11.25.07 There Are Only Three Kinds of People
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
November 28, 2007 “There Are Only Three Kinds of People”
Text: “Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbor to the man who fell into the brigands’ hands?” “The one who took pity on him,” he replied. Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same yourself.”
When he set out the sun was fully up. He had a long journey ahead of him some 17 miles. He had had a good trading session in Jerusalem and his donkey was well laden with bartered goods. He also had some money with him for he had made a profit. The only thing that was bothering him was that he was alone on a dangerous road. He had had to leave his friend in Jerusalem who was to have accompanied him because the negotiations for the property could not be concluded for another three days—too long for Jacob to wait. So he had set out with some apprehension, the kind he always felt when alone on this road. He was coming up to the more difficult part now. The road got rougher here and it was a constant downhill grade losing some 3400 feet in the 17 miles. Here it was rocky with plenty of hiding places. He quickened his pace and urged his donkey on. Suddenly from out from behind a boulder he saw them… three brigands, Bedouin! He greeted them but they ignored him and began to beat him up. It was the old story three against one and he didn’t have a chance. They knifed him in several places and before he lost consciousness he saw that they had taken everything including his donkey. He knew that they had left him to die. Their last act was to curse him and his religion. Jacob despaired and called on the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to help him as he slipped into unconsciousness.
The Levite was on his way from Jericho up to Jerusalem when he saw a priest coming down from the Jerusalem direction. Good! He would be able to talk to the priest about the road and catch up on the affairs in Jerusalem. The priest told him about a man who he not been able to help lying by the side of the road who was probably dead. “Nothing he could do about it,” he had said, “best to keep moving. Hopefully the robbers had got their prey today,” he said. They exchanged pleasantries and they both moved on.
About half an hour later the Levite came upon the scene. The man was still lying there not moving, “Poor guy,” the Levite said. “Those robbers might still be around!” and passed by on the other side. Jacob who was just returning to consciousness cried out to him. The Levite turned and shook his head and then spurred his mount faster.
Jacob passing in and out of consciousness was suddenly aware that someone had stopped and was pulling Jacobs bloody clothing off and pouring oil and wine into his wounds to disinfect them. The helper was a Samaritan, a traditional national enemy, someone Jews had no dealings with. Yet here he was helping him! And then with a great deal of effort he managed to lift Jacob onto his donkey. What was this Samaritan doing this for? What was in it for him? The man was so gentle, so kind so compassionate. Weary mile after mile went by until they reached an Inn. The Samaritan went inside and came out with help and Jacob soon found himself in a bed. But what to do now? Jacob said to the Samaritan, “I have to pay you but they took everything I had.”
“I know,” said the Samaritan. “It’s all looked after. You can stay here at my expense until you are well again and if it takes a little longer I will reimburse the inn keeper. I know him well.” “But I must pay you!” said Jacob. “I won’t let you pay me,” the Samaritan said. “That could easily have been me, neighbor. What goes around comes around,” and with that he was gone. And Jacob said to himself, he called me neighbor? And then drifted off to sleep…
Deepak Chopra, in his 2004 publication called The Book of Secrets says this: “There are only three kinds of people in your life: those who leave you alone, those who help you and those who hurt you. People who leave you alone are dealing with your suffering as a nuisance or inconvenience—they prefer to keep their distance in order to feel better themselves. Those who hurt you want the situation to stay the same because they do not have your well-being at heart. Those who help you have the strength and awareness to do more about your suffering than you are able to do by yourself.”
Deepak has three attitudes he teaches about the three kinds of people. He says take the following attitudes:
1. “I will no longer bring my problems to anyone who wants to leave me alone. It’s not good for them or for me. They don’t want to help, so I will not ask them to.”
2. “I will put distance between myself and those who want to hurt me. I do not have to confront them, guilt trip them, or make them the cause of my self pity. But I cannot afford to absorb their toxic affect on me, and if that means keeping my distance, I will.”
3. “I will share my problems with those who want to help me. I will not reject genuine offers of assistance out of pride, insecurity or doubt. I will ask these people to join me in my healing and make them a bigger part of my life.”
No matter what organization or group we are in there will be three kinds of people when we are in trouble. There will always be the folks who will leave us alone. They will rarely greet us even if we greet them. They will appear for whatever reason to be indifferent to us. They have their own lives, their own friends their own people they talk to. In fact they don’t want to help us or even to know us. So if we are in trouble or are having difficulty, they don’t want to know. They don’t care. They don’t even give us the time of day.
