July 15, 2007 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 25; Luke 10:25-37
The story of the Good Samaritan is one of the most central to our
understanding of the way of Christ. The way of Christ can be summed up in the
two great commandments, to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength
and to love our neighbor as our self. The parable of the Good Samaritan is Jesus’
answer to the question, “Who is my neighbor?”
In the story, two righteous Jews avoid the bleeding, half-dead Jew in the
ditch. Then the Samaritan comes along. Jews treated Samaritans with hostility
and oppression. The Samaritan could have been thankful to see his enemy
bleeding and dying, or at least have been cold-hearted about it. But instead he has
compassion. He does not let social or religious rules or hatreds stop him. He
treats the Jew the way he would a friend.
The Samaritan makes his enemy his neighbor through lovingkindness. A
common modern interpretation of this passage is to say it means that anyone who
has a need is our neighbor, no matter who they are or how different from us. If we
see any need we do not think, “Is that a friend or an enemy?” We think simply,
here is a need. This person is therefore my neighbor. I must respond.
Augustine, the fifth century bishop and saint, read the parable as an
allegory. The man in the ditch represents all humans. The Samaritan is Jesus,
whom humans treat with suspicion and hostility. The inn the Samaritan takes the
man to so that he can rest safely and heal is the church.
One of the beauties of Augustine’s interpretation is that it expands the
definition of neighbor beyond all who have need. We may not see a person’s
need. Does that mean they are not our neighbor?
Whom would Jesus say is our neighbor? The answer is everyone. Jesus
broke down barriers and defied prejudices again and again. Women, children,
Samaritans, Romans, tax collectors, lepers, prostitutes, Pharisees, the poor and the
rich—Jesus loved them all and extended his neighborliness to them all.
Jesus extended his love to everyone and he calls us to do the same. Some
people are fine with that teaching until they start thinking about their own personal
enemy. My cousin left her church in Ohio after a sermon like this because she
could not see how she could possible love someone in her life who was unlovable.
But the love Jesus is calling us to have is not a feeling of affection, it is a feeling
of compassion, of human connection, followed by acts of lovingkindness. You
can still oppose someone and work against them and yet love them in this sense.
The reason to love everyone in every situation is not because we feel like it or they
have earned it or they are on our side, but because, it is what Jesus would do. It is
what God does. It is what we have to do to be in the sacred way.
With time, effort and God’s help, we can get to that loving perspective with
most people in our lives. But there is one despicable person who is hardest of all
to love. The psychologist Carl Jung put it this way:
Is there ever a doubt in my mind that it is virtuous to give alms to
the beggar, to forgive him who offends me, yes, even to love my enemy
in the name of Christ? No, not once does such a doubt cross my
mind, certain as I am that what I have done unto the least of my
brethren I have done unto Christ. But what if I should discover
that the least of all brethren, the poorest of all beggars, the most
insolent of all offenders, yes, even the very enemy himself—that
these live within me; that I myself stand in need of the alms of my
own kindness, that I am to myself the enemy who is to be
loved—what then?
Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Jung’s observations of human nature led him to answer that question
by saying that, “Then the whole Christian truth is turned upside down” and we
condemn and rage against ourselves. “We refuse to receive the least among the
lowly in ourselves with open arms.”
The 25th Psalm that we read together pleads with God, “Do not remember
the sins on my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love
remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O God!” We ask God to interpret our
lives with love, and yet when we confront our own worst selves, the sins of our
youth or our daily faults, the lusts of our flesh or the mean-spirited thoughts, what
do we do? Most of us respond with hostility, with coldness turned against
ourselves. We resist, we defend, we self-accuse, we self-hate, or we try to escape
and hide from the truth of our own repulsiveness. We do whatever we can to
oppress or repress our inner enemy.
