In a world that teaches achievement (doing), Jesus teaches us the values of aliveness (being).
The essence of Christianity is being, not doing. As Billy Graham has been preaching to the world for 40 years, if you want to make a difference, you have to be different.
This was the error of the lawyer Jesus spoke with in today's gospel text. The lawyer wanted to reach his goal, his desired finish line of "eternal life" by doing something, by achieving something. The Good Samaritan parable demonstrates that we cannot do discipleship. We must be disciples. We must be the neighbor to each person we encounter. Only when we become Christ's messengers of faith, love and hope in this world do we become truly alive, living participants in eternal life. "To do" is achievement; "to be" is aliveness.
From kindergarten on, we are trained in the skills of achievement, of "to do." We are utterly ignorant about the skills of aliveness, of "to be," about how to be fully alive to life. Soren Kierkegaard captured our confusion between achievement and aliveness powerfully when he wrote: "The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, can pass off as quietly as if it were nothing. Every other loss that of an arm, a leg, a spouse, five dollars, etc. is sure to be noticed."
In his new best-selling book Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Knopf, 1993), Pope John Paul II loves to quote Georges Bernanos: "What the church needs is not more reformers, but more saints." Actually, I think he's right. Sainthood is Aliveness: one's ability to experience anything fully whether pain or pleasure and to participate wholly in life.
There are three ways we can become the Good Samaritan disciple Jesus is calling us to be.
1. A Good Samaritan Disciple is ... Alive with Faith.
If the truth be told, there is a lot of faith out there. But how much faith in God? I know people who have lost faith in God but not faith in scotch or self or angels. There are plenty of homes where there is no living faith in God but abundant faith in hedonism or materialism.
A sign in front of a church read: "Come in for a Faith Lift." It was faith that demanded the Samaritan abandon his own plans and turn his full attention to the injured man alongside the road. Only in faith does God's healing power flow. The wind parted the waters once the Hebrews believed, but not until the Hebrews believed.
Good Samaritan people who are alive with faith are wired: hooked up to some invisible energy grid. That's why their lives give off such voltage, as if someone had pumped an extra megawatt or two into them. They are spiritually on fire, as they have let God's touch work in them so that the inner and the outer are one.
2. A Good Samaritan Disciple is ... Alive with Love.
In the midst of backbiting, name-dropping, self-praising, power-worshiping, face-saving people, Christ makes us into dare-to-care Good Samaritan disciples people who dare downward mobility rather than upward mobility; people who find themselves by losing themselves in others; people with a capacity to suffer for others; people who give Cheek-to-Cheek rather than Eye-for-Eye responses to injury; live-it-up people, who aren't afraid of the abundant life, but where abundance is not a treasure trove for us to squander on ourselves, but a trust for us to invest in others.
It was love that stopped the Samaritan in his tracks along the Jericho road; love that reached out and tended the wounds of the hurt traveler, love that loaded the man on his own mount and took him to the inn for more care.
3. A Good Samaritan Disciple is ... Alive with Hope
We live in a world of cosmic gloom. When you look at what we are facing and what is going on out there on the Jericho roads of these latter days of the 20th century, it is enough to make Robert Schuller say, "I can't," or Oral Roberts to promise, "Something bad is going to happen to you."
Respected journalist Pete Hamill writes that "as this dreadful century winds down, its history heavy with gulags and concentration camps and atom bombs, the country that was its brightest hope seems to be breaking apart" ("End Game," Esquire, Dec. 1994, 85).
Even our new world of technology can seem bleak. One office worker tacked up on her computer terminal a sign reading: "Abandon all hope, you who press ENTER."
In the recent Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought (1993), there are entries for Faith and Love, but no Hope. As soon as I saw this, I said, "Now there's a vision of the future there's faith, there's love, but no hope."
Not True. Not True! Pope John Paul II began his papacy in October 1978 with these words: "Be not afraid." Tennessee Methodist Roger Watson has written a gospel song based on a prayer he heard an elderly man pray: "Lord, we know what you gonna do, cause we see what you've already done." Hope led the Samaritan to leave the mending traveler in the hands of the unknown innkeeper. Hope gladly paid for all future care for the convalescing injured man.
Theologian Rubem Alves distinguishes hope from faith by calling hope "hearing the melody of the future" and faith as "dancing" to that melody in the here and now (Rubem Alves, Tomorrow's Child [New York: Harper, 1972], 195).
We are living on the edge on the edge of ecological disasters; on the edge of moral disasters; on the edge of social disasters; on the edge of biological disasters.... Yet while standing on the brink, the church still proclaims "the Christ in us, the hope of glory" (Col.1:27).
We are called not to do discipleship, to do ministry, to do Christianity. We are to be the neighbor to the other, to be the Good Samaritan, and in that being, become Christ present in the world today.
Alternative Sermon Idea
When I was growing up, track and field was never a big deal. It was either football or basketball, and for me it was basketball. But there was one track and field event that fascinated me, partly because two of the star football players and two of the star basketball players were in it. It was the four-by-100-meter relay. It was a team event that required the fastest sprinters. But what determined whether you won or lost the race was not how fast you could sprint. What spelled the difference between winning and losing was how well you worked as a team to pass the baton to one another.
Evangelism is not a "program" and people are not "projects." Evangelism and discipleship are the two component parts of the scissors-like, twin-bladed baton Jesus passed on to us as the Great Commission. "All evangelism, no discipleship" fits Jules Lechevalier's criticism of the Christian Socialist F. D. Maurice, whose system was "a very good one for bringing men in, but it is all door" (as quoted by Edward Norman in TLS: Times Literary Supplement, 9 December 1994, 30).
This baton is designed to cut the cords that bind people to life's starting gate, to false starts or to false races. Evangelism is passing the baton to others, a baton that frees them to run the race God is calling them to run.
Jesus gave this mission of baton-passing to his disciples; they in turn passed it on to the people and generations who followed them." (The inspiration for this image came from Philosophers Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of Eleven Leading Thinkers, ed. Kelly James Clark [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993], 105.)
Are we passing on the baton to others that they might run the race with us? Who are the Good Samaritans who passed the baton on to you?
Corrie ten Boom is quoted as saying: "When I enter the beautiful city and the saints all around me appear, I hope that someone will tell me, 'It was you who invited me here.' When you get to heaven, will people tell you, 'It was you who invited me here. It was you who passed me the baton'?"
Yet there is a significant difference between the image of the 400-meter relay race and the baton-passing image of Christian discipleship. Evangelism/Discipleship is not a sprint. Passing on the baton in Christian life is not something you do once and then collapse in exhaustion. Evangelism/Discipleship is not a task to do it is a way to be.
Go on here to identify the baton-passing, life-changing Samaritans in your life and in the lives of the members of your congregation. Who are the Good Samaritans in your midst?