I remember.  I remember the first time someone openly questioned my salvation.  I was in junior high.  My best friend, Brenda, and I did everything together . . . absolutely everything except going to church.  When I first met her, her mother said organized religion was people who couldn’t think for themselves.   

Then, for some unknown reason, she went out and got saved.  She repented from her sins, invited Jesus into her heart, was baptized and accepted the call to become a walking evangelist.  The first person she saved was Brenda.   It wasn’t long before she, too, accepted the call to become a walking evangelist with her mother and I was going to be her first convert.  

We were walking home from school and she was talking non-stop about her new life in Christ.   It had not only become her favorite topic . . . it was her only topic.  Anyway, she suddenly stopped, took hold of my arm and said:  Isn’t it wonderful!  Jesus just told me you are going to invite him into your heart and be saved.  All you have to do is repent and baptized!  

Obviously she had forgotten that I was a Methodist!  So I explained to her that my parents had me baptized, placed on the cradle roll and attending Sunday school before I was six months old!  In addition to that, my childhood had included Weekday Church School, Vacation Bible School, the Angel Choir, and the Junior Choir, and a regular acolyte.   I was now a successful graduate of the Confirmation Class, vice-president of the youth group and an active participant in the adult choir.  In other words, I’d been talking to Jesus all my life.  Not only that, I’d grown up believing we had to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness every day.  So, the way I figured it, I was already saved.  

The look on her face was a mixture of contempt, amusement, and pity as she informed me that wasn’t good enough.  Unless I could tell her the exact day I had met Jesus and invited him into my heart, I had not been saved.   Well, maybe I couldn’t tell her the date I’d met Jesus, but I was beginning to believe I would probably be able to tell her the day and the place that our friendship ended. 

Even now . . . even after all these years . . . I would like to believe it was her youthful enthusiasm and lack of spiritual maturity that caused her to be so judgmental and egocentric.   But, I’m a realist whose salvation . . . and ordination . . . has been questioned by more than one “well intentioned” believer.  And while I in no way want to cast doubt or throw stones at their experiences, beliefs, or faith, I often come away from these encounters wondering  where exactly does God fit in.   

Listen to the way we talk.  Listen to the way we defend our faith and our salvation.  More times than not, it is all about us.  As Bishop William Willimon wrote, The modern world teaches us to narrate our lives without reference to God.  It’s all our decisions, our actions, our feelings, and our desires.  So the first thing we must learn is that salvation is primarily about God!  

Salvation is primarily about God.  In other words, the salvation process doesn’t begin when we decide to allow Jesus into our lives.  It begins in the beginning.  Before we draw our first breath, God is there claiming us as God’s own.  When parents bring an infant to be baptized, God promises to be so intertwined in the very fabric of that child’s life that he or she will never be able to escape the Holy Spirit’s presence.  Then, when choices are made that lead to broken lives and broken dreams, God asks:  Who do you think will be there to bind up the wounds and to save the soul?  

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we often assume Jesus’ command to go and do likewise points us to the Samaritan himself.  After all, isn’t the parable told in response to a question concerning who are neighbors and what our response to their needs should be?  Yet, what happens if we take ourselves out of the leading role and place God there, instead?  What happens if we become the man in the ditch?   

He knew he shouldn’t have been on the Jericho road.  He had grown up being warned of the dangers and being instructed that, although it was inconvenient and maybe even unpopular, he was to take an alternate route.  But he didn’t listen.  As a result, it almost cost him his life.  Then along comes the very person he had been avoiding all his life – the one who represented everything he hated.  It is that very person who reaches out to him.  It is that very person who offers to save him.  He has a choice to make.  He can lie there and get exactly what he deserves – a slow and painful death.  Or, he can allow the person to touch him . . . to care for him . . . to love him.  Either way, the only choice he really has is to live or to die.  Everything else depends upon the Samaritan.     

This is the God we have – one who comes to us when we least deserve it with the offer of healing and hope.  The only choice we have is to reach out and be saved or remain in the ditch and die.  The man in today’s story decided to take his hand. 

Have the choices you made left you feeling beat up by life?  Has everything, or everyone, you trusted in fallen through or moved on?  Like the man in the ditch, are you about as low as a person can get?  Then remember what he did and, in Jesus’ words:  Go and do likewise.