"The Unseen"
Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-28; Luke 10:38-42
A sermon preached by Rev. Coqui Conkey
July 15, 2007
Added 08/09/07
We’ve heard the story of the Good Samaritan before, probably even many times before. We may forget the reason that Jesus told the parable, but we certainly have heard or heard about the parable itself. This particular Bible story has even been written into our own legal system – The Good Samaritan law which protects those who stop to give aid at the side of the road. As a society, we encourage compassion and reaching out to strangers in need. I like parables because they lend themselves to new and contemporary tellings. And I like parables because when I hear them, I find myself taking on different roles…today I may think I am most like the priest, or the injured one on the side of the road, or the road, or even, on good days, somewhat like the Samaritan who cast caution and history to the wind to bend over and lift up a stranger in need. I like parables because they help us understand something about Jesus and about God. Where is God and who is Jesus in this particular parable? Parables help us understand what the Realm of God is like even when Jesus doesn’t begin, “The Kingdom of God is like…” And, sometimes we find ourselves outside the parable itself as the one who asks a question that can only be answered with an illustration. Perhaps, in the end we are most like that lawyer who challenged Jesus asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” and “Who is my neighbor?”
Let me begin by reading a contemporary rewrite of the parable created by Kwasi Kena as a liturgy.
“Jesus tells us a story about someone who traveled through that neighborhood. We know the neighborhood. We drive around it, especially after dark. The inevitable happened, and those people attacked the traveler. Should have known better. Nobody with sense travels through there. Wounded and unconscious, the traveler lay on the street. A preacher late for an appointment drove around the traveler and thought, “Someone’s probably called 911 already.” You never know if it’s safe to stop these days. A leader in the church drove by, but didn’t stop. Probably thought it was a wino or a drug addict. One of those people saw the wounded traveler and stopped to help. Outsiders seem to know that tomorrow they may need someone to help them. That was a risky thing to do. Which one of these people do you think was a neighbor to the wounded traveler? The answer is obvious.”
It is easy to talk ourselves out of acting in risky although compassionate ways. One experiment at a seminary found that availability of time had a great effect on people’s willingness to stop and offer aid, to act compassionately. Even after studying and talking about this parable of the Good Samaritan, students who thought they were late getting got their next class were unlikely to stop and offer aid to someone calling for help as they went from building to building. Those who thought they had a few extra minutes were much more likely to stop. In our hurried world, we keep going, just like the rushing priest. Compassion costs us. Loving our neighbor comes with a price tag. It is pretty easy to rationalize our behavior – whatever we choose to do.
Compassion as well as justice requires risk taking. The Samaritan took risks in order to come to the aid of the traveler. One obvious risk was that the robbers were still around. It’s possible that harm would come to anyone who stopped. This didn’t look like a setup, but maybe it was all an act just to make some innocent passerby vulnerable. I know I’ve been taught not to stop to help someone with car trouble along the side of the road for just that reason – it might be a setup to take me or my possessions. It’s better to just go down the road and send expert help back. In ancient days, most travelers would know how to care for basic injuries just so they would be able to get to the next town if they stumbled and sprained an ankle or got tossed from their ride and ended up with a profusion of scrapes and cuts. While the Samaritan didn’t have an official first aid kit, this traveler knew how to use the common things at hand. Oil helped wash the wounds; wine could prevent infection; and strips of a robe would suffice as bandages. Still, the Samaritan stopped even though the injured traveler might be wounded in ways that were beyond h is expertise. The Samaritan risked finding out he didn’t know enough. The Samaritan risked using up the supplies and not having anything left for her own needs. How often has our perception of another’s needs caused us to hesitate or stop short of helping because we think our own resources are inadequate and we won’t really make a difference? How often do we not help because we think we won’t have enough left ourselves? The Samaritan also risked having the proffered help rejected. Would this severely injured traveler accept the aid offered by one of those people?
