Let's Stop Being Nice

Luke 10:25-48

Tomorrow, I will be teaching the story of the Good Samaritan. This is one of the most challenging stories for me to read, teach, or preach. The difficulty is that when I sit down to read it, I think I already know what it means, but I don't. And when I stand up to talk about it, the people I'm talking to think they already know what it means, but they don't.

When I sit down to read it, or when I stand up to talk about it, my assumption, and I'm afraid that the general assumption of those I'm talking to is this: Jesus wants us to be nice to people.

That's how I remember hearing the story taught in Sunday School, and I've never recovered. I still hear it as Jesus saying, "Be nice."

For the most part, in this culture we have seen Christianity as something that makes us nice. We want our children to be Christians, not so they'll be passionate disciples in the kingdom of God, living by kingdom standards, choosing careers of service and sacrifice, but so they'll be nice.

Jesus did not say, "Follow me, and I'll make you nice." He did not say, "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him be nice and follow me." He did not call us to make us nice. The Holy Spirit of God did not fall from Heaven on the Day of Pentecost to make the church nice. The God of all the Universe came to dwell within us to transform us into distinctive people who reflect his glory in how we live, love, serve, and sacrifice.

Sometimes I think we have anesthetized the tyrannosaurus rex of the Christian life, trimmed his claws, pulled his teeth, and turned him into a mindless purple dinosaur that sings: I love you, you love me, we're a happy family…" There is no more power, danger, risk, strength, or energy to Christian love in this culture. This stuff we deal with is so anemic that it would never have sent Jesus to the cross. It's just nice.

And the parable of the Good Samaritan does not simply call us to be nice.

So, my task this week, as I approached this text, was to listen, to hear the Parable of the Good Samaritan again, and to let it call me to something more than being nice to people.

Jesus is talking about big things – eternal life, God's kind of life, the kind of like we know in the coming age. He's talking about one of the two most important principles by which any person will ever guide his or her life – the 2nd greatest commandment––loving a neighbor as we love ourselves. He's talking about the kind of life God wishes to build into us by painfully extracting it from us.

Jesus is talking about a life of extravagant compassion, wild, risk-taking love, and selfless abandonment. He's talking about living with a definition of humanity in the image of God that obliterates all the false and fearful boundaries we erect to keep others out of our lives. He's talking about seeing the world in a totally different way. He's teaching us that the way of life we are now pursuing only approximates what we were created for. He is not teaching us to be nice.

Jesus is using this story to penetrate the false self I erect around me to protect me and to tell myself that I am doing well. I love those who love me. I love the loveable and the lovely. I love those who are easy to love. I love those I know. I love those who are like me. I love those who are convenient to love. I love those who can repay my love. I love those who cost me little. I try to be a nice person.

Jesus' story insists that I look inside for something else – the self-protective, demanding part of me that has not yet been changed into the image of Christ and does not yet reflect his character. The story asks me to see that he intentionally shapes me into a kingdom citizen. This work of the heart creates compassionate, selfless, boundless, risk-taking servants of God. Not nice people. 

The story of the Good Samaritan, rightly read, leaves me hurting. I know how much my behavior and attitude reflect more closely the responses of the priest and the Levite. I know how little it costs me to love the people I allow in my life. I know how little risk-taking is involved in such love. I know how much I get back from it. 

The story of the Good Samaritan, rightly read, leaves me yearning for more of Jesus in my life. I hear that story and want to clear out space in my life for wounded people. But my life is so crowded with nice people and with being nice to people. I fill up my schedule with being nice. Nothing radical, risky, costly, or challenging in the way of love. I have no doubt that Jesus' life perfectly reflected the behavior demonstrated by the Samaritan. When I was wounded and sinful, he did what the Samaritan did. I yearn to have such a heart and such a life in me.

The story of the Good Samaritan, rightly read, leaves me changed. I don't become nicer. I see people differently. I regard people differently. They are all travelers. All bear the image of God. All are people for whom Christ died. Their wounds beckon me to help. Their needs place demands on my resources, time, and effort. I can't use my religion as an excuse for remaining distant and preoccupied. The second commandment is more demanding than that. The story changes me when I read it rightly. 

The story of the Good Samaritan, rightly read, simply turns my world upside down. It says that the world is not the way I think it is. Gang members and child-molesters, homosexuals dying of AIDS, alcoholics and drug addicts, pushers, pimps, prostitutes, liars, cheats, adulterers – all those that I and my culture label, objectify, marginalize, and ignore – are people the second commandment calls on me as a follower of Jesus to love extravagantly.

It also includes those I, in my pride, look down on as not so bright or too dull to hang around, those whose agendas differ from mine, and those who oppose, ignore, judge, or even hate me. The second commandment does not have boundaries outside of which are people I am not expected to love as neighbors.

So here I am, trying to read this parable rightly, knowing that I'm also going to be required to teach it to nice people who think that's about the extent of what it calls for. I could prepare a lesson that encourages us, in light of the nice behavior of the Samaritan, to be nicer to the people around us. That wouldn't be a bad thing. We could do with more nice people. 

Or I could make an effort to set the parable on fire and invite others to stand with me and watch it burn, to feel its intense heat and to shield our eyes against its light, and to allow it to consume our bland obedience to the second commandment and to enflame our hearts with attitudes and behaviors that look more like Jesus than those we brought to our class on Sunday morning.

But such an effort would require us to acknowledge that God is serious about transforming our lives. He does really intend us to be something other than nice. 

So, I think that instead of making that kind of effort, I will just tell my class what I struggle with as I read this story. It's not a nice story. It puts a twist in my comfortable way of living. It calls me to be a different kind of person––not nice, but sacrificially compassionate, boundlessly generous, passionately merciful–– something with power, life, and joy.