CARE, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE

September 17, 1989, 8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Romans 13:8-10
Luke 10:25-37

“But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw
hin, he had compassion,..." —-Luke 16:33 (RSV)

There was something about his voice. It came through the intercom
urgently, painfully. When you work in a city church you hear, before very
long, every conceivable story created, rehearsed, told and retold in order
to separate you from a few dollars. I have wondered at times about the
general health of the people in Tennessee - because every day someone asks
us for money in order to buy a bus ticket to visit a mother who is
critically ill in Nashville. And so one devises some criteria to separate
the wheat from the chaff. One learns to inhale deeply and recognize the
distinct and telltale smell of alcohol.. And we devise ways to separate
real from fabricated human need. Meal ticket vouchers, food and clothing
instead of cash is one way te make sure one's charity is not ending up in
the cash register of a local liquor store. But even that can be tricky if
what you give is in any way marketable. And so, in the process of
protecting our charity, being responsible with our resources, assuring that
our caring is deserved, something sometimes gets lost.

This voice penetrated my own defense perimeters. I went to the door
and saw a young man in torn and dirty clothing; his face was bruised and
puffy, and he was shivering. It was not particularly cold. He did not ask
for money or food. All he wanted was a sweater so he could stop shivering.
So I did what we all know we should do under those circumstances: I
referred him to the Social Service Center around the corner and returned to
the U.S. Gpen on television. Just as I sat back down I recalled two
things: One, it was 5:30. The Social Service Center closes at 5:00 on
Saturday; and two, a wedding was about to begin in Blair Chapel. So I
hurried over to the church and sure enough, there he was — standing at the
Chestnut Street door, the one that is locked, pounding, trying to look
through the windows - and inside there were people in tuxedos and lovely
dresses, engaged in a very important and very happy religious ceremony.

The church staff was caught between the two events: The lovely
wedding about to begin and the man standing outside the door, with his face
all puffy and bruised, shivering, wanting a sweater. The resolution was
simple enough. The receptionist, who, by the way, deals with emergencies
like this all day long, and I went down to the Share Shop, found a sweater

and a wool] sport coat; I took il up to the man and gave it lo him. He was
overjoyed: put them both on, thanked me profusely and walked up Chestnut
Street. :

As I watched him make his way Uhnrough the smal] tables outside
Crickets, full of people enjoying a late afternuon drink, I recalled a Mark
Twain vignette. Twain is reported to have said once that he was not much
bothered by what he couldn't understand about the Bible. He was bothered a
Jol, he said, by what he understood quite clearly. J was bothered by the
fact that looming directly ahead, like a Biblical sword of Damocles, was
the text I had chosen months ago to use on Sunday, September 17. it wasn't
guiit, actually. It was a sense of irony. The church can't interrupt a
wedding every time a homeless person or an addict or a drunk Icoking for
some guiit-ridden, middie class bleeding heart to finance another bottle of
cheap wine pounds on the door. Nor can I - ner should you - play savior to
every person with a hand out on Michigan Avenue, not to mention the 10 or
50 thousand homeless people on the streets, ,depending on whose numbers you
believe, not to mention millions of hungry people in the country and world.
So I watched him walk away from the church — where the processional had now
begun - with his discarded wool sweater and sport coat, threading his way
through the cocktail crowd at Crickets, still shivering by the way, and I
found myself full of compassion, or at least appreciation for the priest in
the story Jesus told, who did not even stop to investigate the naked,
beaten body of a man lying beside the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The
sweater and coat, I concluded, was simply a socially acceptable way of
“passing by on the other side" of the road in St. Luke's memorable imagery.

But before we get to that, please remember why Jesus told the story
of the Good Samaritan in the first place. A lawyer caught up with him one
day and asked: “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Now
this whole incident is so brilliantly crafted that you can build a lot of
theological structure on every single sentence. You can, for instance,
point out the anomaly of the lawyer's question. He knew and Jesus knew and
we know that you can't do a thing to inherit... except be nice to your
wealthy relatives and try not to look too eager or attentive when they get
sick. Inheritance of property, money, or eternal life, it would seem, is
in someone else's hands. I'm not going to build this sermon on that
anomaly but I would like for us to recall that it is the question the story
of the Good Samaritan answers - sort of.

In any event, if you can get past the incongruity, it's a good
question. We are inclined to use the term “eternal life" to describe what
we hope will happen to us after we die. Jesus and the Jewish people he was
addressing used the phrase to describe a new quality of life in the
present. “Eternal life” indicated a new dimension of life now. So
translate what the lawyer asked: not “how can I get to heaven when I die?"
but “what can I do to be fully alive now?"

As a matter of fact the lawyer knew the answer. He was probably
wearing it in the phylactery dangling from his wrist. For generations the
Rabbis had condensed the entire religious law into the famous summary "You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind...and your
neighbor as yourself." "Do it" said Jesus..."and you will live." Don't
sit around discussing it, analyzing it, emoting over it, evaluating and

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pricritizing it: just de it. Love God and your neighbor...and you will be
living.

