The Good Samaritan & the Christmas Card

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him 

and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead.  And by chance a priest was going down on 

that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came 

to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, 

came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his 

wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn 

and took care of him. On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and 

said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’

--Luke 10:30-35

(This is a passage from a book I am writing. Fr. Leo is an elderly priest at a small inner-city parish.  And he is on the edge of retirement and some of his parishioners whisper that maybe he should have already retired many years ago. But, he carries on quietly and tenderly and awkwardly loving his flock and trying his best to serve them. He is a minor character in the book, but I was having fun with this homily and wanted to share it. I think it fits in with my meditations so far.)

      Fr. Leo closed the gospel and looked at the red leathered cover with the gold embossing. He touched it; lingered his fingers in the indentation of the cross. Perhaps he should shut up, he thought. Looking at the pews he nodded to himself: Yes. Perhaps I should. He sighed, and began to step away from the ambo. But something occurred to him. And he felt a need to just say this one thing. So, he paused in his reticent retreat and turned back. Opening the Gospel again, he smiled—embarrassed. “I thought about not speaking this morning. The Gospel; the parable itself saying so much. What could I add? Why should I try? But… like most priests, I guess I like to muddy the waters.” He laughed.

Margaret smiled politely. Henry nodded and smiled. There were a few polite snickers.

“Nevertheless, I had to say this, because it’s July and the other day I was thinking about Christmas. Like that old Preston Sturges movie: Christmas in July. I think it starred Dick Powell. And who was the woman? I can’t remember. But I remember Powell. I remember him more from the radio. He played Richard Diamond on the radio: the crooning detective. Oh, the memories that can come haunt you. Don’t you know. And they do. As you get older. Right Margaret? I mean, not that you’re old. Oh dear. Never. Oh dear. I didn’t. Anyway. Anyway. I was thinking about Christmas. In July. Isn’t that strange? It sounds strange. To me, at least. But it all started because I found an old flyer on the side of my refrigerator. For the Knights of Columbus; the Friday Fish Fry. During Lent. I was having lunch in the rectory and while my tomato soup was warming up I thought I would clear off some of the old paperwork taped to the refrigerator. So full. Oh, you wouldn’t believe.” He glanced around the church with a sly smile on his lips. “Of course, none of you know what I’m talking about. Right? You don’t have old notes and flyers and artwork taped to your refrigerator? Do you?”

He smiled and waited.

“Of course not. That’s just us old guys.” He glanced at Margaret, but judging by the look in her eyes he realized he should exempt her from any further references. “Well… So, here it is the middle of summer and I am just now removing the Lenten Fish Fry notice off the refrigerator. But, if you think that’s bad, let me tell you. This is the bad part. Beneath the flyer there was a Christmas card. I guess I forgot about it or I was saving it. Who knows. I’m old.” He laughed. No one else did. Except a polite chuckle from the back. Shaking his head, Father began again:

“Feeling a little foolish, I took it off. It was one of those –you know—one of those inexpensive cards. Not even a Hallmark. But I like Christmas cards. I always have. Even the cheap ones. I like the pictures. I like the sentiments. I guess I’m a sentimental kind of guy. Right?”

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled shyly. “The way my voice is always breaking and I’m always tearing up. You know. You’ve seen it. Sometimes it just comes over me and even I think: Oh dear. Here you go again… you old fool!” He took out a handkerchief. “I’m just going to blow my nose. Allergies. I guess…” He blew his nose with a muffled snort into the cloth and then refolded it and put it back into his pocket.

“So… this card. I don’t want to say it was a cheap card. In case someone is here who sent it. But, I will say it was a budget card. Nothing fancy at all. The front of it was a manger scene with the Joseph and Mary and the baby and a cow and a… maybe a sheep and a star. Mostly blue. Night sky and the glow coming from the baby. You know. Very standard. Very sentimental, I guess. The kind of thing that normally appeals to me. So at first I thought that maybe I just kept the card because I liked it. There was that manger and the straw and Mary and Joseph and that little baby with His hands reaching out. I looked at the picture for a moment, and I thought about Christmas and I thought about that stack of thank you notes I still haven’t written. I think I have until November to send them. Right? Anyway, after looking at the card I dropped it into the recycle bin. But, you know how that goes: after a minute, I had to pick it back up and find out who it was from. Why had I saved it? Maybe it was something important. A special note or something. Sentimental. Maybe.” Again he laughed. Alone. “It was from the Pilgrim Cleaners on Washington. I’ve been taking my suits there for over ten years. So… I don’t know. Maybe it was sentimental.” A few people laughed at that. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders tentatively.

