Sermon Luke 10:25-37

"How unexpected the day of his end had come upon him", he thought as he lay by the roadside. With each painful breath, he could smell the dust, his blood, and now as the day grew hotter, the sage that grew by the road from Jericho to Jerusalem.

He had thought he would be free from trouble if he traveled in the morning; he'd always been OK traveling in the early morning ... until now ... he had not even seen the thieves coming ... a blurr of motion out of the shrubs ... a cacophony of yelling and swinging clubs and then they were gone ... leaving him naked, bleeding and broken ...

He wondered if this would be the day he would die ... here ... alone ...

As the sun rose above the hillside he thought of a psalm he learned in the synagogue ... "I lift up my eyes to the hills -- from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth ..."

... then he sees someone ... a priest ... and tries to gasp out a help ... but can muster only a hiss and bubbling noise ... But then he sees the priest glace a horrified look in his direction then look forward at the road ahead ... and he sees the priest quickly pass him by ... and again he is alone ... and he passes out ...

Later he awakes to the crunch, crunch, crunch, of footsteps coming down the road ... as he struggles to keep his eyes open ... he sees it is a Levite ... a temple helper who is passing by on the far side of the road ... as if he were not even there ... "Of course, he knows I am here, other wise, why walk on the far side of the road ... as the Levite heads over the hill the beaten man closes his eyes ... he thinks it is his time to die so he says a prayer "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. . ." then suddenly he stops ... he can see someone coming up the road ... with a donkey ... yet as the person gets closer ... the mans hope fades ... he realizes it's a Samaritan ... He thinks "He sees me ... he's coming towards me ... stupid Samaritan ... I have no money to steal ... nor cloths to take ... and as he watches the Samaritan rush down the ditch towards him everything goes black ... this is it ... he wonders about heaven ... and passes out ...

Later, much later ... he awakens to find himself in an inn ... this isn't what he thought heaven would look like ... he realizes he's not dead ... How? He tries to get up but his now bandaged ribs make him cry out ...

Hearing the noise, an innkeeper pokes his head around the corner ... "So your awake, I didn't think you were going to make it." "Thank you for saving me." "Don't thank me ... it was some Samaritan that brought you in. Paid your bill for you too. Generous for a Samaritan ... we don't usually allow them in here you know ... this is a respectable place ... but since he's helped you out and had some money, I figured he probably was OK. "I guess so ... thank you ... I need to rest now ... and think."

The parable of the Good Samaritan ... you'd think it would be an easy parable to preach on ... people know the story ...some of you may have seen those Good Sam' Club stickers on camper vans ... the Parable of the Good Samaritan... its well known ... and that makes it difficult to preach upon ... Just saying the words "The parable of the Good Samaritan" and you can see the sermon theme... "Let's all be like the Samaritan and do good deeds like him".

Yet, a do-good sermon holds nothing new ... nothing powerful ... we all know that helping people who are hurt is good, that compassionate for those in need is desirable... we know that ... So is this then what this parable is primarily about? Are Jesus parables about telling us something we already know? Or ... are Jesus parables designed to shake us up ... to break apart our preconceived notions of how "things are suppose to be" ... to open us up to new realities ...

You see, this is what a parable is to do ... a parable is a short story with the purpose of breaking down, or opening us up to a new reality ... a new understanding of who we are and who God is ... Jesus used these parables to challenge us to a new vision ... to see the world in a new way

So then what new reality does the parable of the Good Samaritan call us to see? What is the purpose of this story.

To begin with, some don't like the do-good name of the parable and suggest that it would be better to call it "The parable of a man saved by an enemy".

For that is what happened ... the Samaritans were hated by the Jews and the Jews hated by the Samaritans ... although they were cousins and shared many similar religious ideas, they had a long and deep hatred for each other ... not unlike the hatred we see between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. The story of hatred is not new ... we know that story ... but this morning we hear a parable of Jesus in which something different happens ... in this parable it is the enemy who is the saviour ... not the priest ... not the temple helper ... the saviour is the one from the other side of the tracks ... the saviour is "one of those people" ... in this unexpected parable of Jesus help comes from an unexpected person ...

Jesus was pointing out that God's help can come from some very strange places indeed. Grace can come from people you would not be expecting to be the source of healing and help.

Just this last week, I was hearing on the news about a bar owner in Calgary who had decided, during the most busy and lucrative part of the year ... during the Stampede, to shut down his video lottery terminals ... he said, "My wife and I had grown weary of seeing people addicted to these machines ... and last week was the clincher ... when I saw a man blow his entire June paycheck in one afternoon ... he lost it all on video lottery ... I talked with my wife about it and we decided to shut them down."

A strange twist of events ... we are use to the pro-gambling lobby of the hotel and bar owners protecting their lucrative gambling trade ...certainly we've heard them lobbying for video lottery for the lower mainland ... but in this case we see a bar owner ... turning his back on the $50,000 a year profit that his four machines brought in ... turning his concern towards his patrons ... and getting rid of that which was harming the people he served ... instead of the anti-gambling lobby shutting down the machines ... it was a bar owner ... a strange helper ... an unexpected agent of God's grace

Yet, sometimes Grace is seen not in the form of persons, but in the form of situations. Grace arises out of events that open up the possibility for seeing new life.

I remember one such event a number of years ago, Andrew, a friend of mine had called me in the late afternoon to say that his whole work group was let go ... the company decided they were no longer needed ..... so the whole lot of them were given a severance packages in the morning ... and that afternoon they were loading their cardboard boxes in their cars.

Andrew was calling me to say that he was having a party... being Irish born he followed the celtic way of facing loss ... you have a party ... in this case he called it a "Job Loss Wake."

So that night I found myself, in a house full of about 60 people ... 12 of whom had just lost their jobs ... some were still visibly shaken ... but they were with friends and that helped ... I gravitated to the kitchen where all the talkers end up during most parties of folks my age ... and in the kitchen was an interesting conversation about the current round of job losses.

One man was talking about how it was more difficult for the older workers ... he said, "It hit them a lot harder ... a lot of them had known prosperity for such a long time ... they have the cars, the houses, and they've lived in the suburbs for quite a while. They've gotten more comfortable than I have so it's hit them a lot harder." Then he went on to say ..."I don't like the idea of losing my job, it was a good job and I worked with good people, but this situation has made me realize something. I don't want to ever get comfortable ... nor do I need to. I realized I don't need the new car and a house to have a good life. It's odd, but being laid off has given me a sense of freedom. I don't think I'll ever be afraid of being fired or let go again. " I looked around the room and saw a number of others in the same boat who understood what he was saying.

Even though this young man did not desire this situation, he was able to see something new in it. There was new life for him. He had gained new freedom. And so had others who shared his insight ... and many of them took on new ventures, joined new companies, and went on new paths in their lives. Paths they would not have taken before. A bad situation had opened them up to new possibilities ...

And bad situations can do this, but there is something we need to remember. Like this situation, and like the parable of the Good Samaritan ... God did not cause these situations ... in the parable it does not say that God sent these violent thieves as a test, nor as a punishment ... it just says that it happened ... "a man going from Jericho to Jerusalem was set upon by thieves" it just happened ... things happen ... in life "stuff" happens ... I don't know why bad things happen ... that is one of the most difficult questions we have ... I am not sure if there is an answer to that question either ... but what I do know is that I don't believe that God sends bad things to teach us ... or punish us ... God wants wholeness and love for us ... that is what I believe ...

And even though I don't believe that God sends bad things ... I do believe that through God's Spirit we can sometimes use these bad situations to bring new life ... that out of these the unfortunate unexpected situations of life, sometimes ... sometimes ... we enter into new possibilities and directions for our lives ...

I wonder how many in the helping professions are there because of bad situations ... Addiction counselors who's own struggle with addiction led them to reach out to other addicts ... or folks who coach teams ... to be their for kids ... because they know what it is like when adults were not their for them when they were kids ...

And many other people have turned their experience of evil into a call to seek justice and assist others ... Those who, with God's help, have turned life's lemons into lemonade .... Unexpected misfortune turned into unexpected blessings. When faced with the evil of life's crosses, people who experience resurrection and new life. It may not be this kind of new life we expected. We may find ourselves in places we never thought we'd be, but God can bring us to new life. We know this ...

As Christians we know the power of the Holy Spirit to bring new life. We know this because we saw Jesus crucified. The Prince of peace, the son of God, the bearer of God's shalom ... died as a criminal on the cross ... and we suffered his absence for three days ... but on the third day ... on Easter we saw him rise from the grave ... we saw Jesus alive again ... we came to know that God's power was greater than death itself ... the power of death will not have the last word ... be it in the difficulties we face in this life ... or in the shadow of death ...

Ours in a God of unexpected Grace ... who uses unusually people ... sometimes even our enemies ... to share the Grace of God. Ours is a God of new life ... who can bring hope out of terrible circumstances ... who can turn even death into new life. AMEN.