Highways Need Exits
by Jim Westmoreland
It happened on the Jericho Road. It always happens on the Jericho Road. The Jericho Road is the seventeen mile road that connects Jerusalem to Jericho. That road drops 3600 feet in those seventeen miles. It is a steep, winding, descending, remote road that for centuries has been a place of robberies.
The Jericho Road. It always happens on the Jericho Road. It is the seventeen miles of violence and oppression. It is the strip of suffering. The Jericho Road? It's a symbol. It's a symbol of suffering in the world. The Jericho Road is the seventeen rooms of the corridor of the nursing home where Virginia lives who has Alzheimer's disease. It is a place of suffering. .... The Jericho Road? It is the Cadillac Motel, the 231 Motel, the Budget In, the Colonel House and others like them that house the homeless and working poor who cannot afford the deposit to get an apartment, or whose other habits siphon off whatever income they have. These can be a frightening, unwholesome places where one does not feel completely safe. The Jericho Road? There are many 17 mile roads in Iraq and Afghanistan where thousand upon thousands of people have been killed. ... The Jericho Road? It is the seventeen miles that goes right through the heart of Calcutta. ... The Jericho Road? It is the seventeen years that many have cared for an alcoholic spouse and all the attendant diseases and medical problems that eventually come. You see, the Jericho Road is any place where there is violence, any place where there is oppression, any place where people are robbed of their dignity, their love, their food and robbed of their freedom. The Jericho Road is with us too. Don’t you wish you never had to get near or travel on The Jericho Road?
I want to share a parable about this parable. One day the president of the Ministerial Association was on the Jericho Road. He was a very religious man, and he saw somebody who had been hurt, but he was running late for a Min. Assoc. mtg with 30 other ministers, and he couldn’t stop. Then there was a pastor who went down to the Jericho Road and he was appalled by what he saw. It was awful on the Jericho Road, and so he came back to his church, and do you know what he did? He taught a course called, "A Biblical Understanding and Perspective on Poverty." They showed films of people who were being beaten up on the Jericho Road, and everybody felt rotten and guilty enough to think that they had actually done something for the people on the Jericho Road.
We often move through the highways of our lives fast and inattentive. If there are needs around us, we don’t have time to stop, or we act as if there is not a way to pull over, find out what the need is and begin to help. We live as if there are no exits from the highways of our habits, routines and preferences. And, while we pass by on the other side, the man on the Jericho Road dies.
The Jericho Road is always with us. The Jericho Road is any place where people are robbed; robbed of their dignity, robbed of their love, robbed of their food and clothing, robbed of their value as human beings. It is any place where there is suffering and oppression.
Now, the story of the Good Samaritan is one of the greatest stories that has ever graced this earth, and it is told by Jesus of Nazareth. One time, a young lawyer came up to Jesus and asked, "What can I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus responded in good rabbinical tradition by asking a question: "What do you think the law has to say about this?" The young lawyer said: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said: "Do this, and you shall live." The lawyer asked Jesus for clarification: "Well, who is my neighbor? What do you mean, neighbor?" Jesus looked at the young man and said, "Let me tell you a story. There once was a man walking down the Jericho Road"... and Jesus told that classic story that we read earlier.
The first lesson that is to be learned from this parable of Jesus is that it is an attack on apathy towards people in need. It's an attack against making excuses. “I don't want to get involved on the Jericho Road.” Many remember the story of Kitty Genovese that made headlines. Kitty Genovese was a woman who had car trouble in New York City. While she was stopped, she ws attacked by thugs on the street. Her car was stripped, she was robbed and beaten. Over 100 people watched all of this happen and heard her screams for help. No one helped. Finally, an ambulance arrived and took her to the hospital where she died of her injuries. The next day, we all asked ourselves, “Why didn't anyone come to the aid of Kitty Genovese?" People had become afraid to get involved, and the story became a symbol of our apathy.
