Proper 10 :: Amos
7: 7–17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1: 1–14; Luke 10: 25–37
A homily by Fr.
Gene Tucker, given at St. John’s
Church in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, July 10, 2016.
“A WILLINGNESS TO GET DIRTY”
(Homily text: Luke 10: 25 - 37)
When I was a boy, we lived near the
edge of town on a graveled street. On either side of the street there was a
ditch, which, when it rained, became quite muddy. Much to my mother’s distress,
when the mud was particularly think and gooey, I’d go in and ask, “Mom, can I
go out and take my shoes off and wade in the mud?” (I can still hear her sigh,
ringing in my ears, whenever I asked that question!)
Of course, part of the deal was to get
my younger sisters to also join in on the muddy celebration.
The mud felt so good on our feet, as
we’d squish our toes into it and allow it to ooze around us.
For some reason, young children love to
get dirty. As we grow older, however, I’ve noticed that we tend to try to avoid
getting too dirty, and if we manage to do so, we usually look forward to
getting cleaned up afterward.
This morning’s Gospel text, the very
familiar Parable of the Good Samaritan, is all about getting dirty. Or – more
properly – it is about who’s trying to stay clean and who’s willing to get
dirty.
We should unpack the matter of “clean”
and “unclean” a bit.
Lying close under the surface of much
of the interchanges in the Gospels between the Lord and His adversaries (the
priests, the Pharisees and the Scribes, usually) is the matter of ritual
cleanliness, or the lack thereof. The issue of who is able to enter into God’s
presence in the Temple in Jerusalem is a matter, above all, of who is “clean”
and who is not.
As we turn our attention to the
parable, we see this matter being played out as the Lord unfolds the story: He
says that both the priest and the Levite (these are two different orders of the
priesthood) pass by the wounded man as he lies there along the roadside. The
reason they pass by the man, and – just to emphasize the point – the Lord says
that each of them passed by “on the other side of the road”, was to ensure that
there was no possibility that they would come into contact with the man’s
blood. Contact with blood, according to the Law of Moses, would render them
ritually unclean. As priests, neither of them could function in their line of
work after such contact without an elaborate cleansing ritual.
But then, the Lord tells us that the
unfortunate man is happened upon by a Samaritan.
Let’s pause here for a moment and
consider the circumstances of the Samaritan.
First of all, the Samaritan is an
outsider, for he is traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho along the road
that drops about 4,000 feet on the journey. (Even today, one can see the cuts
in the hillsides that the Romans created when the road was created. Such cuts
in the hills provided the perfect place from which to attack travelers. So
seeing this sight brings the reality of the Lord’s story into our own day.)
The Samaritan is in Jewish territory.
We know very well what the Jews thought of Samaritans: They considered them to
be unclean people, for they were the mixed race product of the resettlement of
the Israelites some 700 years before. Not only that, they didn’t worship God in
the proper place, and they didn’t have a reliable and accurate form of the
Scriptures. So for all these reasons, according to the Jews, they were unclean,
permanently unclean.
Compared to the priest and the Levite,
the Samaritan has little to lose by picking the wounded man up and sitting him
on his own donkey. The Samaritan – by Jewish reckoning – is unclean already.
So, if we follow this line of thinking, we might come to the conclusion that a
little more uncleanliness wouldn’t matter.
Now, the Lord introduces another facet
of the situation: The Samaritan brings
the man to an inn, and makes an agreement with the innkeeper to care for the
man until the Samaritan returns. Quite often, I think this aspect of the
situation gets little consideration, for the Lord is showing us that an act of
kindness often requires others to support an initial act of compassion by
playing a part in restoring those who are suffering to wholeness. It would have
been easy for the innkeeper to tell the Samaritan, “Hey, you’re a Samaritan,
and we don’t serve people like you.” But the Samaritan’s act brings the
innkeeper into the situation to be a part of the solution.
Luke’s Gospel account is a treasure trove
of information and material that no other Gospel writer provides for us. And as
he considered what accounts of Jesus’ ministry to include in his writing, quite
consistently, Luke chooses to tell about Jesus’ teachings and actions that
treat the poor, the sick and the outcast with compassion. The Parable of the
Good Samaritan is but one example of Jesus’ compassion for the down-and-out.
Let’s return to the matter of who’s
“clean” and who’s “unclean” for a moment.
In the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry,
people’s situation in life was often thought to be the product of clean or
unclean living. For example, if a person was blind, the assumption often was
that either that person or that person’s parents were guilty of some sin (see
John’s Gospel account, chapter nine, for an example of this thinking). If a
person was rich, it was assumed that they were wealthy because they were living
a holy, upright life. The converse was also true in people’s thinking back
then. We could apply that same sort of thinking that parceled people out
according to who was “in” and who was “out, who was “clean” and who was
“unclean”.
But quite consistently, Jesus breaks
through the barriers of clean and unclean. He is willing to touch the unclean
leper, He is willing to hang around with tax collectors and other sinners, He
is willing to heal the sick. According to the thinking of the Jewish people in
that day, He became unclean in the process of doing all these things.
But Jesus comes to do the work of the
Kingdom of God, and oftentimes, doing that work requires getting dirty. For
God’s work is to clean the unclean, to redeem those who are thought to be
unredeemable.
Our call as followers of Jesus is to be
willing to step outside the doors of this church and to be willing to roll up our
sleeves and to be willing to dig into the dirt of the world. Only by direct and
active contact with the uncleanliness of the world can the world be redeemed
and cleansed, being made holy and acceptable to God in the process.
That is our call. For the dirtiness of
the world cannot withstand the cleansing action of God, made known in Christ
Jesus. As coworkers with Christ, we become God’s agents, working with one
another as the innkeeper did with the Samaritan, working with God to bear the
Good News that no one is outside of God’s power to love, to cleanse, and to
redeem.
AMEN.
