Disciple or Admirer?

Read: Luke 10:25-37

 

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost - July 14, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth R. Elkin

 

I'd like to introduce you to Clarence Jordan, a remarkable man of the 20th century, who lived from 1912 to 1969.

From an early age the young Jordan was troubled by the racial and economic injustice that he perceived in his community.

 Hoping to improve the lot of sharecroppers through scientific farming techniques, Jordan enrolled in the University of Georgia, earning a degree in agriculture in 1933.

During his college years, however, Jordan became convinced that the roots of poverty were spiritual as well as economic.

This conviction led him to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, from which he earned a Ph.D. in Greek in 1938.

He and his wife combined his two interests when they founded Koinonia Farm, an interracial Christian community in Americus, Georgia, deep in the heart of the South in the 1940s.

Opposition was not unexpected, but it was led by his own people, the local Southern Baptist congregation.

It eventually became so angry with him that they excommunicated his entire Koinonia Community, because they dared to have blacks and whites worshiping together.

This was followed by all of the other usual horrors: vandalism, cross burnings, legal pressures, beatings, bombings, an economic boycott and sniper shootings.

Clarence turned to his brother, attorney Robert Jordan, for legal counsel and asked him to become the legal representative of the Koinonia Community.

Robert said no.

“Clarence, I can't do that. You know my political aspirations.

If I represent you, I might lose my job, my house, my job, everything I've got.”

“We might lose everything, too, Bob,” his brother replied.

“It's different for you.”

“Why is it different?  I remember, it seems to me, that you and I attended the same Sunday School classes as boys.

I think the pastor asked both of us the same questions.

He asked me, “Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?”

“And I said, 'Yes. What did you say?”

“”I follow Jesus up to a point, Clarence.”

“Could that point by any chance be – the cross?”

“That's right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I'm not getting myself crucified.”

“Then I don't believe you're a disciple. You are an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think that you ought to go back to the church to which you belong, and tell them that you're an admirer, not a disciple.”

“Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, then we wouldn't have a church, would we?”

“The question,” Clarence said, “is do you have a church, or just a nice religious club?”

 

That was a very painful conversation between those brothers, but it did bring clarity to the situation.

Robert turned away and did not help his brother Clarence.

He was politically rewarded by later serving as a Georgia state senator and a justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, but at what cost?

In Clarence's opinion, by being only an admirer and not a disciple of Jesus.

The opportunity was there for Robert to do something significant, very much needed, and requiring his skills and abilities...and he passed by on the other side.

Later there was a visitor to the community who intended to stay for two hours and instead stayed for a several years and was profoundly influenced by his conversations with Clarence.

His name was Millard Fuller, who went on to establish the organization we know as Habitat for Humanity, with the thousands of persons it has not passed by over the years.

 

The story that Jesus told in today's Gospel reading is very familiar to us, and that familiarity may lead us to say that we don't need to think any more about the story.

It may be, however, that when we think we know something well, we need to listen even more closely for how the lesson will catch hold of us.

The Good Samaritan story is set within a framework of four questions and answers.

On the face of it, the first question is flawed at best.

Remember that it is not just anyone, but a lawyer asks the question “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

It is not a good lawyer-question, is it?

One cannot do anything in order to inherit; an inheritance is by definition a gift received after the death of grantor.

But Jesus does not call him out on the dumb question, but plays along by by asking what the law says about this.

The lawyer correctly cites chapter and verse, and Jesus nods and responds “Do this and you will  live.

“Aha,” thinks the lawyer,” now I have a theoretical checklist which I can contemplate and accomplish at my leisure.

All I need to do now is to get some more specifications in this list and I will be all set.

I will be able to prove myself to God, to handle anything that might be brought up.

So,...'who is my neighbor?'”

Jesus responds with the story, and then asks the fourth question: Which of these became a neighbor?

Our translation doesn't have the word “became”, but it is in the Greek, and it makes Jesus' question different from the lawyer's.

The lawyer assumes that being a neighbor is a matter of genetic heritage.

Jesus' question breaks that stereotype, and expands the possibilities endlessly.

And, by the way, makes it even more impossible to fulfill completely!

If our salvation depended upon our being neighborly to every person, no one could possibly be saved.

Any of us have only met a tiny fraction of the world's population!

 

This brings us to reflect on Jesus answer to the third question, with which Jesus closes the episode.

He says, “Go and do likewise.”

We have rightly seen that as an admonition to become neighbors to persons in all sorts of situations.

Our Family Promise work is just one way we're following this admonition together.

But there is another possibility to understanding “Go and do likewise” which we haven't thought of nearly so often.

Not only are we to show mercy, but we are to be ready to receive mercy.

Our neighboring actions, no matter how noble or well-intentioned, do not win us salvation.

It always remains a free gift of God to us, an inheritance for us to receive with thanks and joy.

What a wonder, what a delight!

Jesus admonition to “Go and do likewise” can mean both to be alert for the opportunities to give mercy and also to be ready to receive mercy.

 

As we are engaged in that giving and receiving, our lives undergo a great shift. 

It was very dramatic in the case of Clarence Jordan, who could have had an academic career as a professor of Greek, had he chosen, but instead developed the Koinonia Community.

It was also very dramatic in the case of Millard Fuller, who came for 2 hours, stayed for several years, and there developed the idea for Habitat for Humanity.

It could be dangerous and disheartening; even when Mr. Jordan died in 1969, there was so much animosity that the local coroner refused to come to pronounce him dead.

We don't think of the risks taken by the Samaritan in Jesus' story.

Let's move it to a different setting for a moment:

Let's say that an American Indian rides into a western town in the 1850s with a wounded white man on a pack horse, and wants to take care of him in the town's boarding house, and even offers to pay for the care.

Would the Indian's story about finding the man abandoned on the road and wounded be believed?

Would the Indian live through the episode or would he be lynched, or at least run out of town?

That's the kind of danger that the Samaritan faced in taking the wounded man into a Jewish town.

 

With that kind of danger, why would the Samaritan stop; why would we stop?

We could come up with a list of possible reasons:

-”In anger and outrage that someone would be so badly mistreated.”

-”Because it is what God would want me to do.”

-”It is a chance to take a stand and say that this is not the way the world is supposed to be.”

-”This is another human being who needs help, no matter what the ethnic group.”

-”Because if I had been here a little earlier, the person in the ditch could have been me.”

-”I stopped because it is the way I was brought up.”

-”I don't know.. out of curiosity I guess.”

That is mixed list of reasons, isn't it; some are better than others.

But isn't it wonderful that God is able to take us with our less-than-perfect motivations and accomplish the job of showing mercy that he needs anyway?!

And isn't it also wonderful that he is merciful to us who are often the most ungrateful and cantankerous folks around?

And Jesus taught us about what it means to be a disciple, not merely an admirer, by asking questions and telling a story.

Amen.