You may be familiar with the TED talks, which have become very popular in recent years. TED talks are 18-minute speeches based on what are considered to be ideas worth spreading. In 2008 Karen Armstrong, who in my opinion is one of the great religion scholars in the world today, won the TED prize. Upon winning the prize Armstrong chose to focus her work on compassion. She began what is known as The Charter for Compassion, which is a brief, 312-word pledge that asks people to place compassion at the center of their lives. It recognizes compassion as the central component in faith and among several other areas of commitment it asks that religious people work to bring an end to the use of religion as an excuse for violence. I think it is a very worthy cause, and our world is certainly much in need of compassion.
This morning, our message comes from one of the most well-known parables of Jesus, the parable of the Good Samaritan. As we focus on the Good Samaritan this morning, we are talking about compassion, with a message titled The Call to Compassion. The text is Luke 10:25-37, and I invite you to follow along as I read that passage.
25 And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?”
27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
28 And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”
29 But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 Jesus replied and said, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead.
31 And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
32 Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33 But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion,
34 and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him.
35 On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’
36 Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”
37 And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”
This parable is very much in keeping with I Corinthians 13, the passage we completed two weeks ago. I Corinthians 13 focused upon love, and in particular focused upon the idea of making love visible. Making love visible is a good definition of compassion. We might even say that compassion is the hands and the feet of love. We can find many other Scriptural references to the ways in which compassion makes love visible. One such example comes from the book of James, which tells us in 2:14-18 14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. 18 But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.
For my points this morning, I am going to consider each of the characters in this parable, beginning with –
1. The lawyer.
I should say at the outset that when Luke tells us that a lawyer stood up to test Jesus(verse 25), he is not speaking of a lawyer as we know attorneys. The lawyer to which Luke referred was an expert in the religious law – the law of Moses – not civic law. Lawyers of this type were often called upon or looked to in order to receive an interpretation of the law, or to give an opinion about the application of religious law. As an expert in the religious law, this lawyer put himself in the position of a guardian of orthodoxy, as Luke tells us that he was asking his question not to gain information, but to test Jesus(verse 25). This was certainly not the only time that Jesus was confronted by the officially or self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy. We read of other times in the gospels when Jesus was confronted by those who sought to discredit him because they disapproved of the content of his teaching or because they were jealous of the large crowds that followed him. After asking his question of Jesus –what must I do to inherit eternal life?– Jesus immediately turned the question around on the lawyer by confronting him with a question, “what is written in the Law,” he replied. “How do you read it?” (verse 26).
I love the response of Jesus. I love that he turns the question around on the lawyer. Jesus certainly knew the lawyer was not asking an informational question. Jesus knew the lawyer had appointed himself as a guardian of orthodoxy and was seeking to discredit him. Don’t you just love it when someone appoints themselves the guardians of orthodoxy? Don’t you just love it when someone decides they are the person to judge the righteousness, or lack thereof, of others? I am asked a lot of questions, many of which are informational, but I am sometimes asked questions to see if I will give the “approved” answer of those who have anointed themselves as the guardians and protectors of orthodoxy (I am not asked those kinds of questions by anyone in our church, I should add). I do not mind answering questions, but when I sense that someone is asking me a question to see if I will give the “right” answer I tend to be less willing to give an answer, not because I am afraid to say what I think, but because I do not want to play the game of theological “gotcha” with those guardians of orthodoxy.
When Jesus turns the lawyer’s question around on him, he does so in a very interesting way. The lawyer, who sought to discredit Jesus, instead finds himself discredited, because he is forced to defend himself as to why he would not love his neighbor. Jesus had the lawyer quote the great commandment – love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all you mind, and love your neighbor as yourself(verse 27), which then put him on the defensive, as he obviously was not interested in loving his neighbor, as he asked and who is my neighbor? (verse 29). It was a typical legal maneuver, trying to bog Jesus down with a discussion over the legal definition of terms. Reading the exchange, it is impossible to miss the haughtiness in the lawyer’s words – oh yeah? And just who is my neighbor? The question is dripping with pride and arrogance and lays bare the lawyer’s contempt for others rather than what should have been his compassion. He did, after all, just a few moments before quote the great commandment, and here he was, now seeking to shrink the circle of concern. The lawyer was, obviously, seeking to evade his responsibility to be compassionate towards others. There were certain people he did not want anything to do with, so he tried to hide behind an evasive legal tactic. The lawyer knew that when Jesus used the word neighborhe was not simply talking about the people that live next door or down the street; he was talking about everyone, including those that the lawyer did not want anything to do with.
