Luke 7:11-17
March 24
David A. Davis
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Two large crowds. Great crowds. A large crowd went with Jesus and his disciples to a town called Nain. Another great crowd was coming toward them along the way. That crowd was surrounding a widow who lost her only son. In the Gospel of Luke when Levi the tax collector gave a great banquet for Jesus in his house, there was a great crowd of tax collectors. When Jesus preached the Sermon on the Plain in Luke, it was a great crowd of disciples and a great multitude of people. When Jesus tells the parable of the sower in Luke, he tells it to a great crowd. When Jesus, James, John, and Peter come down from the Mount of Transfiguration, a great crowd is waiting for them. You heard earlier this morning about “the whole multitude of the disciples” who shouted praise to Jesus on the colt as he headed down from the Mount of Olives. After Jesus died on that cross, Luke tells of the “all the crowds who had gathered there for this spectacle”.

It is as if Luke tells of a great crowd to make sure we are paying attention to what happens. As far as I can tell, the only great crowd surrounding anyone other than Jesus in the gospel of Luke is the crowd surrounding the widow who just lost her only son. Pretty much the whole town must be surrounding her as she heads out to bury her son. A great crowd sharing her grief. A great crowd embracing her at the time of unspeakable loss. A great crowd coming to support her in her now pressing cultural and economic vulnerability. Death comes and a great crowd gathers.

It is what people do when death’s relentless interruption to life comes. It is what people of faith do. It is what the church does. I know that because I have seen it over and over and over again. I have told you before that my then 21 year old brother was killed in a car accident when I was 7 years old. It was a Saturday night. When I woke up Sunday morning and looked out the window, the cars lining the street looked like my parents were having a party. My brother and I had not been told yet about Bobby’s death. It was announced at the early service of worship at church that morning. All of my parent’s friends came to the house right from there. It is kind of an act of our faith really. When death comes that great crowd no matter how small, embodies (hopefully with as few words as possible) a witness to life and our eternal hope.

When the two great crowds meet there at the town gate, one assumes it became a really great crowd. Luke wants us to pay close attention. When Jesus sees her and the whole town coming alongside her in that procession of death and grief, he has compassion for her and tells her not to weep. Here in the text, she says nothing. She doesn’t identify him as Messiah. She doesn’t ask him to do anything. She is doing the only thing she can do. She is weeping. Like the account of the man being lowered from a hole in the roof by his friends to be healed by Jesus, the only expression of faith here to be found is in the gathering of the neighbors that surround her. “ ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’. The dead man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him to his mother.” Jesus gave the gift of life both to the man and to his mother.

The gospel of Luke tells of another procession of death and grief. The procession begins a few days before they made Jesus carry the cross they would use to murder him. The procession of death and grief began at the Mount of Olives. The difference between the two processions is that nobody on that downward path knew about the death and grief part. Instead, it was parade full of shouts of praise and joy-filled acclamations. “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven!” The Pharisees in the crowd didn’t tell Jesus to stop the shouting because they knew it was death march. The whole multitude of the disciples haven’t figured out coming death and resurrection part. Jesus knows where this is all headed and so do we.

Professor Eric Barreto points out the life of Jesus in Luke is framed beginning and end by his mother Mary. Mary, of course, is the first one to be told about Jesus by the angel Gabriel. At the time of his death, Luke tells of “all of his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood a distance, watching these things.” It was “the women who had come with him from Galilee” who followed Joseph of Arimathea to see him lay Jesus in the tomb. The same women who went back the next morning. Mary isn’t named but wouldn’t a mother go to her son’s tomb? In the opening part of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells of the disciples gathering together after the Ascension. Luke lists them by name. “All of these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer” Luke writes, “together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”

Dr. Barreto also points out that in Luke’s gospel, Jesus never reprimands his mother. Neither does Mary try to get Jesus to stop teaching, preaching, and healing in Luke. That’s in Mark. So it is not a stretch to conclude that when Luke tells of great crowd, Mary the mother of Jesus would be there. When Jesus rode that colt down the path from the Mount of Olives and started up the other side of the valley toward Jerusalem, Mary would have been there too. But I can’t imagine Mary was joining in the shouts of praise and joy-filled acclamations. No, she couldn’t have been filled with joy because Mary knew. Like Jesus, Mary knew. The old man Simeon told her way back in chapter two. “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” Mary knew. I have always sort of thought that Gabriel told her too. That when Mary “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”, she knew. Maybe, maybe not, but when Mary joined that procession that began at the Mount of Olives, for her it was a procession of grief and death.

