The Good Samaritan Plumb Line

Last summer, my husband and I purchased a house. We fell in love with the property: a corner lot with some wooded areas that the deer and groundhogs seem to enjoy. It was in our price range with wood floors, a basement, and an attic. It needs a little love and care, but we’re definitely enjoying it. Unfortunately, there was one significant problem we discovered early on: as we went down to look at the basement, we noticed that one of the walls was badly warped, bulging into the basement and indicating potential damage. No surprise, the bank would not provide a loan until that had been fixed. So as part of the purchase, we worked with the sellers and hired someone who could shore up the wall and provide the needed stability.

Well, Israel has become a similarly warped wall in this morning’s old testament scripture. They’ve gotten entirely away from what God wants. Amos was a simple shepherd whom God called to be a prophet. He has been proclaiming the word of the Lord, and none of it is good news for Israel. God has measured Israel with what’s called a plumb line: a tool consisting of a string and a weight on the end that looks like the image on the scripture passage in your bulletin. We use levels now, but these showed whether something, such as a wall, was vertically straight. 

Straight walls are important structurally. And just as Israel was like a bowed wall, so we can be as well. As Dr. Kimberly Russaw noted in this year’s Working Preacher commentary on the Amos passage, “Like walls that have endured over time, as [we] go through life, we may lose our steadiness. [Let’s be honest, we aren’t] always consistent in our faith practices. We live through major disappointments that challenge our faith. Our hope may be built on a firm foundation, but over time, we may experience our hope ‘leaning’ unsteadily to one side or another. Over time, our spiritual houses may weaken and become less precise.”

I was discussing this scripture among some other local clergy this week, and I realized that as Christians we don’t all agree on what it means to not measure up. But Luke’s gospel shows us what that plumb line measurement is: love your neighbor as yourself. And your neighbor includes the one who is particularly difficult to love. Jesus isn’t letting the legal expert get away with defining the neighbor as he wants. As Jennifer Wyant notes in her commentary on this scripture, “By selecting a nearby enemy of his audience, … [Jesus] is pushing them beyond the fact that everyone is their neighbor. He is pushing them to see that… their enemy is also and especially their neighbor.” We don’t get to create “exceptions to God’s command to love.” 

This is a significant part of our plumb line: Do we love our hard-to-love neighbor?

We’re going to have difficulty loving certain people; I think that’s why Jesus uses the Samaritan as the good neighbor in his story, not even a chapter after he visits a Samaritan town and is rejected by them. He loves the Samaritans, despite rejection, because God deeply loves them. So he challenges us to love the most unexpected and difficult as well, by using the Samaritan as the example of the neighbor no one would expect. 

But Jesus’ parable is about more than loving our hard to love neighbor. We are also to put ourselves in the position of the man who was robbed. Turning around the legal expert’s question, Jesus asks “Which of these three… was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” In one of his commentaries, David Lose notes that our neighbor is the person in need, as well as the person who responds to our needs. Even if that person is like a Samaritan was to the legal expert: the last one expected to respond. As Lose writes, “Jesus is inviting us… to identify with each other …in terms of our vulnerability and shared human need rather than any external distinctions or circumstances. Whether giving help or receiving it, whether in the position of need or abundance, we are bound to each other in our vulnerability and mortality.” God wants us to “treat each other with dignity, compassion, and respect” like the children of God that we are.

So, how is your Spiritual Foundation doing? After the basement specialist did his work last year, he had some strong recommendations for us to further help prevent flooding and more damage. We’ve cleaned out the gutters, and gotten a quality sump pump to help with draining a little. And we have more things we’ll need to do over the years. Similarly, there are ways that we can maintain our spiritual foundation. Time with God is important: after all, the command the legal expert noted was “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.” As Russaw notes, we need to do maintenance when we notice “misalignment in our relationship with [God. This maintenance can include] daily prayer and meditation, engaging in practices of love and gratitude” and loving our neighbors in need as we are also loved by our neighbors, all made in the image of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

*Resources for this sermon include:

Rev. Dr. David Lose, “Pentecost 5 C: What the Good Samaritan Teaches us About God” https://www.davidlose.net/2019/07/pentecost-5-c-what-the-good-samaritan-teaches-us-about-god/ 

Dr. Kimberly D. Russaw, “Commentary on Amos 7:7-17” Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-3/commentary-on-amos-77-17-6  

Rev. Dr. Jennifer S. Wyan, “Commentary on Luke 10:25-37” Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-15-3/commentary-on-luke-1025-37-6