In my series of messages on I Corinthians 13 I spoke about the desire of some to focus more on right belief than upon the importance of actions. Right belief, without right action, is not very impressive, and only makes for a cold, uncaring religion. This lawyer was an example of both. He focused more on right belief than upon right actions and in doing so, he represented an expression of religion that was cold and uncaring. There remains quite a bit of this type of religion today. We have all witnessed those who can line up with all the “correct” theology and yet are cold and uncaring. They can line up perfectly with every point of every creed, and yet they demonstrate not an iota of compassion towards others. People in our society have seen enough of this expression of religion, and they have turned their backs on it. The spirit of this lawyer is alive and well today, sadly, and it is well past time for this expression of religion to go away.
2. The priest and the Levite.
I’m going to put the priest and Levite together because they both represent the religious leadership and religious establishment.
I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, so I will consider the possibility that there are reasons why the priest and the Levite did not stop to help the man. Perhaps they were worried that those who robbed the man were still around and were lying in wait for another victim, so they decided it was best to keep moving. Or, perhaps the man only appeared to be beaten and was in league with others who would rob and beat anyone who stopped. Those are possibilities, but I don’t believe they fit the context. The reality is, the priest and the Levite were representatives of the religious establishment, and as such, they actually could claim religious reasons to avoid demonstrating compassion. To touch someone who was bleeding, they could claim, would make them unclean. Better to remain ritually clean, in their minds, than to be compassionate towards someone who was in such great need of help. It is a sad commentary upon any religious point of view that allows one to fulfill a religious command while at the same time avoid the call to compassion. This is an expression of legalism. Legalism is the fulfilling of a religious law or command while at the same time missing the spirit of the law or command. While it might have been technically true that the priest and Levite were to remain ritually clean, to avoid one of the most fundamental callings of religion – compassion – in order to do so is a fundamental misunderstanding of religion.
The priest and Levite are ones who would be seen as representatives of God. This priest and the Levite, failing to demonstrate compassion, made poor representatives of God, however. How can one claim to represent God if one does not participate in one of the most foundational expressions of God, which is compassion? No, the priest and the Levite were not representatives of God. Instead, they were examples of what God was not – cold, uncaring, arrogant, and self-righteous. The priest and the Levite represent that element of religion that exudes self-righteousness, and sometimes insufferably so, and that self-righteousness refuses to see the call to compassion. By using the priest and Levite in his parable, Jesus was directly challenging the lack of compassion in much of the religion of his day, and calling upon his followers to do better.
3. The Samaritan.
The Samaritans were a group of people in the gospels who were despised, as there was a long history of enmity between the Jewish people and the Samaritans. Time doesn’t permit me to go through the history of that enmity, but trust me that it was so, which makes it interesting that Jesus picked a Samaritan as the hero of the parable. Jesus, on more than one occasion, went out of his way to lift up the Samaritans, much to the chagrin of many of his detractors. There was the Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter 4. In the story of the healing of ten lepers we find that the only one who returned to thank Jesus was a Samaritan (Luke 17:11-19). That Jesus would choose a Samaritan as the hero of his story would most certainly have been a shock to his listeners. It was his way, however, of reminding his audience that they were not the only ones who were good and righteous. In fact, it was Jesus’ way of reminding his audience – primarily the lawyer – that the compassion of God was not limited to certain groups of people and so their compassion should not have limits either.
The Samaritan does a rather amazing act, as he tends to the man’s wounds, lifts him up onto his animal, and takes him to an inn where he took further care of him. Then he does another remarkable act, as he pays the innkeeper and offers a promise to reimburse the innkeeper for any further expenses incurred in caring for the wounded man. Isn’t that remarkable? He establishes an open-ended account, with no idea of how much further expense he might incur, and he promises to pay whatever the costs of additional care might be. I can’t help but wonder if the innkeeper was familiar with the Samaritan and knew him to be a man of his word, a man who could be trusted to come back and pay the bill he had promised to pay. Either way, it was quite a commitment for the Samaritan to make.
Jesus said the Samaritan did this because he had compassion upon the wounded man. What’s interesting about that phrase is this – did you know, at the time of the writing of the gospels, that there was no word in the Greek language for compassion? I find that fascinating. The Greek language is very exact and very precise, sometimes using multiple versions of the same word in order to more exactly convey the meaning of a particular word. Love, for instance, had four different words in the Greek language, which helped to more precisely define the type of love that was being expressed. That the Greeks had no way of expressing linguistically the concept of compassion, then, I find to be rather amazing. The writers of the gospels actually had to make up a new word for what Jesus was seeking to communicate with the actions of the Samaritan. The word used by Luke for compassion means to suffer with. To suffer with means that we are called to step into the problems and difficulties of others. Now, right there, I think, presents a bit of a problem. We expend a lot of energy minimizing suffering in life, so why would we want to enter into the suffering of someone else, when we are doing all we can to avoid suffering? Why? Because it is the way of Jesus, to put it quite simply.
