I’ll soon be
moving into a condo that I just bought.
Just before I signed the papers making it mine, I stopped by to see if I
could talk to one of the people who lives in the same complex. There are only four condos in the complex so
I thought it would be good to know at least one of the people there. They will soon be my neighbors, and to tell
the truth I wanted to get some scoops on what the neighborhood and the condo
association was like.
I met Jackie, a woman who wishes she
could retire, but has to keep working because she can’t afford to do anything
else. She is happy that she’s able to
work from home, though. She seems really
content to stay in her condo, smoking and being with her dog. She told me about the condo association and
what they do and don’t do and she told me how great it was to live there in
that neighborhood. She’s nice enough but
I don’t know if we’ll become friends but at least I know who she is.
Today’s scripture is a familiar
story to many of us. It’s about a lawyer
who thinks he can outwit Jesus. He
boldly asks Jesus what he has to do to get to heaven. He already knows the answer since he’s
obviously well educated, been to Hebrew school where he had to learn the Torah
and other books of the Bible. He recites
the appropriate scriptures about what he is supposed to do, but then, it says,
“in order to justify himself”, he asks the second question: “Who is my neighbor?” Maybe he thought Jesus would give him a list
of people who could be acceptable as neighbors.
Maybe he thought Jesus wouldn’t have an answer to such an ambiguous
question.
But Jesus, as usual, tells a story
in answer to the question. The story is about a man who gets stuck in the wrong
part of town at the wrong time. He’s
walking down a dangerous highway, one that’s known for hijackings and
robberies, one that everyone knows is better to avoid, but is hard to not use
since it’s the main highway between Jerusalem and Jericho. With no modern vehicles to speed away in, with
no doors to lock, and with no real place to hide, this guy is really out
there. And, just like people told him,
the robbers and thugs come out and get him, beating him up, taking his shoes
and his clothes, and leaving him in a heap on the side of the road.
Other people travel down this road
at the same hour. Evidently no one
witnessed the beating and robbery. That
happens a lot, doesn’t it? No witnesses,
no way to identify the thugs, no way to hunt them down. But the people traveling down the road are
seemingly not very compassionate. A
couple of them, people whom you would have thought would have stopped, a priest
and a lawyer, crossed over to the other side of the road and kept going. It was finally an outcast, a Samaritan, a
person who was hated by the Jews, who stopped to help this Jewish man. He bound up his wounds, took him to the
nearest hotel and paid for his stay and his care, promising to pay for the rest
of his caretaking when he came back.
So the story ends with Jesus
pointing out that the neighbor was the one who showed mercy and tells the
questioning lawyer that he is to do the same.
Seems pretty straightforward doesn’t
it? Of course when we read this, we put
ourselves in the story as the Samaritan, the Good Samaritan, the one who of
course stopped to help the wounded traveler, who even bound up his wounds,
carried him on his donkey, and paid for his stay at the inn. Of course we would do that. Right?
I have a spiritual director who I’ve
been seeing for a long time – at least 7 years.
She knows me pretty well as a result of our conversations. Sometimes that’s a good thing, and sometimes,
it’s a maddening thing. Like the last
time we met, for example. As many of you
know, the United Methodist General Conference met in May and had discussions
about the acceptance of homosexuals in our church. I call them discussions but they were really
debates, cruel conversations and never-ending diatribes on both sides of the
issue, leaving us with no new insights and no new decisions. I have to tell you that by the time General
Conference was over, I was seriously looking to change churches, not from The
Village, but from United Methodism. I’m grateful for the Village’s connection
with the UMC and the UCC as it gives me the option for a more open church in
the UCC part. Anyway – I was lamenting
with my director about the hatefulness of the evangelicals in our denomination
who are very one sided and rigid, who interpret scripture for their own best
interests and who even were caught bribing and coercing delegates from Africa
and other countries to vote the way they wanted them to. I must have gone on for awhile, and finally
my director said, “What do you think motivates them? Why do you think they are doing what they are
doing?” Immediately, I said,
“Fear.” And she, in her wisdom said,
“And what do you have in common with them?”
After a moment of thought, I decided I hated her – not really – but what
a great question. What is it that
motivates me and makes me do what I do in the church around this issue? It’s fear.
It’s fear that what I love about the church will go away; it’s fear that
I won’t get my way; it’s fear that my voice will be lost somehow – and maybe
I’ll lose. It’s all the same things that
they are feeling. I just hate it when my
director is on target! She got me on
this one.
So when I saw that the scripture for
today was the Good Samaritan, I just had to pause and think about where I am in
this story. Kate Matthews, a UCC pastor
says, “It seems like a very familiar story about showing compassion even for
people we may not want to treat well: a nice little story with a nice little
moral, especially for those of us who like to do good deeds for the needy. The
story certainly doesn't make our stomach churn or offend our sensibilities; in
fact, we tend to hear it with a satisfied ear, as if we believe we would surely
do what the "Good" Samaritan did when he was moved by compassion to
help the victim of highway robbery. At least, we'd like to think we would. In
other words, we put ourselves in the place of the Samaritan, and it's
comfortable there.”
