Love Beyond Our Prejudices--October 10, 2024

Love Beyond Our Prejudices--October 10, 2024

[Jesus continues his story about a man who fell into the hands of robbers...] "But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.'" [Luke 10:33-35]

What does it do to you to receive help from someone you swore was your enemy? 

What goes on inside your heart when someone who belongs to a group you've been told all your life is unacceptable turns out to save your life?

What happens to your old prejudices when someone you've been taught to hate from your earliest memories onward turns out to be the hero of the story?

This is the subversive work that Jesus does with the twist in his story: he makes a hero out of the one everybody in his audience would have been predisposed to avoid.  What's one of THOSE PEOPLE --you know, a Samaritan!--doing in Judea? The moment Jesus mentions one of those residents from across the border in Samaria, the eyebrows among his listeners furrow and their fists clench.  Not one of THEM! How did he get into "their" territory? How long has he been here, and what's his business? Why doesn't he go back to where he came from?  You can just feel the teeth clenching and the blood pressure rising at the mere mention of this foreigner.  And then--in the greatest of gospel punch-lines--when Jesus has this foreigner save the day while the Respectable Religious Leaders had walked on by, he blows apart old bigotries and makes room for spacious and neighborly love.

Part of the scandal of Jesus' kind of love is that in its sway, enemies become friends, outsiders become insiders, and strangers become welcome guests.  We even come to discover that the people we only wanted to look down on just might turn out to be the ones who save the day.  Would we dare to accept help, Jesus compels us to imagine, from one of "those people" we didn't think should even be on our turf in the first place?  Jesus compels us to see ourselves as the man lying at the roadside half-dead and to ask if we would rather keep our old bigotries and fear of "the other" or let the stranger from across the border help us if we were in need. 

It's funny how the place you find yourself in the story has a way of changing how you feel about asking for or receiving help.  If we imagine ourselves always as the ones being asked to come to the aid of others, we have a way of getting pretty stingy and judgmental: "Why do we have to always help THEM?" "Shouldn't I put me and my group's interests first?"  "Why was this guy at the side of the road in this neighborhood in the first place?"  That sort of thing.  But if we let Jesus nudge our faithful imaginations to feel what it's like to be the man left for dead by the priest and the Levite, we're going to have to deal with our pet prejudices real quick when a Samaritan (you know, one of those people whose accent is funny, whose dress and culture are different, whose religion is wrong, and who aren't "our kind of people") comes to the edge of the road to offer a hand.  Jesus pushes us to ask the question, "Would I let the Samaritan help me if I was in the ditch?" which is to say, "Would I let myself be loved by someone I didn't think was worthy of my love?"  

And once we stare that question down, maybe our old prejudices start to melt... and crack... and crumble.  Maybe we realize that the people we thought unworthy of our love are not only truly worthy of love but in fact sent by God to show love to us that we didn't want to admit we needed!  And maybe in this moment of the story we can see that Jesus' design all along in this story was never to delineate a simple rule or a mathematical algorithm to calculate who "counts" as a neighbor that I therefore must offer X amount of help to if I want to stay in good standing with God.  Rather, Jesus' intention has always been to demolish that kind of transactional thinking and instead to see every other person in my life as both someone to whom I might show love as a neighbor, and someone through whom God might show love for me.  

It really does change everything when we stop seeing the world as full of threats and enemies to be thwarted and instead to see it as full of neighbors brought into our lives by God both for us to love and to be loved by as well.  But once we do, we need to be prepared--that change of perspective will put us out of step with a world that is used to fear-mongering and defaults to distrusting anyone it labels as "other." Jesus' kind of love requires courage of us: the courage to see possible enemies and outsiders as faces to be loved, the courage to let someone offer help and love to us when we didn't want to accept it, and the courage to risk ourselves for the sake of someone who may never be able to pay us back. 

Fair warning, dear ones: if we have let Jesus' storytelling do its work on us this far, we will be changed forever by his kind of love.  And there's no going back.

Lord Jesus, let us be transformed by the way your love crosses borders, reaches across barriers, and stretches our vision.