"We have been praying for food. Mama said that God would provide."

A young businessman in Atlanta, Jack Stephens, got a call from the director of a Boy's Club asking him to pick up a boy and his mother and take them to the hospital. The boy had leukemia, and had only a few days to live. The child was lying with his head in his mother's lap. Jack glanced down at the youngster, who asked, "Are you God?"

Jack hesitated, then answered, "No, son. I am not God. Why do you ask?"

"Mother said God would come soon and take me away." His words nearly broke Jack's heart.

Six days later the boy died. A radical change took place in Jack Stephens' life. The picture of that young boy lying with his head in his mother's lap, the eyes of that helpless child, and the question, "Are you God?" burned themselves into his heart. Soon Jack was director of the Joseph B. Whitehead Boys Club in Atlanta.

Jeremy Taylor, a 17th century bishop, said, "Speak kindly to everyone you meet, for everyone has a problem."

Archibald Rutledge told of visiting a church where the singing was contagious, the prayers were splendid, the minister was impressive.

As the congregation was leaving, there was a woman - unkempt and crying - sitting by the fence.

Only one of the worshippers went to her. One of the ladies of the church knelt beside the desperate woman to comfort her. Rutledge concluded, "Only one person in that congregation really knew how to worship God."

The Good Samaritan story, our Gospel for today, is one of the most famous of all the Master's parables.

Let's look at the story again: An expert in the law asked Jesus. "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"You know the Bible, What does the Bible say?" Jesus replied.

The lawyer answered: "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, Love your neighbor as yourself."

"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and inherit eternal life."

"But who is the neighbor I must love?" So Jesus told a story, sort of a make-believe story: A man was robbed and beaten, then left in a ditch to die. A priest passed by on the other side of the road. A Levite also passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, a foreigner, took pity on the man and bandaged his wounds.

Jesus used what teachers call the Socratic method of teaching. He asked a question, "What do you think? How do you understand the Word of God?" "Which of the three men do you think was the man's neighbor?"

The logical answer was, the foreigner who stopped to help, of course. That is the same answer you would have given. So Jesus' logical response was, "Go and live like that."

Who is my neighbor? My neighbor is a family who needs food, a boy who needs to go to the hospital, an old lady with a problem. My neighbor was the non-practicing Jewish man dying in Harper Hospital. Once a prominent Detroit attorney, he was then alone. He needed someone to visit him and pray for him, and then to conduct his funeral. He was my neighbor.

My neighbor was Lois, daughter of a wealthy Detroit businessman. She left home and became a prostitute, a drug addict, an inner-city dropout. Lying in Southwest Detroit General Hospital, dying, no one but a sister and her one-time pimp ever visited her. So she was my neighbor, who needed me to take some flowers to her, and pray for her.

My neighbor is Daniel, a graduate of Georgetown University, now a drop-out living in the inner city. He is completely confused. He talks constantly, never makes any sense. Just disconnected banter about famous people and events.

He doesn't talk to anybody in particular, just stands or walks down the street babbling. People get tired of his incessant chatter, rudely tell him to "shut up" or "hush." So he needs me to treat him kindly and with respect. He is my neighbor.

Who is my neighbor?

Common decency, simple courtesy says it all. As Christians, we must treat everyone, fellow community-dwellers or strangers, with respect and dignity. Well, as long, that is, as they are citizens of our country, or at least as long as our country approves of their country! Right? Now if they are Chinese we have to look at them a little differently! Or if they are sinners (by our standards) we need to think before we treat their wounds. Jesus wouldn't recommend compassion for Cubans, would he? Or would he?

Notice the "fine print" in this story: "But a Samaritan . . ." A Samaritan! One of those hated citizens of a nation on our "hit list" - Russia! China! Iraq, Cuba! Nicaragua!

Traveling the winding road from Jerusalem to Jericho, between the bare limestone cliffs pitted with caves, was always dangerous. Like walking down Cass Avenue or Second Street! Bedouin robbers were often lying in wait.

The lesson is explicit. To be a response-able steward is to treat people - all people . . . especially the unlovable, unworthy, unresponsive - like I would want to be treated if I should lie in a ditch along a highway.

Mother Teresa found a man lying in the gutter - in Calcutta, India. She took him to the hospital, bathed him and put him in a clean bed. He said, "I've lived on the streets like an animal, but I'm going to die like an angel."

Mother Teresa lived by the words of another saint of God, Teresa of Avila: "Christ has no body on earth now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, and yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now."

The deeper, more significant level of this parable is in terms of motivation. Many people want to be Good Samaritans. If they see a fellow human being in need, and they have the resources with which to help, they will respond, if it does not endanger their own lives, or cost too much.

But those of us who know the grace of Jesus Christ know that we could very well be lying in a ditch some day, broken and bleeding. If you were ever to lie there, you know it would be the ultimate Good Samaritan, God, who ministers to your needs. We must to do for others what God has done for us.

Response-ability, if you please. The motivation is one of love for God and others, not of duty nor responsibility.

People can be ornery - even hostile. If you are motivated by duty, you will soon grow weary. But if you are motivated by love, your love will be manifest in well-doing.

Is my neighbor ever a stranger?

Shalom Aleichem tells a delightful story about an old man standing on a bus. A young man asked, "What time is it?" The old man refused to reply. After the youth got off the bus, the old man's friend asked him, "Why were you so discourteous to that young man?"

The old man answered, "If I had given him the time of day, next he would want to know where I'm going. Then we might talk about our common interests. If we did that, he might invite himself to my house for dinner. If he did, he would meet my lovely daughter. If he met her, they might fall in love. I don't want my daughter marrying someone who can't afford a watch!"

