A puppet, a cricket, a stone .... and a cross

Dear Friends,
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Walt Disney’s animated “Pinocchio” released in 1940 featured Jiminy Cricket as the personified conscience of the puppet who yearned to become a real boy:


      When you get in trouble and you don’t know right from wrong, give a little whistle ... and always let your conscience be your                  guide. (Ned Washington)


Our Scriptures this week are both comforting and challenging. The first reading from Deuteronomy reassures us that God’s command is not something “too mysterious and remote.” It ultimately lives in our hearts and all we have to do is look within and carry it out. That is the challenging part, isn’t it – carrying it out.


And that brings us to Luke’s gospel where Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan after a dialog with a scholar of the law who asks what he must do “to inherit eternal life” and correctly cites the great commandment which ends with loving neighbor as self. Then, because “he wished to justify himself” he asks “And who is my neighbor?”


You probably know the story since this parable (and the one known as the Prodigal Son) are the best known and most loved (perhaps) of all Jesus’ stories. But let’s look at who the characters are and what they represent.


“A man fell victim to robbers,” He could have been anyone but was likely a member of the Jewish community. So, interestingly, could the robbers have been. Jesus doesn’t tell us.


A priest and a Levite who passed the robbery victim by were certainly members of the Jewish community and religious leaders who needed to avoid being made “unclean” by contact with an injured, bleeding and possibly dead man.


A Samaritan traveler – not a member of the Jewish community, far from it. Part of a group that Jews had nothing to do with and looked down upon as “less than,” yet the one who the scholar of the law had to admit “was neighbor to the robbers’ victim.” This compassionate man treated the victim’s wounds, used his own animal to take him to an inn, and paid for his lodging and care, promising to make good any remaining balance upon his return.


Here’s the kicker: Jesus tells the scholar of the law (and tells us!) to “Go and do likewise.”


Singer and songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter in “Stones in the Road” from the album of the same name sings:


     “The “starving children” have been replaced by souls out on the street. We give a dollar when we pass and hope our eyes don’t             meet.”
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These lyrics haunt me. I have been stingy with my care for the unfortunate I’ve encountered who make me feel uncomfortable. When I look at my attempts at kindness and compassion in the light of the Good Samaritan’s I know I have much work to do and that I could be “weighed in the balance and found wanting” (Daniel 5:27)

But as Paul writes in his letter to the Colossians (today’s second reading):
For in him [Christ Jesus] all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Thanks be to God.

There is good reason for hope.

Siempre adelante,
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Dominic MacAller
Worship Minister
Readings

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