Ready to Be Stopped--October 9, 2024

Ready to Be Stopped--October 9, 2024

But wanting to justify himself, [the lawyer] asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, pass by on the other side...." [Luke 10:29-32]

I've got to confess to you, every time I read the opening scenes of this parable of Jesus, it makes me squirm.  

Here are two Official Leaders of Respectable Religion, walking past a man laying in pain at the side of the road, presumably because they are convinced they have Very Important Respectable Religious Things to do.  And here am I, a pastor of a congregation twenty centuries after Jesus' story was first told, a modern-day Official Leader of Respectable Religion. And I tell myself that my days are full of Very Important Respectable Religious Things to do, too. And I wonder, haunted by this story, if my own self-important religiosity keeps me from even noticing people whom Jesus sees deeply and with love.  And how would I recognize when it is happening?

See, here's the thing about this story: I don't think the first two passersby were trying to be villains. They see themselves as paragons of piety and models of holiness. The robbers?  Sure.  They knew they were being wicked criminals when they robbed the man going from Jerusalem to Jericho.  But the priest and the Levite see themselves as good... as virtuous... as righteous.  And I have a hunch that they have convinced themselves that their job as "Official Leaders of Respectable Religion" is more important than stopping to help someone left at the side of the road for dead.  (After all, it's probably the half-dead man's fault that he's there, right? He shouldn't have been in such a dangerous part of town, right?)

The two Respectable Religious Professionals convinced themselves that it's pious and holy to walk past, since touching a dead body (and they just don't know about the person lying at the roadside, do they?) would make them ceremonially unclean.  They need to be able to do their job offering sacrifices, leading prayers, and doing "religious" things, after all. They can't do those things "unclean," right?  They can't be delayed from offering prayers and publicly practicing their faith... right?  They are convinced, in other words, that their worship of God requires them to forgo showing love to a stranger.  And I can't help but conclude they are convinced that they are doing God's will by making their choice to walk on by, in the name of Respectable Religion.

And of course, that is exactly the mistake that Jesus is warning us not to make.  Jesus isn't worried that we'll think it's OK to become highway bandits and rob people; he's worried we'll think that it is worshipful to overlook a fellow human being in the name of our Respectable Religion.  He's warning us not to think that love of God can be pitted against love of neighbors to let us off the hook for caring for people whose journeys intersect with our own.  And he's reminding us, as we already saw in our devotions last week, that from Jesus' perspective, you cannot love God without also loving your neighbor--the one necessitates the other.

This is the first point (of several, to be sure) at which Jesus' parable cuts us to the quick:  he shows us that it is quite possible for someone to THINK they are being good and righteous and holy and moral by attending to the proper forms of religion and still to completely miss what really mattered to God in the first place. The priest and the Levite don't think they are the bad examples in the story--they either think (incorrectly) they are doing the right thing and choosing what God wants them to choose, or they aren't even thinking about their choice at all.  Maybe they are on religious Autopilot mode, or ceremonial cruise-control, where they don't even pay attention to the people or circumstances around them while they just conduct their business of looking pious.  But at any rate, they cannot even see that they are the heels of the story, because they are not able to see that God's priority would be to stop and help the one laying in the margins of the road.

So here's the question that keeps me up at night. What will keep me--or keep all of us--from being so absorbed with the routine practice of Respectable Religion that we cannot see the people Love is pleading for us to see... to stop for... and to serve?  What will prevent our hearts from becoming so hardened, or keep our minds from becoming so self-confidently certain (and wrong) that public performances of piety are more important than quietly helping someone when nobody else will notice? What will keep our hearts tender enough to love, and what will keep our minds humble enough not to think that our oh-so-busy-lives cannot be stopped for another person whose need intersects with our day?

It's good news that this isn't where the story ends, and that the failure of the Respectable Religious Professionals to love God OR their neighbor rightly isn't the last word.  There is more to be said, but for now, maybe the place we need to land is looking at ourselves enough to ask where we have been the priest and the Levite. Maybe we need to ask, too, where we have assumed that our religiosity or our public piety impressed God, while we may have missed the actual people we were sent to care for.  And maybe we need to let all of that reframe our understanding of who God really is, and what God really cares about. Maybe then we'll be ready to be stopped in our routines for the sake of love.

Lord Jesus, help us to see where we have misunderstood your priorities, and help us to be turned back toward the people you send across our path.