Last week I preached about forgiveness and quoted a grief minister who
says, “Pain that is not transformed will be transmitted.” I also referred to
Dostoevsky who wrote, “One may stand perplexed before some thoughts,
especially seeing (people’s) sin, asking ourselves, ‘Shall I take if by force, or by
humble love?’ Always resolve to take it by humble love. If you so resolve once
and for all, you will be able to overcome the whole world. A loving humility is a
terrible power, the most powerful of all, nothing compares with it.” (From The
Brothers Karamozov)
If we do not transform our inner enemies, we will transmit the pain they
cause us, we will act out in some way, even if we are strong in our cold-hearted
resistance against them. We will be cold-hearted toward others, or our resistance
will slip and we will do the very thing we do not want to do. But if we treat our
inner enemies with a warm, humble love, we may in time heal them and be free of
the pain and conflict of them.
This is important for several reasons. It is important because it can relieve
us of inner pain and free us to be the people God created us to be. It can free us to
have the peace and joy God wants for us. It can free us to use the gifts God has
given us to serve the world. All this is important, but perhaps even more
important is that until we learn to transform our inner enemies into neighbors that
we treat with love, violence will be breeding within us. In order for God’s will to
be done on earth and the reign of peace finally to be established, nonviolence
needs to be cultivated in us each. The way to a nonviolent world is to love our
neighbor as our self, but first we have to love our self as our neighbor. “Have
peace in yourself and thousands will find salvation around you.”
How can we do that? By treating our worst thoughts and impulses and
memories of our past wrongs the way the Samaritan treated his enemy. Instead of
defending or accusing, instead of cold resistance or denial or distraction when we
see the repulsive part of our self, we need to attend to it with pity, with
compassion, with lovingkindness.
That does not mean we do what it wants, or that we agree or conspire with
it in any way. It means simply that we feel its pain, and we surround it with loving
attention, and then, when it is healed, at least enough to leave us alone, we let it
go.
I told the children that this summer I will be studying a form of Christian
meditation or contemplation called Centering Prayer. The people who have
revived this ancient Christian prayer form have developed another one called
Welcoming Prayer. It does a Good Samaritan kind of inner work. In Welcoming
Prayer we begin praying as soon as we realize that we are in pain, physical or
emotional. In our prayer we begin by feeling the physical sensations that our
injury, sickness or strong emotion is causing. We feel the knot in our stomach or
tension in our jaw, the heat of our loins or fever of our brow—whatever physical
expression the less-than-ideal condition is causing us at the moment. Then when
we have felt it attentively in every minute sensation, we say, “Welcome” to it.
We open the arms of our hospitality to it. We take it to the inn within us and pay
for its care.
Please note; we do not welcome the injustice or disease; we welcome only
our inner response to it. We may need to work against what is causing us pain, but
we welcome the pain as part of our inner neighborhood. We welcome it because
Jesus welcomed the sick and the sinner so that he could change them with his love,
and so he could work on their side from within to bring them healing and peace.
This is almost the whole of welcoming prayer, feeling our pain regardless
of its cause, and welcoming it. After we have done that a while we may find it
possible to let it go, which is the last step. It may come back another time. That
does not matter. What matters is the whenever it comes, we will treat it as Christ
would. This is what matters in the Good Samaritan story—not what came before
or what will happen after, but in this present moment how will we respond to the
person before us, or the inner enemy within us?
Jesus said, “Do not judge.” We may come to learn that we do not need to
judge ourselves for what we call negative thoughts or feelings or our evil
impulses, nor do we have to judge others. Judging is not our job, and more
importantly, it is not helpful. It gets in the way. There is only one law by which
we are called to interpret the world. We are to interpret it by love. That may seem
weak, far weaker than punishments or hard, cold, violent resistance. But as
Dostoevsky said and Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. proved, humble
love is the most powerful force in the universe, far more powerful and effective at
changing the world that violence or hate.
Humble love can overcome any enemy in time. We may die still having
the same enemies we struggled with all our lives, but our love will not die. What
the Good Samaritan did for that man will ripple out forever with its positive
effects. It was three hundred years later that Christ’s love overcame the Roman
Empire. His love is still working powerfully today. He is asking us to join him in
it. “Go and do likewise,” is how he ends the story. “Go and do likewise.”
So consider: who within you or around you is the enemy you need to love
and care for in your life right now to make your enemy your neighbor? What
situation could you change by interpreting it by love and treating it with
compassion?
Let us pray in silence….
Sermon 07/15/2007