There are things that measure us.
They can be as simple as a smile from a child or a spouse and as complex and life changing as a degree exam or an attorney’s cross examination. We often do not notice that we live by them, but we do. They assume a place in our value systems. We note them when they disrupt us, either by their confirmation of our “rightness” or as corrective to our errors.
What does affirmation look like? Sometimes it is that deeply attentive look when we speak to our child or grandchild…or spouse. Or from the stage at a recital or from the ball field when a son or daughter looks momentarily in our direction, a faint smile, and everything we have laid aside to be here is well spent. And for the child it is the dependability of our presence. Sometimes it is an ever so light touch on our hand or forearm. And sometimes it is a job performance review that goes well, a bonus perhaps received or given, or the chance to hold our position when others are not.
The other measures we know as well. That teenage look that seems to say ‘and exactly when did you get this stupid, or think I am?’ A distancing that sets in because the one we love -- or you or I -- have failed to reconcile some petty or essential disagreement. Will we let it stand? Or the effort that we have put into some domestic action remains unnoticed too long. Or the touch we are so nurtured by ceases or is too infrequent. Or the job review goes the other way, the position we depend on ends.
Perhaps each of us carries a somewhat different set of values by which we measure and allow ourselves to be measured. All are plumb lines that hang by our life and tell us daily, or as we pause, how we are doing. We value them as we value them…or don’t. Yet these plumb lines let us see if we are leaning off course.
Such are the plumb lines of scripture. Here we find the strings held from the Core of life, God, with the weight of God’s concern, compassion for us at the bottom to hold all steady. We begin by being measured by law, oh the Ten Commandments, say. We end by being measured by the weight of compassion.
Amos was not born to the house of the prophets. He, like so many, was the beneficiary of a prosperous time for the northern kingdom, Israel. The material prosperity becomes more worshipped than God. Somehow the Word of God presses in on Amos as he looks at the contrast between those who prosper and those who do not and the lost touch of care that was expected to flow from one to the other. The noble do not feel obliged to care. Measured by God’s compassion and blessing, The plumb line of God’s being, and the season of plenty, their cultural wall is leaning. Only by turning, seeking clarity will this wall, this nation be righted. But the priest of the King’s holy place only wants to banish this prophet and his word. Why discomfit him with what won’t change?
We know this place, don’t we. When what we are able to amass, use well perhaps, to secure life, proves to distract us from deeper cares. Perhaps we over work. Perhaps life’s extras become life’s center. Perhaps our sometime motivation to soften the lives of those who are not so fortunate fades into the background. When we are blessed, we do well to pause, take account, find our gratitude, act on it as a return to life and to reflect God’s generous creative core, to be one with it.
This desire to reflect back, to seek union with God is at the heart of today’s gospel.
A lawyer, someone trained in religious/cultural law, asks Jesus, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus asks, “What do you read there?"
He answered, "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." And Jesus said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."
Here is the plumb line. It is already at the heart of the tradition. Love God over all and yourself and neighbor equally.
The lawyer is troubled by one term, neighbor. How broadly am I to define this term? Is it someone who lives over the road, my own family perhaps, my friendship circle, my nation? Hmm, could that be it? Could it be more?
Who is my neighbor? This question is so very key because Jesus speaks of neighbors often. If you are going to be a Christian of any sort or degree it is the question you are ever to live with.
Jesus here, in Luke’s gospel, gives him a rather simple if puzzling picture, one the church has forever treasured. Luke alone, the gospelor who cares for the outsider -- the gentile -- tells of the Good Samaritan, an outsider.
Most likely Jesus’ audience thought the man mugged on the road to be Jewish, returning perhaps from Temple worship. The priest and the Levite are ritually cleaned, a long right of preparation for their essential duties, and cannot touch blood lest they be yielded unclean for duty and thus being very late to duty would be the result.
The one who acts on compassion is the least expected. In his heart he must reach over a history of discrimination and dislike that runs deep. He does so in the most generous way.
Jesus turns the question on the lawyer, “Who has acted as neighbor?”
Beneath it is the question, “When have you been neighbored?”
When have you, or I, been in a ditch, in need, and someone reached out to us?
It is from this question answered that we find the energy to love, to reach back.
Once when I was in seminary I was in my usual broke state. I didn’t much mind it, truth be told. Mostly I had enough, between scholarships, work, and a developed frugality. But life was always tight and extras were rare. And to be honest, I was a little jealous of others whose Diocese’s aided them more. I’m not sure which was more the ditch, my poverty or my camouflaged jealousy.
One spring day, I opened my mailbox to find a letter in an unfamiliar hand. It was written by someone whose son had died in WWII, which had interrupted his seminary education. With it was a $100, worth $500 today. The note went on to say that the person had a way to know of students in need and ‘would I, please use this for my education’, noting that having some pleasures was part of a rounded life. The letter was, of course, unsigned. I stood there face to the wall so very touched. I would use the money for needful things. But the gift was the anonymous care. There was no one I could write. The vocational connection felt a God connection. That gratitude I could express. And I noted to myself, when I prosper I would emulate this care. Once noted, the opportunities of care abound.
Your neighbor is never quite whom you think, either the one you reach toward or the one who reaches back.
When we are helped out of a ditch, Jesus says simply, “Go and do likewise.”
And we are left to wonder what this going and doing will look like in us.
This is the plumb line of Compassion by which we are to measure our lives, our alertness to God.
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