It was an hour before conference time. They were getting off to a late start and it looked like speed limit all the way for any chance of making it in time for the opening gavel. The pastor behind the wheel had experienced the inevitable last minute problems relating to Sunday’s bulletin. One of the hymns he’d picked for the service had only the second tune in their hymnals. The congregation wasn’t familiar with it and the choir couldn’t lead it without practice, and they weren’t practicing this week. It was prestigious being pastor of the largest church in the district, but something last-minute always seemed to come up just when he was leaving for an important out-of-town meeting. There were times when he wished God’s work at his church would take care of itself and he could get off to conferences on time.
The man sitting next to him knew exactly how he felt. He was a pastor in the town, too, and had his own brand of familiarity with last-minute details. His church was smaller, not as wealthy, and on the other side of town. Limited funds and lack of personnel meant more do-it-yourself kinds of detail for him. This morning, just as he was preparing to leave, there were last-minute questions about the altar flower responsibility for the coming Sunday. This wasn’t the first time it had come up, and his wife graciously agreed to get some clippings from her flower garden as she had done so often in the past. He wondered how the altar could survive without her ... she adorned it so many Sundays out of the year.
As they drove toward the edge of town and approached the interstate, they commented about how problems invariably seemed to crop up just when they planned to leave town. There was always something, and they could predict that last-minute hitch just as accurately as they could predict a hole in little Junior’s breeches. Each happened with regularity, and it seemed the more important the trip the more last-minute the problem.
Oh well, that was all behind them now. The interstate lay ahead of them and they had an hour to discuss the upcoming conference theme on the ethics of church-supported food shipments to underdeveloped countries which were primarily nonChristian. Helping Christian nations was one thing, but there was real question in their minds about how far the church should go in these other situations. Church money aiding nonChristians was something else, and as ordained ministers and voting members of the conference, they planned to let their views be known. The issue had come up at two previous conferences, but each time it was tabled because members present couldn’t agree on the appropriate procedures for considering it. Questions like this took time and thought ... it wasn’t something the conference members could just rush into. And the benevolence funds were earning interest so really it was profitable and wise for the conference to move slowly.
The two men suddenly realized that this hour on the interstate would be the first chance they’d had to discuss the ethics of the conference question. Ethics had been one of their favorite interests at seminary, and as classmates there they could remember sitting and talking for hours about broad ethical questions. It was fun to bring a new theological twist into such a discussion, and even though they never really resolved anything nor expected to, the hours seemed to pass quickly. Those were the good old days before church details in their own perishes had come into the picture and dominated their time. Now, for almost an hour, they could resurrect those good old days and talk about their favorite subject.
Ten miles into the discussion, they noticed up ahead a car on the shoulder with a very flat left rear tire. It looked empty at first, but as they got closer they noticed a woman sitting in the driver’s seat. Well, if they’d noticed her a little sooner they might have stopped and offered her a ride to the nearest interchange, but then again maybe she was just a decoy sitting there with one or two thugs crouched down in the back seat. Anyway, what would she think if two men stopped and offered her a ride? It might have been less threatening to her if they had changed her tire, but could you imagine what their friends at conference would say if they came in with dirty, greasy hands and messed up clerics, twenty or thirty minutes late? Instantly they’d be branded for life as the "Dirty Duo" from sixty miles north. Too bad they had gotten off late and were on such a tight time schedule, but surely somebody would stop to lend a hand. There’d be other cars soon on this interstate.
The incident passed quickly, and they hardly missed a beat in their ethics discussion. Next moment they were back in the thick of it using words like agape and eros, teleology and ontological ramifications. Some of these terms they hadn’t dusted off since seminary, and it felt good to be airing them again. It even looked as though they’d make the conference on time despite their late departure.
