Cross Over to the Hurting Side
“Cross Over to the Hurting Side” E-100 # 59 Luke 10:25-37
by Clancy Nixon
January 17, 2010
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, Virginia
The title of my message today is “Cross Over to the Hurting Side.” Do it for love of God. Do it for love of neighbor. But as the lawyer asked, who is your neighbor?
My fellow Virginians, I have a confession to make. This weekend, I’m celebrating, but not the holidays of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson, whom I do admire in some ways. I’m celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, for he is a personal hero of mine. As a young Baptist preacher, an unknown King led the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. He could have led a quiet and distinguished life as a preacher in a large black church, but Martin crossed over. He crossed over the line from pulpit ministry into political action to help elderly Rosa Parks, who was arrested for not giving up her seat on a public bus to a white person. The Montgomery bus ordinance required any black person who already had a seat to yield his seat and move to the back if a white person came on the bus. If four blacks sat in a row, and one extra white came on, then all four had to stand in the back, because blacks were not allowed to sit on the same row as whites. Martin got involved in politics for love of neighbor. In the midst of bombings, beatings, and lynchings at the hands of angry whites, King’s leadership put him in great personal danger. King went on to lead the fractious Civil Rights movement for 13 years to embrace non-violent resistance as the best way to change unjust laws based on racial discrimination.
When I was a lad in Pittsburgh, discrimination and bigotry were the order of the day. Before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, black people were legally treated like second class citizens. We’ve come a long way in racial reconciliation in my lifetime, but we still have a long way to go. Like all men save One, Martin had his personal sins and policy errors. But Martin pointed our nation to Jesus’ injunction to love your neighbor as yourself, and that includes both individual acts of kindness and social change. All through the scriptures, God expresses his care for the gentile, the poor, the oppressed, the widow and orphan. Both kindness and social action come with personal costs. For Martin, it led to martyrdom by an assassin’s bullet. Martin said, “The cross we bear - precedes the crown we wear.”
Cross Over to the Hurting Side. That’s what Jesus’ fictional example did, whom we know as “The Good Samaritan” from Luke 10. He crossed over to the hurting side to help a bleeding, naked, half-dead victim of robbery. Good Sam’s doctrine was a bubble off plumb from orthodoxy, but there was nothing wrong with his heart of compassion and mercy. When he saw a Jewish man in dire need, Good Sam stopped his business, and made the sacrifice needed to help him. He dressed his wounds, put the man on his animal, took him to an inn, and set him up him there, leaving hundreds of dollars for his care and recovery.
Let’s consider the Samaritans from a Jewish perspective. Like Jews, the Samaritans accepted the Torah, the 5 books of Moses, as authoritative. But the similarities ended there. Samaritans did not accept the books of the Jewish prophets. Samaritans persisted in offering sacrifices on Mt. Gezarim in Samaria, instead of at the Jewish Temple on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, which later Scripture prescribed as the only proper place for sacrifices. Not only that, but Samaritans were considered “half-breeds” by Jews, for they were believed to have intermarried with Gentiles. Racial enmity between Jew and Samaritan was the standard operating procedure of the day, and Jesus challenged that standard in the name of love of neighbor. As John’s gospel tells us in chapter 5, Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. In that story, Jesus initiated a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well in Samaria to show God’s love for her. He did that even though it was considered improper for a Jewish man to speak to an adulteress, a foreigner, or a woman in public. Jesus did not shy away from debating the truth about the Samaritans doctrinal errors; but he broke social taboos even to speak to her. Jesus crossed over racial boundaries for love of neighbor, and love of God.
Jesus chose two functionaries of the Jerusalem Temple, a priest and a Levite, as the bad guys who ignore the dying man. Priests offer prescribed animal sacrifices, and Levites help with administrative duties around the Temple. As they walk along the treacherous road, both of them refuse to cross over to help the dying man. They may have felt compassion for him, we don’t know; all we know is that they didn’t help. Instead, first the priest, then the Levite, verses 31 and 32, “passed by on the other side.” This implies that they went out of their way to avoid him. Understand that if they were on their way to the Temple to serve there, touching a dead man – he might have been dead - would have made them ritually unclean for seven days, according to the Law of Moses at Numbers 19:11. In that case, the priest might lose his turn to serve at the Temple, and he didn’t want to risk that. Jesus chooses these three particular characters in his tale about neighborliness to emphasize that religious rituals are not as important as the fellow who lay bleeding at the side of the road. Jesus chose a Samaritan as “the good guy” in this story to teach that you and I are to stop and mercifully help people in need, even though their doctrine or race is different from ours, and even though we are busy on our own business, even holy business.
