He Nate and I lost someone very dear to both of us this past week. We both met Greg independently of one another. Greg was Nate’s first patient at an outpatient orthopedic physical therapy clinic. Nate was nervous about working in this sort of clinic because it’s not his area of expertise, so thankfully his first patient was Greg. Nate and I agree that he is one of the most gentle people either of us has ever known. He was kind, soft-spoken, and eager to learn. Nate could not have hoped for a better first patient to help him find his groove.

Later, I met Greg because he came to where I worked at Note-Able Music Therapy Services. He started guitar lessons at a very delicate time in his life, one week into his sobriety from alcohol. Guitar lessons with a music therapist was a God-send for Greg. And we were all thrilled to be a part of his recovery and his exploration of what life might hold for him in his retirement years without alcohol.

Over the years, Greg became a pillar of the community at Note-Ables. Not only did he continue in his lessons, learning and writing his own music, and performing in the recitals, but he also volunteered in group experiential music classes for adults with disabilities. In these classes, they sing, dance, write songs, explore instruments, or play musical games. Greg was always there, quietly and gently supporting people in their participation and success. Just like in our text today, he came close, saw what they needed, and was there to provide that support. Week after week, year after year, Greg quietly showed up and loved people.

Seems to me, Greg sounds a lot like our Good Samaritan in the text today. Coming close, seeing the needs, and meeting them.

The part of this story that was the zinger back in Jesus’ day was that the good man, the one was the neighbor to the injured man, was a Samaritan. Samaritans were considered enemies or at least people from the very wrong side of the tracks. They were folks who had every right to see the suffering of a Jewish man on the side of the road and know that this suffering had nothing to do with him. In fact, there were likely Jewish people who may not have even wanted help from a Samaritan, such was the rift. 

So, what the Samaritan didn’t do was see the suffering of the Jewish man on the road and take the easy and relatively justified path of not helping. It would have been an easy thing to do and even an understandable thing to do. The road was unsafe, after all. So, you see someone who is not really like you, not really someone you’d call “your neighbor” in a situation that could be dangerous to you, lots of people would understand not helping.

I remember a situation when I was maybe 20 or so, coming home around midnight from something or other. I was driving alone and I came upon a car with a flat with four young men about my age looking a bit confounded about what to do. So, what did I do? I stopped and asked if they were OK. What should I have not done as a solo, scrawny young lady in the middle of the night? Stop! That’s what 99% of folks would say, anyway. But you know, I’m a dingdong.

So, it’s not necessarily a condemning thing to say that it would have been acceptable or at least understandable if the Samaritan decided the suffering of the man on the road, while regrettable, was not his problem. But that’s not how the story goes.

It makes you wonder about the Samaritan, doesn’t it? He’s clearly a man of some means, being able to give roughly two days wages to the innkeeper to care for the injured man with promises to pay whatever is needed on his return. He’s got places to go and things to do and yet he sets aside his agenda for the care of someone he could easily justify as having nothing to do with him.

It begs the question why? While this is a parable, we can still wonder about our characters, no? We can wonder about origin stories. So, I wonder whether he himself had been beaten and abandoned before. Or perhaps a family member had been brutalized like this. Perhaps that’s why he came near, was moved to compassion, and decided this suffering did have everything to do with him.

In an ideal world, each of us could respond this fully to each incidence of suffering we were witness to. I would love it if we could each respond as the Good Samaritan to each international, national, local, and personal moment of suffering we witnessed on any given day. But we just can’t. We are inundated by catastrophes, both natural and human-made. We live in an information-soaked society and 95% of that information, it seems, demands our compassion and wants our action.

So, what do we do? Well, I think Greg has set an example for us. Greg arrived at Note-Able Music Therapy Services very near the lowest part of his life, carrying a guitar but very little else. Afterall, he almost died the week before from addiction. Thankfully, he decided he wasn’t ready to die and thankfully, he did have the love and support of his family. He had the idea to learn guitar. But, he was also a man who understood being on the bottom rung of the ladder.

At Note-Ables, Greg was automatically included in a joyful community of people of all abilities participating in music. As he drew near to people with disabilities, he saw people who don’t measure up to very much at all in the eyes of a productivity-obsessed society. He saw people close to the bottom rung of the ladder, as well. They were there in a different way than himself, but there all the same. And as he recovered, went to AA, and became a new man without alcohol, he stayed near to those on the bottom rung. He never quit his music lessons up until his last few days. And he never quit volunteering until he physically couldn’t do it anymore. He drew near, stayed there, kept his heart open, and met the needs of the people around him. I’d like to ask him, if I could, but I assume he stayed close because he knew what it was to be on the bottom rung from the inside out. He understood that pain and wanted to be there to tend to it in a way only he could because of his own superhero origin story. 

We often find ourselves asking the perpetual question, “What do I do? What is my purpose? What is our congregation’s work to do?” If we say as Christians we are to respond to the pain of the world, (to see pain, move close and respond) we may find ourselves frozen. We may find ourselves without a way to respond if we are too flooded by what’s happening all around us. And yet we are called to respond.

All of us have suffered. All of us carry certain wounds that we may not want to share or even name. And yet, what if this wounding is where we can best see, come near, and connect with the suffering around us? What if God’s action through our own wounds is the source of our capacity to be a Good Samaritan for someone? And what if that action of God’s grace through our hands and lives is a source of healing for us, as well?

Individually, we can respond to the pain and evil of the world that resonates in us like a bell. Perhaps we don’t know why we feel certain suffering so acutely, or perhaps we do. Perhaps it touches our own deep wounds which allow us to know that pain from the inside out. Perhaps our wounds help us to know how to draw near and act. And I wonder, as we are called to respond in individual ways, if we can together cover a lot of ground.  

We sometimes respond to painful issues or realities by moving away because the resonance in us is too much. We look away, scroll quickly by, or change the subject. But the invitation here is to draw close to what hurts us, to see the wound, and respond.

What wounding in the world resonates in you may not resonate in me, right? The world’s suffering, from close by to far away, is too much for us all to respond to everything. But that ringing in us, that resonance in us, that ache in us, might very well be the call of God in us to respond. That ache may tell us about our purpose and hidden in that shared pain is healing and the Kingdom of God. Hidden in that messy, painful compassion is the peace that surpasses all understanding. That’s where God is calling us to be. I think that’s why Greg’s wife asked if his memorial could be held at Note-Ables. It was a holy place for him where he encountered Christ in others. 

We are all Good Samaritans when we draw near to the pain we are witness to regardless of societal rules and status. We are all Good Samaritans when we focus on being the neighbor instead of worrying about other’s worthiness. We know this. The question really is how, when, and where do we draw near. Like Greg, the answer might just be to look where our own wound is. The pain of the world will ring in us at times like a tuning fork touching a broken bone. Painful. So, when we feel that resonance, may God give us all the strength to move close and enter into that space of compassion and understanding so that we can do the work of the Lord.

AMEN