I awoke that morning to my mother in hysterics running up
and down the hallway. She in turn had just been woken up by my father’s death
rattle; he’d had a massive heart attack and died beside her in the bed. It was an
understatement to say it was a hard day, one of the worst in my life, but one
where I felt what it was like to be loved by my neighbours.
Immediate neighbours…About mid-morning, our next door neighbours
actually whipped over with their lawn mowers and mowed our lawn; my father had
taken great pride in keeping the garden very neat and tidy. He was an ex air
force officer, so it had to be military style short. They wanted to honour him
by doing that.
And the kind of neighbours that Jesus talked of in the
parable of the Good Samaritan… Not only was it the day my dad died but it was
also the day I left my job at the BNZ Queen Street, so in the afternoon,
feeling very fragile and sad, I went in to say farewell to everyone. I took my car, a beaten
up old triumph 2000…and as I was heading home again…up the steep part of
Wellesley Street back to the western motorway on ramp… The car decided it was
going to break down…break down on that steep hill…break down in the outside
lane… break down in rush hour traffic…
There were businessmen on their way home, they obviously
knew what was going on in my life because as they passed they waved fists at me
and tooted, maybe to tell me to stay strong. Many of them pointed towards
heaven with one figure hopefully to encourage me to put my faith in God… I’m
trying to be nice here. But none stopped to help.
I’d broken down right outside the old hotel that used to be
on Wellesley Street, where that bungee swing is now… and a bus load of tourist
stopped and got out and looked around. They had obviously not seen a car like
mine before because they took photos, but no one came to help…
Then over the noise of traffic and those ever increasing encouraging
toots, I heard the sound of rap music and a group of young pacific island guys
dressed in their street gear came down with a ghetto blaster at full volume. People
gave them the once over then that look of disapproval. But they saw me in the
middle of the road. They strode out into the traffic and said… ‘do you need a
hand bro”… they stopped the traffic and they pushed my car over to the side of
the road. I thanked them and they said no problems and headed off.
A friend had to come all the way in from Titirangi to tow
me, and when they arrived, wouldn’t you know it, my car simply bust into life
again… it was a vapour lock or something in the fuel system…it really was one
of those days… But I knew the love of neighbours. I knew the kindness that Jesus
beautiful articulated in the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan.’
We are working our way through Luke’s account of Jesus
journey to Jerusalem. In Luke 9 verse 51 it says that Jesus knew his time was
coming and so he resolutely set out for Jerusalem. It just so happens that that
journey makes up the central third of the gospel and focuses on Jesus teaching
on what it means for us to follow him walking the cross road… the road of
discipleship. Last week, when he sent out the seventy two, we saw it was a missional road of going and telling people of Jesus and his Kingdom. This week we see it
is a compassionate route when Jesus tells us to go and do likewise, to go and
love our neighbour in a lavish radical over the top way that reflects God’s
love for us in Jesus own life death and resurrection.
Often when I’ve preached on this passage, I ask people to
tell each other the parable of the Good Samaritan and then to listen to it
being read. Then I ask them to talk to the person they had told the parable to
and see what they got right and what they missed out. In all those times there
are three things that always come up.
The first is that
people miss the context. The parable is so powerful and memorable that they
forget that it is told in response to some questions by an expert in the law. ‘What
must I do to inherit eternal life?’ It’s a good question it’s the salvation
question… isn’t it. And Jesus asks the expert to tell him what the law says
“how do you read It?” and the lawyer gives a great answer ‘to 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 neighbour as yourself”. That first part is the core of what Jews call
the ‘shema yisrael’ from Deuteronomy 4:6-8. It is the focal point of the law
and covenant in the Old Testament: that the Lord our God is one and they should
love the Lord their God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your strength and with all your mind’. It was to be nailed to their door posts,
in a mezuzah, so every time they came in and went out they were to remember it.
“Love they neighbour’ from Leviticus also captured the essence of the law, how
being a people in right relationship with God is to be lived out in how treat
each other. First and foremost that relationship with God needs to be addressed
for us to have eternal and full life. Of Course Jesus came and lived and died
and rose again so that we might be put right with God and though that be
reconciled with each other.
But the lawyer wants to definitely know ‘who is my neighbour?’ There is a sense here that likes all lawyers
they want to dot the I’s and cross the t’s. Define neighbour Jesus? Was it just
the physical neighbour that lived next door? Is it just the people like us, our
friends or our family or people in the church…? and Jesus really challenges
that by saying it is the person who we come across who is in need. He bangs it
home for the lawyer by making the hero in the story a despised Samaritan, those
people of mixed race that the Jews looked down their noses at. He is the one
who shows love to his neighbour. The lawyer may have wanted to quantify it, box
it up, and put a limited to whom he should love but Jesus blows that apart for
him and for us…
The second thing that people say they didn’t remember is the
extent to which the Samaritan goes in showing love for the man, beaten and
robbed by the side of the road. He goes out of his busy way as a merchant to
help him, he takes him to an inn and tends his wounds and feeds him and pays
for him to stay till he can recover, and he offers the inn keeper to cover any
debt the man might incur beyond what the Samaritan has paid him. I wonder if it
like someone in today’s society paying the bill for a homeless family staying
in a motel…and then giving them the deposit they need to get a flat and the
furniture they need to live. To love with a Christ like love calls us to give
and love sacrificially. Who knows where it will lead.