God cares about racial reconciliation. When Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the Temple surrounding the holy of holies was torn in two, and a gentile confesses that Jesus is the son of God. (Mark 15:38-9) This symbolizes the end of the exclusive access to God for Jews only. When Jesus drove the money changers out of the outer courts of the Temple with a whip, he said, quoting Isaiah, “My house is to be called a house of prayer for all nations.” (Mark 11:17) That word translated “nations” in Greek is ethne – meaning all ethnic groups! The money changers and dove and sheep sellers were in the only place in the Temple where non-Jews were permitted to worship – the outer courts. Peter and Paul had massive paradigm shifts in their ministries over God’s plan for all races of people to worship him together in equality. Beloved, Heaven is going to be multi-racial! Can you imagine what would our church look like if more of Heaven came to earth among us? Cross over to wear the moccasins of those who have been hurt, so we will look more like heaven.
Here at Church of the Holy Spirit, our mission statement is a paraphrase of the Greatest Two Commandments and the Great Commission. Let’s say our mission statement together from memory: We love Jesus. We love our neighbors. We make disciples who make disciples. We plant churches that plant churches. Jesus tells us here in Luke 10 that our greatest need is for loving relationship with God. Then, our second greatest need is to love and be loved by people. It’s easier to love God than to love people. I have a theory - once or twice, every one of you have had a thought that this whole relationship with God thing would be so much easier to deal with if you just didn’t have to deal with the people!
With the lawyer in the story, we want Jesus to tell us, “How does this work in practice?” Who is my neighbor? It’s is easy to agree in principle to the law of love. If we did a poll this morning and asked you if everyone, including you, should live the law of love, we’d all say yes. The difficulty comes because the law of love seems to suggest that every person has a claim on your time and your money. The problem is that none of us has an infinite supply of time or money, except for God. Let’s bring it right to today: Do the suffering millions of homeless people in earthquake-devastated Haiti have a claim on you and me? We know that the race of the people ought not to matter. The tension in this story of the Good Samaritan is in some ways our tension – the tension of time commitments. With the lawyer, we agree with the law of love, but we know there must be a law of limits as well. We’re already stretched. Our world is so much busier today than it was just a few years ago.
Look at the story. Notice that the Samaritan did not decide to help the victim indefinitely. He had business to take care of, so he did what he could, got the man to safety, and he moved on with his business. Tom Pokorni is going to Haiti for an indefinite time because he has been called by God to that work. That is a wonderful thing, but that is not what God calls most of us to do. I believe that God calls each of us to take the time it takes to love our neighbor, not heedless of limits, but recognizing God’s power to do through us more than we can ask or imagine. So yes, I believe that those millions in Haiti do have a claim on you and me, as does every human being, black and white, born and unborn.
All of us are called to be a neighbor to the persons God places right in front of you. That may mean taking a meal to a sick neighbor. It may mean inviting a co-worker to lunch and asking them about themselves. It might mean giving a ride to church for someone who needs it. Right now we have several needs for rides, so if you can help with that, please contact John Nuzum, our deacon.
When God came in the flesh as Jesus of Nazareth, he crossed over the barrier between Godhead and manhood. He crossed over to wear our moccasins, and experienced temptation, hunger and death. Jesus came over to our hurting side of the street and bound up our wounds, covered our shame, and paid our sin debt when we were unable. He’s here today to cross over into your life as well. All you need do is to trust in him to save you, and receive his love that flows from his work on the cross for you.
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke a famous of his dream for America here in Washington in 1963. He said, “ I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: - 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
When I was a boy, Martin King taught me to dream about justice; about peace and brotherhood in America. I share that dream. I believe that his dream is rooted in a deeper, truer dream: and that is God’s dream for all mankind. We’ve taken up God’s dream here. One day, the men and women of Church of the Holy Spirit will rise up and live out the true meaning of our creed – to love God, and to love each other. I dream that one day, our church will focus first on the law of love, and not the law of limits.
