesus talked an awful lot about. We’ll see what transformation looks like. You, see, when we cross the road, not only is the person we help changed, but we are changed.  Often more than the one we help.  We’ll finally understand who we are called to be. And best of all, we’ll finally encounter the Kingdom of God we’ve been longing for.

We don’t know if the expert in the law who asked the question, “And just how would you define my neighbor?” understood what Jesus was trying to teach.  We don’t know if it changed his behavior or not.  But we have a chance to be transformed.  The question is, will you set aside your fear and  go out on a limb for a neighbor?  Will you cross the road when you have the opportunity and be transformed?  Let us pray:

Dear Lord,  how often we hear of real-life good Samaritans: those who would give the shirts off their backs, those who do anything and everything to help people in need. Help us to be people who  seek justice and alleviate suffering in our world. We offer our hearts and hands to help, Lord. Help us to help our neighbors, setting aside our own needs, comforts, and fears knowing that their needs and comforts are as important as ours. Help us to share your love with all we know.  In Jesus name, Amen.