‘Don’t know why, but I never tire of the story of the Good Samaritan. It always makes me remember a Vacation Bible School one of the first summers I was ordained. We told the story of the Good Samaritan to the children and then asked them to dramatize it. I remember the man who was attacked by robbers was played by a very small little boy. And I remember not the faces, but the attitudes, of all the others…The robbers, the Priest, the Levite, and the Good Samaritan.
Now according to the children, the robbers were sort of mean thrill-seekers… ‘Just roughing up a guy they didn’t even know for the heck of it and to get his money in the process. It was basically an impersonal thing, just something they did maybe because they were bored. The Priest and Levite were a different thing: One actively sneered at the injured man, as if to justify his indifference, and the other just pretended not to see him at all.
The Samaritan’s attitude was a bit of a surprise to me. He was played by a tall, lanky teenager, and he did what he did quite matter-of-factly. There was no great emotion or gushing, like, “You poor, wretched thing.” He simply applied the appropriate first aid, and then gently picked up the victim and placed him over his own shoulder (there was no pack animal in their play!) and carried him off to the inn. As if to say, “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” As if to say, “Here is another human being. Regardless of our ethnic and social differences, this brother human being needs help, and I gladly take it on myself to help him. It’s the least I can do, and it’s certainly what I’d want someone else to do for me in the same circumstances.” Well, the children got all this across without a word! Their body language and acting said it all. (My hunch is the way we act and our body language often “says it all” about us as well.)
But as I think about this parable Jesus told, I really wonder what message he intended. Why was the “good guy” the despised Samaritan? If the Vacation Bible School children were right, and Jesus simply wanted us to understand how important it is to do acts of mercy, it wouldn’t matter to the story who the people were. We wouldn’t have needed the detail that they were a Priest, a Levite and a Samaritan. And if Jesus was wanting to poke at the hypocrisy of some ordained types, the third man should have been a Jewish lay person, and that would have made the point much better. If Jesus was wanting to illustrate that we are to love our enemies, then it seems the victim, not the mercy-giver, would have been the Samaritan. But, the mercy-giver was a Samaritan, so perhaps the parable’s propose is to shake us out of being too smug about our own particular religion or ethnic group.
However, today my mind goes back to the little boy who played the man who was beaten, robbed, and left half dead. He had no choice in the thing (about being hurt or being helped). He was basically unconscious and no doubt in pain when Grace came to him, and in the most unlikely way…Through the mercy of a Samaritan, a person considered detestable by Jews.
I wonder if that’s really the main point of this parable: That we have to “be in the ditch”, a low/desperate place, or at least, we have to be like a little child in a helpless place…a place where we don’t really expect that anyone can/will/would help us, before we can receive God’s full grace and mercy.
Think about times in your lives when you may have been “in a ditch” or weak and helpless. And think about how help came to you. What happened that made you better? Who helped make you better? My hunch is it came in a most unexpected way and through the mercies of people you might never have imagined. That’s how God’s grace works. We don’t earn it or deserve it. Sometimes we don’t even ask for it. Grace just IS!
Now today we will all be witnesses to such Grace as we baptize Aidan into the Body of Christ. Aidan’s certainly not “in the ditch”, but he is small and helpless. He’s going to be baptized here not because he’s earned it or deserves it, but because his parents and godparents and all of us are here, as mercy givers, are asking God to bestow upon Aidan this priceless gift of Abundant Life. This Child of God will be marked as Christ’s own forever, as were his siblings Gabriel and Olivia before him.
And today there will be yet another Grace as the twins receive Holy Communion for the first time. Not because they’ve earned it or really deserve it but because they desire it, Olivia and Gabriel will be nourished in an unexpected form—a tiny piece of bread, which will become for them, and for all of us, the Body of Christ, the bread of heaven!
As I think back on that Vacation Bible School drama of so long ago, I have a new understanding of why the children chose a tiny boy to be the victim. I thought it was just so the teenaged-Samaritan could carry him more easily. But today I think those children understood something I did not: It’s not the big and strong who are able to receive God’s Mercy. It’s the ones “in a ditch”, the helpless, the desperate, and the little ones who are truly receptive to the healing gift and treasure or God’s Amazing Grace.
Amen.
1 comment:
Beautiful Francie!
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