Granville sharp is an ancestor of mine on my Mother’s side. When we saw a photo of a plaque with his face
on it we knew it was rue because of the sharp nose… and high cheek bones (I'm adopted so I don't have the family nose). Granville
is known as the father of the movement for the abolition of slavery in England.
He was the son of a bishop in the Church of England, and was a shipping clerk,
one day he went to visit his brother who was a doctor and on the way he found a
salve Jonathan Strong, who had been beaten by his master and left for dead on
the street. Granville and his brother tended his wounds, got him a place in a
prestigious hospital, paid for his four month stay there, that gives you a
sense of the injuries he had sustained, when he was better they found him a
job. When his master came looking for him again Granville Sharp engaged a
lawyer to fight his being sold and shipped off to the plantations in the
Caribbean. Granville Sharp spent two years teaching himself the law so he could
argue in court that it was illegal for one person in England to own another,
that when a slave stepped foot in England they were free. The law lords at the time feared him because
of the rightness of his cause. He published the first pamphlet against slavery.
It wasn’t till a generation later, with new leaders like William Wilberforce,
that the slave trade was stamped out. Random acts of kindness can lead to
systemic changes and justice. It is the power of love for our neighbour, world
changing.
The last thing that people forgot was the punch line... or
application… ‘Go and do likewise’. Jesus asked the lawyer who was the man’s
neighbour? and the lawyer rightly responds the one who helped him and Jesus
says go and do likewise… Go and do likewise… It’s interesting but the two
people you’d think would be the heroes in Jesus story, the Levite and the
priest, were religious people, kept the letter of the law were doing good
things in terms of religious observance. But it isn’t religiosity or ritual
cleanliness, both important issues for the Jews that God was looking for it was
love and mercy… It was kindness.
The passage calls us as followers of Jesus to go and do
likewise, that our love for God is shown in our love for others, our reaction
to the race and the mercy and the kindness of God is to show that to others
around us.
I found myself looking for something fresh in this parable
today, and the thing that struck me was the way that he love shown by the
Samaritan mirrored Jesus own love for us. We know what love is because God
first loved us. He found us in our brokenness,
robbed and beaten, as we red in
the psalm we used as a call to worship ‘he healed up the broken-hearted and bound up our wounds’, he took us to a place
where we could find wholeness and he paid the price for us to be made new
again. And so Jesus calls us to go and do likewise. Be it simply acts of
kindness and again in the parable of the sheep and the goats Jesus talks of
simple acts of kindness like giving a glass of water, going and visiting the
sick, the infirmed, the prisoner, clothing and housing those who are poor.
Isn’t that a challenge that we find increasingly at our door. Juan Carols Ortiz
a south American Pentecostal who lived in the kind of land of extreme wealth
and poverty we sadly are finding ourselves in summed up love your neighbour as
yourself as saying that if we have three meals a day and our neighbour has only
one e should settle for two so they can have two, if we have two coats and they
have nothing to keep the cold out we should give them one of ours.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the profound movie ‘Pay it
forward’. It tells the story of a teacher who challenges his class of young
people to come up with an idea that will change the world. One young boy comes
up with the idea of doing three acts of kindness for people who have no way of
doing something for themselves. He them says that instead of paying him back he
was going to ask them to pay it forwards, by doing three acts of kindness for
other people and only asking in return for them to pay it forwards, it had to
be a costly act and one that the person couldn’t do for themselves. The boy is
tragically killed in the movie and as his mother and teacher are comforting
each other a great crowd of people gather, those who have been affected and
shown kindness and love as part of this pay it forwards movement. Of course I’m
sure as the parable of the Good Samaritan show us there is no limiting of showing
the great love we have received in Christ. We have received great love in Jesus Christ,
the restoration of our relationship with God, that we can know God as our
heavenly Father; let us pass it forwards by loving our neighbour. Let’s open our eyes as we travel down the
roads we live in and travel along and allow the spirit of God to show us where
the robbed and beaten in our community and city are and allow the spirit to
cause us to go and show love and kindness. The cross road following Jesus is
the compassionate way that leads to eternal life.
So I’m going to finish today by refereeing back to our light
bulbs and asking you to continue to be that light … and ask today that we
commit ourselves to three simple acts of kindness this week. Ask God to lead
you to three people that you can show God’s grace and love to. Maybe they are
on the list of people you are praying for from last week maybe just totally out
of the blue.
Let’s pray.
We pray you would fill us a fresh with your spirit
Help us to love our neighbour and our enemy
To show them the love we have received from you
Open our eyes to see them and their needs
Open our hearts with the compassion of Christ
Open our lives and our wallets to share what we have
Empower our words and our deeds to embody you in the world
May we love because you first loved us
May we show kindness because you have shown us your kindness
May we show grace and forgiveness because we are graciously forgiven
May we offer the wholeness and healing we know that you bring
May people know Christ because they see your great love in us.
Amen
