The Good Iranian
Sermon
Rejoicing In Life's 'Melissa Moments'
The Joys Of Faith And The Challenges Of Life
The only time I got a bit scared during the whole episode was when he told me he didn't know the way to the airport. It all started that morning. A pastor who had been in my class that week offered me a ride following the final session on Friday morning. I had been in Morgantown for six days teaching a course for laypeople at West Virginia University. Everything was complete. I was on my way back to Rochester, New York.
The small commuter plane was scheduled to depart at 2:05 p.m. for Pittsburgh. I would change planes for the remainder of the trip. A pastor who had been studying with me all week was driving close to the airport and offered to drop me off. We agreed to leave the dormitory at 1 p.m. Two or three other people also on their way to the airport would join us. At 1:20 p.m. the other passengers had not arrived. My friend said we must leave, else I would miss my plane. As we drove through Morgantown, the pastor's car broke down. The transmission was all locked up. The gears would not change. He jumped out, fooled around a little under the hood, and announced that he would have to find me another ride. The intrepid soul ran right out in the middle of the street and almost forced every car to stop. He told the startled drivers my predicament and begged them to take me to the airport. After a few people had respectfully declined the opportunity, a good-looking young man in a very impressive white sports car stopped, heard the story, and agreed to help.
After my luggage was hastily moved to the new taxi and brief farewells were said, the handsome stranger and I set off. He was quite talkative and chattered away immediately. He was a student at the University from Iran. This was happening in the summer of 1980. American hostages were being held captive by Iranian students. Walter Cronkite was announcing every evening how many days it had been since the crisis began. I was sort of half-way listening. Uppermost in my mind was the fact that the time was passing, and we had a long way to go. I did hear him say that Iranians were not very popular with Americans right now. The way he put it told me that he was unhappy about that. He obviously wanted to be friendly with me. More important on my agenda was that he had made two quick left turns within a couple of blocks. We were now going in the opposite direction from where I thought the airport was. I muttered something to this effect. He replied that he knew another way, a shortcut. Who was I to argue? I knew nothing about the area.
In West Virginia highways usually are going up and down hills or around sharp curves and often both at the same time. They don't call it the "Mountain State" for no reason. We were twisting and turning and zooming through the countryside at speeds exceeding my comfort level. But he appeared to be a good driver. The sports car was one of those expensive luxury models that just loved the kind of death-defying maneuvering we were doing. After a few minutes, it was apparent that we were going farther away from anything remotely resembling an airport. I interrupted his continuing efforts to repair American-Iranian relationships to comment on the fact that we seemed to be going away from the urban scene where we might expect to find large planes arriving and departing. That's when he told me that he didn't know the way to the airport.
It so happened that this was right after one of the hostages had been become ill and was released and sent home. It dawned on me then what the situation was. I was to be the new hostage to replace the departed one. Somewhere nearby in the hills was a helicopter that would transport me to the plane that would take me to Iran. This momentary panic was shortly relieved by what appeared to be genuine remorse on the part of my new friend. He recognized my distress and suggested that we stop and ask for directions. He pulled in at a restaurant. I leaped out, dashed inside, quickly asked for assistance, listened intently, hopped back in the car, and we were off again at breakneck pace. But it wasn't working. We looked for clues that did not appear. At an intersection, he stopped a woman going the opposite direction and asked where the airport was. She pointed us down the same road, so we zoomed on. Still the expected signs were nowhere to be seen. Once again, we pulled off the road and screeched to a halt at a garage. I jumped out and finally located a pair of feet sticking out from under a car. Assuming there were ears at the other end of the body, I blurted out my predicament. From under the car came reassurance that we were proceeding correctly. The faceless voice told me again what I had heard at the restaurant. The newly formed American-Iranian alliance sped down the road.
Finally, as my watch rushed toward 2 p.m., the clues fell into place -- the intersection, Route 7, the Kentucky Fried Chicken place, the bank, and a right turn. At last, signs pointing to the airport came into view. Lo and behold, only a few minutes later, we pulled up in front. I thanked my rescuer profusely, heard him stoutly refuse my offer of monetary payment, grabbed my suitcase, and ran inside. As I dashed up to the counter and flashed my ticket, it was just about 2 p.m. The plane was scheduled to depart in less than ten minutes.