Another man left town that morning about two hours behind the ministers. He had just gotten off his night shift at the bakery. After seven hours on his feet moving to and from those miserably hot ovens, it felt good to sit down. It would feel even better to get some sleep, but his mother was expecting him in time for lunch and he didn’t want to disappoint her. She hadn’t been very well lately, his visits seemed to mean a lot, and he wanted to be there to do what he could. She worried about him holding down the bartending job in the evening and the bakery job at night, but with the heavy medical bills it seemed the only way to keep financial ends somewhere close to meeting. She knew he was doing it for her and really wanted to. Quite a son ... even though he had been adopted. Seemed closer, more devoted to her than her own children. They often joked about German immigrant mom and Mexican-American boy getting along so well. It seemed as though they had been together all their lives.
As he approached the interstate, he thought about that last doctor’s report and hoped it didn’t mean another operation. She had been through far more than her share. Now, as he drove, he guessed he’d begin thinking about how he was going to be able to get new front tires before inspection time. The nearly bald ones out there now weren’t really very safe, and that slight wobble in the right front wheel wasn’t helping matters any. If a guy could get enough rest and had enough money to go around, he guessed that really would be the life. One thing for sure, it was life he didn’t have a chance to know anything about. For now he was just hoping the balding tires and wobbly wheel would get him there.
Ten miles into his thoughts and hopes, the same car came to view on the road shoulder. He spotted the flat tire and the woman who by now was giving up hope, and he pulled off as quickly as he could ... wobbly wheel and all. In a moment he had backed up to her car, had his tired bakery-oven feet back in action, and was introducing himself.
He soon learned that there was really very little they had in common. She came from an upper-middle-class family background while he was poor and orphaned at an early age. In the world’s eyes she had prestige and class; and in those same eyes he had mixed blood, a low-paying job, financial bills, and a wobbly wheel. The irony of it was that even though he’d never known a background or neighborhood like hers, he was her true neighbor. In the preceding hours, many drivers who matched her family background and lived in neighborhoods like hers had swished by at fifty-five. Only the tired feet of a night-shift baker had come to her car door, offering to help. Where her natural brothers in background and neighborhood had passed by, he was, at that moment, her sole and only brother.
There was no agape, eros, teleology, or ontological ramifications about what he had done. He had never seen such words and didn’t know they existed. And equally foreign to him was the notion of a conference of clergymen to discuss the ethics of church-supported food shipments to underdeveloped nonChristian countries. The only conference he knew anything about was the Atlantic Coast Conference, and he tried to catch some of that action on the bar room TV when he wasn’t too busy. It wasn’t agape or ethics that had made him stop. She was in need and he thought he could help ... it was that simple.
At this moment a scene from another highway in a far century crept stealthily into our minds. A young lawyer in pursuit of an intellectual discussion had asked Christ, "Who is my neighbor?" It was a good question and a loaded one. The lawyer knew Jesus associated with many low-level Gentiles, and the lawyer also knew that Jews did not consider Gentiles to be neighbors. They were not entitled to neighbor privileges or consideration. So the lawyer thought he had a clever question and the basic ingredients for a fascinating theoretical discussion. Jesus refused the lawyer’s theoretical bait and answered with a concrete, practical situation. A treacherous seventeen-mile stretch of road from Jerusalem to Jericho. A certain man traveling it when he was robbed and severely beaten. A priest and a Levite passing by before a Samaritan came that way and stopped, doing everything he could to help. And then, at the conclusion of Jesus’ description, a pointed question to the lawyer: "Which of these three do you think proved neighbor to the man...?"
The two scenes have a haunting similarity and their messages to us are equally haunting and similar. In both scenes, the description of the traveler was not emphasized nor placed in the spotlight. It was almost as though it didn’t matter who the traveler was ... what seemed important was the fact that the traveler was in need.
As attention centered on the three subsequent travelers, new elements in the message gained pointed clarity. The first two were professionals in the field of religion. Not only were they respectable neighbors, but they were men who knew thoroughly the theological tenets of their religious faith. If you were betting on someone stopping to help, certainly one of them would be your odds-on favorite. They knew their religion and their life was the church institution; but for some reason, they passed by without stopping. Could it have been that they had more important religious things to do? Or could it have been that they missed the important things because of the religious? For whatever reason, it seemed that their church institutional involvement had drawn them away from individual people and their needs. Somehow temple functions and ethical discussions seemed easier and less threatening.
