I went to two prayer vigils this weekend. Two. On Thursday evening I went to the Sojourner Truth memorial for a vigil grieving the fact that this week two more black men were killed by police officers. It was a powerful evening, and let me tell you what made it all the more powerful was that Battle Creek police officers were there with us. Not as police, but as community members, as fellow grievers. We, police and people, stood together at the Sojourner Truth memorial and reflected on the fact that the sin of racism is real and alive, and it touches us all.
Having stood gratefully with our police department on Thursday, it was with great sadness that I got up Friday morning and went to the Police Memorial, for a vigil grieving the death of five police officers who were assassinated on Thursday evening at a protest very like the vigil in Battle Creek. The Dallas Police Department, like the Battle Creek Police Department, is aware of how racism affects policing and have actively worked to dismantle their own implicit biases. By all accounts the protests in Dallas were peaceful, police and community gathered together to declare that racism has no place in their community. One person unaffiliated with the protesters destroyed that peace. As I stood at the Police Memorial, a block from where I’d stood less then twenty-four hours before, and looked out on many of the same somber faces I thought, how did we get here again? How do we live in a world where two vigils for senseless violence are required in the span of less than two days?
Dear people of God. Black lives matter. Black live matter, and saying this in no way negates the fact that blue lives matter. Blue lives matter. Blue lives matter, and saying this in no way negates the fact that black lives matter. This is true because of course all lives matter. So wouldn’t it be easier to just say all lives matter? No. We have to be specific. We have to say black lives matter, we have to say blue lives matter for the same reason when you get a cut on one finger, you don’t put a band-aid on all your fingers because all fingers matter. You care for the finger that is hurt because if you do not, infection can set in and hurt the whole body. This specificity is actually biblical. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians he addressed divisions in the body of Christ, saying, “those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this.” Later he wrote, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it.” Our Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton in a video message this week said, “We are killing ourselves.” Racism is an infection that is killing the body of Christ, and police and people of color are being caught in the crossfire.
These are hard conversations, dear church. These are hard times. But sadly, these divisions that seem so sharp and powerful are not unique to our time. In our Gospel reading for this morning, the lawyer asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Now, let’s be clear, the lawyer was not asking this question because he was sincerely curious about how to lead a better life. He was an expert in the law; he knew what the answer should be. He was asking the question to test Jesus, to make sure Jesus knew what the right answer was, to make sure Jesus understood who was in and who was out. And Jesus responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The Good Samaritan. It is almost impossible to overstate just how outrageous this would have been to its original hearers. There was, in the Judean worldview, no such thing as a good Samaritan, in the Samaritan worldview, no such thing as a good Judean. This is the Hatfields and the McCoys, the Crips and the Bloods, the Israelis and the Palestinians, ISIS and everyone who is not ISIS. The lawyer was so disgusted that when Jesus asked him, “Which of these was a neighbor to the man?” he could not even utter the word “Samaritan,” sputtering instead, “the one who showed him mercy.” To which Jesus responded, “Go and do likewise.”
Now, this is a great story about how God wants us to view anyone who is in need as our neighbor, and to love them expansively. To strive to serve everyone we come across in the model of the Good Samaritan is certainly a great way to live. But I think there’s something even more amazing going on here than just an object lesson on neighbor love; something that takes this story from teaching tool to transformation. It comes in two places. First, verse thirty-three reads that the Samaritan, when he saw the man, “he was moved with pity.” Moved with pity could also be translated “had compassion.” If you remember a few weeks ago we heard the story of Jesus raising the widow’s son because he had compassion for her. That’s the same word here, splagchnizomai. It literally means a churning in ones guts. This word shows up another time in Luke’s Gospel, in the story of the prodigals. When the father saw his son coming toward him, he was moved with compassion and began to run to him. Jesus was moved with compassion, the prodigal father, a metaphor for God, was moved with compassion. To be moved with compassion in Luke’s Gospel is an attribute not of humanity, but of the divine. God alone is capable of being moved so deeply.