We read about African and Bosnian refugees and Ethiopians starving, and about blacks gunned down in the streets of Detroit. People who are different from us American white suburbanites.

We ask "What is my responsibility to those people? There is so much need everywhere I turn. What can I do? What should I do? How can I help?"

Dear saints, the answer to that question, to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" will differ for each of us.

I am not here to tell you where or what your ministry is, but to remind you that you do in fact have neighbors. You do have neighbors whose needs only you can adequately fill.

Jesus could not have chosen a more shocking example of a neighbor than a Samaritan. Samaritans were hated by the Jews as pagan and alien. The Samaritans had been on Israel's "out" list since about 722 B.C. when Samaria fell to Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. It is believed Shalmaneser brought to Israel foreign colonists from Cutha, Babylon, Hamath and other places. He demoted the leaders of the Jewish community and transplanted them with "foreigners."

Then there were two communities living side by side; native Israelites and foreign colonists. They intermarried and their offspring were known as Samaritans, half-breeds. The "pure" Jews looked down their noses at this "impure" group.

It might help us better understand the decision of the priest and the Levite, to pass by without helping, if we are aware that, according to temple discipline, they risked exclusion from the sanctuary if they came into contact with the blood of the injured man. One of the Jewish laws!

There was a triadic form to the telling of stories in Jesus' day. After the account of the priest and the Levite, the audience would look for a third character; they would expect perhaps a Jewish layperson to be the hero. How very disenchanting to hear that a Samaritan had fulfilled the spirit of the law!

In a real life story, the Samaritan had begun another journey long before the trip from Jerusalem to Jericho. His other journey was an inner one that took him into the deepest recesses of his own wounded soul, a journey on which he explored his brokenness, his defeats, his anger at the persecution and assaults on his person and integrity. Samaritans had no more regard for Jews than Jews had for them. Sort of reminds us of the war in the Middle East today, doesn't it? And the fighting in Northern Ireland.

The Samaritan's response to the man in the ditch was a response of compassion, and to the value of each person.

We can learn from the Samaritan. We can also learn from those who passed by without stopping. No one wants to leave a stranger lying in a ditch. But what is it that makes people do so? Why does it seem so much safer for us to just keep going and not get involved in other people's problems? That does in fact describe us, doesn't it?

We each have what psychologists call "defense mechanisms" - forms of behavior that minimize stressful situations by distancing ourselves from them. Often, these processes are healthy, because they keep us from things with which we cannot deal.

But defense mechanisms can also keep us from making that inner journey, from confronting truths. Psychiatrist Carl Jung said that all people wear "masks" to conceal their true identity, feelings and fears. False issues provide false escapes and false security. It was safer, emotionally, for the priest and Levite not to deal with someone who was all bloody, and maybe even dead. Getting to the temple, or not risking defilement, were just the excuses they needed.

From the Samaritan we learn the true meaning of love. From the priest and the Levite we learn the tragic effect of legalism, legalism which clouds our priorities, precludes response to human need. distorts the true Jesus way.

From the lawyer who approached Jesus in the first part of the story we learn that knowing the truth, knowing what's good and what's bad doesn't do much for us. It was the healing ministry that saved the man. Sympathetic words or get-well cards don't fill the bill.

The parable is unmistakably a rejection of rules that hinder mercy. It is a rejection of hair-splitting that infects so much religion. It is a criticism of church-going obedience and prudence, which are virtues, if they are substitutes for courage and action. It raises many questions about the confusion of values and priorities, and about the pressures to conform in church and society. It is a story of what freedom and courage can do through the grace of God.

"What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Maybe we would have answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved."

We do believe. And by grace we are saved. But . . . that isn't the end of the matter!

A happy marriage is never made simply by two "I do" responses.

"Go and do likewise," Jesus said. Do! James tells us that "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows . . ." (James 1:27).

Jesus taught us that to shout "Praise the Lord" is not enough. Those who do the will of the Father will inhabit the kingdom. (Matthew 7).

He told another story one time, a story about two boys and how they responded to their daddy in different ways when he asked them to work in the field. One of the boys said he would go work in the field, but he didn't. The other said he wouldn't, but did! (Matthew 21:28)

And Jesus made his point: "It's not the promise, the profession that counts, it's the practice!" Not what you say, but what you do.

Top it all off with James' "faith without works is dead." (James 2) Our deeds are more important than is our profession. We need to walk the talk!

If this is the stuff of eternal life, then this Samaritan has won the Kingdom. It happened with the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. Without realizing it, the sheep won acceptance into the kingdom. Remember their very surprised question? "When did we see you hungry, naked, sick . . . and minister to your needs?" In other words, "When did we see you in the ditch and stop to help?"

And Jesus answered, "When you saw me lying in a ditch, and stopped to help me."

This is the gospel - the good news. Do good works. Demonstrate love and concern and compassion. That is as orthodox as it can be, because in the Christian faith, the response to the needs of others in the name of Christ is the very heart of the matter.

Response-able stewardship of my time of life on earth is found in living the Jesus life-style. Coincidentally, this is also the way to find complete fulfillment and complete happiness.

Go . . . do . . .

Let us pray . . .

Prayer:

Thank you, Lord, for the story of the Good Samaritan. Thank you for the lessons we have learned. Teach us, O God, to see those lying in the ditches of society. Help us to really see them, and then to take pity on them and help them. Teach us to minister to the needs of those who have been beaten by life and left to die alone and in pain.

We who have so much, and so much for which to be thankful, are here today as your children. Sometimes we take our blessings for granted. My we go from this sanctuary with determination to make life better in this community.