Still flushed with my apparent success and the memory of my speedy adventure, I scarcely heard the voice from across the desk saying there was no seat for me. When I recovered enough from the shock to hear the explanation, I learned that the commuter plane had twelve seats. Thirteen confirmed reservations had been issued. I was number thirteen to arrive. I was the odd man out. In my exasperation, I complained that I just had to get back. A wedding rehearsal planned for months was scheduled for that Friday evening in Rochester. I was the minister in charge. The clerk offered to help, grabbed the mike, and announced that a minister was present who needed badly to get on this plane in order to preside over a wedding rehearsal in a few hours. This plane is his last chance of making it. He proceeded to make a lucrative offer to anyone who would surrender a seat and take the next plane. Most of the assembled group looked compassionately at me but offered compelling reasons why their imminent departure was equally urgent, although they would really like to assist.
All seemed lost. Then a woman appeared overflowing with sentiment about how important and beautiful weddings are. She ran on about how important it was for me to get to that rehearsal. She agreed to the seat exchange. I am not sure whether her enthusiasm was motivated by thoughts of weddings, romance, and flowers or whether she just lusted after the money the clerk was offering. Nevertheless, whatever the explanation for her effervescence, the offer was gratefully accepted. Presently, I was sitting crunched up in the crowded little commuter plane. I looked at my watch. It was exactly 2:05 p.m. The rest of the trip was uneventful. I arrived in ample time to greet the happy couple at the wedding rehearsal in Rochester that evening. Let us hope that we all live happily ever after.
Prior to this time I felt no urge to preach on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Don't we already know what this story means? Do we need to hear it again? What more can one add to the obvious truth of the parable about a hated foreigner who gives aid to a stranger in distress? However, this chance encounter with a Good Iranian in West Virginia brought home the truth of this familiar story in a fresh and unexpected way.
We all know that the ancient story begins with one question and ends with another. The lawyer asked, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus asked, "Who was neighbor to the wounded traveler?" The first question is general, abstract, theoretical, an intellectual adventure in semantics and definition. It is the kind of question one might expect from a lawyer or a theologian. These are professions noted for their proclivities for precise statement and frequent distinctions. The lawyer's question was, above all, safe, non-involving, and non-threatening, an issue for a seminar discussion. The lawyer raised the point anyway to test Jesus. If you are so smart, if you have wisdom from on high, tell me what you mean when you speak of loving a neighbor. Who is my neighbor anyway? That's a complicated question, you know.
The question that Jesus put at the end is practical, particular, concrete, about real life as it is lived on streets and highways. It is personally involving, particularly after what has gone before. Who was neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of a criminal? The priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan? This brings the issue down to specifics. It calls for a decision about a particular event. Now it is the lawyer who is being put to the test.
Then there is the element of surprise and shock. Who is the hero in this story? The answer is unexpected. The good person is neither the priest nor the Levite. The one who was neighbor is not the one who might be expected to receive commendation. The center of attention is not even on a member of the favored race, not even one of the elect whom God has chosen for a special destiny. The hero is not a Jew but a Samaritan, a member of a despised group. This story cuts through prejudice and cliche and the untested assumptions by which so much of life is lived. The question Jesus posed goes right to the heart of the matter. Who is my neighbor? Anyone in need, any specific person in a given set of circumstances who is in distress. Who is neighbor? A neighbor is one who shows mercy to somebody in trouble. This story reduces life to fundamental, simple truths, unencumbered by the complications and obscurities with which religion often overlays the basics.
All of this came home to me in a vivid and unexpected way as I, anxious and sweating, zoomed up the hills, around the curves, and down into the valleys of West Virginia with a stranger from a foreign country. Looking back on it, I think our chance encounter went through three stages in about 25 minutes.
First of all, we confronted each other as an American and an Iranian. Our talk turned to politics and international relations. He remarked that Americans don't like Iranians right now. He saw me as one of those Americans and wondered if I liked Iranians. I saw him as a foreigner whose nation held my fellow-Americans captive. We were both suspicious and anxious, wondering what the other felt, what the American thought about Iranians and what the Iranian thought about Americans.
In a second move, we came to see each other as just two people. He came to see my distress. I needed to get to the airport. His whole attitude changed when he admitted he didn't know where the airport was and then saw the anxiety and puzzlement that spread across my face when that news struck me. I came to see him as an individual human being who had a genuine desire for friendship. That's he why he talked so much. That's why he offered to go out of his way, to take his own personal time, and to drive me -- a total stranger -- to meet my plane. At first he had been so intent on talk-ing and establishing contact with me that the airport was not really in his mind. Initially, I had been so focused on getting there on time that I was impatient with his chatter.