The second place that we catch this hint of transformation is unexpectedly from the lawyer’s own unintentional confession. When he could not say, “Samaritan” and instead said, “the one who showed mercy,” he was making a statement greater than he knew. See “mercy” in Luke’s Gospel is also a word used exclusively as an attribute of the divine. Humans are capable of care, of concern, of support, of asking for help for the sake of others, of all kinds of wonderful and important acts of care, but only God shows mercy.
In this parable Jesus is not casting us in the part of the Good Samaritan. He is casting himself. We are the man lying injured in a ditch; Jesus is the one who we thought was our sworn enemy, who spared no expense to make sure that we were made whole. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, “while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, [then] having been reconciled, we will be saved by his life.”
There is not better news than this. If you have ever thought you don’t deserve God’s love. If you’ve ever thought there’s no way you can do enough to get God to love you. If you have something in your past that you think is unforgivable, guess what, this is a parable for you. Guy in a ditch never did anything for the Samaritan. Guy in the ditch in fact had probably, in a million tiny ways, been actively hostile to the Samaritan, in that way that we can be to people who are different than us, even when we don’t mean to. And yet, the Samaritan helped him. Picked him up, patched his wounds, set him up in an inn, and paid the cost and then some for his recovery. He had absolutely nothing to gain from this, but the Samaritan did it anyway, because that’s what mercy, that’s what compassion does, it moves to action.
That Jesus has cast himself as the Samaritan is why we can trust that forgiveness is real. It is why we can trust that grace is real, that grace is true, and that grace is for us. So radical, so overwhelming, so merciful is God’s love for us that even the most stark barriers, like that between Samaritans and Judeans, is destroyed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You can be confident in God’s love for you, because the Samaritan helped the man in the ditch. If THAT can happen, then there is NOTHING you could ever do, that could ever separate you from the love of God.
So, “Go and do likewise,” Jesus said to the lawyer. If this story is about Jesus the Samaritan, what do we do with that line? Well, think about this for a minute. Imagine what happened to the man who was saved after this story. Imagine him waking up, groggy and sore, in a strange inn. Imagine his shock when the innkeeper tells him that he was brought in by a Samaritan, who had tended his wounds. Imagine when he goes to check out, and discovers that the same Samaritan who’d cared for him, has also foot the whole bill for his recovery. Imagine how that must have changed him. The lightness in his step as he walked away, the gratitude in his heart, the burning desire to help another in just the graceful way that he had been treated. How he must have looked at the whole world and everyone in it differently, after experiencing such care.
The man in the ditch must have found his whole worldview changed after his experience with the Samaritan. I imagine it changed not just him, but everyone he came across, as he recounted this story of the Samaritan who saved him. Acts is full of stories of ministry among and with the Samaritans, who became part of the ever-expanding message of the kingdom of God.
So what do we do, in response to Jesus’ command to go and do likewise? We live as people transformed by the mercy we have received. We can show up in the lives of people who are viewed in the same light that the lawyer viewed the Samaritan and we can say, he, she, too is my neighbor. I have gotten involved in a group in Battle Creek called “Showing Up for Racial Justice,” is a nation-wide organization of white people committed to walking alongside communities of color and showing up in the places that they need us to be present. They are planning a launch sometime in September, and I will share details with you as I know them. On September 25th, our sisters and brothers from St. Mark CME church will worship here with us, and on November 13th, we will worship at St. Mark with them. You can come to those services as we get to know one another and praise God together. I ran into Chief Blocker during the Battle Creek half marathon last weekend, and I invited him to join us for Freeze Pop Tuesdays sometime this summer. He and some of his officers are going to try and make it this Tuesday, so you can come here Tuesday and thank them for the work that they do protecting our community and keeping us all safe.
“Go and do likewise,” Jesus told the lawyer. Go and live like the one who has just been rescued from a ditch. Go and walk lightly, with the hope of one who has experienced mercy. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians that we read this morning, “You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among you from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God.” The grace of God is already bearing fruit within you, so go and do likewise. Thanks be to God. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment