Life and preaching from the ditch

Have you ever been stuck in a ditch? There was this one time, living in Telegraph Creek, British Columbia, that I was on my way to St. Jude’s, Dease Lake to do a communion service for the folks there, only to be run off the road by a car on 8 Mile hill and sit there until help arrived. I sat there for 2 ½ hours until the tow truck showed up. It cost me $90 to get out of the ditch and I was glad that neither the van nor I were damaged. Then I sheepishly finished the drive into Dease to let the folks know I was safe. Just on the outskirts of the community, I was stopped by the local RCMP constable, who was on his way to look for me. We had a rule that if I were more than 2 hours late, my wife was to call the RCMP. I made my stop at the house I was going to and then I went and got gas and a snack, turn around and drove the nearly three hours home again, passing the spot where I had just been rescued from.

I share this saga with you because of the Gospel for Sunday is a similar kind of situation (Luke 10: 26-37)There is a lawyer who wants to make sure that he has done all that he needs to do so that there is no question that he will be blessed in this life and enter into the next without worry. So, he asks Jesus the hot button question: “What must I do to live an eternal life?”

In response, Jesus posses another question, “What does the Law say?” in other words, what did you learn in kindergarten? How did you understand it? Are you living it out? What does the law ask of you? The Lawyer puffed up his chest and proudly announced, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbour as your self.” Jesus says to the lawyer, “Great. That’s how I read it too. God and do it.”

The Lawyer did not like what was being asked of him he did not want to have to keep on doing things. He thought he had done enough and wanted to be let off doing any more. He thought that Jesus had shown him up. So, he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” so that he could find a way to limit the people he had to be good to and at the same time find a way to justify his thoughts and be one upon Jesus.

In response, Jesus told those gathered, including the lawyer, a story about a man who is attacked by a group of thieves. The traveller is beaten, stripped naked and left for dead in the ditch, not even having put up much of a fight. Along comes a priest of the faith, he sees and regards this man but moves to the other side of the road and leaving the injured and dying man and goes on his way. Then a Levite, a lawyer of the Faith comes to the scene and does the same thing, not wanting to get involved. Lastly comes a foreigner, a Samaritan. Each people are enemies of the South and of the Jews. They occupied the North of Israel when the people were sent back to rebuild the City and its Temple. To call this man “good” by Jewish standards would have been incredibly offensive. But he becomes the protagonist of Jesus’ parable. The one who was considered to be undesirable and enemy of the people of God is the one who did what God asked of the people in the Law. And yet, this is what God asks of each and of all of us. The Lord insists that on us doing Justice for the weak, the lowly and the destitute – which completely describes the man in the ditch.

In this is a model for how you and I might do our ministries: (1) take time to pray and be with the Lord; (2) Take time to see the beloved, care for the needs that the Beloved has; (3) take time to eat and to spend with family, and (4) take care to get rid of your agendas and demands and in so doing, get rid of your idols so that you can see clearly and move deliberately to make sure that the proclamation of the Gospel moves forward.

What did the lawyer have in common with the men in the story who did not stop to help the man in the ditch? They all knew the Law, the Torah! They knew and understood what the Scriptures taught and therefore what God demanded were the weak, the lowly and the destitute were concerned (and the man in the ditch was maybe all these!). The LORD insists on there being justice for them.

The kingdom of God is not a discussion of ideals and ends between two people. It is about a community of people taking action to help the people around them and to proclaim to them that the kingdom of God has come near them. And in working for God and the kingdom there is a necessity of being chasted. We need to be faithful only to the Lord and to what he is asking of us so that people would be reached for the kingdom.

Unfortunately, there are too many that are comfortable with not getting involved, despite knowing that they should get involved for the sake of the injured, the suffering and the dying both physically and spiritually. It is time for the Church to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. It is time for the Church to go from 6 days invisible and 1 day incomprehensible to been seen as a community of action that cares for those who are in need. It is time to get out of the ditch.

Jason+