Jesus lifts us out of the ditch – Luke 10:26-37

Ordinary Time, Yr C, 15th Sunday; St. Mary's

“Who is my neighbor?”  I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve heard that question often enough that I’m not sure it no longer stirs in my heart what needs to be stirred.  When I realized this week that we could just as grammatically render it “Who is near me?” it started to do a little more work.  Then, I thought that right now might not be the time for grammatical fastidiousness, and I might need the freshness of this: “Whose lives matter?”  “Who is my neighbor…? Who is near me…? Whose lives matter?”

On June 23rdof this year, a county correctional officer had a heart attack in the District Courts Building in Weatherford, Texas.  The only people who could see this, who would see this for another fifteen minutes, were inmates in a holding cell, inmates who shouted and hollered and broke down the door to their cell to get out and help their jailer.  When deputies heard the noise, they feared, knowing that the C.O. had keys and a gun on him, and ran down to find him lying, unresponsive, with one handcuffed inmate bent over him, giving CPR, and another reaching for his radio, located next to his gun.  It’s a miracle that everyone got out of that room alive.  It’s a miracle.  “Who is my neighbor…? Who is near me…? Whose lives matter?”

We need to keep asking “Who is near me?” because there’s a power in that question that goes beyond the moralistic reading that says this text is basically about being nice to people.  I think it’s on the basis of that kind of reading that our lectionary gives us the passage from Deuteronomy as our first reading: an optimistic encouragement, “kindness is natural, go, be good to one another!” And we should be, boy does this world need kindness.  This world needs more than nice, it needs people willing to act riskily for the sake of another, the sake of the other, to leave themselves open to the possibility of being financially exploited by the inn-keeper like our Samaritan, to risk their lives for their jailer like our Texan inmates.  But, to reduce this text to a moral is to blunt its gospel power.  Because what if I don’t feel like a priest or a Levite or Samaritan?  What if I feel like the man lying in the ditch?  What if I feel like the C.O. whose keys and gun do him no good now his heart won’t pump blood?  What if I feel like an inmate who can’t break out of the cell, whether from the strength of the door or my fear?  With all the violence of this past week, does this text have no power now?

“Who is near me?”  God is near me.  God is near us.  God is moved with compassion.  God approaches, anoints, bandages, lifts us up and brings others into our care team.  God pays the price.  When we are worse than robbed, God is near us.

And this good news is what animates the other moral that is often, and needfully, drawn from this text, the moral that attends to the shock that it’s the Samaritan in whom love incarnates in care, to remind us to not judge books by their covers, to not reject whole classes of people as incapable of virtue.  But what about when we do that out of fear?  Does this text have no power then?  Or is it an unbearable burden?  No, for who is near me?  God is near me.  And God lifts us out of the ditch of fear, God salves the wound of prejudice.  When we are worse than robbed, God is near us.

And it’s precisely in the security of God’s embrace that we can embrace the risk of costly love.  It’s precisely being tightly held that we go move out beyond our narrow interests and unreflective convictions of who matters.  It’s precisely being lifted up that we can look down into others’ ditches, and rise to raise.

When I was doing my stint as a hospital chaplain, I met a patient named Kay on the gen med floor who told me, “I know why I’m in here.”  I expected a presenting problem, but I got, “I’m here to treat each and every person that comes through that door a little more humanely than they normally get, and that’s how I’m going to help heal all the rest of the patients.”  I did go on to learn that Kay had a deep Christian faith, but she didn’t need to use God-talk in that sentence for me to know that she got the power of this text.  That she knew God was carrying her burden with her, so she could have space to carry others.

When we try and make sure that our good news doesn’t lack moral demand, that our theology still has room for ethics, we often talk about the ethical flowing from the theological, and that’s true on one level.  But, we can’t make that sound like a two-step process, like we have to have it all together before we can help, to be done with needing healing and holding to start loving.  We can love in a hospital bed, from a holding cell or in a ditch.  Because if God is near us and God thinks we matter then God will raise us, and we will see who else God is near.