It all changed out on the highway when his agenda became my agenda, and my agenda became his. He was sorry he had not taken my need seriously and had driven aimlessly around talking about politics and international affairs. I was sorry I had been so suspicious of him and had not heard his plea for some sign of friendship. Then we became partners involved in a common enterprise of finding the airport. In the next few minutes we came to be neighbors to each other. From that moment on it didn't matter that one human being was an Iranian and the other human being was an American. We were just two people out on a road in the West Virginia hills, who for those few minutes needed each other.
We were thrown together by chance circumstances like that Jewish traveler and that Good Samaritan who happened to come along. I have since wondered if, as they journeyed down the road to the hotel, that Samaritan turned to that Jew and said, "You know, Jews don't like Samaritans much right now."
We reached a third stage in our encounter on the airport road. We rode that final distance to the airport as this specific Iranian and this individual American. We cannot fully abstract our humanity from the fact that we are certain kinds of human beings. We are white, black, Jew, Samaritan, male, female, Russian, Chinese, Protestant, Catholic, Christian, Muslim, and so on and on. These particularities make us what we, as individuals, are as human beings. Anyone who hears me preach knows as soon as I speak that I am from the South. That fact is important. It shapes and molds me in a thousand ways beyond the fact that I sound funny to Yankees who sound funny to me.
When the lawyer asked for a definition of neighbor, Jesus did not expound on humanity. He did not offer generalization about how we are all just people. He told a story about two human beings on the Jericho road, one a Jew and the other a Samaritan. This particularity is crucial to the story. When we arrived at the airport, the fact was that our chance encounter as two human beings on the Morgantown road took on its distinctive and peculiar meaning because he was an Iranian and I was an American.
On a highway in Morgantown, West Virginia, I relearned the lesson Jesus taught a long time ago about a Samaritan and a Jew. For one brief moment an American and an Iranian were able to get past the headlines that put our nations at odds with one another. For a short time we reached out to each other as two human beings who needed a friend then and there. I needed a ride to the airport. He needed someone to see him as an individual and to be nice to him. I probably will never hear the parable of the Good Samaritan ever again without thinking of that up and down and around and around road to the airport and of the Good Iranian who was neighbor to an American.
The small commuter plane was scheduled to depart at 2:05 p.m. for Pittsburgh. I would change planes for the remainder of the trip. A pastor who had been studying with me all week was driving close to the airport and offered to drop me off. We agreed to leave the dormitory at 1 p.m. Two or three other people also on their way to the airport would join us. At 1:20 p.m. the other passengers had not arrived. My friend said we must leave, else I would miss my plane. As we drove through Morgantown, the pastor's car broke down. The transmission was all locked up. The gears would not change. He jumped out, fooled around a little under the hood, and announced that he would have to find me another ride. The intrepid soul ran right out in the middle of the street and almost forced every car to stop. He told the startled drivers my predicament and begged them to take me to the airport. After a few people had respectfully declined the opportunity, a good-looking young man in a very impressive white sports car stopped, heard the story, and agreed to help.
After my luggage was hastily moved to the new taxi and brief farewells were said, the handsome stranger and I set off. He was quite talkative and chattered away immediately. He was a student at the University from Iran. This was happening in the summer of 1980. American hostages were being held captive by Iranian students. Walter Cronkite was announcing every evening how many days it had been since the crisis began. I was sort of half-way listening. Uppermost in my mind was the fact that the time was passing, and we had a long way to go. I did hear him say that Iranians were not very popular with Americans right now. The way he put it told me that he was unhappy about that. He obviously wanted to be friendly with me. More important on my agenda was that he had made two quick left turns within a couple of blocks. We were now going in the opposite direction from where I thought the airport was. I muttered something to this effect. He replied that he knew another way, a shortcut. Who was I to argue? I knew nothing about the area.
In West Virginia highways usually are going up and down hills or around sharp curves and often both at the same time. They don't call it the "Mountain State" for no reason. We were twisting and turning and zooming through the countryside at speeds exceeding my comfort level. But he appeared to be a good driver. The sports car was one of those expensive luxury models that just loved the kind of death-defying maneuvering we were doing. After a few minutes, it was apparent that we were going farther away from anything remotely resembling an airport. I interrupted his continuing efforts to repair American-Iranian relationships to comment on the fact that we seemed to be going away from the urban scene where we might expect to find large planes arriving and departing. That's when he told me that he didn't know the way to the airport.
