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The Most Natural Thing in the WorldJuly 15, 2007 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost I wonder if there’s anyone present who hasn’t heard of the Good Samaritan? No doubt it’s right up there with the story of the Prodigal Son in terms of notoriety within our culture. I got over two million hits when I googled the phrase. It serves as the name of many medical institutions and a wide variety of Christian organizations devoted to helping others. It’s an important parable, one that every would-be follower of Jesus should know. And by way of understanding the parable’s challenging meaning, I think every Christian should also know the true story of the French village, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. Perhaps some of you are familiar with this as well. But whether you know of it or not, it shines a bright light on how we are to understand Jesus’ radical teaching embedded with his teaching. Primarily a town of French protestants, the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon became a haven for Jews fleeing from the Nazis during World War II. You may remember that early on in Hitler’s advance on Europe, France became a vassal state of Germany and a sympathetic government was installed. Over the course of the war, it’s estimated that French collaborators delivered around 83,000 Jews to the Nazis, including 10,000 children. Even now, from this distance of six decades, it’s hard to make sense of the numbers and even harder to make sense of the vast number of ordinary persons who collaborated in such a mass transfer of fellow humans. But Le Chambon-sur-Lignon defied the Nazi regime and the French government, and over the course of the occupation, took in 5,000 Jews - as many as the entire village population. Most homes and farms held strangers, as well as local institutions – not just for days, but for years. So deep was the villagers’ humanity that it is believed that no resident ever turned away, denounced, or betrayed a single refugee. They helped provide forged identity documents and ration cards, and helped the Jews over the border to safety in Switzerland. Such large-scale resistance was known to the Nazis, but whenever patrols came to the village word spread and villagers hustled the Jews into nearby woods. One of the Chambonais later recalled: “As soon as the soldiers left, we would go into the forest and sing a song. When they heard the song the Jews knew it was safe to come home.” [1] This gentle but thorough subterfuge was led by the village pastor, André Trocmé and his wife, Magda; under their leadership villagers acted on their conviction that it was their duty to help their “neighbors” in need. They didn’t attempt to convert them, they simply saved them. Eventually, some of the residents were arrested by the Gestapo, including Pastor Trocmé’s cousin, Daniel, who subsequently was killed in a concentration camp. Once the war came to an end and the villager’s activities became known, the Chambonais rejected any labeling of their behavior as heroic. They said: “Things had to be done and we happened to be there to do them. It was the most natural thing in the world to help these people.” [3] “Things had to be done and we happened to be there to do them. It was the most natural thing in the world….” There are probably other sorts of stories we could share with one another, stories on a smaller scale, perhaps, that would also model how Jesus’ teaching can become embedded within the hearts and minds of his followers. But, for me, the story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon stands out within recent Christian history. It bears repeating and internalizing and teaching to our children and to ourselves. I want this story told and absorbed in our own educational program. The parable of The Good Samaritan has a tendency to become so sentimentalized as to lose the real scope of the love Jesus lived and taught. It can seem to be reduced to a schmaltzy lesson about treating people we know decently, which isn’t bad, of course. Or it can be used as a prod to get parishioners to sign up for an occasional romp in doing a bit of good. But the real stakes in the story are made more clear when quoting the Chambonais, “Things had to be done and we happened to be there to do them. It was the most natural thing in the world to help these people.” Considering the duplicity and complicity of much of the Christian world, not to mention government, and the incredible risk involved, this simple response seems to defy reason. Because, after all, even in our doing good we want to be reasonable about it, don’t we? Consider the lawyer’s intention in quizzing Jesus. The real set-up of the parable comes when Luke says that the lawyer wanted to justify himself with his question, “Who is my neighbor?” In other words, he wanted to know the exact limits of the meaning of the word, neighbor. Clearly, he thinks there are limits, thus his need to justify his position on the matter. And we could surmise that what he’s after is a debate about the finer points of the law, a debate that leaves him well satisfied that he’s got it right. If you happen to be a lawyer or have ever worked with one, you know how this might go. Frederick Buechner reasoned that the lawyer in our story was looking for a legal outcome that sounded something like this: “A neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as a person of Jewish descent whose residence is within a radius of three statute miles of one’s own residence (hereinafter referred to as the party of the second part) unless another person of Jewish descent lives between the party of the first part and the party of the second part, in which case, the intervening person shall be considered the neighbor to the party of the first part, hence relieving the party of the second part of any responsibility whatsoever.” Instead of debating, Jesus told a story that had nothing to do with law, and everything to do with grace. Or we could put it this way: there was only one two-part law that transcended all others – love God with your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself. But this law was not subject to legal analysis, only the response that love dictated. And, if this love was embraced and internalized, it would wind up expressed in words like those of the villagers in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. “Things had to be done, and we happened to be there to do them. It was the most natural thing in the world…” We could hear the Samaritan in our story saying something just like that, had a reporter shown up at the inn to ask him about his motives in coming to the aid of the stranger on the side of the road. The lawyer in our story would not have understood this sort of behavior. Indeed, Jesus himself was ultimately not understood, or, maybe, understood only too well to be embraced. For his sort of love would upend the prescribed order of things, considering all the ways he expounded on the theme, “the first shall be last and the last first.” In first century Palestine, the lawyer was among the first and the Samaritan among the last. The Samaritans were despised by the Jews. That this outsider is the one extending the aid is a radical aspect of the story with both the privileged priest and the Levite passing on the other side of the road. Note Jesus does not say why they passed by. Surely they had a good, solid reason. Like fear for their lives, for instance. Suppose it was a trap? Or, suppose it was someone other than a Jew? Someone beyond their normal range of neighborliness? Someone who, quite frankly, could be discounted for not belonging to God’s elect? Of course, by the time of the Second World War, it’s the Jews who were largely beyond the range of neighborliness in western civilization. There’s much to be said about the American silence pertaining to the Holocaust as it evolved in Europe, rooted in an endemic bias within Christian culture. But then, this wasn’t the first time so-called Christian culture failed to learn Jesus’ radical lessons. At some point in their sojourn in Ghana, our church team that left Thursday to build homes with new neighbors, will visit the slave castles on the African coast. These were the points of embarkation for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, where millions were bound and held prisoner crammed into dank cells. I have an unrelentingly vivid memory of standing in the chapel of one of the castles six years ago. A cold chill swept through me when I realized the floor of the chapel doubled as the ceiling for the men’s dungeon. Surely the story of the Good Samaritan was read in that place. Inscribed on chapel wall was a verse of Psalm 132: “For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation.” If you look that up you will find that passage continues with these words: “This is my resting place forever. I will abundantly bless its provisions; I will satisfy its poor with bread.” This experience remains one of the most powerful and disturbing metaphors of my ministry. Had I thought of it at the time I might have remembered to share the story there of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and Pastor Trocmé’s words: “The Christian Church should drop to its knees and beg pardon of God for its…incapacity and cowardice.” [4] We begin to see the enormity of the stakes in our beloved parable this morning. It strikes at the heart of our essential commitments as persons who claim to be followers of the way Jesus walked. It prompts us to consider the sort of community we wish to become. Here’s what I hope: I hope and pray that increasingly we become the sort of family that does the work of love Jesus inspires. Remember, after the lawyer gave the correct answer about loving God and neighbor, Jesus said, “Do this and you will live.” I yearn for all of us to have this inscribed within our hearts so that like the Chambonais our response to having provided courageous and generous loving care anywhere to anyone would be like theirs: “Things had to be done and we happened to be there to do them. It was the most natural thing in the world to help these others.” ___________________________ Previous sermon: Abounding Opportunities • Next sermon: Learner and Doer All past sermons |
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