Samaritans

I want to tell you a true story that I wish wasn’t true. A few years ago I joined with the folks who were participating in the Episcopal Charities Walk in San Francisco. If you haven’t heard of this, it’s a sponsored walk to raise money for various Episcopal charities around SF and in Oakland as well. The participants walk from site to site, learning about each charity they visit and taking on some pretty steep hills as part of the journey. So we set off from the Cathedral with the Bishop in the lead. The first leg of the walk was straight down from the Cathedral into the Tenderloin district, where there are lots of people who have life challenges to put it mildly. In the first block we passed some folks sitting drinking on a stoop. One of the men, he looked more like an older boy really, had passed out on the sidewalk and was lying with his leg half in the street and just spread out there in our path. Several dozen Episcopalian walkers had already passed by and so we came up behind them and saw the man lying there, too. We discussed what should be done, in our little group, and because we felt obligated to proceed with the walk we had signed up to do, and because we presumed that someone had already called police or ambulance, we continued on with the walk. We visited all the charitable organizations that do such great work in SF and we wore ourselves out trudging up and down the hills, but I couldn’t get that unconscious man out of my head, lying splayed out on the sidewalk, stone cold drunk and helplessly unconscious. Who was a neighbor to this man? Certainly not a couple hundred Episcopalians who walked right past – I know many had more than a tug at their heart and compassion – but I hated it that I was one of them and that I didn’t stop and do something to change that moment in time for him. Did he deserve my help and pity? I believe he did, I believe he did. Was I legally obliged to act? I don’t know. God put a tug in my heart, and I walked by. I was not a neighbor to the man who lay drunk and unconscious on the sidewalk. I wish I didn’t have this story to tell you.
In our Gospel today a lawyer asks Jesus a legal question about his rights and obligations as a Jewish citizen and religious adherent in the first century. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus questions him back – “What does the law say? What do you read there? They are both referring to the Jewish law contained in the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish Scriptures. The lawyer replies with the standard and proper response: “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.” 28And then Jesus says to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But the lawyer feels some kind of dismissal in this interchange – He has given the pat answer and Jesus has responded in a perfunctory way. So to push the envelope a little the lawyer asks, and who IS my neighbor? And so Jesus invites him and us then, into a deeper more loving more intimate meaning of the word neighbor. The question changes from a legal issue to a loving issue – not “who is my neighbor?” but “who was a neighbor to the man who was injured?” These are completely different questions by legal standards and by standards of the heart. Legally, the priest and the Levite could not touch the beaten man who had been left in the ditch to die, they could not touch him according to Jewish law, without losing their status of ritual cleanliness. And then they could not perform the acts they were obligated to perform on behalf of the people at the temple. So they passed on by due to this question of legal and religious obligation – and they were legally right to do so. But the question of the heart, the question of love begs a different response. The Samaritan looks at the man and is filled with pity for his condition – he doesn’t worry about his own consequences or the cost, or the interruption of his journey – he is filled with pity and acts accordingly. And Jesus casts this helper as a Samaritan just to put a knife into the heart of the lawyer, because as we have discussed previously the Samaritans were the enemies of the Jews and did not follow the Jewish laws and dared to worship at another temple on another mountain. Justice can certainly be a question of law – just and right behavior can be regulated and receive a stamp of approval. But mercy on the other hand, is an affair of the heart. Who is a neighbor to the injured one, who is moved with enough compassion to do something to really help?
The lawyer asks: And who is my neighbor?

And Jesus answers: Who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

So to answer this question I have to tell you another story and ask another question.

As many of you know, I work in a small rural hospital about 70 miles from here. Our hospital has been struggling financially as long as I have worked there, about 10 years. And though the problems – financial, structural and social – are abundant, there is compassion and care in the work done there. The town also has a lot of pride in its produce – and in its name, which is famous all over the world, though the town is very small. Over the past nine months many ideas have been considered to keep the hospital from falling into bankruptcy as many small hospitals do. This week a new idea, which had been floating around for a while, was made public. There is a state mental hospital nearby and our hospital is considering a contract with them to provide acute hospital care for the residents and prisoners. It will bring needed revenue for the hospital, much needed revenue. Our usual clientele mix ranges from the extremely wealthy and sometimes famous to the most poor and illegal field worker. There is no security to speak of at the hospital. The doors are open most of the time except in the dark of night and we have no security guard at any time of day or night. So this is the setting into
which a few very mentally ill and criminally culpable individuals with serious healthcare issues are proposed to be introduced. I wondered how my staff of nutrition caregivers would respond. I wondered how they would feel about the prisoners and their guardians being in our hospital and providing care for them. At 11:45 each weekday we have a “standup” meeting for about 5 minutes so I took the opportunity on Friday to ask them how they felt about the potential for the criminally insane to be patients in the hospital. Nobody answered so I went ahead and talked about how it would be normal to be afraid of working with folks who have committed a crime serious enough to land them in the state hospital. But fortunately, this state hospital is the same place where I did my clinical pastoral education for SFD and so I could assure them that medication, guards and psych techs will control the behavior of the prisoners so that my staff can feel very safe – and when the prisoners come to the hospital they will be sick enough to be admitted to an acute hospital – for whatever regular reasons people are admitted – appendicitis, broken legs or hips, surgery of some kind, even having a baby.
Referring back to our story about the Good Samaritan, one could argue that these prisoners are not the man who was beaten and stripped of his clothing and left to die by the side of the road. They are, in fact, the robbers. They have beaten and stolen and murdered. They have exhibited out-of-control dangerous behavior. They are unwashed and unkempt, in dirty clothes and smelling not so great. They are our neighbors, brothers and sisters, they are us. We may have folks in our own families with mental illness – perhaps not so extreme – but although we don’t talk about it much, mental health care is a huge problem in our society – most people with severe mental illness end up in prison since the large institutions were shut down. Don’t get me started….
Jesus asked, who was a neighbor to the man who injured by the robbers? The lawyer answered, the one who showed him mercy.
And I want to ask the question - will we at the small rural hospital be able to be the neighbor to the robber himself – to the most despicable, dirty, criminal and ultimately the most in need of our love and care? Will we be able to show him or her mercy? It is my prayer that this blessing will come our way. Jesus says, Go and do likewise.

Amen.