Sam Bush, “The Good Bartender”
There was a recent Saturday Night Live sketch called “One-Uppers” where a group of friends are out to dinner and are not-so-subtly competing for moral superiority. “That’s strange,” says one of them. “My screen time is really low, probably because I gave up all social media and only read books now.” Another rushes in, saying, “Sorry I’m late everyone,” pausing for dramatic effect. “I was… at a protest.” When one friend is asked where he got his sweater, he says, “Oh, I thrifted it…at Goodwill…where I volunteer!” Before he can bask in his sanctimony, another friend steals the show, announcing that he knitted his sweater himself: game over! The sketch is funny but I would have laughed harder if it didn’t already sound like most of my daily conversations.
Not to sound cynical, but almost everything we do is susceptible to becoming a means to self-justify. Parenting, politics, career, even our summer reading lists and vacation destinations can be used as a way to one-up ourselves till kingdom come. What makes you such a good person? What’s your ticket to heaven? Is it your low carbon footprint? Your high church attendance? It could be your protestant work ethic or catholic guilt. As for me, my righteousness is rooted in my ageless wisdom and deep, profound humility.
Whatever the case, when we try to justify ourselves, we are swimming in the same waters as the lawyer from today’s Gospel reading. “Teacher,” he says, “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus knows he’s being tested. This lawyer would have been an expert in Jewish law. He wants to know if Jesus respects the law of Moses and is rooted to the God of the Old Testament. So Jesus says, “Well, you’re the expert, you tell me.” to which the lawyer responds with what was widely known as the summary of the law: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. “A gold star for you,” Jesus says, “You have answered correctly.”
Luke then discloses the lawyer’s intentions. “Wanting to justify himself,” Luke writes, “he asked Jesus ‘And who is my neighbor?’” This man wants some clarification. By drawing a line in the sand, he’ll have a better grasp of his spiritual status. He wants to know exactly what will be on the test to make sure he gets an A. Rather than spelling it out for him, Jesus tells a story.
There’s a man walking from Jerusalem to Jericho, an 18-mile road, still visible today, with long stretches of rocky terrain that made it easy for robbers to set up an ambush. And a group of robbers take this man for all he’s worth and leave him for dead in a ditch on the side of the road. As he lays dying, a priest walks by and avoids him. Eventually, a Levite (who was basically a priest’s assistant) does the same, passing by on the other side of the road. To be in contact with a dying body would have made them ritually unclean and unable to perform their duties. In other words, they’re off the hook. They’re doing God’s work!
Finally, a Samaritan comes along. Now, Samaritans had a blend of Jewish and Gentile ancestry and, because they were racially mixed, they were considered to be unclean and beyond the reach of God’s grace. This lawyer would have especially held Samaritans in contempt for having built their own temple for worship outside of Jerusalem. They were blasphemous half-breed pagans. Even Jesus himself had reason to scorn them because in the chapter before this, he is outrightly rejected by an entire Samaritan village.
So a good Samaritan would have been an oxymoron but Jesus makes him the hero of the story. He has no obligation to help this man. He’s just as vulnerable as the next guy. He should keep going. And yet, he stops, bandages his wounds, puts him on his donkey, takes him to an inn, pays two months’ wages to keep him there and pledges to pay the innkeeper back whatever else is spent. This is absurdly lavish treatment for a sworn enemy. When Jesus asks which man was a neighbor to the man in the ditch, the lawyer can’t even say the word “Samaritan.” He says, “The one who showed him mercy.” It’s too offensive to think the enemy is on the right side of history.
Do you see what’s happening? Jesus sees our need to justify ourselves and our meager ways of measuring goodness according to screentime or voting or recycling or our criminal record and blows our little definitions of goodness out of the water. “You want to be good? In the eyes of God?” he asks. Good luck! “Go and do likewise,” he says, daring the lawyer to do the one thing the lawyer could never do.
Two-thousand years later and we are still hell-bent to justify ourselves, endlessly auditioning for the role of the Samaritan which is a role far beyond our reach. But God has another role in mind for us. “Have you ever considered trying out for the man in the ditch?” he asks. You’d be perfect for that role. If you don’t believe me, just ask a man named Ed Gavagan.
The night before Thanksgiving in New York City, a furniture builder named Ed Gavagan was heading back to his apartment when he was cornered by five teenagers who targeted him in order to be initiated into a gang, stabbed him and left him for dead. The fact that he survived was a mixed blessing. He wasn’t insured and was released from the hospital with two collapsed lungs and suffering from PTSD. Over the next few months he lost his business and his apartment. Friends would encourage him to move on, but anytime someone gave him advice made him feel like a drowning man who was being thrown a kit to build a boat. One day, he’s spiraling, he walks out on Park Avenue and sees a man with perfectly coiffed hair, an impeccable suit and shiny briefcase. He says, “I just wanted to tackle him and kneel on his chest and punch him in the face and say, ‘You know, you’re not good! You’re just lucky, man! You think that all of your assumptions and everything you know and all you’re doing is keeping you where you are, you’re just lucky. ‘Cause it can all just be gone.” He then realizes that he had just wanted to hurt an innocent stranger to make a point about what was wrong with his life and that he’s become more like the kids that stabbed him then the man he had previously been.
One night he visits his favorite bartender, this cute Lebanese/Canadian girl. What set her apart was that she listened. Instead of giving advice, she sat there and allowed him to talk it out. She offered up her couch as a place to sleep. She cooked meals for him without expecting anything in return. A couple of years later they end up getting married and now have a daughter. Now, I don’t know Ed Gavagan, but I’ve got a good hunch that if he ever sees a man bleeding on the sidewalk he’ll do something about it. You’re only going to help a man in the ditch if you’ve been the man in the ditch.
Why would the Samaritan inconvenience himself like that? Why would he pay out of pocket for a man who likely would have spit on him? Why did he help? Jesus says when the Samaritan saw the wounded man “he was moved with pity.” The Greek word used here, splagma, means to be “moved with bowels of pity.” And it is the word most often used to describe the emotional state of Jesus Christ. He sees a crowd of people and is moved with pity, he sees a blind man and is moved with pity, he sees a man possessed by a demon and is moved with pity. He sees you and is moved with pity.
I don’t know where you are right now. Maybe you don’t want pity. But if you think you’re out there crushing it or nailing it or killing it (by the way, our use of those idioms is worth keeping in check), if you’re minding your p’s and q’s and you’re one-upping everyone in sight, remember the man in the ditch who would say it’s really a matter of luck and not virtue. And if you happen to identify with the man in the ditch today, well, you’re actually in luck. You may feel beat up and defenseless and alone. You may feel like you are actually dying and that nobody cares. But I’m here to tell you that that’s just not true. For a passerby has come along and gone out of his way to pick you up, to carry you, to heal your wounds, to give you rest and pay for every expense until you are completely restored.
Help often comes from the least likely place. Not from your own strength or can-do spirit, but amidst your own helplessness. Help comes to you today in the form of a man who, like the Samaritan, was “despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows,” as Isaiah writes, a man who identifies with a fellow ditch dweller and is moved with compassion.
Amen.