It so happened that this was right after one of the hostages had been become ill and was released and sent home. It dawned on me then what the situation was. I was to be the new hostage to replace the departed one. Somewhere nearby in the hills was a helicopter that would transport me to the plane that would take me to Iran. This momentary panic was shortly relieved by what appeared to be genuine remorse on the part of my new friend. He recognized my distress and suggested that we stop and ask for directions. He pulled in at a restaurant. I leaped out, dashed inside, quickly asked for assistance, listened intently, hopped back in the car, and we were off again at breakneck pace. But it wasn't working. We looked for clues that did not appear. At an intersection, he stopped a woman going the opposite direction and asked where the airport was. She pointed us down the same road, so we zoomed on. Still the expected signs were nowhere to be seen. Once again, we pulled off the road and screeched to a halt at a garage. I jumped out and finally located a pair of feet sticking out from under a car. Assuming there were ears at the other end of the body, I blurted out my predicament. From under the car came reassurance that we were proceeding correctly. The faceless voice told me again what I had heard at the restaurant. The newly formed American-Iranian alliance sped down the road.
Finally, as my watch rushed toward 2 p.m., the clues fell into place -- the intersection, Route 7, the Kentucky Fried Chicken place, the bank, and a right turn. At last, signs pointing to the airport came into view. Lo and behold, only a few minutes later, we pulled up in front. I thanked my rescuer profusely, heard him stoutly refuse my offer of monetary payment, grabbed my suitcase, and ran inside. As I dashed up to the counter and flashed my ticket, it was just about 2 p.m. The plane was scheduled to depart in less than ten minutes.
Still flushed with my apparent success and the memory of my speedy adventure, I scarcely heard the voice from across the desk saying there was no seat for me. When I recovered enough from the shock to hear the explanation, I learned that the commuter plane had twelve seats. Thirteen confirmed reservations had been issued. I was number thirteen to arrive. I was the odd man out. In my exasperation, I complained that I just had to get back. A wedding rehearsal planned for months was scheduled for that Friday evening in Rochester. I was the minister in charge. The clerk offered to help, grabbed the mike, and announced that a minister was present who needed badly to get on this plane in order to preside over a wedding rehearsal in a few hours. This plane is his last chance of making it. He proceeded to make a lucrative offer to anyone who would surrender a seat and take the next plane. Most of the assembled group looked compassionately at me but offered compelling reasons why their imminent departure was equally urgent, although they would really like to assist.
All seemed lost. Then a woman appeared overflowing with sentiment about how important and beautiful weddings are. She ran on about how important it was for me to get to that rehearsal. She agreed to the seat exchange. I am not sure whether her enthusiasm was motivated by thoughts of weddings, romance, and flowers or whether she just lusted after the money the clerk was offering. Nevertheless, whatever the explanation for her effervescence, the offer was gratefully accepted. Presently, I was sitting crunched up in the crowded little commuter plane. I looked at my watch. It was exactly 2:05 p.m. The rest of the trip was uneventful. I arrived in ample time to greet the happy couple at the wedding rehearsal in Rochester that evening. Let us hope that we all live happily ever after.
Prior to this time I felt no urge to preach on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Don't we already know what this story means? Do we need to hear it again? What more can one add to the obvious truth of the parable about a hated foreigner who gives aid to a stranger in distress? However, this chance encounter with a Good Iranian in West Virginia brought home the truth of this familiar story in a fresh and unexpected way.
We all know that the ancient story begins with one question and ends with another. The lawyer asked, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus asked, "Who was neighbor to the wounded traveler?" The first question is general, abstract, theoretical, an intellectual adventure in semantics and definition. It is the kind of question one might expect from a lawyer or a theologian. These are professions noted for their proclivities for precise statement and frequent distinctions. The lawyer's question was, above all, safe, non-involving, and non-threatening, an issue for a seminar discussion. The lawyer raised the point anyway to test Jesus. If you are so smart, if you have wisdom from on high, tell me what you mean when you speak of loving a neighbor. Who is my neighbor anyway? That's a complicated question, you know.