“But, here’s the thing. I’d been thinking about this reading. Preparing for it. The Good Samaritan. And thinking about the –I don’t know—the traditional way of reading it. The way we are used to thinking about it. Augustine. The allegorical reading we all know.” He adjusted his glasses and squinted. Looked down at the opened Gospel on the ambo, then coughed.

“Dear me. Some of you may even be saying to yourself –what’s an allegorical reading. But even if you don’t remember what an allegory is, you know it. Everybody has heard someone preach it. And because it is such a familiar story and such a familiar understanding of the story, we don’t really pay attention anymore. It’s like the power of the parable to challenge us has been tamed. If we can wrap it all up with a bow, like a Christmas fruit cake or something, then there’s nothing in it to challenge us any longer, because –like that Christmas card –it’s become kind of a cliché. Think about it. This parable, how many times have you heard it?”

He paused to let people think for a moment. “Yes. Yes. We know it so well, we are so familiar with it; we don’t really hear it anymore. It’s become safe and settled; like a mathematical equation. This equals this. The Samaritan equals God. The wounded man represents our sinful states. The Levite and the judge equal the religious authorities and the law –or the government. Neither one seems to do very well, I might point out. The donkey becomes the incarnation –the fleshly presence of God in the form of Jesus Christ. The Inn is the Church where sinful man comes to be refreshed and healed with oil and wine –which are the sacraments. You see… It’s all very simple. It’s all very mathematical. Not that I would know anything about math. Right? You should see my check book. Or the parish accounts… No. No. Just joking. Please. Don’t write the Bishop.” 

He laughed. A few polite responses came from the pews.

“But here is what I am trying to say. Here is what I meant to say and then I will sit down and shut up. I took that sentimental card out of the recycling and looked at it, without really thinking about it. It was just your normal, standard baby Jesus and manger with Mary and Joseph there smiling and looking like they just came from the beauty salon. They are gazing down on their new baby with awe and joy. Lots of radiance and glowing and just a hint of a breeze in their freshly washed hair and their perfectly clean robes and scarves. Even the shepherd and the sheep look like they just stepped out of a spa or something. Very Hollywood looking. And I was about to throw it away again when something caught my eye. The naked hand of the baby Jesus reaching out of the manger to His blessed Mother, and for some reason that hand struck me. Even after I put the card back in the trash, I thought about that naked hand and how vulnerable and helpless it was. How helpless and naked and vulnerable all babies are. They need to be cared for –completely. And I thought of Mary and Joseph there, watching over Him. Not the Hallmark card versions or the Hollywood versions, but the real ones. Mary and Joseph. Taking care of Him. Changing His diapers and kissing his boo boos. And thinking about that, thinking about all of that, I started to realize something. I realized something strange that had never occurred to me before; every time we hear this story, you know who we are called to be like: the Samaritan. Right? And yet who did Jesus become? He became the wounded man, naked and helpless and alone in the world. That’s how he came to us. He came to us as that little baby in the manger. He came to us helpless and naked and in need of someone to pick Him up, someone to give Him shelter and to give Him love. Do you see it? Think about that. What does that mean to you personally? What does this parable say to you now? For me, what I learned was that sometimes the gift we bring is our strength and sometimes our gift is our weakness. Sometimes the best gift we have to offer is our weakness, our vulnerability. Our need for help. Because your weakness is a chance for me to step away from my Shredded Wheat and coffee and help you. It’s a chance for me to become the saint God made me to be. So, don’t be afraid to be weak. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Jesus was weak. Jesus was vulnerable. He even cried out from the cross. The next time you are feeling weak and vulnerable, remember: that may be how God is calling you to become more like Christ. And it could be that God is using your weakness to plant seeds and grow saints in the people around you.