Jeremy Del Rio in an the article “Jesus Justice” in the on-line journal www.thejournalofstudentministsries.com tells about explaining justice to his five-year-old and then having to live into his own teachings about compassion and justice. As only persistent children sometimes can, Jeremy’s son wanted him to explain what justice was. Jeremy had been struggling with a definition because he needed one for the speaking and teaching he was doing. “Justice,” Jeremy ended up telling his son, “is about righting wrongs.” He goes on to tell this story:
“’Why didn’t we help that man?’
“As Judah’s confused yet compassionate eyes gazed at mine, his words cut deep. We had just passed a panhandler in Chinatown on the way to introduce Mom to soupy dumplings. I had taken him the night before, just the two of us, on a father-son outing. He enjoyed the dumplings so much – and the practice chopsticks the waiter taught him how to use – that he wanted to bring Mom the next night.
“What do you mean, ‘Why didn’t we help?’ I thought. We’re on family time. The rationalization didn’t cut it for me, however, so I figured it would mean even less to him. So I promised Judah that if the man was still there after we ate, we would give him some money.
“On the way back to the car, we passed the man a second time. No longer panhandling, he sat on a stoop with his head between his legs. I gave Judah a handful of coins and took him to the man. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘My son has something he wants to give you.’
“Slowly the man raised his head and watched Judah approach, hand outstretched. The man grabbed his hand and with tears welling up in his eyes, said ‘God loves you, boy.’ Later Judah offered him his ice cream cone and the tears streamed down the man’s face.
“The ice broken, the man introduced himself as Lonnie. He said he’d been strung out for 30 years and homeless for 25. At one time he was a Christian, but he turned his back on God and became hooked on crack cocaine and alcohol. He said he’d been off drugs for 12 years, but he couldn’t shake the booze. He wept as he told me that Judah was the sixth person who’d stopped to show him God’s love that day.
“He kept saying he was scared – afraid he would go to sleep and not wake up. Judah looked at him lovingly, straight in the eyes and said: ‘Everyone is scared of something.’ With that, more tears.
“Lonnie was chilly, so we gave him Judah’s beach towel from the car, and a brand new Bible I had bought for myself that weekend. Lonnie asked if Judah would pray for him. He did, along with mom and dad.”
Compassion and a passion for justice begin when we truly see the one in need and listen to the stories of those around us.
As time went on Jeremy heard his son continue to pray for Lonnie, asking that Lonnie not be homeless any more. Five-year-olds don’t have many resources for right the wrong of homelessness. Prayer for a home on top of his compassionate responses to a stranger in need was the resource he had to help right wrongs, restore balance, renew hope, and create a more just world.
Neighbors are all around us. I know my neighbors on both sides of my house; we’ve lived next to each other for a long time now. I know my neighbors across the street – we’ve watched out for each other over the years. We’ve taken each other to the airport and to the hospital. We’ve mowed one another’s lawns and helped remove damaged or unwanted trees. We’ve used snowblowers and shovels to clear a path to the plowed roads so that others could get to funerals and work in spite of a foot or more of snow. As neighbors, we have cared for one another. Compassion has come into play more than once in our responses to one another…but justice hasn’t really been something we have needed to attend to in my small neighborhood…well, expect when part of the block was going to have loose street leaf pickup and the other wasn’t. But even that is quite a small matter.
I suspect though that somewhere on my two-block long street there are unseen needs, even people who are unseen. What we don’t see, we don’t have to attend to. When we don’t see, we don’t have to participate in making a difference. I think that was really part of the problem for the Priest and the Levite, perhaps even with the lawyer who first questioned Jesus; they didn’t really see what was going on and the real person, real people who were affected. Every area has people who are unseen, who stay just outside our field of recognition. A woman or a man may be battered. A child may be being abused. There may be drug and alcohol dependencies that have remained behind closed doors. A young person may be struggling with issues of sexual identity. Mental illness may be challenging a person’s ability to interact well in society. Financial troubles, lay offs, divorce, or loneliness may be troubling my neighbors and all I see are the kids on bikes, the folks working in the garden, and a young mother’s delight in her child. First, we must see, really see people and their needs in order to be compassionate.
