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.

Which son are you?

The Ways of the Lord Are Not Fair

Matthew 21: 28-32

 “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son,
go and work today in the vineyard.’ “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed
his mind and went. “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He
answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?”
“The first,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the
prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to
show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors
and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.

 (The mass reading for this past Tuesday (Dec 13) has always troubled me.  I think my problem is, I take the Bible very personally.  I think God really is speaking to us (to all of us) through His word and I find it sometimes very challenging and very troubling (and very personal).  For instance, here I see myself in both of these brothers.  And so, here are a few thoughts on the Gospel. I prepared them for a homiletic class I was taking.  Let me know what you think.)

The ways of the Lord are not fair…

There were two sons.  And one day their father asked each to go out to the vineyard and work.  The first son said, NO. 

Maybe his NO meant, I don’t have time right now. Maybe it meant, I have other plans.

Maybe his NO meant I was hoping to take a nap.

I was going to hang out with my friends. Maybe it meant: The ways of the Lord are not fair!

But in the end, he repented and went to the vineyard and did what the father asked.

The second son said, YES, SIR. Very politely. Very respectfully. Possibly even sincerely.  And yet he didn’t go. He didn’t do what his father wanted.

The ways of the Lord are not fair.

Two sons. Two calls to action. And two very different reactions.

Which son are you?

Are you the one who says YES, maybe with the best of intentions, but somehow you just don’t do it? 

Or are you the one who says NO, perhaps you even make a fuss and say, “No way! I am not going to wash those dishes or take out that trash or clean the cat litter. Again!  It’s not fair! Why am I always the one who has to do it?  I washed the dishes last night! It’s just not fair.” But then… after you’re done fussing… the next thing you know you’re drying your hands and the dishes are done, the trash is out… or maybe you’ve trained the cat to change its own litter…

            Which son are you? 

            And what about those of us who say YES… We don’t mean to be hypocrites, do we?  Aren’t there always extenuating circumstances?  Isn’t it possible that the YES son really meant to do what his father told him?  Isn’t it possible he even set out immediately for the vineyard with the best of intentions but got distracted? Maybe he met a servant with news that the goats were loose and wandering in the street again or maybe there was a shepherd offering to round up the missing goats but he had needed his 1099 form signed and then a peddler came to the door selling GPS tracking devices for wandering goats so they’d never get lost again…  You see.  There are lots of reasons why the second son may have neglected his YES to the father.  Extenuating circumstances… right?

            By golly, if I were that second son, I might start thinking: The ways of the Lord are not fair! 

           So which one are you? 

            Well, I’ll tell you which one I am.  Like most of you, probably,  I’m both. How many times have I said, NO, but then had a change of heart and done what I was asked anyway? 

And how many times have I said YES but for some reason or another I just didn’t do it… Sadly, I couldn’t even begin to count.  A perfect example from my own life would be prayer.  How many times have I promised God that I would spend more time in prayer, if only He would help me with whatever trouble I was in? How many times have I promised to get up 30 minutes early to pray if only God will… fill in the blank!… Help me find my keys… Make the policeman not notice that I just ran a red light…   And in that moment of promise, that moment of desperation I am always very sincere. Yet, how quickly after the emergency passes do I begin to realize that my promises to God… My YES to God was unrealistic?  I can’t get up early to pray because I stayed up too late cleaning the cat litter and washing the dishes… Anyway, if I don’t get enough sleep, I’ll be cranky. And God doesn’t want me to be cranky.  And after all, I intended to do it!  I meant YES when I said it.  I really did!  I just… I just… I just didn’t do it. Does that ever happen to you?

So, truly brothers and sisters… I am both sons.

            So… what’s the big deal? We all do it. We all act like both… sometimes… Anyway, it’s pretty clear which one is the better son… The first one. The one who said NO.  Even the elders and the high priests tell Jesus that son at least did the father’s will. He at least went to the vineyard and worked.

And there is something to be said for that.  But, there is a risk in it too… saying NO can become a habit… Think of a two year old who has just learned a new word...  And we all know how hard habits can be to break.  They become part of us. They begin to shape us, to form our character and our conscience… We may start off saying NO simply as a way of asserting ourselves; you can’t boss me around. You can’t tell me what to do. I’m not your servant!  It’s our pride… Then one day –instead of repenting and going to the vineyard to work-- we just keep saying NO.  It’s become a way of life.

And, clearly there is also a risk in saying YES.  Late one Sunday night our next door neighbor called.  She was in the hospital. She felt anxious, alone. No family or friends visiting her. She was afraid. When my wife got off the phone she asked me if I would go visit this neighbor in the hospital. Without hesitating, I said, “YES. I’ll go tomorrow night.”  But then Monday night came and the washing machine was acting up and I had to fix it, and then it was dinner time and after that I was supposed to join a conference call to discuss a presentation. And then Tuesday night came and we had parent teacher conferences at school, so we didn’t get home until after 8pm. Then Wednesday night there was class at the seminary and then suddenly it was Friday and I realized I hadn’t thought of our neighbor for two days.  But by then she was already home.  I had meant to live me YES, but I didn’t do it.  And that too can become a way of life.  We say YES to so many things, good things, important things… constantly YES… but it’s unrealistic… and it can become a habit. A way of making ourselves look good and asserting our importance, by showing the world how busy we are…Look at all the important things I do (or plan to do)… And yet I forgot to make time for my neighbor who was sick, and lonely and afraid…

Which son are we supposed to be?

Well, there is one more son in today’s Gospel—a son we haven’t talked about yet—the one telling the story. Jesus is also the son of the Father.  And He truly is our model, the model for all sons and all daughters everywhere. When his Father calls Him to go to the vineyard not only does He say YES, but He lives YES. As Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians (2:1-11): This Son empties himself, and takes on the form of a slave.  He submits completely to the will of the Father “… becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” That is our model, hanging there on that cross on your wall or in any church, that is our model --complete self-emptying to the will of God.  That is how we are called to live. That is the son we are called to be.  We are called to say YES, and we are called to live it.

God's YES to us hangs on that cross; it is a YES that died for our sins.   

Ask yourself:Are the ways of the Lord unfair?   

You bet they are.  Blessed be the ways of the Lord.