Welcome to a special bonus episode of the Grace for All podcast. With this episode, we are stepping out of our normal format to bring you this 25-minute reflection by Herb Sadler. In it Herb takes us deeply into one of Jesus' most famous stories: the Parable of the Good Samaritan. We hope you enjoy this episode.

The Christian faith comes down to the great commandment. If you distill it, the essence of Christian living is to love God and love your neighbor with equal regard to yourself. The two most famous and best-loved stories Jesus told were the Prodigal Son—about our relationship with God—and the Good Samaritan—about our relationships with other people.

It is recorded in the 10th chapter of Luke's gospel, and it happened like this. There was a group of people and an expert in religious law asked Jesus a question: “Teacher, what do I need to do to have eternal life?”

And Jesus said, “Well, you know the scripture. What do you think?”

And the man replied by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.” And then he added Leviticus 19:18, “...and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

Jesus said, “That's it. You got it.”

Then the lawyer asked the second question. He said, “Well, who is my neighbor?”

Great question. In other words, who is it I am supposed to love? And in answer to that question, Jesus told a story.

A man was traveling on a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road. Now, let me stop here. I know this road. I have traveled this road a dozen times or more. Jerusalem sits at a high altitude, approximately 2,500 feet above sea level. Jericho, just 17 miles away, is adjacent to the Dead Sea, 1,300 feet below sea level—the lowest point on the surface of the Earth. In other words, in those 17 miles, you lose three-quarters of a mile of altitude. So, it's all downhill. And once you clear Jerusalem, there's nothing. There are rocks and hills and wadis and maybe the occasional ragged Bedouin tent with a couple of goats, and that's it. Nothing. And the ancient road ran parallel to the modern road, and people knew that it was a favorite hideout spot for bandits.

And so this happened. They stripped him, beat him, and left him half dead beside the road. Now, by chance, a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. A temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.

Then a Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine, bandaged them, put the man on his own donkey, and took him to an inn where he took care of him. The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins telling him, “Take care of the man. If the bill runs higher than this, the next time I'm here, I'll pay you.”

“Now, which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.

The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”

And Jesus said, “Yes, now you go and do the same.”

In this story, there are three groups of people, and every character in the story represents a group of folks, as we shall see.

The First Group: Those Who Are Hurt

There are all kinds of ways of being hurt. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, financially—all kinds of ways of being hurt. So, who fits in this category? Who are those who hurt? Well, sometimes it's you, and it's me. We've already heard it in the joys and concerns period. I have a son dying with cancer, and it hurts. Some of you have lost a spouse; the Bones have lost a child. You got somebody you love who has Alzheimer's. You're estranged from somebody you love. Every one of us sooner or later hurts. And even when we don't, the people around us do.

For many years, I had the same routine when I was working. I would get up about 5:30 in the morning. Barbara is an early riser, but not that early. So, I would slip away, drive down to the local Waffle House, go in, turn right, last booth, sit there. All the waitresses knew me. I knew all of them. I knew their stories. They would bring me a cup of coffee and a glass of water and leave me alone until I needed another cup of coffee. And I would read the newspaper, and I would meditate, and I would work on a sermon a little bit. I spent an hour or so, six days a week, early morning.

On Saturdays, though, I would come in later, 9:00 or 9:30. So this had to be on a Saturday. The parking lot was full, the restaurant was full, somebody was in my booth. So I just stood there at the high counter waiting for a stool, and the guy finished his breakfast, and I sat down. The person who came over to serve me was a haggard-looking young woman. I didn't know her. I knew all the waitresses. So, they had imported this girl, I guess, because it was so crowded. There was a soccer tournament or something like that.

So, she says, “What you want?”

I said, “Coffee. A cup of coffee.”

“What you want to eat?”

I said, “I don't care for anything to eat. Just a cup of coffee.”

Well, I could see it in her brain. There goes my tip. What she didn't know was I always tipped as though I had eaten.

So, she's gone a little bit and then she comes back and she slides a glass of their coffee over and it sloshes a little bit and she turns to go and I say, “Excuse me, but may I have a glass of water?”

Well, this really steams her. And I'm steamed by now. I mean, there's this adversarial thing going on and we can both feel it. So, she brings a water and she puts it down and I don't know what motivated me to say what I did. It certainly was not what I felt, but what I said was, “Today's a tough day, isn't it?”

Tears sprang to her eyes. She paused. Then she said, “My husband left me last night. I shouldn't care. He's mean. He's mean to me. He's mean to the kids. I should just say good riddance. It's just... I don't know what I'm going to do about them kids.”

In that moment, the surly waitress became a hurting neighbor. Sometimes we can see it, sometimes we can't see it. And there are groups who, because they are groups of people, by the very fact that they belong to that group, they hurt. They're ostracized or they're demonized or they're put down just because of their religion or their race or their ethnicity or their gender. Who hurts? Everybody from time to time.

The Second Group: Those Who Hurt Others

But there's a second group in this story. There are those who hurt, and then there are those who hurt others. The robbers, of course—they hid, they waited, they pounced, they beat, they robbed, they fled. They did this on purpose. Now, we're part of the people who hurt, but we do not want to be part of this group. This is not us. This is not how we're made. This is not what we believe. We're not a part of that group.

Those who cause hurt—other than avarice, what motivates them to do something like this? I think I know. You see, if you "horrible-ize" someone or some group, then you have dehumanized them. And if you can dehumanize them, then they're less than you. And if they're less than you, then you can do things you wouldn't do otherwise.

Barbara and I, like a lot of you, have things on our refrigerator door. We use that door not just to keep cold stuff inside, but for messages and reminders. We have pictures of our grandkids. We have a couple of little plaques with sayings on them. And we have a list. It's not a grocery list. It's not a to-do list. It's a list of words.

