Chumps

             A few posts ago I mentioned a sermon by the associate pastor of the church my daughters and I attended for many years – the talk was about the Magi, and go home different than the way you came became one of my philosophies of life. And I said that there was a second sermon which provided yet another statement in my list of words of wisdom.

              That talk was about the Good Samaritan. Oh my gosh – what can make a fresh take on the story of the Good Samaritan? It was one of the gospels I heard one Sunday every year growing up in the Catholic Church, and it was a tale much more comprehensible than the Prodigal Son. But then again, over the years, more has come out about the Good Samaritan – about how the people who passed by the injured person were not evil heartless beings that the rest of us would never identify with – but rather, they were folks very much like every single one of us who could have lost their livelihoods by stopping to help – reputations could have been ruined by touching someone who was not clean, jobs could be lost for being late – the Samaritan was the only one willing to risk everything to help – how many of us can do that at any given moment? So the message had changed in the years since I was a kid at Mass.

              There had even been a famous (yahoo-headline-worthy) experiment where a college professor had been teaching the history and lesson of the Good Samaritan and then instructed the students that there would be a written exam on the topic at a location different from the classroom – someplace clear across campus – and they were not to be late. On the route where the kids would have to walk across campus, there was someone crying for help – none of the students wanted to be late for the exam. None were willing to risk failing an exam on the Good Samaritan by being a good Samaritan and helping the person in need along the way. They failed the final.

              All of this was known before the associate pastor gave her own talk about the Good Samaritan one Sunday – she might have even included all this in her sermon – so how does one make the story fresh enough to catch my attention?

              She wrapped up her talk that day with something she had read recently in the news. A priest was giving an orientation to a room full of priests who were going to minister at a nearby prison. He was giving them an oral list of do's and don'ts. He said, under no circumstances were they to give money to any of the inmates, no matter what sob story they put forth. He said there was a priest who used to go to the prison to minister to the inmates. And one day as one of the inmates was being released, the prisoner looked the priest in the eye and sneered with complete derision, “Every single time you came here, I asked you for money, and each time I gave you a different ridiculous reason for why I needed the money, and each time I was lying. But you gave me the money. You are such a chump!”

              And the priest looked at the about to be released inmate and said, “I knew you were lying. I made the choice to be the chump.”

              So the priest leading the class said to the new priests about to minister to the prison, “Do not give anyone money. Do not be chumps!”

              One of the priests in the classroom raised his hand and asked, “Father, were you the priest who was the chump?”

              And the priest responded, “No. I was the prisoner who called the priest a chump.”

              This still gets to me.

              The message is not (and if this priest/prisoner story is an urban legend, I do not want to know) that we should give in to all con artists at all times – we would soon all be broke with ruined reputations and no jobs – the injured person on the side of the road might be a con also – (thank goodness for cell phones today – we can all be Good Samaritans with little risk!) But what I hear from this story is that every once in a while, we should choose to be the chump. Some good might come from it – not necessarily good for us individually, but a good that somehow pays forward.

               When I was a kid, someone who was visiting one day talked about how her family was on welfare for a while when she was growing up – she grew up during the Great Depression. For her, even as a child, receiving welfare was humiliating. It was even embarrassing for her to admit to years later. But the assistance helped keep the family together, and gave her the strength to vow to make something of herself when she grew up. It was with pride that she told the story of paying back to the government, in cash, all the welfare money that had been given to her 'way back when. It is with great pride that I could gloat over what her children have become. They done good.

              Sometimes choose to be the chump.

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