Jesus teaches that our neighbor isn’t necessarily the one who lives next door or down the street. “Neighbor” has a broader connotation. Let me tell you the story again.
A man went down from Nogales, passing the United States border and fell from heat, lack of food and water, and the chasing of the U.S. Border Patrol who stripped him of his clothes, wounded him, and left him half dead.
By chance there came a politician who, because he voted for laws prohibiting U.S. citizens from helping illegal immigrants, ignored the man and passed on the other side. Then a priest came and looked on him, prayed for the man’s soul and passed by.
The Samaritan Patrol, persons from different faiths, had compassion on him, bound up his wounds, gave him First Aid, water, and food. Departing, they established food and water stations to prevent the death of future immigrants passing over the border.
Which of these was the neighbor?
Not too far from my house and my comfortable suburban neighborhood is a neighborhood of a different sort called the Blake Corridor. This is an area of inexpensive apartments which become home to all sorts of people without too many financial resources. Along with that poverty has come an increase in crimes and police calls. A large number of immigrants from Mexico and Somalia live in the apartments. The kids attend the Hopkins schools and among those who noisily populate the local library. With a broad brush, city and school officials had seen this area in those terms. But, what could be done to right the underlying wrongs, restore balance, renew hope, and bring justice to this area rather than just acknowledging the difficulties that exist and sending in police cars. In the last few years, a more concerted effort has been made by the city and schools…and maybe even the faith communities…to discover and really meet the needs of this area. Some things have been surprisingly obvious. The immigrant parents can’t read the flyers from that are sent home about summer school and recreational programs. And even if information is communicated, lack of funds for fees and lack of transportation are barriers to participation. Parenting classes might be useful, but in what language? So a primary drive has been to find ways to involve the Blake Corridor families more extensively in community activities. Keeping children involved in activities and programs that build on their education and interests leaves less time for them to join gangs and find other kinds of trouble. Information is proved not just on paper but in person and in many languages. Buses help get kids where they need to be in order to participate in classes and activities. Special funding helps with financial requirements. The neighbors have been here for a long time but they had been unseen by the community.
I wonder what we would find if we went for walks in circles out from this church. How far would we have to go before we began to see real needs for compassion and justice in this community? Who would we see if we sat in the New Brighton parks for an afternoon?
Not long ago, I took a walk along the path that goes passed the church. I turned on the part of the path that just goes to a picnic area and doesn’t circle the lake. I met two men there, Paolo and Sean. I called out a hello and then walked over to talk. Paolo and Sean had come out on the path because it is quieter than the backyard of the group home where they live just up the street. Both were in wheelchairs. Paolo talked about taking his son for walks up the path here towards the church. He told me part of his story of being adopted into a family in the United States as a young teen and that he had lost contact with his birth mother and siblings. I’m sure these two have more stories to share. And, had I not gone for a walk that particular day, they would have remained among the unseen in this neighborhood…at least by me. Who else is unseen and what needs to change just in this neighborhood to make a just society?
The Samaritan saw an injured traveler on the side of the road and that Samaritan didn’t stop to think. The Samaritan co-acted with God. Co-acting with God, John Shea explains, is not an act of will but an “act of cooperation with an abundant source.” Co-acting with God means that we see what God sees; we hear what God hears; and we go where God goes. We have all had times when compassion has stirred us before thought could intervene and we had time to rationalize ourselves out of acting. We have all had times when we have co-acted with God. We have had moments when we have helped provide justice to the weak and the orphan and tended to the rights of the lowly and destitute. We have truly seen the weak and needy. We have experiences upon which to build.
The lawyer asked what he needed to do in order to inherit eternal life. That lawyer knew the law and the commandments to love God and neighbor. But there is more. God’s Realm is about much more than following laws. We must instead embrace and embody the values of that Realm – compassion that compels us to see, stop, and act – and justice that keeps us at the scene working to right the wrongs until peace, until healing, until shalom is restored.
There were three who walked by the injured traveler. Which one are you?