The Samaritan and our night-shift baker form a striking contrast to their predecessors. Both are, in effect, outcasts in thier respective worlds. Neither is native by birth, neither is respectable by social class, and neither knows the theological tenets of any prevailing religion. The odds that either of them would stop to render help would be more lopsided than the odds that a plowhorse could win the Kentucky Derby. Neither would look at all promising. Neither would have the impressive qualifications. And yet it is here, among the outcast, the unknown, and the unqualified that a person in need finds help. Christ is saying to the lawyer and to us that he doesn’t know who our neighbor will be ... that our true neighbor will be the person who helps us in our time of need. He is also telling us not to be surprised if our neighbor proves to be someone we would least expect ... perhaps society’s least among us and to some in institutional religion, the lost among us.
The message goes even further and deeper. It cautions those of us in the organized church about institutional quicksand - subtle entrapment in the details of our local church or the generalities of broader church involvement - a quicksand in which we can find ourselves removed from the specific individual in his moment of need. It is a further caution against judging those around us on the basis of what they do for a living, how often they go to church, or how much sunlight their skin color reflects. At such a moment we may be judging a true neighbor in the sight of God ... someone who stopped and helped in a fellow traveler’s darkest hour.
Beyond the caution message there is hope ... the hope that as we travel we can rise above duty to a genuine helping outreach. Duty is a sophisticated computer which runs continually day and night, estimating the reward and cost of every interaction. It moves us out and away from any situation which might have dangers, either real or imagined. Maybe there are robbers in the caves ... maybe there are thugs crouched down behind the car-seat. The computer warns us not to take the chance ... the risk is too great.
Where the risk seems low, the computer tells us to do what is required ... not necessarily being helpful but at least looking helpful. In one of its glaring moments, such dutiful outreach resembles a mother seeing Johnny off to school with the words, "I want you to be sure to smile and keep your eyes open today for anyone who needs a Kleenex, a pencil, or an eraser; and you be sure to help them!" We can imagine Johnny’s grudging, dutiful feelings as he goes through the day - a far cry from the spontaneous depth and quiet example of the Good Samaritan or the night-shift baker. A pundit has characterized such dutiful, hollow outreach as "creating half the misery it relieves while being unable to relieve half the misery it creates." It’s harsh and says, in effect, "We’re here to help you because we have to be. We hope you realize the inconvenience this is causing us. Here’s what you need. Take it and say ‘Thank you’." Such outreach contains more hurt than help.
There is little wonder that writers have called this parable one of the most universal, timeless messages ever written. While the surface may be modernized and changed, and while the center lines may be repainted, the highway stays the same. And its message could never be more appropriate to any age than it is to us today. New York City and the nation were shocked when a young woman was attacked and killed on a Manhattan sidewalk. Murder wasn’t new, but it was devastating to realize that in that half-hour period at least thirty-eight residents were known to be watching, and none of them sought either to help or to call the police. Had the Good Samaritan in us died, or was this a special kind of situation? The incident triggered both concern and research, confirming some of the suspicions you and I might have had for some time - that the more of us there are watching a critical need situation, the lower the likelihood that any one of us will render help. Our individual responsibility somehow seems to fade into the crowd. But there’s confirmation of still another suspicion, and this time the outcome is a little brighter and more reassuring - that we’re more likely to help someone in need if someone has provided us with an example of helping before our moment and opportunity.
Our supreme example was Christ. Luther called him "God’s Good Samaritan for all." It is obvious that in our human frailty we will not match the perfect example of Christ, but somewhere in our travels each of us will be an example to someone. At those moments we have the unique opportunity to make a very meaningful contribution.
The world will not change much because we came, but it will never be quite the same. Christ hopes that as we make our difference it will include the joy of having been sole brother to someone in need.
