A samaritan, a mindset, a community

 Last week, with the parable of the lost, sheep, coin and son, I mentioned the power of stories or ideas grouped in threes.  Folk stories grouped in threes catch our attention. It’s always the third character that succeeds. The rule of three also has this element of predictability.  If we think groups of three:

Father, Son and Holy Sprit.
Larry, Moe and Curly.
Snap, crackle, pop.
Signed, sealed, delivered.
Back to that same old place, sweet, home Chicago!

This favorite bible story that we just heard is about the man who is beaten up, thrown to the side of the road, and he needs help. 

1. The first person who might help him is a priest, 
2. The second is a Levite and when Jesus told this story, all his people  are going to know that your... 
3. ...third person in that trio is going to be an Israelite.  

(A levite, priest and an Israelite—it’s the old standard formula(1)). When Jesus says, “Samaritan” you can almost hear everyone go, “Noooooo! C’mon, man!!”  

While we look at the story and might say, “ah, the first two characters failed. Yes, yes, sometimes we too fail. We should be like the lovely, generous Samaritan.” That perspective is not wrong.  But it’s a little more nuanced than that. In Jesus’ time, there was bad history, with the Samaritans and Jewish community. Some folks considered the Samaritans Jewish, some didn’t. There was a complicated history all around, but people would have really booed at Jesus with this story.  Jewish scholar, Amy Jill Levine explained this point and went on to say that “A priest, a levite and a Samaritan would have been like saying, “Larry, Moe, and (enter the name of some famous terrorist). For a lot of reasons Samaritans were not beloved.

When we don’t like someone, there’s something in us that prefers a simple lie about them to a complex truth. As with anyone who you really don’t like, it was tough to imagine the Samaritan was motivated by good old fashioned compassion.  

MLK, on the night before he was assassinated, gave a speech called “I’ve been to the mountaintop.” He was in Memphis and the city's sanitation workers were striking. In it, he reflects on the priest and the Levite who first stumble upon that injured man and why it was that they didn’t help.  He suggests that are worried about what will happen to them if they stop and help.  That makes sense. We have worried about that too: What will happen to us if we help a person who is in need, if we support a movement, defend a cause? Just look at the bible story: It takes time to get involved with this guy on the side of the road. It takes money to truly help him. It’s uncomfortable. It’s an inconvenience. The Samaritan loses the better part of a day. These first two characters in the story, King said, couldn’t get over the question of, if I stop to help this man, what’s going to happen to me?

But the Samaritan is different, King says. The question he asks is, when he sees the man in need is if "I don’t stop to help this man, what’s going to happen to him?" 

Spin this question out just a little bit and extend those comments of King and ask, “if I don’t stop to help this man, what’s going to happen to us? 

We are part of a collective whole. 

Catholic Priest, Father Richard Rohr wrote about how during the South African Truth and Reconciliation process, the perpetrators apologized to the victims and when they did that they used the words “I’m sorry. Forgive me.” It was a way to take responsibility for what they did or what they had done. But, when this was translated the victims heard something different. It was a painful miscommunication. They instead heard what the translators said to them: Nidi cela uxolo which has a different meaning. When we say “I’m sorry” in English, it’s something that we say individually: I did something wrong and I’m responsible for it. The words, “forgive me” Father Rohr explains, are specifically about me and my guilt that has weighed heavily on me. Please cancel this debt. Forgive me. But the translators translated the words “I’m sorry” as Nidi cela uxolo or “I ask for peace.” You can feel the difference between “I’m sorry” and “I ask for peace.” Peace is wider than just you and me. It is an Ubuntu way to apologize and it is about “we.”  The elders heard a request for peace and they offered forgiveness with this spirit of “us” with a “hope that seeds would be planted for the good of the whole community.”  It is a way of asking for a better “we” and for a healing of the fabric of the collective people. It’s a little bit of a mind bender but it’s one we’re called to adopt.   

What does it look like to think collectively?

It’s not easy. 

This last week, I was talking with Dave, who many of you know in our congregation, who is a business man. He works in sales. He mentioned how strategies around leadership are changing since he got his MBA 10 years ago. He is obviously concerned about a profit in his line of work, but he told me he has been thinking about servant-leadership. 

Clearly, this piqued my attention. I asked him about it and he reflected. Servant leadership is simply good for the people he works with. It helps everyone become their best selves which is healthy for the collective. He told me he’s still trying to figure it out and that it’s not intuitive. I believe him. But we’re called to move in this direction and he's thinking about how to do that.

We are not trained, not raised, not guided to think of the collective. For example, here in the US, folks talk about buying organic produce because it was good for them. (Fine and good, buy the produce you like organic or not. However, for the sake of the example:) my own thought process on it changed a little when I worked with some migrants farm workers in Mexico who told me how their eyelashes would fall out after a pesticide was sprayed. While we tend to consider the individual cost, implication, benefits, etc, I realized there was a collective consideration wrapped up here that goes beyond the “cost to my own body.” 

Every once in a while, this church sells fair trade coffee. It’s a similar idea: there’s an effect that goes beyond the cost to us but that affects a wider circle of farmers. Regardless of the kind of produce or coffee you buy, we’re just not trained to think this way. 

Kevin once told us in a message that his mother said she didn’t always go to church for herself but for the people down the pew who needed the presence of another person there. We’re not taught to think of the wider collective implications of caring and helping. 

African American activist and writer, James Baldwin wrote that it’s actually in the interest of American whites to think of the collective and to pursue racial reconciliation.  At first that sounds like a mindset of self-interest. Yes, in a sense, he appealed to our tendency towards self-interest (What’s in it for me?), but racial healing is actually to everyone’s benefit. It’s about us.

It’s not the easiest shift for us to move from, what could I lose if I help? (What will this cost me in time, money, and energy? if I give, serve, advocate, and participate) to what do we lose if I don’t.

How can you practice thinking collectively this week? How can you practice this in the way you respond to people who are in need, in the way you interact with your team at work, in the way you buy things, in the way you serve?

When we don’t stop to help, when we ignore the pain of the person, when we make snap judgements of people, when we stop deeply caring about our neighbors, we lose something of the kingdom of God. Something cracks. We lose something. Justice frays. We lose connection, trust, grace. We lose peace. Our vision of a world animated by God’s love dims.

God’s kingdom doesn’t just exist between two people: for example, between the wounded person and the one who helps. It is something collective that is shared between all of us.  Maybe the Samaritan isn’t showing us what it looks like to individually sacrifice. Maybe he’s showing us what community looks like and the kind of world he wants to live in.

I want to live in that world too.

And we can. We build it—we experience it--with each action of service we do.

Clearly, Jesus wanted to get us thinking and reflecting with this one. But then, he tells us at the end where to land. Go, he says. Be like the Samaritan. Do likewise.

(1) Ezra 10:5, Nehemiah 11:3. Amy Jill Levine elaborates this idea in "Short Stories by Jesus."