See… that parable isn’t so simple after all, is it. The next time you hear one of these old familiar stories, don’t just nod your head and think: Oh, I know that one. I’ve already heard that one. No. No. No. Ask yourself: what is God trying to say to me, right here, right now? What is God speaking to me? Maybe He’s asking you to be the Samaritan and help someone who is wounded and hurt and needs your care. Or maybe God is asking you to be the vulnerable one who needs help. Maybe He’s asking you to be carry the cross, or maybe God is asking you to be an opportunity for someone else to carry His cross; And maybe God is telling you that to become like Christ, to become Christ for others… all that is being asked is that you become like that man on the road to Jerusalem or like that baby in that manger on that card: weak and vulnerable, in need of help –naked to the world. Reach out your hand in need and see what happens. You know. Even if no one helps you, you don’t know. You won’t know. You can’t know how much you may have helped them. Maybe even the memory of seeing you so vulnerable, so willing to ask for help… That simple memory may haunt them –in a good way. And maybe that’s how God planted His seed in their heart. Memories. Christmas cards. And weakness. I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t know. That’s all."

Reaping Where You Haven’t Sowed: The Parable of the Talents

(Matthew 25: 14-30)

“Sir, I had heard that you were a hard man, reaping where you had not sown
and gathering where you had not scattered…”  --Matthew 25:24b

This is another passage that has always frightened me –always troubled me; I relate to the poor servant who has heard and believed that the master is ruthless and hard.  He panics when the master gives him the single talent and does what seems to him most prudent: he hides it in order to protect the master’s money –so that it can be safely returned to him when called for.  He avoids the risk of investment that the other two servants undertake, because in his heart he fears the master will take payment out of his hide if he loses the money.

So, he acts in what must have seemed a prudent way and is able to return the master’s money safely to him.  But, the master challenges this approach –this caution—and the servant is punished anway.

One thing I am troubled by when dealing with parables, when studying the teachings of Jesus in general, is the rush to allegorize or spiritualize everything.  The rush to disengage from the actual and make everything neat and tidy by turning it all immediately into symbols and a simple lesson; dismissing complications in order to create an easily digested lesson.

Of course a lesson is there, that was part of His mission –to teach us—but I like to remind myself: don’t be in such a rush to sum it up. To package it with a bow.  Don’t be in such a rush to make everything clear and simple and safe.  Spend some time with the actuality of His words.   Remember what He said about why He taught in parables:

“Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.” –Matthew 13: 13

Clearly Jesus is using parables not because they are the clearest form of communication, but for another reason –perhaps their staying power: the memorable nature of a brief, simple, narrative with a couple of memorable characters makes parables easy to remember and therefore easily transmittable by an oral culture.

But, for me, this speaks to an intent not to be clear and simple –but to be a little bit mysterious and definitely not to be afraid of being a little confusing.  So, I have to often remind myself: Don’t be in a rush to make everything clear and simple and safe.  Spend some time with the mystery, with the actuality of Jesus’s words. 

Spend some time with the actual of the story; contemplate the actual events, characters, images He chose.  Contemplate the whole of it –or find yourself one little troubling verse or line or word –even—and spend some time with it.  Don’t try to make it make sense. Don’t try to force an answer to appear before your eyes.  Just let yourself be a little troubled and maybe a little agitated.  Let the seed of that truth work its way into your soul, your mind, your heart. Inside you.

In this parable the master never denies what the servant says –that he is a hard master, and he never denies that he reaps where he has not sown.  He simply repeats to the servant what he has said.  Why?

Spend some time today with that master; with that servant. Why did Jesus use these two characters? Why did He tell His followers this particular story? And why did He use it to create an image of the Kingdom of God?  And –perhaps most importantly—why is He telling it to you, now, over 2000 years later?

Don’t rush to clarify it. Don’t rush to make sense.  Don’t bury the word in a mound of scholarship and footnotes and academic theological interpretations.  Those have value, and may help you at some point.  But first, just spend some time with that hard image, with that hard master, and see where God leads you.  Let God plant His seed in your silence, so that you can reap what He has sown.