I can’t say I feel all that fit to preach today, given how I failed this gospel just a few days ago.

It was a week or so ago, at the end of long day; I was walking home when a young man approached me for help. His car had broken down on the corner of Harvest Hill and Inwood. His flashers were on, and he appeared quite stressed. He wanted me to help him; he didn’t understand how to interpret the warning lights on his dashboard, he said, so he wanted me to come look at it, help him figure it out. But I didn’t help him. I was tired, and I wasn’t about to stick my head into some stranger’s car. I told him I’d call roadside assistance (which isn’t as easy to do as it should be, by the way). I walked away—all dressed up like a priest. The man threw up his hands; I remember the look on his face. He turned around and went back to his car. I don’t know what happened to him, how he ever got help.

But that was the right move, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just that I was tired, that seemed dangerous. I’m not bending over into some stranger’s car on the side of the road—not with a story like that, not in this day and age. I mean, I’ve got a family! Maybe I should have sent for Fr. Michael; there are practical uses to celibacy, you know. He doesn’t have any dependents. He’s more expendable. Maybe he would’ve more readily risked it. But I didn’t even do that. I just brushed the guy off and went home. It was a very sensible thing to do, yet I’ve been bothered by it ever since.

I’m sure, though, that many of you will talk to me later, help me feel better about it—tell me I did the right thing. Honestly, I’d likely behave in just the same way if it happened again. I wouldn’t advise any of you either to go sticking your heads into strange cars—not these days. I agree with you. It’s smart to be smart about these things, to be careful and cautious. Because, of course, bad things happen all the time. Ours is a very dangerous world, so you’ve got to have common sense. Yet, still, I’m bothered by it. As I said, preaching feels heavier, harder today because of it—all dressed up like a priest.

Because, you see, it’s that good common sense Jesus seems to question, exactly all those excuses we so often use which make so much sense—especially in this parable of the good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite—the thing is—their reasons for ignoring the man (“half-dead,” Luke tells us) were very good reasons too. The priest was likely going home, likely tired, just as I was. But that wasn’t the main reason he “passed by” the poor man. A priest, by law, couldn’t make himself ritually unclean by touching a corpse, except maybe for his closest relatives, surely not a Samaritan.[1] Now we shouldn’t ridicule the priest’s obedience to the law here just because our attitudes to the law are relatively lax. To the original hearers of this teaching, the priest wouldn’t have been viewed so immediately a corrupt religious hypocrite. That is, this priest was a faithful Jew, and he was acting in obedience to sacred law. For most people hearing this in Jesus’s day, they would’ve thought the priest acted perfectly reasonably, perfectly religiously. Out of respect for God’s law, most would’ve thought the priest did exactly the sensible thing.

But, no, Jesus said. Those good excuses are precisely the problem, he seems to say. Which is what’s so good about the good Samaritan, that he doesn’t seem to have any good excuses preventing him from doing good. Also, we should think about the danger this Samaritan puts himself in and how Jesus still praises him. It could’ve been a setup, a trap. If it were me, that’s what I would’ve been thinking. Fear that something would happen to me I’m sure would get the better of me. But Jesus doesn’t seem to acknowledge such fear. He simply says, “Go and do likewise.”[2] It’s almost as if fearing for one’s bodily safety isn’t something Jesus is all that concerned about, as if earthly life isn’t as important as doing the right thing. Crazy talk, really. Yet, that’s one way to read this story, one moral to take from it—that fear doesn’t excuse us from charity. No matter how real or reasonable that fear is.

Now, honestly, I don’t know what to tell you. You see, I doubt I’ve learned the lesson. I am still ruled by fear; I’m still afraid—all dressed up like a priest. And again, honestly, I hope you practice good judgment too. I wouldn’t want any of my loved ones risking their lives, quixotically doing all sorts of foolish beautiful things. But maybe that’s just me. Maybe I need to let Jesus more fully into my life. “Go and do likewise,” Jesus said. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Jesus is right. I don’t know. But maybe that’s the point—I don’t know, Jesus does. It’s just I know that grace must break into the world somehow—radical grace, risky grace, foolish grace. And maybe that’s our task as Christians—to risk it and to be foolish like this again, to quit all our talking and to let go of all our good reasons and go and do likewise. To be Christians once again. Amen.

[1] Leviticus 21:1-2

[2] Luke 10:37

© 2022 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield