Crossing Boundaries

June 10, 2012

Luke 10: 25-37

J.W. McNeill

[This is pretty close to a reprise of the first sermon I preached in Fairport in July of 1995.]

I.  What’s this story about?

            The parable of the Good Samaritan is a familiar parable.  Difficult to hear it because we think we know it already. But let us try to hear it with new ears this morning to see if there is something different for us to discern within it. 

Story within a story

            Let us first notice that as we are presented with Luke’s text, the parable is placed within another story.  So, it’s a story within a story.   A lawyer stands up to test Jesus.  He asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Characteristically, Jesus turns the question back to the one who would put him to the test, and asks the lawyer what is written in the law.  The lawyer gives what may have been a rather commonplace summary:

            You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

This is a good answer as far as it goes, but the attorney must press the fine point of the law -- who is my neighbor?

Self-justification [why do we feel like we need to do that?]  Luke tells us that he presses Jesus on this point in order to justify himself.  The lawyer is looking to set a boundary to the concept of neighbor in order to limit the extent of his obligation in conforming to the law. 

He can only justify himself if there is some limit to his obligation.  If his obligation is unlimited, then he will not be able to do so. 

Now this insight as to the intentions of the lawyer  turns the context of the story so that we can see that the parable is not simply a story about how we should help others.  The context of the parable of the Good Samaritan is at least in part a story about attempts at self-justification.  Let me return to this topic later.

           

                       

II. Bad rap on the Priest and the Levite

            But it’s also a story about other sorts of  boundaries, and how we function with boundaries.  To some extent, the Priest and the Levite get sort of a bad rap on a quick reading of the parable.  We may get the sense that these two are implicitly condemned by Jesus because they were too busy with their religious duties to help an injured traveler.  In this sense, we may take them to be hypocrites. 

            But I think that there is another issue that is raised by their behavior.   That is the issue of the boundary between what we might refer to as the clean and the unclean.

            The problem faced by the Priest and the Levite was that if they touched the injured traveler and it turned out that the traveler was dead, then they would be made unclean by that contact.  And if they became unclean, they could not fulfill their religious duties at the temple, because those who were unclean had to submit to a time-consuming process of purification before they could again enter the temple precincts.     

Their obligations to their professions prohibited them from endangering their ability to do their jobs by crossing the boundary between clean and unclean.

III.  Samaritan crossed a boundary.

            On the other hand, the Samaritan did cross a boundary.    I don’t know whether he knew that he was crossing a boundary or not.  Since the half-dead man was stripped by the robber, he could not have determined that he was a Jew by his clothing.  But the road between Jerusalem and Jericho would have been mostly traveled by Jews.

            In any case, knowingly or not, the Samaritan reached across the bitter boundary separating Samaritan and Jew, to rescue a traveler in dire straits.   And for that, he is celebrated in Jesus’ parable.  This character’s crossing of that  boundary has come to be recognized as the epitome of charity.

IV. But did the half-dead man want a boundary crossed? 

As I try to put myself in the place of the naked, half- dead man on the side of the road, there is certainly a part of me that would just as soon be left there to die.

I have already been humiliated by my assailants.  I am naked (which would have been more of a big deal for Jews of that time than us).  That fact in itself signifies defenselessness and exposure.  I am helpless, completely vulnerable.  I cannot maintain my boundaries.  I cannot protect myself.  I am at the mercy of the world.  To be helped is in some ways only to prolong the humiliation.  I’d rather die.

There have been times when I have felt something like that.  Do you know that feeling?  Do you know helplessness?  Do you know what it means to be vulnerable?  Do you know what it is like to be at another’s mercy?

Many of us have a hard time with that.  We have an easier time helping someone else, than accepting help for ourselves.  We have an easier time forgiving someone else than accepting the forgiveness of another.

Some of us would rather drive around aimlessly for miles instead of simply asking for directions.  Some of us would rather injure our backs trying to move a piece of furniture than ask for help.  These are the smaller sorts of cases that are magnified in the naked, half-dead traveler at the side of the road.

To accept help, to accept aid, is to allow someone to pass through our boundary and into ourselves.  Some of our discomfort about that is based on a concern about persons manipulating us by their help, and so we are sensitive to the possibilities of strings being attached to other peoples’ assistance.  Some is the embarrassment or shame at not being able to take care of ourselves.  Some of it is self-consciousness about being needy.

That can be uncomfortable.  To the extent that we feel vulnerable -- or worse, humiliated -- that discomfort is magnified.

So I would want to say that crossing boundaries is a tricky business.

[Go down into the congregation.]

When I leave the pulpit and come down here, I’ve crossed a boundary.  It may make some of you a bit uncomfortable.  Of course, this had more of an impact when I did it on my first Sunday here. You didn’t know me then.

When that boundary is crossed it can make us a little uncomfortable.  It puts us on alert.

            When is it okay to cross a boundary?

            When is it not okay to cross a boundary?  These are serious questions that require some discernment.

V. Neighbors and fences

            Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan in answer to the question, Who is my neighbor?

The proverbial wisdom about neighbors tells us that good fences make good neighbors.  Perhaps you can guess why this is true. 

Fences set clear boundaries.  If there is a fence around my neighbor’s backyard, I will be unlikely to enter without being invited.  The boundary is well-marked and can be easily respected.

The harder cases come up when persons have no fences, no marked boundaries, no clear sense of personal integrity that forms the definition of an individual. 

One of the tasks of raising children is to help them gain a sense of their own boundaries and the boundaries of others, so that they can have a clearer basis of respect for themselves and for others.

Moving

I have noticed over the last few weeks of getting ready to move that my sense of vulnerability has been quite high.  I have had a sense of a need to put up some fences around me There have been times when I have found myself resisting help in order to preserve some sense of boundary in my life. 

I don’t feel as “in control” of my life as I like to feel and I sometimes respond to that by building fences.

Part of our task together within the community of faith is to develop both the trust and the discernment to know when to let others in, and when we need to keep some distance.   A clue for this is in Christ.

VI. God in Christ crossed a boundary

God crossed a boundary in Jesus Christ.  God entered the human realm in a very intrusive way.  How did God do that?

God did not come to manipulate.  God did not come in power to overwhelm. 

But in order to meet us in our vulnerability -- in our weakness, in our failure, and in our limitations -- God became vulnerable and limited.  God came in love, not power.  Or, to put it better:  God came in the power of defenselessness.

Christ comes not to overpower our defenses, but to enter into our weakness.

           

I don’t  know about you, but God makes me nervous sometimes.   Sometimes God raises my anxiety level a bit.  I think I’d feel better about it if I could justify myself.  Then I would have a leg to stand on when God came to visit. 

If God’s gonna come over my boundary I want some defense!  If I can justify myself, if I can help myself, if I can save myself -- then I can keep God out.

I may be half-dead, stripped naked, barely able to breathe, but I’m okay, Jack.  Just back off and leave me alone.  I’ll make it on my own.

If you’re going to help me in this position, I need to be able to know that you cross my boundary not in power, but in love.  And then the remnants of my boundaries can collapse and I can submit to your love and comfort and healing.

When God crossed the boundary into the human realm in the person of Jesus Christ,  God came defenselessly, vulnerably, without power in the usual sense.

And when the Good Samaritan climbed over his Jewish neighbor’s fence, he did so -- like Jesus says --

he was moved with pity.  Not to steal his dignity, not to make him feel small, not to put him into his debt, but because he was a fellow child of God.

Those of us with some experience of the deeper things of the world and of the Spirit, know that these questions of boundaries, dignity, love, and integrity can be very difficult. 

We are fragile creatures on this earth.  The strongest among us are easily hurt.  The weakest among us can easily hurt someone else.   And yet even so, God has called us into a community of faith -- not because we are already so expert at loving each other, but in order that we should in this way learn how to love better.  In order that we learn how to better trust each other.   Not only do we come to learn how to help each other and to help those neighbors we have not yet gotten to know, but also how to be helped.  How to submit ourselves to the difficult business of being loved not for our merits, but for being daughters and sons of God almighty.

It’s interesting to me that the Gospels are filled with incidents of crossing boundaries.  It almost seems that one of Jesus’ primary aims was to cross as many boundaries as he could: boundaries of class, gender, nationality, even the boundary of the Sabbath and the codes of clean and unclean.  Jesus celebrates crossing boundaries in our parable this morning.

Old Testament Judaism, in its code of purity, its code of holiness, its code of clean and unclean, legal and illegal, Jew and Gentile, was in great measure a religion of respect for boundaries.  And in our day of increasing informality I think that  we could learn something from the sort of respect for the holy and the respect for boundaries that is so central to much of biblical Judaism.  We may cross boundaries too easily for the wrong reasons.

But at the same time, I would like to say that in Christ, holiness lies in the crossing of boundaries in love. 

Love has a habit of crossing boundaries.   But it crosses them in the Christlike way of emptying oneself, dying to oneself, losing oneself for the other person.  The way God in Christ crossed the boundary into the human realm.  The way the Samaritan neighbor rescued the Jew.  The way you have invited my family and me to be a part of your life together.

Within the community of faith, we cross boundaries by stepping on each other’s toes and by lifting one another up.  Both are important parts of living a life together and I will always be grateful for  the adventures in grace we have shared together over the years.  

Thanks be to God.  Amen.