“Showing Up”
A Sermon by Rev. Patrice Ficken
Luke 10:25-37
Sanbornton Congregational Church, UCC
July 15, 2007
(Please do not re-print or re-use without permission of the author)
When we moved here to
The man who was left by the side of the road, beaten and maimed by robbers certainly must have wondered who would show up to help him. We don’t know from Jesus’ telling whether he actually saw the holy men who passed him by. But we certainly can imagine his deep relief and gratitude for the Samaritan, for the one who showed up.
As I was imagining this sermon, I imagined the story Jesus describes captured by another inadvertent passer-by – one who happened to have a video capability on his digital camera and who posted the video on the internet. Not a far-fetched scenario in our age of technology. Politicians are becoming aware that eyes are everywhere, able to capture embarrassing moments. We used to call such moments in the insurance business – career limiting incidents.
As I continued my imagining, I thought of the three being interviewed on Larry King Live or the Newshour – the first two passers by being interrogated for their neglectful behavior. Now, because I’m not an actor I won’t try to take it further than that. But as I reflected on what such an interview would reveal, I thought the following profiles might come into view.
The first man, the Priest, the PreOccupied One….not a bad person, just a busy person with a lot on his mind, a lot of responsibilities, a lot of burdens he carried. To stop and help the man would have meant dropping the ball on something else. For him, maybe he felt between a rock and hard place.
The second man, the Levite, the temple assistant, the Overwhelmed One…worried maybe about being late for work, disappointing his superiors, losing his position, disappointing his family.
The third man, the Samaritan, the one who showed up, the Compassionate One….perhaps he himself had been helped in a time of need or difficulty. He remembered what it meant to him – there was no question about what he need to do.
Filling out the characters stories to helps us to understand that this is not simply a black and white story.
As Fred Craddock notes in his commentary, modern readers tend to too quickly pass judgment of the two who passed the man by and quickly identify ourselves with the Samaritan. By doing so we actually do the opposite of what Jesus intended in telling the story. In our quick judgment of the others we close our hearts rather than open them.
We remember that the reason this story was so powerful at the time was that the Samaritans were viewed as outcasts. They were considered religious heretics, ritually unclean. For the holy men to stop would have made them unclean by Jewish law. They would have been unable to carry out their religious duties.
Jesus in this simple story shatters all kinds of assumptions and beliefs for those first listeners. He shows how shallow these laws are in comparison to the need of the man left for dead by the side of the road. Jesus blasts open the limits of understanding that people had of who is considered holy, who is a child of God.
And this is such good news for us! For isn’t it true that in the hearing of this story we can identify with all the characters? Isn’t true that there are times when we’ve all passed by, averted our gaze from the suffering of our neighbor – whether the one in our community or the one across the globe? And isn’t it also true that we have been the one to stop, to show compassion as well as the one left by the side of the road?
The beauty of this story, as Mike Glen writes in his “Meditation on the Parable of the Good Samaritan while Lying on the side of the Road” is that when we ourselves become overwhelmed by life circumstance – we never know how God’s grace will show up. Maybe God’s grace will show up in the people we least expect – like Glen’s friend Lannie.
Glen describes in his piece for Weavings magazine how he met Lannie at the gym and how different they are from each other. Their interests, pursuits, life interests all quite different from one another.
As Glen writes,
“While Lannie would discount his having done anything of note, one important thing I have learned from him is to show up. He rarely offers profound words or insights; he just shows up and does what he can do. When my father had surgery, Lannie was one of the people showed up. When my son was recently hospitalized, Lannie called every day. When I hurt my back, Lannie came by. Whatever is going on, big or small, Lannie shows up and does what he can do. Nothing more, nothing less.” (p. 43)
Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of life is showing up. Maybe we could show-up for others more if we show-up for ourselves first. If instead of berating the parts of ourselves that cry out from the side of the road – we instead stopped and tended to them, we might have a greater capacity to show mercy to one another. Maybe if we showed more compassion to ourselves, we might have more compassion to share with one another.
Amen.
