"How can I inherit eternal life?"

Rob Quam, the executive director of the Care Center, frequently makes the point that the Care Center staff and volunteers are not the good Samaritans in Jesus’ parable which we just heard. Rather, the Care Center is more like the inn to which good Samaritans from our community bring those who have suffered significant loss, who are not able to take care of themselves, who are often, in one way or another, half dead. The financial support that our congregation and other congregations and individuals provide the Care Center allows them to take care of those who are brought to them until they are able to get back up on their feet again and move on with their lives.

I think it is appropriate for us to think of our own facilities like the inn in Jesus’ parable too. I’m not sure how many AA, Al-Anon and NA groups we hosted in the Campbell Building when I arrived thirteen years ago, but I know those groups have increased over the years until we now host nine groups, six out of seven days a week, morning, noon and night. I doubt any other congregation has been as welcoming and supportive of those whose lives have been broken by drugs and alcohol, either directly or indirectly, than we have. Part of the reason for that is the fact one of the founders of AA was Sam Shoemaker, an Episcopal priest from Pittsburgh, so AA and other 12-step groups naturally approach Episcopal churches because they trust that they will be welcomed and their anonymity honored with a confidential space as they get back on their feet with the help of a higher power and the support of those who know their need of God.

So when some of our young mothers and fathers met to discuss the spiritual nurture of their children, and they asked me to consider supporting their request to have the exclusive use of the Campbell Building as a worship and educational space for their elementary school children and our neighbors who might turn to us to seek the same support for their own children, I was naturally torn between their legitimate needs and the legitimate needs of our 12-step groups. Like an innkeeper, I was persuaded that each group needed their own room rather than sharing a common room. I certainly didn’t want to put anyone back out on that dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho, those places out there in the world that can crush children and families and marriages as surely as it can rob a person of his or her sobriety. I think I have found a practical solution which our vestry will consider when they meet after church today which will give everyone a safe space in which to find the care and the support that an inn such as ours can provide.

As important as it is for us to understand that we, the church, are the inn in Jesus’ parable, and that the spiritual forces of wickedness, the evil powers of this world, and our own sinful desires, to quote the familiar words of our baptismal covenant, are the robbers in the parable that can and have victimized each and every one of us in one way or another at some point or other in our lives, I would like to reflect with you on the other characters in the story: the priest, the Levite and the Good Samaritan.

The church has traditionally interpreted the priest and the Levite as the personification of the law and the prophets in the Old Testament. They each recognize that a crime has been committed and that something should be done about it, but they are not moved to believe that it is up to them to do it. That is not their job. The Law and the prophets can point out the problem of sin and make it clear that it is wrong to rob people of their lives and leave them half dead, but they can never effectively intervene to save anyone. They can only highlight the need for a Savior, for someone with compassion who can and will act in the power of that compassion, no matter what the cost, to restore life, to even give us new and eternal life that is not subject to the forces of sin or death, which cannot be robbed or stolen.

I think if we’re honest with ourselves, we can identify with the priest and the Levite. They remind me a little of State Farm, a mutual insurance company, which means it’s owned by everyone who holds a policy. We are all familiar with State Farm’s motto, “Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There,” except, of course, in Florida, between I-95 and the Atlantic Ocean, and between I-75 and the Gulf of Mexico, parts of Florida that are nature’s equivalent of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho where hurricanes and tornados can wreak incredible havoc so costly that those of us who can get State Farm Insurance are unwilling to pay the premiums that would be required to insure against the potentially catastrophic losses of our seacoast and gulf coast neighbors. This practice is sometimes called redlining. Redlining is a statistical judgment that it’s too risky to do business in a certain area. The costs are prohibitive. Tragically, those who most need the help of others are often passed by because, like the priest and the Levite, we recognize the overwhelming risk to our own lives if we get involved. When I was a lifeguard, we called it the risk of a double drowning, of trying to rescue someone whose needs are so desperate and powerful that we risk our own lives by reaching out to them. Their obvious mortality, the fact that they are half-dead, reminds us of our own mortality, of just how fragile our own lives are.

Do you remember why Jesus told this story in the first place? It was because a lawyer wanted to know how he could inherit eternal life. What Jesus’ parable is telling us is that we will find eternal life precisely where only eternal life will do, where normal human resources based on statistical analysis of risk will rule out any intervention in the lives of those around us, our neighbors. What sets the Good Samaritan apart from the priest and the Levite is the fact that he is moved by compassion to believe that eternal life, life that a robber cannot steal, is present and available in an otherwise hopeless situation. Where does that compassion, that invitation to take what, from a merely human perspective is a foolish risk, come from? Jesus is saying that it comes from God. It is the very inheritance that the lawyer is asking about and presumably wants. Or perhaps I should more accurately say that it is the invitation to collect the inheritance of eternal life that the lawyer and all of us seek. As Jesus reveals to us, the issue is whether or not we will accept the invitation, not whether it is God’s gracious will to offer it. Strictly speaking, we cannot earn or merit eternal life. Even the lawyer admits as much when he asks how eternal life can be inherited. An inheritance is a gift which can be ignored or rejected as easily as it can be claimed.

The hero of the story, of course, is the Good Samaritan. What is perhaps not so obvious is the fact that Jesus wants us to see himself as the Good Samaritan. He is the one who has infinite compassion for you and me and everyone who is half-dead because of the forces of sin and death in this world. He comes to us when we are incapable of coming to him. He pours out his cleansing and healing life into our wounds. He picks us up and carries us to the inn, to his bride, the church, to care for us until he returns. He gives his bride, the church, the resources she needs in order to do her part in restoring the broken lives of her neighbors.

Don’t you find it intriguing that Jesus identifies himself as a Good Samaritan? Samaritans were despised by Jews for many reasons. They were viewed as spiritually and racially grotesque and defective. They shared some common history with the Jews, but they had long ago also intermarried with the very enemies of God. The Jews didn’t see or didn’t want to remember that one of their own kings, King Rehoboam, had provoked their initial rebellion and civil war when he threatened to increase the taxes and conscription of his father King Solomon. They ignored the fact that their own favorite, King David, had a grandmother, Ruth, who was a full-blooded Moabite, who nonetheless put her complete faith in the God of Israel, a faith that was honored by her own Good Samaritan and future husband, Boaz.

By identifying himself as a Good Samaritan, Jesus is reminding his fellow Jews that the Law and the prophets are not enough, whereas God’s compassion is enough for all who will respond to it when it is offered as an invitation to the gift of eternal life, capable of restoring not only those of us who are half-dead, but even those who are mortally wounded. Just as there is no guarantee that a fellow Jew will not turn out to be someone who turns on his own fellow Jew in a desperate and vain attempt to secure his own life by robbing a fellow Jew of his own possessions and life, so should we not rule out the very real possibility that the neighbor we may be inclined to despise may actually be the perfect blend of human and divine, a Good Samaritan, not something grotesque or defective, but perfect, filled with the very eternal life we are seeking and ready to offer it to us without counting the cost precisely because it is eternal life to do such a thing, discovering in the process that we can only secure eternal life for ourselves as we are neighborly toward others, especially those who would otherwise be beyond our ability to assist.

So let us thank God for giving us eternal life so that we might reach out to others when we are moved by God to act with divine, sacrificial love, whether it is as dramatic as getting involved in the life of a young Honduran child with a defective heart, opening our doors to those who cannot do their taxes, donating possessions we no longer need, or simply making room at the inn for those whom we bring here because someone else once shared God’s eternal life with us. AMEN.