What would the New Testament do without lawyers? This une doesn't
Jet us down, but in a kind of reflective attempt to keep the inquiry going
tries to extend or confuse the matter by asking: "Who is my neighbor?
I*i] love him if I could only know which one he is." The lawyer knew and
Jesus knew that there was serious discussion about this matter. At its best
and most inclusive Judaism, in the tradition of Amos, Hosea, Jonah, defined
neighbor as “fellow human being." At its narrowest and mast exclusive,
Judaism defined neighbor as kin, friend, fellow citizen. Charity begins at
home, after all. One of the anthropological functions of religion is to
help us define who we are by defining who we are not. Tribalism is the
name for it: Moslem and Jew - in the Middle East, Catholic and Protestant
in Northern Ireland. "Take care of our own: Jet them tend to theirs.”
Religion helps tell us who "they" are.

So Jesus told a story. A man is walking down the 17 mile road from
Jerusalem to Jericho. He is mugged; robbed, beaten, stripped of all his
clothes, and left to die, naked and alone, by the side of the road. Along
comes a priest. He has probably been on duty in Jerusalem. It's a
business trip. He's on his way home to do more official duties. He's
riding a donkey. Priests don't walk. He sees the naked, beaten body and
steers the donkey to the other side of the road. Why did he do that? Ever
know a human being who wasn't at least curious? Why not at least ride by
and peer down and see? The reason is that if that naked body was a
gentile, and without clothes on, the priest couldn't really tell what
nationality or religion that man was: worse yet, if, that body was dead and
the priest came within four cubits (six feet) of it, the priest would be
unclean and could not function as priest until he turned around, went back
to Jerusalem, to sign up for the week-long ritual of purification, bought a
red heifer, slaughtered it and burnt it to ashes. His wife - quips Kenneth
Bailey, a Mid-Eastern scholar who explains the incredibly complex dynamics
of this story - would have been glad he had the good sense not to stop and
get involved. It's nothing personal with him. He is actually caught in an
untenable conflict between his personal conscience and whatever feeling he
has about the man in the ditch, and the religious system he serves which
-has other duties for him to perform. The wedding consultant can't stop
the ceremony, so the clergy can run outside and deal with the man pounding
on the church door. ”

A Levite comes along next; he's a minor religious official. He does
what the priest did. Then comes the Samaritan. Only someone who has lived
in a culture divided by a couple of centuries of racial and religious
hatred can comprehend the contempt Jews (the ones hearing this story) felt
toward Samaritans, says Bailey. Never, never, he says, would a Palestinian
tell a story in which an Israeli is hero. Never would an Israeli tell a
story in which a member of the PLO comes out a moral hero, superior in fact
to an Orthodox Rabbi. So it is a very dramatic and disturbing story
because the Samaritan does everything the Priest and Levite do not do. He
stops, kneels down, tends to the wounds, puts the limp body on his donkey,
hauls it all the way down to Jericho, registers the man in an inn, pays the
bill and promises to come back later and settle his account.

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“Whe is neighbor?" This Samaritan obviously. The one who showed

werey. The one whe, in Jesus’ words “had compassion." Now we have the
ful] answer to the original question: "What shal] I do to be fully alive?"
Have compassion: Be compassionate: Care.

Compassion is the key. It is a very strong word by the way. It does
nol mean pity or sentimentality. It has a lot to do with passion. It's
linguistic roots in both Greek and Hebrew have to do with "innards."
Compassion is literally a "put feeling" - a visceral response. Jesus was
teaching that to feel deeply and passionately, specifically to feel with a
human being in need, is very close to what it means to be alive.
Conversely, he was teaching that not ta feel deeply, not to have compassion
is to be not quite alive - dead.

There is a specific word here. The tilt of urban life is in the
other direction. There is so very much to care about we find ourselves
building barriers, defense mechanisms, to keep the suffering of others out.
Compassion survives in small communities where everyone knows everyone
else: where neighbors are friends and friends are neighbors. When one
suffers down the street, all the neighbors rally round and bring noodle
casseroles and apple pies. But in the city, it is possible to live in an
apartment for a very long time without even meeting the people who live on
either side.

The very size of urban problems is intimidating. Did you happen to
see Joan Beck's editorial on homelessness in the Chicago Tribune last
Saturday? It is not a simple matter. She cited a new study done in
Baltimore and just published in the Journal of the American Medical Society
which painfully described the complicated cluster of problems and how they
are related in a way that exacerbates every one of then.

91% of the homeless men interviewed and 80% of the women had either
an alcohol or drug addiction, or a major mental illness, or both.

The men suffered an average of 8.3 health disorders, the women 9.2.
70% had dental problems: 50% had cardiovascular difficulties.

A third are anemic. Almost ail suffer malnutrition and become
further ill] without nourishing food, medical care, decent sanitation, or
access to clean, warm and safe shelter.

Almost ali are lonely, cut off from meaningful contact except with
other sick, homeless people.

