TOY STORY, TOO
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Text: Luke 10:25-37
The Toy Story saga begins with a deep division between the two key characters, a beloved cowboy doll named Woody and the latest action figure, a spaceman by the name of Buzz Lightyear. The two toys could not be more distant in their concept and yet each is commonly a toy belonging to a boy named Andy. The initial plot focuses on the jealousy between these two toys from “different worlds.” How can such disparate characters come to inhabit the same play room and be loved by the same boy? Perhaps there are parallels to be drawn between Toy Story and Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, at least in the sense that, in the end, figures from differing places must learn to be neighbors and friends in order to survive in a hostile world.
However, the title of this sermon refers to a different story. This is one reported about a modern radio station that broadcasts a regular feature called T.O.Y. story. In an age when the media either reports or manufactures an overabundance of disaster, hostility and other bad news, this feature focuses on people who reach out to strangers in unsuspecting ways. The letters “t, o, y” are not meant to spell the word toy; toy here is an acronym for “Think Outside Yourself.” The station receives calls from people reporting how the stranger ahead unexpectedly paid for a meal at a drive in or a bridge toll; how someone stopped to help change a flat tire; how an anonymous postal worker answered a child’s letter to “God” about a death in the family. These stories reminded me how my mentor, Walt Pulliam, was always stopping to help someone in need - along the highway, on the street, in the church office. The radio station calls these helpers “good Samaritans”, and that would certainly apply to Walt. Here are people who see a need and simply try to meet it, without a lot of questions, with minimal fuss and with no desire to draw attention to themselves. Their good deeds are only known because someone else lives to tell the story.
Would we know anything of this merciful Samaritan if Jesus had not told the story? Yes, it is a parable, but is it so improbable that something like this might have happened on the Jericho Road? that a man beaten and left for dead lived to tell the story because a stranger had compassion? The parable of the “Good Samaritan” is one of the most familiar and popular in the Bible. What interests me about it this time around, though, is the context in which it is told. Understanding the context may enrich the story for our own lives as disciples.
Immediately before this interaction with the scribe, Luke has told of how Jesus has sent his disciples out into the villages of Galilee to spread the good news of God’s realm, to heal the sick and to cast out demons. The disciples return overjoyed with the success of their mission, but Jesus warns them, “‘…do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’” At first this seems a curious statement, cold water on their enthusiasm, a downer, but then things get even stranger. Jesus goes on to pray, “‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants…’” Finally he turns to them and says, “‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it’” (Luke 10:1-24.) In these sayings Jesus is blessing those who see and believe, who faithfully follow, even though they may lack formal training and expertise and are not assumed to have proper wisdom and understanding. Those with eyes to see, ears to hear and the will to follow God’s way are not always those who claim to be God’s prophets, priests, wise ones or legal experts.
Something of this truth leads Luke directly into the encounter with the scribe. Jesus has been rejoicing with his followers. As he blesses them, he also teaches them. Part of the lesson has to do with humility. They could not do the things they have done unless the spirit worked in and through them. They must not try to claim their successes as their own doing. These are a result of their working in partnership with God to do God’s will and bring in God’s reign. The scribe, this expert in Jewish law, has overheard their conversation and wants in on it. He engages Jesus.
It may be that this is a hostile engagement. Some scholars insist that asking a question like this would have been a direct challenge to Jesus to prove himself worthy of making the claims he has made. It may be that this lone scribe (where is the priest or Pharisee for whom he works?) is genuinely curious and wants to understand better what Jesus has been saying. At any rate he asks Jesus a question to which he clearly knows the answer. He may be trying to show Jesus as ignorant of the law and a heretic; or he may just want to know how what Jesus is saying fits his own understanding of the Torah. Jesus does not rise to the challenge though. He turns the question back on the scribe. Then he simply affirms the scribe’s recitation of the two great love commandments of the Torah. “Yes, if you want to inherit eternal life, you need to love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself.”
In good journalistic fashion, the scribe quickly slips in his follow-up question. “Well, just who is my neighbor?” Again, this may be a question in which he seeks to justify himself by catching Jesus in a different trap; or he may be taken in by the depth of the conversation in which he is engaged. And again, Jesus does not answer him directly. In fact, Jesus does not answer him at all. Jesus is not interested in the question of whom one’s neighbor is – every human being is a neighbor to every other in the realm of God. Jesus is much more interested in showing what true neighbors looks like. Inherent in the question, “Who is my neighbor?” is an implication that there are some who can be defined out of the category. What the scribe is trying to do is get Jesus to limit neighborliness. He already has his assumptions about who is in and who is out, who merits his attention and gets his disdain, who is good enough and who does not measure up. He wants his biases affirmed. What he does not see is the basic tendency to dehumanize, to devalue some of God’s good creation, in this desire to box in some and box out others.
This is one place in which this ancient word becomes particularly relevant for us. Where is it in our own lives that we want to have defined for us who our neighbor is? We may be happy to do the occasional good deed and that is not a bad thing. God knows we can always use more good deeds in this world. But what Jesus is challenging us to see is that our neighbor is the one next to us, whoever she might be, wherever he might come from, whatever station in life they might inhabit. We are all, everyone of us, neighbors in God’s realm. In fact, we are more than that; we are sisters and brothers in God’s family.
When Jesus first told this story, his listeners would have nodded their assent. Yes, they could picture the foolish traveler trying to cover the dangerous Jericho road alone. As poor peasants, people outside centers of power and privilege in religious as well as civic life, it was easy to boo the priest and the Levite. “They think they’re too good, too pure to stop.” But the next character, the hero in the story, is supposed to be one of them, a faithful Israelite, with a deeper, richer understanding of God’s mercy. It is not supposed to be a damned Samaritan who stops to help.
Jesus is always doing this, turning the tables, taking us in the direction we least expect. The disciples are no more entitled to be smug or self-satisfied in their understanding than is the scribe. Everyone has something to learn from this story. The bottom line is compassion. It is always compassion. Put yourself in another’s shoes Climb into the other’s skin. Feel what it’s like from the inside out before you ever make a move or a judgment. You may be shocked to discover how that one you were so sure was other, that child of God you were ready to step over, that sister or brother you labeled enemy, is just like you.
The great preacher, Fred Craddock, tells the story of being a brash young scholar, a budding theologian who thought he knew a lot. He had read Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus. Perhaps like the scribe in our story, he found the word wanting. Assuredly full of his youthful knowledge, he judged Schweitzer’s work as shallow. He says, “I found his Christology woefully lacking – more water than wine. I marked it up, wrote in the margins, raised questions of all kinds.” Then one day he read in the paper that Schweitzer was to play the dedicatory recital on a new organ in Cleveland. Craddock scraped together the bus fare from Knoxville, for the announcement also said that there would be time afterwards for interaction with the audience.
Craddock went determined to confront Schweitzer on the inadequacy of his theology. He arrived early and planted himself in the front row, ready to pounce. After the recital Schweitzer came into the fellowship hall, “shaggy hair, big white mustache, stooped and seventy-five years old. You know he was master organist, medical doctor, philosopher, biblical scholar, lecturer, writer, everything,” Craddock says. Fortunately, before the young scribe could open his mouth to embarrass himself, the great man addressed the crowd. “You’ve been very warm, hospitable to me. I thank you for it and I wish I could stay longer among you, but I must go back to Africa. I must go back to Africa because my people are poor and diseased and hungry and dying and I have to go. We have a medical station at Lambarene. If there’s anyone here in this room who has the love of Jesus, would you be prompted by that love to go with me and help me?”
Craddock says, “I looked down at my stupid questions, they were so absolutely stupid. And I learned, again, what it means to be Christian and had hopes that I could be that someday” (Fred Craddock, Craddock Stories, quoted in Richard B. Vinson, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Luke, p. 338.) “Thinking outside yourself.” Yes, this is a T.O.Y. story, too. There is nothing like a confrontation with the grace of God, an encounter with humility, a challenge from the needy to come and help, to put one’s life in perspective. What are our T.O.Y. stories, yours and mine? For what strangers are we being called to offer compassion? What might draw you or I to pass by on the other side without getting involved? Are we ever found lying by the side of some road, challenged to accept help from someone we thought was unacceptable? How will we respond when Jesus challenges us, once again, to follow him in compassionate living? Maybe we will be found thinking outside ourselves, creating our own T.O.Y stories, too.