It was an hour before conference time. They were getting off to a late start and it looked like speed limit all the way for any chance of making it in time for the opening gavel. The pastor behind the wheel had experienced the inevitable last minute problems relating to Sunday’s bulletin. One of the hymns he’d picked for the service had only the second tune in their hymnals. The congregation wasn’t familiar with it and the choir couldn’t lead it without practice, and they weren’t practicing this week. It was prestigious being pastor of the largest church in the district, but something last-minute always seemed to come up just when he was leaving for an important out-of-town meeting. There were times when he wished God’s work at his church would take care of itself and he could get off to conferences on time.
The man sitting next to him knew exactly how he felt. He was a pastor in the town, too, and had his own brand of familiarity with last-minute details. His church was smaller, not as wealthy, and on the other side of town. Limited funds and lack of personnel meant more do-it-yourself kinds of detail for him. This morning, just as he was preparing to leave, there were last-minute questions about the altar flower responsibility for the coming Sunday. This wasn’t the first time it had come up, and his wife graciously agreed to get some clippings from her flower garden as she had done so often in the past. He wondered how the altar could survive without her ... she adorned it so many Sundays out of the year.
As they drove toward the edge of town and approached the interstate, they commented about how problems invariably seemed to crop up just when they planned to leave town. There was always something, and they could predict that last-minute hitch just as accurately as they could predict a hole in little Junior’s breeches. Each happened with regularity, and it seemed the more important the trip the more last-minute the problem.
Oh well, that was all behind them now. The interstate lay ahead of them and they had an hour to discuss the upcoming conference theme on the ethics of church-supported food shipments to underdeveloped countries which were primarily nonChristian. Helping Christian nations was one thing, but there was real question in their minds about how far the church should go in these other situations. Church money aiding nonChristians was something else, and as ordained ministers and voting members of the conference, they planned to let their views be known. The issue had come up at two previous conferences, but each time it was tabled because members present couldn’t agree on the appropriate procedures for considering it. Questions like this took time and thought ... it wasn’t something the conference members could just rush into. And the benevolence funds were earning interest so really it was profitable and wise for the conference to move slowly.
The two men suddenly realized that this hour on the interstate would be the first chance they’d had to discuss the ethics of the conference question. Ethics had been one of their favorite interests at seminary, and as classmates there they could remember sitting and talking for hours about broad ethical questions. It was fun to bring a new theological twist into such a discussion, and even though they never really resolved anything nor expected to, the hours seemed to pass quickly. Those were the good old days before church details in their own perishes had come into the picture and dominated their time. Now, for almost an hour, they could resurrect those good old days and talk about their favorite subject.
Ten miles into the discussion, they noticed up ahead a car on the shoulder with a very flat left rear tire. It looked empty at first, but as they got closer they noticed a woman sitting in the driver’s seat. Well, if they’d noticed her a little sooner they might have stopped and offered her a ride to the nearest interchange, but then again maybe she was just a decoy sitting there with one or two thugs crouched down in the back seat. Anyway, what would she think if two men stopped and offered her a ride? It might have been less threatening to her if they had changed her tire, but could you imagine what their friends at conference would say if they came in with dirty, greasy hands and messed up clerics, twenty or thirty minutes late? Instantly they’d be branded for life as the "Dirty Duo" from sixty miles north. Too bad they had gotten off late and were on such a tight time schedule, but surely somebody would stop to lend a hand. There’d be other cars soon on this interstate.
The incident passed quickly, and they hardly missed a beat in their ethics discussion. Next moment they were back in the thick of it using words like agape and eros, teleology and ontological ramifications. Some of these terms they hadn’t dusted off since seminary, and it felt good to be airing them again. It even looked as though they’d make the conference on time despite their late departure.
