Go And Do Likewise

Amos 7:7-17   Luke 10:25-37

This is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the LORD said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said, "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."

In case you are wondering what a plumb line may be, it is a tool used to determine the vertical of an upright surface.  Though modern builders may rely on laser levels, the plumb line has not gone out of use, and is still used today. God is holding His plumb line right in the middle of the Children of Israel. How do they measure up?  How upright are they, and how closely are they following God’s Commandments?  Sadly, God is showing the prophet Amos that the Israelites don’t “measure up”, and for this, God tells Amos, they will pay a terrible price.  The lesson describes for us the wrath of God against His own people.

What have they done, and why would they have been foolish enough to fly in the face of what they know to be upright?  Were they living in bad times?  Had the economy crashed so that some had turned to crime?  Had they done things we think of as truly evil – murder, mayhem, war not condoned by God?  The answer to these questions is, “No!”

The time of King Jeroboam, which is when the prophet Amos was active, was actually a time of prosperity for Israel, but prosperity brings with it its own set of temptations, and in the time of Amos, social and religious corruption were rife.  The Children of Israel had fallen away from their faith, and into worshiping materialism and other gods. 

This doesn’t mean that they didn’t go to synagogue, that they didn’t still continue the practices of their faith.  What they had done was bend the rules just enough to allow them to lead comfortable, profitable lives.  There is something alarmingly familiar in this picture, something we can easily recognize today.  We call it rationalizing – when our faith teaches us one thing, and we prefer to do another. We tell ourselves that God won’t mind – not just this once.  But “just once” grows into many times, until we live as if what we are doing has no consequences at all. This was probably what the Children of Israel were doing - but In our first lesson today, the plumb line has been dropped; Israel has been found lacking.

It is this tendency we have, to relax in our faith and start bending things to our will, that worries Paul as he writes to the Galatians that he has, “not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord…”.  How easily we, without noticing, slip away into lives less worthy

In today’s Gospel we hear Jesus recount a very familiar story.   We have been told that He is speaking to a lawyer, so we immediately know the man who is listening to our Lord is well versed in the correct and proper way to live according to God’s command.  Jesus starts out by meeting the lawyer’s question, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?".  Jesus, with the most straight forward response, simply asks the lawyer what it says in the Law, and the lawyer gives the correct response which includes the admonition to love your neighbor as yourself.  Jesus offers no further comment.

But the lawyer isn’t satisfied.  He has the keen mind of an attorney, a mind that always searches for all the facts, wants to cover all bases, wants to be certain.  Therefore, it is important to this attorney to know, “who is my neighbor?"  This isn’t quite the nit-picking question it may appear to be.  At the time this conversation occurred, Jews were debating whether all fellow Jews (or just some) were their neighbors.  Amazing the questions and arguments we humans can raise within our faith, or in our modern day lives. Who is and American citizen, and who is not - sound familiar?

Jesus again responds, and this time he tells the parable of the Good Samaritan.  It is a familiar story, one we’ve all heard many times, and, despite its ancient setting, we get the point.  But the setting does seem archaic. 

We know that Jesus chose his examples carefully - the priest representing Jewish religious leaders, and the Levite, from the caste that assisted the priests in the temple.  It isn’t just that “people” pass by the injured man, it is religious leaders who do so, finding reasons to ignore their responsibility to come to the aid of a seriously injured person by hiding in religious precedent.  If the man is dead and they touch him, they will become ritually unclean.  Better not to risk it, since if he is dead they can be of no help.  Better to walk past and not cause trouble for themselves.

We have actually have modern versions of this attitude, some of which make sense, but which we sometimes use to excuse our doing nothing.  Don’t touch him, don’t move him – you might injure him further.  Don’t contaminate the area, it’s probably a crime scene.  All right – sensible.  But we go further - don’t get involved, you’re just opening yourself up to litigation, or you might actually be blamed for the crime.  And even, after we at least use our mobile phones to call for help, and help arrives – things sometimes still go horribly wrong.  Remember Robb School in Uvalde, Texas?  - Don’t rush into the classroom – wait for backup – while children bled out and die.

All right – we say – we get the point.  The Samaritan story is still applicable in some extreme situations in our society today.  But, how often in our day to day lives do we actually encounter such chances to exercise our faith?  The answer is that such chances do appear, but we are so wrapped in our carefully “molded to fit” version of our faith, we often miss them.

Several years ago, I needed some cash, and went into one of those little rooms you can find that contain a bank machine.  There was one person ahead of me, and in a corner of that small room, a man sat crumpled on the floor.  I’m not making this up – it really happened.

The person ahead of me finished their transaction and walked out.  I have no idea if that person even looked at the man in the corner. I went to the machine and got the cash I needed, and then I too left the tiny room.  What have we been taught?  Do not talk to strangers.  Do not address homeless humans collapsed on floors.  He might be an alcoholic or a drug addict.  He might be contagious (though this was a time before COVID).  He might be violent.  And what did Jesus teach us?  “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of these the least brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I realized I had to go back in.  I addressed the crumpled man on the floor.  “Are you all right?” I asked.  Not too surprisingly, the answer was, “No”.

All right – so we don’t often encounter strangers collapsed on the floor in a bank machine cubicle, but we do encounter so many people who are needy.  Jesus has told us we must give to beggars. Do we?  Or have we replaced that command with logic that excuses us because we “don’t know what they’ll do with the money”.  We seem to forget what we just failed to do with our money (give to the beggar) will be recorded in heaven.  What about the complaining friend or relative who wants our time, needs us to listen – but we’re tired of them, tired of listening, tired of “being there” for them. 

How stingy are we?  How much do we hoard our money or our time?  Jesus’ life was all about giving – about sacrificing, not about bending things to make His life safer and more comfortable. We, on the other hand, constantly find ways to excuse our failure to love unconditionally as we have been commanded to do.  We are Christians, Jesus followers – and yet in our lives as in today’s story, the shocker is that it isn’t the Jewish travelers who finally come to the aid of the injured man.  It’s the outsider, a much despised, even hated, Samaritan.  The point is, the best of us so often fall short.

My story, the man in the bank machine cubicle, may sound reckless and even foolhardy to some – and perhaps on some level it was, but when situations arise, we need to ask ourselves, and Jesus, are we reacting out of fear or prejudice, out of selfishness and impatience, or are we responding with love.  Next-door to the bank machine was a Dunkin’ Doughnuts – so my story ends there, with the man drinking coffee and eating breakfast, which I had purchased for him, and regaling me with stories of his life. 

Of course, sometimes we don’t know how the story will end – for the beggar, if we give them a dollar, for our needy friend or relative, if we listen to their complaints one more time.  But what we need to remember is, the end of someone else’s story is not our problem.  What we need to be concerned with is that plumb line and leading lives worthy of the Lord.  What we need to be concerned with is our story and how in the end we will be judged by our actions or lack of them.

We have heard what it means to be a good neighbor, in today’s Gospel Jesus has told us.  It means, as the Psalmist said today, saving the weak and the orphan; defending the humble and needy; rescuing the weak and the poor.  It means putting aside the modifications we have made to excuse us from fulfilling our calling.  We know what it means to be a good neighbor - and Jesus tells us, “Go and do likewise.”

Let us pray:

Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with Your most gracious favor, and further us with Your continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in You, we may glorify Your holy Name, and finally, by Your mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.