A Higher Calling

PROPERS:          PROPER 10, YEAR C  

TEXT:                AMOS 7:7-17; LUKE 10:25-37

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 10, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The divine spirit overrules the Law.    

 

            Laura Thatcher Ulrich was a little-known professor of history at Harvard University in the 1970s.  She was married to another professor and was a Mormon – thereby facing limits on her role as a woman, a wife, and a mother.

 

            In her teaching and scholarship, her area of focus was ordinary people – and the importance and impact those people had on the trajectory of history.  She wrote a book about such a woman – a Puritan midwife and healer in the 18^th century, who lived a routine life.  It was about that ordinary woman and was entitled “A Midwife’s Tale.”

 

            She won a coveted Pulitzer Prize for that book.  But it was a simple quotation from that book which brought much attention: “Well behaved women seldom make history.” It was meant to be an encouraging statement:  Well-behaved women should make history, but it doesn’t usually happen.

 

            The quotation, however, became a slogan among the growing movement of progressive women.  I have even seen on bumper stickers: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”  It is a battle cry that, in order to affect the course of history, you may have to break some dishes.  It’s like those sayings: “To make an omelet, you have to break some eggs” and “Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.”

 

            That interpretation of the quotation can be construed to be similar to the late Congressman and Civil Rights activist John Lewis’s admonition to “Make good trouble.”

 

            In other words, in order to do good, don’t be hamstrung by the rules, or the law.

 

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            That seems to be exactly the point Jesus is making this morning. In a conversation with the man I grew up knowing as the Rich Young Ruler, Jesus is asked “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

 

            In response, Jesus turns the table. “What do you think,” he asks.  The young man quotes the Summary of the Law: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus tells him he has answered correctly.

 

            The man responds that he has done all those things since his youth. And he wants more… perhaps to bolster his self-assurance: “And who is my neighbor,” he asks.

 

            Jesus does what we call a paradigm shift.  He does not detail the Law.  He does not recount the Deuteronomic Code.  He tells a story.  We know it as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

 

            You know the story.  It is familiar.  Like the young man and the Law, we have heard it since our youth.  The people who refused to help the wounded traveler – a priest and a Levite -- were both highly-esteemed in the community of faith.  They knew that the Law said they were to have nothing to do with this unclean, unidentified traveler. So, they took the other side of the road.

 

            But a Gentile… a goyim… a Samaritan… a foreigner, not one of the faithful, came by and cared for the man.  He took him to an inn and paid for his care.  He acted according to a higher good.

 

            In the first lesson, the prophet Amos spoke of a plumb line. – a plumb line that God had put over Israel.  He said that it had been placed among the people.  Some might point to the Law… or its essence… as that plumb line.

 

            But Jesus tells us, and the plumb line tells us, that there is a higher good that goes beyond the Law.  It is something that cuts through the flesh and marrow of human existence.  It is the divine spirit which should animate and guide our lives.

            It is the person of Jesus… and the essence of his teaching… which should motivate us and drive us toward doing the right thing.  Regardless of what the world… the Law… and others might say.