Don’t you think when Jesus looked into the eyes of the grieving mother surrounded by a great crowd on the way to the cemetery to bury her son, he was filled with compassion, and he saw in her eyes his own mother? At some point when the two great crowds met and made a very great crowd, can’t you just imagine that at some point amid the woman’s complete silence, Jesus and his mother saw each other and exchanged a profound, heart heavy, knowing look? There must be a special place in heaven for parents who must bury a child and there along that procession of death and of life, Jesus and his mother shared a knowing look with another mother. And by grace and the resurrection power of God, Jesus, foreshadowing his own death and his own resurrection, turns the procession into a miraculous witness to life. Jesus transforms a really great crowd staring at the reality of death. With very few words, Jesus turns that crowd into an embodied witness to life and our eternal hope.

You and I are part of a really great crowd today, in the coming days, and next Sunday too. The tradition labels Jesus’ process as the Triumphal Entry. But you and I, along with the whole multitude of disciples, we know where this is headed. We offer our shouts of praise and joy-filled acclamations this morning but soon we will surround Jesus in the Garden and weep. We don’t rush to the tomb and until we join Jesus’ acquaintances, including the women who followed him from Galilee, standing at a distance watching the spectacle of the imperial principalities and the power of darkness torture Jesus and beat the life out him. We are part of a great crowd called together by his suffering and death and a mother’s grief doing what people do when death calls, doing what resurrection promise-filled neighbors do. We offer an embodied witness to life and our eternal hope.

I don’t remember much else that happened on that Sunday morning when I was 7 years old, and a great crowd came to our house. My parents told me more of the details over the years. The friends who sat with them. A few who said things stupid things like “it must have been God’s will.” But more, many more who nothing and only wept. A few started cleaning the house without saying a word. The pastor came from the church after the second service of worship. And of course, all the things people did in the ways, weeks, and months and years that followed. Even though my memories are blocked by the trauma of it all I can see it deep down in my heart. Yes, because my parents, my sister, my brother, and some of those friends described it to me. But I can see it deep down even more because I have seen it over and over and over again. And so have you.

You might have noticed in Luke’s account of the procession from the Mt of Olives to the city of Jerusalem, there were no shouts of “Hosanna” which means “save us”. I figure those in the crowd still shouted it even though Luke doesn’t record it. It’s in the three other gospels. Save us! Save us! Save us! It’s always described as a joyful shout! But it’s a prayer-filled plea as well. Save us, dear Lord!

When that great crowd gathers around death to embrace the broken-hearted, amid that embodied witness to life and our eternal hope, there is a prayer-filled plea as well that defines that crowd. A prayer that rests way deep down in the soul. It dare not come in a joyful shout but in silence. It’s the same plea as the Palm Sunday one.
Save us! Save us! Save us! Not with a shout of hosanna but with prayer. Lord Jesus save us in our grief and point us to the hope of resurrection life. Join our procession here and now and forever lead us to the very heart of God.

Hosanna!

Acts 5:16-29
March 17
Youth Sunday
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Luke 10:25-37
David A. Davis
February 18, 2024
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He never called him good. That was everyone else, ever since. Jesus never called him good. In the parable Jesus tells of “a Samaritan” who came near the man, saw him, and was moved with pity. Not “good”, just a Samaritan traveler. In the gospel of Luke, the words “Samaritan” and “good” are never paired together. In the previous chapter in Luke, Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem”.  He was heading out from Galilee and intentionally went out of his way to enter “a village of the Samaritans.” The Samaritans where not hospitable to the visit of Jesus and the disciples and James and John wanted to “command fire to come down from heaven and consume them.”  Jesus, of course, rebuked them and they headed off to another village. The disciples wanted to wipe out the Samaritans.

You will remember Luke’s account of Jesus healing the ten people with leprosy and only one of them turned back and fell at the feet of Jesus to thank him. Do you remember that it happened “in the region between Samaria and Galilee”? The man who turned back was a Samaritan. Jesus didn’t call him good either. Though the man had already been healed, Jesus said “Get up and go on your way, your faith has made you well.”  John’s gospel includes the longest conversation Jesus had with any one person. It was the woman at the well. She was a Samaritan. Late into their conversation, the disciples return and find Jesus talking to her. “They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman.” They didn’t say anything but John writes that they were thinking “Why are you speaking to her?” Presumably because she was a woman and she was a Samaritan. “Many Samaritans from that city believed in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony.”  Jesus didn’t call her good either. Jesus never called the traveling Samaritan good. That was everyone else, ever since.

Small groups started this week and my group on Wednesday morning had such a good conversation. Helpful for preaching, too. One person in the group noted that when the lawyer was asked by Jesus which of the three “was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robber”, the lawyer couldn’t even bring himself to say it. That he was the Samaritan. No, all he could muster was “the one who showed him mercy.” The one. When Jesus finished the parable, everyone and their uncle knew the answer. It wasn’t the Levite. Come on, say it. It wasn’t the priest. You can say it. IT WAS THE SAMARITAN. Jesus could have said, “uh, uh, uh…..which one?” But the parable is shocking enough, Jesus just said “Go and do likewise”.  Shocking and timelessly relevant when it comes to the human condition. Part of what makes the parable so lasting and powerful in the world we live in today is not that the Samaritan was good. It’s that he was a SAMARITAN.

Several years ago, Iman Chablis from the Islamic Center of New Jersey out on Rt 1, Rabbi Feldman from the Jewish Center of Princeton and I together did a three-night gig. Each night was at one of our respective houses of worship. Our intent was to show our collegiality and respect for one another and for each of us to give an example of how we interpret our sacred texts. I chose this parable of the man in the ditch. I won’t ever forget how, after we finished at the Jewish Center, several members of the synagogue came up to me one after the other. Not a few. Several. They told me they were raised to think this parable is an example of the antisemitism of the New Testament and of Christians. It was all because of how the priest and the Levite were portrayed by Jesus as walking by and failing to show mercy to the man in the ditch. One or two mentioned that they never heard that the man who had been robbed was Jewish. I had argued that while Jesus doesn’t say it one could assume someone traveling down from Jerusalem to Jericho was Jewish. But notice, Jesus never called the Samaritan good and never criticized, said a negative thing, or called the priest or the Levite bad. As another person said Wednesday morning, “Can’t we find something good to say about the priest and the Levite?”

Jesus never called him good and he never called them bad. Maybe that’s because at the end of the day the parable isn’t about being good. The wonder and the power of the parables is that they cannot easily be reduced to a moral point. They are not simply morality tales with a takeaway about being good. Jesus didn’t say “Go and be good” or “Go and do good.” Like a parent dropping a child off for a friends birthday party or a practice or a rehearsal or an SAT test. Jesus asked “who was a neighbor”. The lawyer is the one who brought up mercy. Jesus might as well of said “go and be” or “go and live” or “go and neighbor”.

If a takeaway from the parable here is about being good, you and I are in deep trouble. Because we are good enough. We aren’t ever good enough. I’m not good enough. You’re not good enough. And compared to the priest and the Levite, we’re not holy enough and probably not smart enough either! If this parable about the traveling Samaritan who acted as a neighbor to the beat up man in the ditch left for dead is about being good, if that’s the standard of assessment when it comes to faithfulness, the instruction manual for how to live and work and stop and care and help and give, I will only speak for myself, but I am failing miserably. And I am the one who walks down Nassau Street as the religious professional like the priest and the Levite.

A long time I was in the office of the church in South Jersey all by myself. Solo pastors are often in the building all by themselves. The doorbell rang and as I went to the door I could see man outside whose clothes were very tattered. He was clearly worn down from life and life on the street. I was smart enough to not invite him into the building. It wasn’t cold outside so we stood in the parking lot and he started telling a long story that was hard for me to follow. At one point I was able to interrupt him and I asked him in a very straight forward way: “what can I do for you?’ I was expecting him to ask for money or food or a bus ticket or a hot meal or a place to stay. I could have helped with some but not all of those things. In a manner different from the rambling story, he looked me in the eye and asked “Can I have a ride to Camden?” That was about a fifteen-minute ride from the church. Maybe I was sort of dumbfounded by the request but a few minutes later I was driving up the Atlantic City Expressway on the way to the bus station in Camden. It didn’t take long on that trip for me to think of my family: Cathy, Hannah and Ben who were very young at the time. That’s when I said to myself, “Self, this might be the stupidest think you have ever done in ministry” I sort of think Jesus would agree with me. Going and doing likewise. It’s not as easy to figure out as it seems. And the Christian life as never been as easy as “What Would Jesus Do?”

To go and do likewise is not an exhortation to do good or to be good. It is the call of Christ to live and to be and to work toward a world defined by compassion, mercy, kindness and love. To go and do likewise is the expectation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that boundary walls should be tumbled down and hateful stereotypes of all kinds should be crushed and that everyone should be treated as a child of God. To go and do likewise is confirmation for the followers of Jesus that righteousness starts with a trickle of unexpected action and liberation from all the world ingrains in us about those who are different from us and we. To go and do likewise is the less an invitation to do what Jesus would do and more an invitation to see the world and the people in it as Jesus did.

The first step to going and doing likewise is to find yourself and know yourself on the receiving end of God’s compassion, mercy, kindness and love. To know with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind that this saving grace of Jesus Christ is as unexpected and undeserved and upending and life transforming as being on the receiving end of the loving, not anticipated, surprising care of a neighbor. And there is no better way to remember that and experience it afresh than to hear the words “This is my body broken for you. This is cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood for the forgiveness of sins. It is for you.

He never called him good. That was everyone else, every since. Jesus never called the Samaritan good. Not at the end, not in the middle, not at the beginning for the parable. Maybe that’s because when it comes your life of faith and mine, the parable actually begins with us in the ditch.