The question that Jesus put at the end is practical, particular, concrete, about real life as it is lived on streets and highways. It is personally involving, particularly after what has gone before. Who was neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of a criminal? The priest, the Levite, or the Samaritan? This brings the issue down to specifics. It calls for a decision about a particular event. Now it is the lawyer who is being put to the test.
Then there is the element of surprise and shock. Who is the hero in this story? The answer is unexpected. The good person is neither the priest nor the Levite. The one who was neighbor is not the one who might be expected to receive commendation. The center of attention is not even on a member of the favored race, not even one of the elect whom God has chosen for a special destiny. The hero is not a Jew but a Samaritan, a member of a despised group. This story cuts through prejudice and cliche and the untested assumptions by which so much of life is lived. The question Jesus posed goes right to the heart of the matter. Who is my neighbor? Anyone in need, any specific person in a given set of circumstances who is in distress. Who is neighbor? A neighbor is one who shows mercy to somebody in trouble. This story reduces life to fundamental, simple truths, unencumbered by the complications and obscurities with which religion often overlays the basics.
All of this came home to me in a vivid and unexpected way as I, anxious and sweating, zoomed up the hills, around the curves, and down into the valleys of West Virginia with a stranger from a foreign country. Looking back on it, I think our chance encounter went through three stages in about 25 minutes.
First of all, we confronted each other as an American and an Iranian. Our talk turned to politics and international relations. He remarked that Americans don't like Iranians right now. He saw me as one of those Americans and wondered if I liked Iranians. I saw him as a foreigner whose nation held my fellow-Americans captive. We were both suspicious and anxious, wondering what the other felt, what the American thought about Iranians and what the Iranian thought about Americans.
In a second move, we came to see each other as just two people. He came to see my distress. I needed to get to the airport. His whole attitude changed when he admitted he didn't know where the airport was and then saw the anxiety and puzzlement that spread across my face when that news struck me. I came to see him as an individual human being who had a genuine desire for friendship. That's he why he talked so much. That's why he offered to go out of his way, to take his own personal time, and to drive me -- a total stranger -- to meet my plane. At first he had been so intent on talk-ing and establishing contact with me that the airport was not really in his mind. Initially, I had been so focused on getting there on time that I was impatient with his chatter.
It all changed out on the highway when his agenda became my agenda, and my agenda became his. He was sorry he had not taken my need seriously and had driven aimlessly around talking about politics and international affairs. I was sorry I had been so suspicious of him and had not heard his plea for some sign of friendship. Then we became partners involved in a common enterprise of finding the airport. In the next few minutes we came to be neighbors to each other. From that moment on it didn't matter that one human being was an Iranian and the other human being was an American. We were just two people out on a road in the West Virginia hills, who for those few minutes needed each other.
We were thrown together by chance circumstances like that Jewish traveler and that Good Samaritan who happened to come along. I have since wondered if, as they journeyed down the road to the hotel, that Samaritan turned to that Jew and said, "You know, Jews don't like Samaritans much right now."
We reached a third stage in our encounter on the airport road. We rode that final distance to the airport as this specific Iranian and this individual American. We cannot fully abstract our humanity from the fact that we are certain kinds of human beings. We are white, black, Jew, Samaritan, male, female, Russian, Chinese, Protestant, Catholic, Christian, Muslim, and so on and on. These particularities make us what we, as individuals, are as human beings. Anyone who hears me preach knows as soon as I speak that I am from the South. That fact is important. It shapes and molds me in a thousand ways beyond the fact that I sound funny to Yankees who sound funny to me.
When the lawyer asked for a definition of neighbor, Jesus did not expound on humanity. He did not offer generalization about how we are all just people. He told a story about two human beings on the Jericho road, one a Jew and the other a Samaritan. This particularity is crucial to the story. When we arrived at the airport, the fact was that our chance encounter as two human beings on the Morgantown road took on its distinctive and peculiar meaning because he was an Iranian and I was an American.
On a highway in Morgantown, West Virginia, I relearned the lesson Jesus taught a long time ago about a Samaritan and a Jew. For one brief moment an American and an Iranian were able to get past the headlines that put our nations at odds with one another. For a short time we reached out to each other as two human beings who needed a friend then and there. I needed a ride to the airport. He needed someone to see him as an individual and to be nice to him. I probably will never hear the parable of the Good Samaritan ever again without thinking of that up and down and around and around road to the airport and of the Good Iranian who was neighbor to an American.
