Pilgrimage (8 page)

Remembering is important. As Joshua led the Israelites into the Promised Land to conquer and settle it, he erected “stones of remembrance,” a series of seven stone memorials so that the people could look back and say, “Yes, God is faithful. He brought me this far and gave me victory in this place.” The first memorial was comprised of stones taken from the Jordan riverbed, one for each tribe, as they crossed the river on dry land (Joshua 4:1–7). The final memorial was erected in Shechem, when Joshua and the people renewed their covenant with God after the land had been conquered. “When your descendants ask their fathers, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them . . . [God] did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord
is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God” (Joshua 4:21, 24).

I’ve fallen into a monotonous routine back home because I have wanted to stay in one place when I should have moved forward. I’ve forgotten that discipleship is a journey. Now as I determine to start walking up to Jerusalem, continuing my walk with God, I want to mark the places where He has been faithful with stones of remembrance, revisiting them, never forgetting them. “Count your blessings, name them one by one . . . See what God has done,” the old gospel song reminds us. And after remembering, I want to move forward and celebrate what God is doing today, then ask Him what His plans are for tomorrow. How should I live during the next stage of my journey?

When I look at this rugged terrain and the steep, breathless climb to Jerusalem, I wonder why we have tried to make the Christian life a comfortable one. Why are we tempted to make our faith experiences all about “arriving,” finding a great parking spot, resting on our achievements, building monuments and settling down? I was guilty of doing just that when I imagined that after raising three children for Christ they would settle down beside me and we’d all live happily ever after, serving Him within the static confines of our home church. Or when I became so comfortable with the ministry God has given me that I stopped looking for new ways to use my gifts and talents to serve Him. I’m learning that the spiritual life is all about change—moving forward and going steadily upward, growing closer and closer to God. It’s about sacrificing my will and my plans to His.

I’m reminded of another old gospel song, “I have decided to follow Jesus . . . No turning back, no turning back.” I
often forget that the only way I can follow someone is if we are both moving, not sitting still. If we want to follow Jesus we must remain in motion, hiking behind Him as He walks forward in a chosen direction—up to Jerusalem.

The gospel of Mark says, “They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and . . . he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him” (Mark 10:32). What He revealed was not at all what they had imagined. “‘We are going up to Jerusalem,’ he said, ‘and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise’” (Mark 10:33–34).

Jesus also said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:24–25).

“Are we there yet? . . . I’m
tired . . . I’m thirsty . . .”

No turning back. No turning back.

Good Samaritans

This road between Jerusalem and Jericho is where Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan takes place. In the story, a traveler is ambushed and beaten by robbers and left for dead. The modern highway is a steep, winding road, bordered by cliffs and mountains and ravines; I can see how it would provide plenty of places for outlaws to hide and ambush unsuspecting travelers. This was a main road in Jesus’ day, not only for pilgrims coming to attend the feasts but also for Jerusalem’s
wealthy citizens who loved to travel down to the spa and hot springs in Jericho. And the Temple priests were among the very wealthiest Israelites.

As I climb this road and see the setting of the parable, I open my Bible and read the entire account (Luke 10:25–37). The story is part of an extended conversation that Jesus had with an expert in the Law. This expert already knew all the right answers but he “stood up to test Jesus,” posing the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered with questions of His own: “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” Rabbis and disciples always taught and learned this way, posing questions, searching for answers, digging into the tiniest details of what each word and letter in that word meant. In fact, Jewish schools still teach Torah this way.

The expert gave a very orthodox, acceptable reply to Jesus’ question: “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor,” two commandments found in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But the discussion wasn’t over for this legal expert because “he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” He wanted a checklist, a set of definite rules and regulations so he would know exactly who he was required to love and who he was not, when he was required to love them, and where, and how. Maybe then he could find a loophole that would excuse him. Jesus answered the question “Who is my neighbor?” with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

A Jewish traveler on this Jericho road was attacked and left for dead. The first person to pass by was a priest who didn’t stop to help him. In fact, the priest made a wide circuit
around the man. The second man, a Levite, did the same. I had always assumed that they did so because the rules for priests found in Leviticus 21:1–4 forbade them to make themselves unclean by touching a dead body. “Sorry, I have to stay pure. It’s part of my job description.”

But when I looked at a Jewish commentary regarding these purity regulations—which the legal expert in Jesus’ day surely would have been familiar with—I found a surprise. The Jewish sages agreed that if a body is isolated and the victim has no one to bury him, then even the high priest has a moral obligation to care for the person and bury him with dignity, even if the act makes the priest ritually unclean. Not only that, but Jesus said that the priest and the Levite were on their way
down
to Jericho, perhaps for a little vacation? They could have purified themselves of any defilement before returning to work in the Temple. But of course, that would have interfered with their massage at the spa.

When both the priest and the Levite passed by on the other side, they might have appeared to be religiously correct, but they were far from the compassionate heart of God. The priests in Christ’s day probably would have ignored the man, too, as they headed down to the hot springs, because in all of the New Testament stories that feature them, they seem greatly lacking in love: willing to stone the woman caught in adultery; following the letter of the Law but looking for loopholes around it; totally without compassion toward blind men or crippled women if their healing took place on the Sabbath. No wonder Jesus criticized a group of legal experts by saying, “You give a tenth of your spices . . . but you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23).