Another man left town that morning about two hours behind the ministers. He had just gotten off his night shift at the bakery. After seven hours on his feet moving to and from those miserably hot ovens, it felt good to sit down. It would feel even better to get some sleep, but his mother was expecting him in time for lunch and he didn’t want to disappoint her. She hadn’t been very well lately, his visits seemed to mean a lot, and he wanted to be there to do what he could. She worried about him holding down the bartending job in the evening and the bakery job at night, but with the heavy medical bills it seemed the only way to keep financial ends somewhere close to meeting. She knew he was doing it for her and really wanted to. Quite a son ... even though he had been adopted. Seemed closer, more devoted to her than her own children. They often joked about German immigrant mom and Mexican-American boy getting along so well. It seemed as though they had been together all their lives.
As he approached the interstate, he thought about that last doctor’s report and hoped it didn’t mean another operation. She had been through far more than her share. Now, as he drove, he guessed he’d begin thinking about how he was going to be able to get new front tires before inspection time. The nearly bald ones out there now weren’t really very safe, and that slight wobble in the right front wheel wasn’t helping matters any. If a guy could get enough rest and had enough money to go around, he guessed that really would be the life. One thing for sure, it was life he didn’t have a chance to know anything about. For now he was just hoping the balding tires and wobbly wheel would get him there.
Ten miles into his thoughts and hopes, the same car came to view on the road shoulder. He spotted the flat tire and the woman who by now was giving up hope, and he pulled off as quickly as he could ... wobbly wheel and all. In a moment he had backed up to her car, had his tired bakery-oven feet back in action, and was introducing himself.
He soon learned that there was really very little they had in common. She came from an upper-middle-class family background while he was poor and orphaned at an early age. In the world’s eyes she had prestige and class; and in those same eyes he had mixed blood, a low-paying job, financial bills, and a wobbly wheel. The irony of it was that even though he’d never known a background or neighborhood like hers, he was her true neighbor. In the preceding hours, many drivers who matched her family background and lived in neighborhoods like hers had swished by at fifty-five. Only the tired feet of a night-shift baker had come to her car door, offering to help. Where her natural brothers in background and neighborhood had passed by, he was, at that moment, her sole and only brother.
There was no agape, eros, teleology, or ontological ramifications about what he had done. He had never seen such words and didn’t know they existed. And equally foreign to him was the notion of a conference of clergymen to discuss the ethics of church-supported food shipments to underdeveloped nonChristian countries. The only conference he knew anything about was the Atlantic Coast Conference, and he tried to catch some of that action on the bar room TV when he wasn’t too busy. It wasn’t agape or ethics that had made him stop. She was in need and he thought he could help ... it was that simple.
At this moment a scene from another highway in a far century crept stealthily into our minds. A young lawyer in pursuit of an intellectual discussion had asked Christ, "Who is my neighbor?" It was a good question and a loaded one. The lawyer knew Jesus associated with many low-level Gentiles, and the lawyer also knew that Jews did not consider Gentiles to be neighbors. They were not entitled to neighbor privileges or consideration. So the lawyer thought he had a clever question and the basic ingredients for a fascinating theoretical discussion. Jesus refused the lawyer’s theoretical bait and answered with a concrete, practical situation. A treacherous seventeen-mile stretch of road from Jerusalem to Jericho. A certain man traveling it when he was robbed and severely beaten. A priest and a Levite passing by before a Samaritan came that way and stopped, doing everything he could to help. And then, at the conclusion of Jesus’ description, a pointed question to the lawyer: "Which of these three do you think proved neighbor to the man...?"
The two scenes have a haunting similarity and their messages to us are equally haunting and similar. In both scenes, the description of the traveler was not emphasized nor placed in the spotlight. It was almost as though it didn’t matter who the traveler was ... what seemed important was the fact that the traveler was in need.
As attention centered on the three subsequent travelers, new elements in the message gained pointed clarity. The first two were professionals in the field of religion. Not only were they respectable neighbors, but they were men who knew thoroughly the theological tenets of their religious faith. If you were betting on someone stopping to help, certainly one of them would be your odds-on favorite. They knew their religion and their life was the church institution; but for some reason, they passed by without stopping. Could it have been that they had more important religious things to do? Or could it have been that they missed the important things because of the religious? For whatever reason, it seemed that their church institutional involvement had drawn them away from individual people and their needs. Somehow temple functions and ethical discussions seemed easier and less threatening.