If you look at the
story as Jesus tells it, he has us as the one in the ditch. We are the ones who need a neighbor to help
us. We are the ones lying there helpless
and we need our enemies to have compassion on us. Think about that for a moment. We need our enemies to have compassion on
us. I need the evangelicals that I
quarrel with so much, to be my neighbor, to have compassion on me. I need those that I judge for whatever reason
to have compassion on me. I have to say,
that this whole experience of realizing our connection, that my evangelical
enemies are also my brothers and sisters, that my conservative Trump followers
are also my brothers and sisters, that those I look upon as less than me – yes,
I still do that sometimes – are my brothers and sisters. We are neighbors, and we are to love them as
we love ourselves.
But it’s also not just
about us as individuals. We love to do
charity work, reaching out to people who are different from us and feeling
really good about it. It’s not just
about us; it’s about the community as well.
We have heard in the news this week about shootings of black men that
are seemingly unjustified, and in Dallas, a place where the police have really
worked at being open and compassionate, where those in the demonstration about
the injustice were snapping selfies with the police, a sniper killed five
officers. We have lived through the
senseless murder of people in Orlando, St Paul, San Bernardino, and Charleston.
And the list goes on. I heard this week
that bullying is up in schools all over the country as reported by the Southern
Poverty Law Center, starting in the third grade and it is getting worse all the
time. Political rallies have become
battlegrounds, with people attacking each other over who to vote for. Divisive rhetoric is killing us –
literally-- and it’s running rampant in
our country, affecting the way we live and work with one another.
According to Bernard
Brandon Scott, "Not just individuals have to cross the line, but
communities have to cross the line. Yet the crossing of that line always begins
with the first Samaritan whose heart is moved by a Jew. Such people are
initiating a new world for all of us."
Some of you may know Woody and Judy Trautman. Woody is now in his nineties with failing
health, but the Trautmans have been instrumental in Toledo in forming and
maintaining the Multifaith Council. Back
in the early 2000s, Woody had a passion for interfaith dialogue. There was an organized group in Toledo that
consisted of pastors and leaders of various faith groups, but all we did was
meet together once a month and periodically do some kind of joint project or
service. That group organized the first
interfaith Habitat build in the country.
But it was just the leaders who benefited from that group. Woody and Judy wanted us to really get to
know each other better, to sit and eat and talk together. And so they worked very hard and reached out
to the interfaith community and formed the Multifaith Council of Toledo. They now have annual dinners, they meet at
each others’ houses of worship, they were instrumental in getting Toledo
declared a Compassionate Community, they have developed interfaith gardens
across the city, and have had youth activities, calling on our next generation
to live in peace.
The Multifaith Council
is changing our community. Woody and
Judy and now a host of others were the first Samaritans to cross the road and
reach out to the “other.” In this time
of increased bullying, even by at least one of our political candidates,
increased violence and decreased civil conversations, the community needs to
join together and realize that we are all neighbors. It doesn’t matter whether we are gay or straight,
Muslim or Jew, Christian or Atheist or Agnostic, black, white or brown. It doesn’t matter how old or young we are,
what our cultural heritage is, what our political affiliation is, or where we
live or eat. We are all neighbors. And I have to tell you that if I were the one
lying along side of the road, I would want any of them to help me. Wouldn’t you?
So what do we do with
this story? How do we live it out in our
lives? Who is my neighbor? And maybe most importantly, how do I get to
know him/her? How can I learn to love my
neighbor as myself and stop the judging and the holier-than-thou attitude that
threatens to undo me and us? Who is your
neighbor? And who is it that you are at
odds with and need to show compassion to?
Can we cross over to the other side of the road to help the one who
doesn’t think or look like us? Can we
follow the example of Jesus and accept all people as our neighbors, even if we
disagree with them? Can we reach out to
a Muslim? Can we reach out to someone of
a different racial background? Can we
accept it if they reach out to us? Could
the priest who walked on the other side of the road be me? Could the Levite who walked on the other side
of the road be me? Could the one lying
in the ditch be me? Could it be me?
I’d like for you to turn to another person and
share with them how you might cross the road in this next week. Who is it that you are having a hard time
with – arguing, fighting, misunderstanding – who is it who makes you so mad you
can’t see straight because they are so narrowly focused? What can you do to reach out to them and to
see them as your brother or sister in Christ?
We really do need each other. And we need to develop ways to agree to
disagree, letting go of the need to be right, or righteous, to be on top, to be
the best, to win. Everyone is our
neighbor, whether we like it or not. Jesus calls us to show mercy. Go and do likewise. Amen.
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