Using the Law as an excuse to ignore a fellow human being in need is exactly what Jesus taught against when He accused the religious leaders of tying heavy loads on people’s shoulders but not lifting a finger to help them; ignoring the commands of God to follow the traditions of men; straining the tiniest gnat out of their food because it wasn’t kosher yet swallowing camels, the largest of the non-kosher animals. As Jesus told this story of a priest who looked the other way, the expert in the Law could not have missed the scathing condemnation of him and his fellow law-keepers.

It was a Samaritan, as much an enemy of the Jews as the modern-day Palestinians are, who acted with human kindness, going beyond mere obligation in caring for the wounded man. No law required him to do that. Acts of love and compassion can’t be legislated. But helping someone in need was the loving thing to do, and he did it.

Jesus was saying that people need to stop following a list of rules and follow God’s example of love and compassion. To truly love your neighbor, you must broaden your scope of who your neighbor is, even if it means helping your enemies. People like me want rules. We want to package God’s laws in a neat set of books so that we can analyze them and reference them. If we do everything “by the book,” we’ve done our duty. We want order and stability, the kind you find in a basketball game or a soccer match where we know all the rules and can clearly see when they’re broken. We can cry “Foul!” and see the offender placed in the penalty box immediately. We want to know exactly whom to root for and who our enemy is. And we want our religion neatly structured, too, so we can keep score and know precisely what is required of us with no shades of gray in our black-and-white world.

Jesus broke the rules quite often, healing diseases on the Sabbath that were not life-threatening to deliberately show that a close, living relationship with God should serve as our guide, not rules. If the priest, the Levite, and the expert in the Law really knew the God they served, they would know that He is a “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin” (Exodus 34:6–7). They would know exactly what their loving God meant when he said “Love your neighbor as yourself,” without asking for a detailed description of precisely who their neighbor was. But their religion was out of balance, emphasizing the rules and missing the heart of God.

Jesus ended the parable with another question for the expert: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The only conclusion the expert could possibly reach was “The one who had mercy on him.” It must have galled him to admit it, especially when Jesus added, “Go and do likewise.”

A rich young ruler once asked Jesus the same question that the expert had asked: “What good thing must I do to get eternal life?” He assured Jesus that he had scrupulously followed all of the rules. Jesus told him to sell all of his possessions and give them to the poor—something the rich man couldn’t bring himself to do. He loved something else more than he loved God or his neighbors in need (Matthew 19:16–30). The lesson isn’t that I sell everything, too. It’s that I look at my life and see if I put God first, giving all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength to Him. I need to ask myself if I’m living an outwardly correct life, playing by all the rules, but lacking in love. I need to see if I’m someone Isaiah and Jesus would
include in their indictment, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men” (Isaiah 29:13 and Matthew 15:8).

The priest in Jesus’ story thought rules were more important than being led each moment by a living God, a God who wants us to open our eyes and see others in need and respond with compassion. The Hebrew word for priest,
Kohen
, means servant. The priests were servants of God and their fellowman. The New Testament tells us that we “are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices” (1 Peter 2:5). Are we becoming too “holy” to stop and help those who have been beaten up by the world and left for dead?

I also see this parable as a picture of Christ, “Who, being in very nature God . . . made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6–7). There is no uglier, sin-filled place than earth, filled with unclean, sin-scarred people. Yet Jesus left the holiness of heaven to cross over to our side of the universe and bind up our wounds at His own expense, restoring us to life. He showed us the heart of God. In turn, the way we view people in need reveals how Christlike we have become.

As our bus travels this modern Jericho road, I don’t see any stranded, wounded travelers along the side of the road. But I think I now understand that my neighbor might have AIDS or live an immoral lifestyle or be a homosexual or a Muslim or an atheist. Will I stay far away from him, unwilling to associate with “defiled” people and become contaminated? Or will I show God’s love and compassion wherever I encounter my neighbors in my everyday life, binding their wounds, giving
my own money, time, and resources for their care? There are Good Samaritans in this world who don’t acknowledge God or follow His rules, yet they are eager to help the needy. Rock stars and celebrities raise millions of dollars to fight world hunger and AIDS and help victims of natural disasters.

Why am I passing by on the other side?

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Luke 6:35–36

A N
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P
RAYER
FOR
THE
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OURNEY

Gracious heavenly Father,

You are a God of love and compassion and mercy. I praise You for sending Your Son to our side of the road to heal our wounds and rescue us from death. Love is Your very nature, yet I confess that I haven’t followed Christ’s example of loving my enemies. Forgive me, Lord, for not standing at the crossroads and helping lost friends and loved ones find their way; for not being a better example of Your sacrificial love. Thank You for a new beginning in my life, a chance to climb out of my comfortable rut and journey with You on the road of discipleship, turning my back on the Good Life in pursuit of a godly life. Help me to embrace change with joy and faith, knowing that Your Spirit gives me the strength to conquer giants in Your name.