The Samaritan and our night-shift baker form a striking contrast to their predecessors. Both are, in effect, outcasts in thier respective worlds. Neither is native by birth, neither is respectable by social class, and neither knows the theological tenets of any prevailing religion. The odds that either of them would stop to render help would be more lopsided than the odds that a plowhorse could win the Kentucky Derby. Neither would look at all promising. Neither would have the impressive qualifications. And yet it is here, among the outcast, the unknown, and the unqualified that a person in need finds help. Christ is saying to the lawyer and to us that he doesn’t know who our neighbor will be ... that our true neighbor will be the person who helps us in our time of need. He is also telling us not to be surprised if our neighbor proves to be someone we would least expect ... perhaps society’s least among us and to some in institutional religion, the lost among us.
The message goes even further and deeper. It cautions those of us in the organized church about institutional quicksand - subtle entrapment in the details of our local church or the generalities of broader church involvement - a quicksand in which we can find ourselves removed from the specific individual in his moment of need. It is a further caution against judging those around us on the basis of what they do for a living, how often they go to church, or how much sunlight their skin color reflects. At such a moment we may be judging a true neighbor in the sight of God ... someone who stopped and helped in a fellow traveler’s darkest hour.
Beyond the caution message there is hope ... the hope that as we travel we can rise above duty to a genuine helping outreach. Duty is a sophisticated computer which runs continually day and night, estimating the reward and cost of every interaction. It moves us out and away from any situation which might have dangers, either real or imagined. Maybe there are robbers in the caves ... maybe there are thugs crouched down behind the car-seat. The computer warns us not to take the chance ... the risk is too great.
Where the risk seems low, the computer tells us to do what is required ... not necessarily being helpful but at least looking helpful. In one of its glaring moments, such dutiful outreach resembles a mother seeing Johnny off to school with the words, "I want you to be sure to smile and keep your eyes open today for anyone who needs a Kleenex, a pencil, or an eraser; and you be sure to help them!" We can imagine Johnny’s grudging, dutiful feelings as he goes through the day - a far cry from the spontaneous depth and quiet example of the Good Samaritan or the night-shift baker. A pundit has characterized such dutiful, hollow outreach as "creating half the misery it relieves while being unable to relieve half the misery it creates." It’s harsh and says, in effect, "We’re here to help you because we have to be. We hope you realize the inconvenience this is causing us. Here’s what you need. Take it and say ‘Thank you’." Such outreach contains more hurt than help.
There is little wonder that writers have called this parable one of the most universal, timeless messages ever written. While the surface may be modernized and changed, and while the center lines may be repainted, the highway stays the same. And its message could never be more appropriate to any age than it is to us today. New York City and the nation were shocked when a young woman was attacked and killed on a Manhattan sidewalk. Murder wasn’t new, but it was devastating to realize that in that half-hour period at least thirty-eight residents were known to be watching, and none of them sought either to help or to call the police. Had the Good Samaritan in us died, or was this a special kind of situation? The incident triggered both concern and research, confirming some of the suspicions you and I might have had for some time - that the more of us there are watching a critical need situation, the lower the likelihood that any one of us will render help. Our individual responsibility somehow seems to fade into the crowd. But there’s confirmation of still another suspicion, and this time the outcome is a little brighter and more reassuring - that we’re more likely to help someone in need if someone has provided us with an example of helping before our moment and opportunity.
Our supreme example was Christ. Luther called him "God’s Good Samaritan for all." It is obvious that in our human frailty we will not match the perfect example of Christ, but somewhere in our travels each of us will be an example to someone. At those moments we have the unique opportunity to make a very meaningful contribution.
The world will not change much because we came, but it will never be quite the same. Christ hopes that as we make our difference it will include the joy of having been sole brother to someone in need.