There is also a story about a Harvard Divinity School course entitled, "Christians and Society." The professor had created a test on "Being a Moral Christian in An Immoral Society" that was three hours long. Half way through the test, the students could take a ten-minute break. The students were to leave the room for ten minutes, get fresh air, and then come back and take the last hour and a half of the test. In the courtyard was ice tea and cookies. Also in the courtyard was another part of the test, although the students didn't know it. This was the real test. There was a man who appeared to be all beaten up, laying on the edge of the courtyard. The students saw him, drank their tea and ate their cookies and said to themselves, "What should we do? We have this test to take." All the students went back into the classroom to finish the written part of the text. The professor met them and flunked them all! ....
Do we understand? Do we understand the real test? Sometimes, we who are the church of Jesus Christ flunks the real tests in real life because we are so busy with our narrowly defined religious routines and duties when the real tests are on the Jericho Road. When we are trying to be “church-people,” we pass by on the other side. When we are learning to be a disciple of Jesus, we become people who are always cruising on the Jericho Road looking for someone who needs help. We think, “They know where we are!” instead of wondering, “How can we go to them?”
This parable is also an invitation for us to be merciful and kind to those in need. We are invited to be people who have a gentle heart of generosity, kindness, mercy and tenderness when we see people suffering. You can't pay anyone to do that.
Robert visited his wife every day in the alzheimers unit of a nursing home. He was sharing with his pastor about the exceptional care that two employees, a nurse and an aide, gave her. While they were talking in the hallway, they were watching someone polish the floor, and they were talking about the love of these two nurses. Robert finally said: "Well, you can pay somebody to shine the floor, but you can't pay anyone to love the patients here in this Alzheimer's Unit." You can pay money to get the floor shined, and the bedpans changed and the linens changed, but you can't pay money to have a heart of love. He, of course, was profoundly correct.
This parable of Jesus invites all of us to have hearts of love, to have hearts of love for anybody who is hurting on any of the Jericho Roads of life.
Now, the Jericho Road may be no further than your own house. Your Jericho Road can be in your own kitchen, your own bathroom, your own bedroom of your own home, where you are taking care of your mother or your father or grandmother or grandfather, husband or wife, son or daughter. You see, Jesus invites us to have hearts of love, and you can't pay anyone to have a heart of love. You can pay for floors to be shined and beds to be changed, but you can't buy hearts of love. What God wants for people more than anything is to have that heart of love. .... And that is the purpose of this parable: Jesus is inviting us to have hearts of love.
But this parable is also an invitation to be kind and merciful and loving to... our enemies. Yes, our enemies, people we would love to hate. Let me explain. As you know, the Jews and the Samaritans during the time of Jesus didn't like each other. In fact, they hated each other. They didn't talk with each other. So when Jesus said that there was a Jew down there on the road to Samaria and he was hurt and a Samaritan came along and took care of him, everyone was shocked. I mean, Jews and Samaritans didn't talk to each other. A Samaritan helping a Jew? Impossible! So this was an invitation for Jews to take care of Samaritans and Samaritans to take care of Jews, their historic enemies. This is an invitation for us today, and for people of all time, to love our enemies or to love people we would like to hate. It is hard to love our enemies. But Jesus, in this parable, is inviting us to love people that we think that we have a right to hate.
Who are your enemies? Who are the people you like to hate? To put down? To tell stories about? Send emails about? The story of the Good Samaritan changes our hearts of hate and prejudice into hearts of love.
So there are many levels to this wonderful story of Jesus. It's a parable that condemns non-involvement and apathy and all of our excuses to justify ourselves. This parable is an invitation for us to have a heart that overflows with love and mercy for those who are hurting. This parable is an invitation for us to love our enemies.
We give ourselves no exits in the way we live our lives. We race forward, seeing only what we want to see and ignoring what should make us stop. The exit signs represent our need to pullover, to get off the road for a moment so that God can lead us to do the right thing and help someone. To help, we have to see. To help, we have to stop. Highways need exits and so do we! Amen.
Century Christian Church, July 15, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