Then there are those folks who want to hurt us. In my experience there are far fewer of these kinds of folk. But they are there. They may be the bullies who it doesn’t pay to cross. They may be power brokers and you are in their way. We may have something they want and they are willing to do anything to get it. They may have taken a dislike to us and they may be trying to get rid of us. They may band together as the three did on the Jericho Road and we may fall afoul of them and get hurt. They may hate us because of our faith, our party allegiance, because we are American or because we may have hurt them in some way. We may have apologized to them and we may even have been very kind to them. But their minds are made up and they will hurt us any way they can.
Then there are the people who genuinely want to help us. These folks are the salt of the earth. And we are fools if we refuse their genuine offers of assistance out of pride, insecurity or doubt. If we look hard at the parable of the Good Samaritan we see that they all are there. The Levite and the Priest are in the category of those who wish for whatever reason to leave us alone. They pass by on the other side of the road.
Those who want to hurt us are the brigands who set on us and beat us up and leave us in a worse state than they found us and they don’t care if we get help in fact they want the situation to stay the same as that they have created. They don’t want things to get better for the victim of their hate. Compassion is far from their minds. It’s all about them, the bottom line, their way or the highway. They are not nice people to their victims. In fact they are abusive.
In the introduction to the story of the Good Samaritan the lawyer who asks the question is in the hurtful category. Scripture says that he intended to disconcert Jesus. Note who he is: He is gifted, he knows the Scripture, he is an expert at the law, and he wants to get Jesus off balance. Why? He doesn’t have Jesus’ well being at heart. People who want to hurt us don’t have our well being at heart. Why is that so hard for us to learn I wonder? Why do we return time and time again to someone who is a dry well and expect the water of friendship and love to flow? Why do we stay in toxic relationships? Is it our old friend fear saying that we need to confront them, change them make them see reason?
Let’s see how Jesus handles this man that wants to upset him. Note Jesus has been asked a question about how one can inherit eternal life. The person who asks the question has the power, so Jesus knowing that the question is to disconcert, does what he frequently does. He answers by asking a question: “what is written in the law?” The power is now with Jesus.
A pastor I know of was in an interim position in a conservative church. He was open and liberal in his theology. Three elders of that church came to his office as a body to ask him a litmus test kind of question such as, “Do you believe that the Bible says Jesus is the only way to salvation?” The pastor replied, “Well what do you think the Bible says?” The elders said “Answer the question!” And the pastor simply said: “There is the door!”
Deepak’s words come to mind. “I will put a distance between myself and those who want to hurt me. I do not have to confront them, guilt trip them or make them the cause of my self pity. I cannot afford to absorb their toxic effect on me and if that means keeping my distance, I will.”
In Jesus’ case the man answers the question because his motivation is to justify himself. Jesus has fired at him a test question that asks him as a lawyer to justify his legal training and answer by saying what the law is. So the man does so and quotes the law. Jesus agrees with him that his answer is correct.
But now the man is on a trip to justify himself further by questioning the great commandment about loving God and neighbor and asks; “and who is my neighbor?” Let’s note what Jesus does this time. He tells a story from real life about the three kinds of people we all encounter in life and he constructs it in such a way that there is only one answer to the question: “Which of these three proved himself a neighbor to the man who fell into the brigands’ hands?” The question keeps the power with Jesus and the man has to answer his own question. By any standard this is Jesus at his most authentic and he is formidable as an opponent because he is someone who tries to help even the person who would hurt him. But the man has to see it for himself in order to be helped and Jesus does not permit the man who would disconcert him to succeed.
But let’s note something further, the man is asking; who is my neighbor? Jesus constructs a story that does not identify the victim as the only neighbor. Neither does Jesus answer the questions: Who is My Neighbor? He asks, “Who was a neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?” Thus Jesus is still answering the original question: How do I inherit everlasting life? Being neighbor for the Historical Jesus who we find in Matthew, Mark and Luke is an active verb not a subject. A neighbor is one who is neighborly.
And who will inherit eternal life? The Levite who left the man alone? The priest who knew the law backwards but left the man alone? The Brigands who beat the man up and left him for dead? Do these folks inherit everlasting life? What does the law say? In other words Jesus is asking: Which category are you in my friend when you are trying to disconcert me? You are not in the helping category.
Last week I was having parking lot conversations, one in our parking lot and one in another parking lot. Parking lots are great aren’t they for conversations? A lot of good things can come out of parking lot conversations. One man was talking about Westminster folks who gave all those canned goods last Sunday. He said with tears in his eyes that these gifts would make a lot of people who had very little or nothing very happy indeed. He could hardly talk he was so moved. I could tell that he was a helper. I knew he was destined to eternal life.
