9/14/52

Scripture: Luke 10: 22-37

(Text: see Luke 10: 30)

While we were reading, and listening to the reading, of the Bible this morning, we reviewed a familiar story --- that of “a certain man” (Jesus probably meant him to be a Jew - one of their own people) who, while traveling, was set upon by thieves, robbed, beaten and left half dead. Three people, a priest, a Levite, and a man from another tribe (a Samaritan) passed by. Only one of them did anything for the unfortunate victim. Sometimes it helps to make an ancient story come alive if we give it a modern setting. A young seminary student of this past year has told that story, by which Jesus taught a pointed lesson, in this kind of setting:

"A man lay beside the road. He had been driving from Chicago to Indianapolis early in the evening and had picked up two hitchhikers. On a lonely stretch of road, just after Route 52 separates from Route 41 and heads for Indianapolis, the hitchhikers stuck a gun into the driver’s side and made him stop the car. When he resisted, he was thoroughly beaten, robbed of personal possessions, and left on the side of the road while they sped away in his car.

"The first person to come by the scene, after this act of violence, was a minister. He was hurrying home to Indianapolis after a churchmen’s meeting in Chicago. His headlights caught the outline of the man; but his mind was so engrossed in a weighty problem of church policy which had been discussed during the day, that he automatically swung his car to the left and rolled past at a comfortable 65 per.

"Next, a prominent church layman came by. He saw the form of the man lying at the road’s edge, and started to slow down. Coming closer, he realized that anybody lying there like that was probably in bad shape, and would need a lot of time and care. Remembering that his own reason for going to Indianapolis that night was to get a good night’s sleep so that he would be fresh for an important business conference the next morning, he swung wide and went by.

"The third person to come by was a Negro truck driver. (Since we are a Caucasian group, it is just as well to make the truck driver a Negro for purposes of emphasis.) The truck driver stopped, hastily set a flare behind his truck, came to the victim, got out his first aid kit and did all he could to make him comfortable. Realizing that more would have to be done, he helped the fellow up; and half carrying him, got him into the truck, took him to a hospital in Lafayette, got in touch with the man’s folks in Indianapolis, reported the loss of the car and the victim’s whereabouts to the State police, and then went on his way.

"Who was neighbor to the man by the side of the road?"

Now let us dare to look at this story a little more, for it is not too easy to look at. It was started off in answer to a lawyer’s question: “How shall I inherit eternal life?” Notice that it is the lawyer, in the story, who answers his own question. For he had put the question to Jesus in order to test the Master, who had replied by asking him to quote the law. The answer was given by the quotation: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” It was not Jesus who originated these so-called 11th and 12 commandments. Jewish scholars at that time were apparently perfectly familiar with this summation, made out of a union of Deuteronomy 6: 5 and Leviticus 19: 18. It was part of their sacred literature-their law.

And so it was the lawyer who answered his own question by quoting the law. Pressing further, however, he asked again, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus did not answer that question, either. The story he used in meeting the inquiry was not a discussion about knowing who is to be considered one’s neighbor. But it is about being, one’s self, a neighbor. The Samaritan (or the truck driver of our adapted version) did not prove by his compassion that the beaten man was his neighbor, but rather demonstrated that he was the neighbor of the one assaulted. The parable still judges us of today as it did the lawyer and the other listeners of old. When have I had compassion for the man lying hurt in the road?

Jesus pushed the story far enough to make it hurt. It hurts us some, if we see it. He focused on the one of the three passers by, who might least be expected to stop, but who did stop, help, and do all possible to restore the victim to health. And Jesus commanded, and commands, his hearers to “go and do likewise.”

I don’t much like to consider how difficult it is to do likewise, when I know of a man in the road who is hurt. It is inconvenient. It is not without danger of being similarly victimized. You and I dislike to get involved.

I had a friend in seminary in Chicago who returned to the school late at night taking a dark way as a short cut. He was stopped, threatened, and stabbed in the abdomen by a thug. Weak from shock and bleeding rather profusely, he staggered to the lighted street and tried to hail passers by for help. Only a few passed and none stopped. Finally an autoist did stop and consented to drive him to the nearest hospital. But the motorist paused only long enough to let him get out of the car by the hospital door; then stepped on the gas to get away from there, evidently taking no chance of getting involved either with the gangsterism of that period in Chicago or with police investigation.

1) There is a serious urge in us who are comfortable, to look the other way in the face of the great neighborly needs we all-too-reluctantly face. How often we hold ourselves back from the compassion we would like to have for our neighbors, feeling that we just don’t have the time to maintain a sustained interest in them. Some of the jobs of neighborliness are sore trying in prospect of time, patience and over-taxing energies.

The experience of Americans in dealing with some of the Displaced Persons has been revealing. So many of the DPs have come to this country full of gratitude for their sponsors. And yet, having already been filled with the experience of being shoved from pillar to post, some of them experience a disillusion about American kindness. And sponsors likewise are disillusioned when, for instance, a DP “farmer” turns out to be a “farmer” only for purposes of entrance into the USA and proves to be inept and difficult for some time as the new adjustments are made. It takes a sustained kind of neighborliness on both sides to establish community.

2) We get into another difficulty when we ask ourselves what appears to be a perfectly reasonable question: “Is this person really worthy of my help?” Do we not go far in destroying compassion when we ask that question? And are we not in a sense intent on ego-building, rather than on mercy?

It tightens one’s vest buttons to be able to say: “I helped that fellow once, and look how far he has come since then!” We might watch ourselves and see, the next time we consider helping someone, if we do not ask, “What kind of fellow is he?” and “Does he really need my help?” Now there is some merit in asking those questions from an analytical standpoint. But it hardly comes under the heading of mercy. If God had been concerned with our worthiness, instead of our need for his love, would Christ ever have appeared on this earth?

3) A further factor that restrains us from compassionate love is the thing that caused the Indianapolis minister of our story to swerve around and keep going. It is so absorbing to weigh concerns for mankind in general that it becomes easier than to love a person in particular.

When one comes close to an individual for any length of time, he often experiences irritation over a thousand little things. So it is easier to give moderately to some “good causes” (and there are many!) than to love a few persons or a person who may have need of compassion.

And of course one of the difficulties in having compassion for the injured man in the road is that we never see him. We hear of migrant workers, and we are sometimes aware that the food we eat is partially harvested by those who move from place to place with the crops, often wretchedly housed, with inadequate medical attention; with little schooling for the children and practically no church or religious training. Many of them are robbed of a steady job by the presence and competition of scores of thousands of folk who come illegally over the border from the south.

But 20 leading Protestant denominations pay so little attention to the migrant that a budget of only $30,000 is provided for a ministry to American’s one million migrants. Will we church people come to the aid of people like that -- as a group or as persons?

There is no lack of need for neighborliness in the world today. The shortage is in the compassion of that common Samaritan which our Lord says should be you, and me.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 14, 1952.