Full Service Good Samaritan 3-4-10

Anderson, South Carolina

During forty years in the Church I have seen a preoccupation of clergy and writers to describe God’s hand in the lives of people; now dead for twenty to forty centuries. Rarely do we hear of numinous encounters in the lives of people still above ground. Here in the post-modern secular era we desperately need to hear stories of God’s hand moving in the lives of those around us. In a world where insecurity and uncertainty are universal and media has the capability of telling us in real time of every calamity, small and catastrophic, we need even more to know that there is goodness in the world, that Someone is in charge. As I write, media is keeping me well apprised in graphic detail of the tendrils of dust still rising above the remains of a two nations devastated by cataclysmic earthquakes.

The emotional angst many of us experience with holographic reality checks of a world gone amok is often overwhelming. It does little good to know how people living thirty centuries ago experienced God’s provision if we never hear about how, or if, He does this in a very different era. Present day conversations of God’s working in our lives are often limited to hoped for interventions in catastrophic medical challenges. Occasionally we hear of someone being delivered out of the jaws of an odious financial or relational scenario. It’s much rarer to hear of someone being delivered from medical free-fall.

Recently I heard a Good Samaritan story every bit the equal to the familiar one found in the New Testament, this one also involving travellers. If one were still allowed to add stories to the New Testament I would be adding this one, post haste.

In ancient Palestine travel was hazardous at best and pilgrims often walked labyrinths as a symbolic pilgrimage rather than risk travel on bandit-infested roads in torrid deserts. The familiar story tells of a traveller who was robbed, beaten and left for dead. A Samaritan man came along the dangerous road and gathered up the battered bleeding form of the comatose traveller and took him to an inn and saw to his care, paying the innkeeper to see him through to recovery. Twenty centuries later his kindness is recorded in the best seller of all time, yet we don’t even know his name.

As it turns out I know the name of a Good Samaritan and she is above ground, alive and living out her faith in a way I find simply stunning. Unlike the familiar man of the New Testament with his bag of gold coins, this Samaritan has essentially nothing. Donita has life-threatening catastrophic illness that will never go away, let her live free of pain, or allow her to work, unless the hand of God moves in an extraordinary way in this post-modern era of materialism.

She is a single mother of three small children, two mentally disabled boys, a daughter severely challenged by her uncertain life circumstances. Perhaps twice a month Callie is farmed out some place while Mom is in the hospital. The boys get farmed out as well but their disability shields them from full awareness of just how uncertain life can be.

This family’s financial survival is precariously dependent on several disability payments, ones officials are considering for termination. Medical bills to date are close to $2 million. Despite these most precarious of personal circumstances in what has been named an All-America city in the richest country on earth, Donita has reached deeper than most of us could ever fathom in her efforts to help others.

Last week as Donita was driving into her street from the main commercial highway, she saw a battered disintegrating van in the parking lot of a now abandoned gas station. One of our myriad police was making it very clear to the very heavy, dirty, distressed woman and her four children that they must shove on and get out of town. His intent was to follow her to the interstate to make sure our All-American city didn’t have another problem to deal with. No matter the woman and her kids had not eaten in a couple of days and had no money to buy gas to continue their flight from a hideously abusive father/husband. The officer demanded they move on. It was at this moment Donita turned the corner and heard this confrontation.

Donita has no problem getting right in someone’s face. She didn’t this time, pulling into a weed-infested asphalt wasteland, asking the officer what the problem was. He told her this woman was loitering and needed to shove on. It didn’t matter she was in tears, pleading for assistance. Donita challenged the sergeant on why he hadn’t told her of the various agencies in town that could have helped her. “Why didn’t you offer her something that could have given her even a small bit of hope?” “She has to move on”, he repeated yet again. The officer couldn’t be bothered telling this woman where our women’s shelters are located. Perhaps He doesn’t even know.

One has to know Donita to understand her incredible ability to get what she wants, especially if she is on the side of someone who has been kicked in the teeth. Donita negotiated with the officer to let this woman and her four kids stay right where they were for ten minutes while she went home and got some bags of food and brought them back to the abandoned Exxon. She then negotiated for the cop to stay with the van and the four kids while Donita took the woman across the street to an ATM and pulled the last $40 from her account. She gave the woman the money and told her it would buy her two tanks of gas. She could make it to her parents’ house in south Florida if she didn’t spend money on anything but gas. They re-crossed the highway and returned to a progressively more impatient cop, who was intent on preserving the wholesomeness of our All-America city.

By this time a second enforcer of the peace had appeared and he was decidedly less patient or civil than the first insurer of our suburban wholesomeness. Donita was street-smart by the time she was fourteen, by then living on her own. She knew the street to be less dangerous than staying at home. Time proved her right.

Going against everything she had learned about staying street smart, she negotiated with both cops to allow her to take this woman and the kids to her house a block away. And we thought it was only in the Soviet bloc where one had to get police permission to move freely in a city? This mother in flight had no outstanding warrants or ‘paperwork’ against her. Why should she have to get permission to visit someone’s house? George Orwell may have been right after all, just off in his timing. 1984 is just a bit late this year.

Donita, successfully negotiating with the Establishment, took this mother and her four kids to her house where she proceeded to wash all their clothes, feed them a spaghetti dinner, and give them showers. From what I have been told these were not lovely people to the five senses in any way. My Samaritan friend saw beyond the foul odors, filth, and rough edges into their souls. This morbidly obese mother in flight told Donita, “No one has ever loved me before.” Donita told her “You are loveable.”

This family in distress went on its way, knowing that God does still move in the lives of people that haven’t been dead for twenty or forty centuries. The Establishment waited at the end of the block for the family and made sure they went to the on-ramp of the Interstate without passing Go. It didn’t matter; Donita had already given them their Go money and the hotels on Park Place and Board Walk, rent-free.

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.