In another lot I was talking to another Westminster member who was telling me about the AA groups that meet almost every day of the week in Westminster. He said to me, “Lives are being changed right under our noses and I bet Westminster folks are hardly aware of it because of the anonymous factor.” He too was a helper.
Today I want to ask us all. What category are we living in? Here is how to tell. Anyone in need is the neighbor to whom our good will must go out. Our love must not be calculated or restrained as though being neighborly was simply our duty. We can be foolishly extravagant and lavish! By choosing a Good Samaritan as someone who is neighborly Jesus has done something absolutely brilliant. If you remember nothing from this sermon today but this point, it will be enough. The Jewish lawyer who tried to disconcert Jesus was all into duty. Who is my neighbor to whom I have obligation? And Jesus does something brilliant here. He says what is the great commandment and then by using the Samaritan as an example, he goes beyond the concept of duty into self love and neighbor love. Our motivation is not to be duty. The Samaritan had no duty to a Jew. He has crossed lines, enemy lines, to help the person in need. It didn’t matter to him that the victim was Jewish. He was deliberately diverse, fully inclusive, without regard to just nationality, age, gender, sexual orientation, level of education or income. He was into helping!
When we love ourselves we don’t do things for ourselves just out of duty but because we want to do them. We enjoy eating, buying a present for ourselves, making love, building things, cooking up a storm. We do these things because we want to. The Samaritan fulfilled the law because he wanted to help this man who fell among thieves. That is Jesus’ point.
The Samaritan was above all a human being and the important thing was not that a Jew was in need of help, but that a man was. In this sense the Samaritan was like God who brings God’s rain on the just and the unjust. God loves us all without distinctions for God made humanity one. When we find ourselves at our deepest level we discover that we are kin with everyone; those who would pass us by, those who would hurt us and those who would help us.
But we are not allowed, if we know better, to stay in the passerby or hurtful person’s category. That is not the way to life and it is not the way to everlasting Life.
Lewis Shankle of Tucker Georgia was a proud man who found it hard to ask for help. He used to unload trucks at a warehouse about a mile away from his home. Being close to home was important because he had no car or money to buy one. But he had a bad back and he knew he couldn’t keep the job much longer. He got a job offer in 1997 which paid $6.70 an hour but it had great medical benefits for him and his family, dental insurance sick leave and holidays. The problem was it was 20 miles away. He told his wife Anita that he had taken the job. How are you going to get there she said?
Lewis said; “I’ll walk.” It was July in Georgia, hot! He miscalculated how long it would take. He arrived half an hour late. He was bone tired but still he worked. Quitting time was 10:30 pm at the school. Last man out he had watched everyone else drive away. He prayed before he left asking for strength and arrived home at 2:30 am.
He slept a bit and the next day did it all over again. Day after day it went on. Some days he was chased by dogs, careless drivers nearly ran him down, roughnecks jeered at him saying they were going to mess him up and thunderstorms weren’t much fun. Still he walked and walked.
He got on the day shift and changed his route which allowed him to walk by his church where he stopped every day to pray. The church began to figure out what was going on and a caring deacon said to him: “Lewis you must be some kind of man, strong. But I am going to pick you up after work tomorrow.”
Lewis protested at the help, but the next day the deacon was there, (just as I know the Westminster deacons are there) and the deacon took Lewis home. Half an hour later he at home hardly believing his eyes that he was seeing his children in daylight. He went into the bathroom and shut the door and cried. After that the deacon often drove him home.
Then one day a coworker asked Lewis, “how do you get to work? “I Walk.” “How far?” “From Tucker, about twenty miles.” Her eyes opened wide. She went and told the school principal and the principal ushered him into an empty room and said: “I hear you walk to work.” “Yes Ma’am” said Lewis. “That’s not anybody’s business Mrs. Corley. It doesn’t matter how I get here or how I get home because I come to work every day.”
A week and a half later it was mid morning when Lewis was called to the office. There were five or six staff members there. “Would you mind coming outside with us,” asked the principal. In the parking lot was a shiny green Ford Taurus. Lewis couldn’t accept the gift at first. Forty seven years of going it alone without asking for help. Now he was surrounded with helpers. Something his mother had tried to teach him came back to him: “Remember if you turn away a person, its God you are turning away.”
Suddenly joy flowed over Lewis. He wanted to shout but he was speechless. Instead tears coursed down his face. After his shift was over he got in the car and said to himself, “You took your last long walk this morning.” He went to pick up his kids from the babysitter and the kids came running out: “Daddy’s driving!”
Lewis says: “I learned the way to do it is to let God help, by accepting help from the people he puts on the road I travel.”
Three kinds of people; only one category to be in. It’s the road to life!
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