I think we often think of compassion as an emotion, such as empathy or sympathy. But compassion, in the Biblical sense, is something far deeper than empathy or sympathy. Compassion, the way Jesus defines it, is putting love into action by stepping directly into the lives of others and to work on their behalf to bring a positive change to those lives. This is what the Samaritan did for the man who was robbed, beaten, and left for dead along the road. When the Samaritan saw this injured man, he demonstrated compassion; that is, he did something about his condition. Compassion is love with hands and feet. Compassion is taking love out of the theoretical realm and putting it into the practical reality of everyday life. Compassion is not just saying words of concern, but putting those words into action. We often use the word moved. We might say I was moved by that song orI was moved by those words. Movedis a great word to use, because it is an action word. Moved is a verb. It means we are touched deeply by the condition of another person and we are literally movedinto action. Compassion begins in the heart, where we are movedby the plight of another, but it is not true compassion if it remains only in the heart. Compassion must movefrom the heart to the hands and feet, making a difference to another person.
It would be far easier, I suppose, to protect ourselves from the suffering in the world. It would be easier to guard our hearts, but entering into the suffering of others is what brings the hope of healing to our suffering world. Compassion takes the risk of being involved in the lives of others, of walking with them through their pain and struggles, and doing so means we make ourselves vulnerable to their pain. How much easier life would be to withdraw into the safety and seclusion of our own lives, but how much poorer is the world when we do so? It is complicated to help others. For the Samaritan, it cost him time and it cost him money. It can be very time consuming to help others and it can be very expensive.
It’s a hard world in which we live. It’s a tough world, and it seems to be getting tougher. It takes a lot just to take care of our families and ourselves. Who has the time, energy, and resources to worry about others? Sometimes we don’t believe we do, but that is the calling of Jesus. The compassion of Jesus would not leave people to their difficulties and troubles. This is what Jesus did for us – he became one of us to walk with us through our struggles, and our pain, and our difficulties.
4. The wounded man.
Here’s what I find really interesting about the wounded man – he is the only one in the story who is not identified by any class or group of which he is a part. He is not identified by race, ethnicity, nationality, religious role, religion or in any other manner. All the other characters have some kind of identification – a lawyer, a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. But the wounded man is simply identified by his need. He was beaten, robbed, and left half dead along the side of the road. This is where the man becomes the archetype for so many others, as the wounded man represents all the people throughout the world who await some expression of compassion. They are the nameless, faceless, mass of humanity, left alone in their suffering and with the hope that someone, anyone, will come along and offer assistance. They are the nameless and faceless who risk their lives to cross land and sea to find a better life. They are the nameless and faceless who starve and are ignored by the rest of the world. They are the nameless and faceless who die of diseases that require only very basic medicine, and yet they do not receive that medicine. They are the nameless and faceless who are the victims of warfare than destroys homes, livelihoods, and innocent lives.
Back in the early 80s, when I was in seminary, I had a class project in which to participate. The project was called The Plunge. The Plunge required us to spend a weekend living on the streets of downtown Louisville. Our professor dropped us off downtown, each of us with one dollar and one piece of identification, and we would be picked up on Sunday afternoon. My dollar did not last very long, as I quickly grew hungry and went to a White Castle to buy a meager dinner. After dinner, my thoughts turned to shelter for the night, which was a very big concern to me. The thought of sleeping out on the street, and the potential dangers of that situation, were of great concern. At that time, the Galt House was building a new section of the hotel and I made my way into the foundation of that building, where I found a pile of plywood. I can’t say it made the most comfortable bed, but that plywood at least gave me a dry place to sleep. The next morning, as I began to think about where I might find something to eat, I met two young men who were about my age (I was 25 at the time). They had been living on the streets for a while and knew where to find food, and they took me to a shelter where we had lunch, and another shelter later that day for dinner. I will say, all these years later, that those meals were some of the best I have ever eaten. God bless the people who served those meals, because when you are hungry and have no idea where to go to find a meal, being fed at a shelter is a true blessing. With the help of those two young men I managed to get through the weekend, and I was very grateful God sent them my way. On Sunday afternoon, as we gathered for a meal on the campus of the seminary, I felt a great deal of relief to be back to my life, even if it was a rather meager life as a student with very little money. Several days later, I was driving through downtown Louisville, on Main Street, and as I passed through an intersection I saw those two young men sitting on the sidewalk. I was a bit startled to see them sitting there, and I was also startled by how quickly I decided to keep driving. All these years later, I still see them in my mind, sitting there on that sidewalk, two young men who had compassion on me and helped me in my time of need, and yet I drove by them only days later, without stopping. The priest and the Levite are easy to criticize because they saw the man and his terrible condition and yet walked by. To walk on by seems very cold and callous on their part, but I drove by two people who had taken it upon themselves to help me.
Our world is not going to improve on its own. The suffering of people will not go away without action. Their suffering will not go away as long as we pass them by. It is compassion that will heal our world, compassion that requires us to stop what we are doing, to allow our lives to be interrupted, and to enter into the suffering of others. No, it is not easy to do so, and it will not be easy, but it is our calling nevertheless. The world is waiting.
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