Lawyer's Question

A Reflection for 5th Sunday after Pentecost St. Andrew’s , Nags Head, NC July 13, 2025 Thomas Wilson, Guest Celebrant Amos 7:7-17 Psalm 82 Colossians 1:1-14 Luke 10:25-37 Lawyer’s Question A scribe asks Jesus a question: “What must I do to inherit Eternal Life?” A scribe is a member of a group of gifted people who were chosen to be trusted enough to be able to write the scriptures and to interpret them. In the first century, the scribes were people who were counted upon to preserve the traditions, especially during this time when Greek and Roman legal traditions were threatening to over take the place of Hebrew traditions. Scribes were lawyers of the Hebrew tradition. Jesus had this habit of reinterpreting the law, which made him suspect by the lawyers and scribes. Lawyers are used to drawing up wills. So when this scribe, lawyer, asks Jesus about a legal matter about what tradition upholds in the giving of eternal life, as the party of the 1st part, so it seems like a nice question. The Hebrew word for life is “Chaim”, which is a plural rather than a singular word, meaning that life, which is a gift from God, means what happens before birth, during life and after death. The lawyer, scribe, wants to nail Jesus down what does this part of “life”, after this physical life, looks like? Are there rewards and punishments? So, Jesus starts off by telling a story about a man who is accosted by robbers and left for dead. Two, very respected men, a Priest and a Levite, come by the body and assume that the body is dead or dying, in which case if they touch the bloody body, they will become unclean and unable to do their work at the places where their important work takes them. They cross to the other side of the road, to avoid being contaminated by this tragedy. If they become contaminated by the blood, their journey would need to be interrupted by a cleansing ritual bath. They both make a solid and respected business decision. No one could blame them; people die all the time. Life must go on, even in the face of death. It is a little like when I agree to do a wedding of the daughter of some leaders of the church and find an impediment in my schedule and have to cancel my commitment at the last minute. If ever that would happen, my resume would need to be in the mail that afternoon to any church Rector openings. In the days that I was researching and writing this reflection, I received four, count them four, phone calls from spam numbers asking me if “Patricia”, my wife, “was there”? She died two years ago and I said, “No”, and their response was to switch to a pre-recorded sales pitch. Life must go on. I finally called their number and found it was from a political party, that she would not have voted for on a bet, and I asked them to remove her name. You know the rest of the Biblical story, that a Samaritan comes upon the scene. Let me see if I can give you a metaphor for the identity that would resonate with the reaction to the man being a Samaritan. How about when a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party comes by a body washed up on the beach across the street from this church? The Communist would be the only one who ministers to the victim while the members of this church would find lots of excuses not to get their hands dirty., because it is Sunday morning after all. For those of you who used to watch the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” Cartoons; it would be as if the villains, Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, suddenly turn into heroes and Rocky and Bullwinkle into disappointments. During the time of Jesus, if you were a good Jew and you had to even say the word “Samaritan”, you would be expected to spit to show your displeasure about the whole race. But, in this story, the Samaritan is the only character who shows mercy and love to this broken person. Jesus had this habit of telling stories that were rough to be heard by good religious folk. It is one of the reasons that when the crowd gathers outside for the trial of Jesus, to join in with the call to crucify the Nazarene trouble maker, who just didn’t leave well enough alone. One of the things about religious folk like me is that we like to make prayers that tell that “Old Boy up in the sky”, what “WE” want. In conversations with the Almighty, we tend to do most of the talking and very little of the listening. But in this story for today, the lawyer/scribe does the listening and it seems to dawn on him that the standard villain of Jewish stories, the Samaritan, (BOO -Hiss), is the only one who acts as if he hears God’s call to grace filled ministry. I like to think that the lawyer goes home that evening and sits down to dinner with his wife and tells her about what he learned about love that day and how he needed to tell her about his love for her, and show what that means in the days ahead, when they help people together as outward and visible signs of God’s love. What Jesus likes to do in telling stories, is to turn everything upside down, where we are no longer the centers of our universe. And perhaps that says a lot about what should be happening in this creation. What stories do you need to tell; especially those stories without words, yet full of action? Lawyer’s Question Lawyer wants a way out of neighbor care, Getting too close to the life we want to live, Closed to outsiders; refusing our help to give And sharing it only, when it’s really our affair. Jesus’ response was we reap what we sow Suggesting we sow forgiveness and graces Before it is needed, not just in holy places, But on the roads where all our enemies go. Not just to people we’d invite to the house But those your friends tell to take a hike, Especially those they won’t even try to like. And to people not approved by your spouse. Moral is more than inviting Samaritans to lunch, But to treat all people as part of family bunch.