Several years ago, then-Pastor Katherine Nance preached a sermon where she talked about words that are disappearing from use in the English language in the second half of the 20th century, and accelerating in the first quarter of the 21st century. These words—every single one of them, there are about 30 of them on this list—these words are all virtues. Now, what's troubling most of all is not that the words themselves are disappearing, but the less we use these words, the less we employ the virtues they reference. So the virtues themselves are less frequently practiced.

Here are some of them: Kindness. Sincerity. Mercy. Humility. Grace. Courtesy. Modesty. Fidelity. Gentleness. Purity. Wisdom.

And these words in usage and practice are being replaced by their opposites. And as the public discourse becomes more coarse, it becomes easier to "horrible-ize" those we disagree with and thus dehumanize them. And thus we can be cruder and crueler than we otherwise would. It scares me to think that I could become one who intentionally causes hurt.

But it's not just the robbers who are responsible for hurt. Jesus says a priest came down that road and the priest saw the hurt, distanced himself from it, and moved on. And a temple assistant, a Levite—this is like a lay leader, somebody very active in the church—saw the hurt, inspected it, and moved on. It is very significant that Jesus uses religious figures for people who did not inflict the hurt but allowed it.

This is Black History Month. And to help me get inside the black experience in ways I can't experience, among the things I've done is to reread Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." In early April of 1963, King brought his nonviolent protest movement to Birmingham, considered at the time the most segregated city in America. He sought to meet with community leaders to talk about reforms; he didn't get anywhere with that. So he began scheduled protests, sit-ins, that kind of thing. And on the 12th of April, he was arrested.

That same day, there appeared in the Birmingham News an editorial. It was actually a letter to King and those who worked with him from eight clergymen. It was entitled "A Call to Unity," but it was in fact a call to step down, citing things like "outside agitators," and saying "you're creating unrest in the community," and "it's not the right time"—those kinds of things.

Now who were these eight clergymen who sent this message to King? They were the two Methodist bishops in Alabama. Now, let me pause to say I knew these guys. Nolan Harmon, the bishop of North Alabama, would later teach me the Book of Discipline at Emory University. Paul Harden, the bishop of South Alabama and Northwest Florida, was my bishop when I was a college student, a junior, and serving six little country churches in South Alabama. Paul Harden had previously been the pastor of First Methodist Church in downtown Birmingham. Two Methodist bishops. The two Episcopal bishops in Alabama. That's four. The Catholic bishop of Alabama. The moderator of the Synod of Alabama of the Presbyterian Church. That's six. The pastor of the First Baptist Church of Birmingham. And finally, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Birmingham. Without question, the eight most prominent Christian leaders in the state of Alabama.

Somebody smuggled the newspaper into King's cell and he took a pen and began to write in the margins. He got other scraps of paper and he continued to write and finally he had a notepad, and he penned what is a religious and devotional classic: "Letter from Birmingham Jail." It does a variety of things, including explaining the use of nonviolence as a proactive tool in erasing injustice. But for our purposes this morning, I want to read just a little bit of it that has to do with passing by on the other side.

"I must confess that over the last few years I've been gravely disappointed with the white moderate who paternalistically feels that he can set the timeline for another man's freedom. Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will."

And then he talks about white churches:

"I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities."

I think it was Burke who said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing." So there are those who hurt, and sometimes it's us. And there are those who cause hurt, and sometimes it has been us.

The Third Group: Those Who Help

But there's the third group. There are those who help. Jesus said a Samaritan came down the road. Don't fail to recognize: He makes an immigrant the hero. Samaria was the adjacent region, and the Jews looked down on the Samaritans, considered them inferior. They were inferior religiously. They were inferior socially. They were inferior racially. They were inferior politically.

The Samaritan of all the characters had the least to gain and the most to lose. And he was not well-equipped to solve the problem. He wasn't a doctor, but he did what he could to bind the man's wounds. He had no ambulance, but he put the man on his donkey, took him to the closest thing to a hospital, paid for his care, stayed as long as he could, and said to the innkeeper, “I'll come back and do more to help.”

So Jesus finishes his story and he says to the lawyer, “Now, who was neighbor to the man who was beaten?”

The lawyer can't even bring himself to use the word Samaritan, he says, “The one who showed him mercy.”

And Jesus said, “Yeah, that's what you ought to go and do.”

And here's what I want you to notice about this. When Jesus asks, "Who is my neighbor?" and he answers the question with a story, he is saying: Who is it you and I are to love?

The answer doesn't have anything to do with what we feel, with who we care about, with who we have an affinity with, who our friends are. Neighbors are who hurts and that we can help.

So we have to ask the question: With all the hurt out there, we can't solve all of that. So where do we help?

I can only tell you—and the story doesn't address this—I can only tell you my answer to that. For me, where my interests and my abilities intersect a specific human need... there is where I find, in the words of Jesus, is the cross to take up. So let me say that again. My gifts, my passion, specific human need. There I find the place of service. And that's true collectively. That's true for us as a class. What we have to bring and what we care about and what need exists that matches our abilities and our heart. That's our mission. That's our ministry. That's where we help. That's who we love.

Prayer:

I want to close with a prayer and then I want to invite us into some conversation. And the prayer is from the 13th century. It is from my hero, Francis of Assisi. Let's pray.

Lord, make me and us an instrument of your peace.Where there is hatred, let us sow love.Where there is injury, pardon.Where there is doubt, faith.Where there is despair, hope.Where there is darkness, light.Where there is sadness, joy.Divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console,to be understood as to understand,to be loved as to love.For it is in giving that we receive,it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

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First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.