And so it is not simple. Solutions come in clusters too and they are
all expensive, tedious and demanding. "Tax dollars are short" said the
editorial. “But the cost of not trying, of continuing to avert our eyes
from the homeless or to hand out an inadequate dollar or two is even
greater - and that is a hardened heart." [Chicago Tribune, 9/11/89]

Hunger, illiteracy, drug traffic, unemployment are complex problems
Which not only exist but are worsening in our city. They demand the very
best thinking and the most efficient organizations we can produce. And

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while we are trying te do that - lo create systems to deal wilh systemic

suffering - someone has to keep reminding us that hunger is measured not
only by average nutritionai levels but by a litile child who hasn't eaten
for two days: and thal unemploymenl is not just a percentape statistic but

a forty year old whose worjd just crumbled because his job was abolished:
and poverty is a particular mother whose apartment rent and ulility bill
absorb 90% uf her welfare check: and illiteracy is not just the inability
to read Shakespeare but also the directions on food packages and
instruction on job applications.

Someone has to hold on for dear life to the capacity for compassion.
Someone must risk the cynicism of those for whom "“do-gooder" is a
criticism. Someone must remind the world that to be unfeeling, emotionally
anesthetized from the suffering of others, while safe, is synonymous with
being spiritually dead.

Joe Sittier was always quoting passages of Joseph Conrad to his
theology students. He thought Conrad was a novelist who knew this teaching
of Jesus thoroughly. In Typhoon, a ship captain, on the China Sea, is
sitting in his cabin watching the barometer fall and the sea become violent
as his crew below is being tossed about by the cruel storm. Conrad said and

Sittler wanted us to know:

“Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as some
men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid
grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see
all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, of terror. There are on sea
and land such men thus fortunate - or thus disdained by destiny or by
the sea." [The Ecology of Faith, p. 53]

Jesus said if you cannot feel the suffering of others you are not
fully alive. And Dr. Bernie Siegel, in his popular book Love, Medicine and
Miracles, writes about a terribly ill patient: “Death is not the worst
thing. Life without love is far worse." [p. 207]

It is, I think, the Christian secret. Eternal life is given to us as
we open ourselves to others: as we take upon ourselves the pain and
suffering of others: as we love and serve and help and strive to bind up
wounds. It is our secret and it is a radically different word from the way
the world proposes that we should live. Philosopher Sam Keen describes our
culture's definition of the full and good life as "a new car, a color
TV,... a perimeter of ICBMs surrounding all ‘hostile nations'; a large
insurance policy, knowing your underarm deodorant will keep you spring-time
fresh throughout the day: being well-liked, having a good job." [The
Passionate Life, p. 102]

The Christian secret is that real life, life with the quality of
eternity to it - full, joyful, satisfyingly human life - happens when it is
given away in compassionate love for somebody else.

The world needs that secret. The world needs people who know that
secret, people willing to be out of step at times, people willing to love
and care when it is not terribly appropriate or convenient or socially
acceptable. The world needs a church courageous enough to tell the truth:

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to say, for instance, that we have made the problem of homelessness much
worse by culling huge holes in the safety net in order to give aurselves
tax breaks, and we're about to do it again. There are more peaple an the
street because there are fewer places for them to live. And there are
fewer places because we decided to stop using government funds (our funds)
to build them. The world needs an institution willing to keep saying that.
The Good Samaritan, someone pointed out, would have been less than faithful
if the incident beside the road happened every day. At some point he
should harness his compassion to his intelligence and show up at City
Council te inquire about conditions on the road. But, in the meantime, the
city also needs churches willing to bind up wounds — willing to answer the
door in the middle of the wedding, willing to advocate the cause of anyone
lying beside the road.

The conclusion: be compassionate: Care, for Christ's Sake: be alive
by being vulnerable to the suffering of others. That is how sermons on this
parable end. That is what our Lord said to that lawyer. And insofar as we
identify with him, that is the word of Jesus Christ to us and for us.

But something happened to me this time through this very familiar
material. In the course of a 25 year ministry one does preach on this text
more than once. And this time something new occurred. This time through I
found that I was identifying not only with the two men who passed by on the
other side and with the Samaritan who had compassion, this time I found
myself thinking about the victim. He may be the main character. It may be
that the people Jesus was talking to would have first identified with him.

it may be that we are to hear two words here: a word of admonition
to be alive by caring. But also a word of God's compassion to us ~— for us,
wherever we are.

Said Karl Barth: “The Good Samaritan is not far from the lawyer. He
stands before him incarnate..."

Jesus is the Good Samaritan. He is the one who comes onto the read
of life. He is the one who will not pass by when we are alone. When life
falls in, when we are bruised, battered, wounded: when it is clear that we
are alone: there is one who will not and does not pass by. There is one
who promises to kneel by the roadside to bind up our wounds, to love us
back to life.

So it is more than an admonition. It is Gospel.

"Al] Joving' someone said is ultimately 'thanksgiving' for the
fact that we ourselves have been loved." [Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting
Father, p. 168]

Jesus Christ calls you, and me to love the neighbor in need, the one
nobody else ever notices, not as duty, but in the gratitude of love. And
in the promise that when we do that, when we care for Christ's sake, in
loving that man - that woman - that child - we will be given the gift of
life.

Amen.

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