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Years ago, when I was on staff at the MCC in New Orleans, I had the opportunity to see one of my dreams for that church become a reality...sort of.
The dream was a big one. I and a few others brainstormed about the creation of a day center for *** positive adults that would be housed at the church.
It would be called the Living Room, which we all thought was a wonderful name, and it would offer a healthy, home-cooked meal for lunch. Funded entirely through grant money,
it would provide incredible opportunities for the *** community, such as yoga, cooking classes, holistic health workshops, and more. That was the dream.
The reality was something altogether different. Because the church was located in a poor section of downtown New Orleans, it attracted a clientele different than the one
we had originally anticipated. The clients weren't middle-aged, educated, ***+ gay men, as we imagined they would be. Instead, the location of the center
and its free lunch attracted a previously uncharted and untargeted segment of the *** population of New Orleans: the homeless. And so while on staff at the MCC in New Orleans,
I had the privilege and opportunity to serve for a period of time as the director of the Living Room, and during that time, I learned some things, I can tell you.
I learned why our clients generally weren't interested in any day center activities, but instead, simply flopped onto the sofa or easy chair as soon as they arrived,
only to immediately fall asleep. You see, they had to constantly stay on the move throughout the night, or else risk arrest. No sleeping on park benches
or under bridges in New Orleans. And so the Living Room was the place they could get some sleep. More than a place for cool workshops and classes,
the day center became a home base for these people. Much more important than yoga classes were the washing machine and shower we offered.
Cooking classes were pretty much useless, but the daily meal was much appreciated. We allowed most of them to use the church phone for local calls, too.
However, we had to keep an eye on one of the clients, who had a tendency to use it for his obscene phone calls. During my time as the director of the Living Room,
my world was expanded from the gay neighborhood in which I lived – a place where anyone walking down the sidewalk was assumed to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender,
unless proven otherwise. My circle was widened to one that included a population of people who existed outside my comfort level. And so it was for me that,
as I believe one of our preachers at General Conference said, it is when we are pushed to the edge of our comfort level that life truly begins. And that's one of the themes
that I think we can take from this morning's parable of the Good Samaritan which is familiar – possibly overly familiar – to many of us. But I think we do the parable an injustice
if we reduce it to nothing more than a morality story, one which illustrates the importance of being nice to others who are in need. Certainly, that is one of its themes,
but not the only one, and probably not the primary one. I also think we Christians do it grave injustice with our tendency to demonize the lawyer
and some of the characters of the parable. For example, we tend to critique the lawyer in the text for his nitpickiness with the Jewish law.
But isn't it the job of a lawyer to be nitpicky about the law? And when we hear of the lawyer’s attempt to "justify himself," we probably hear it with different ears
than a Jewish audience of Jesus' or Luke's day would have. "In such a context," Richard Swanson writes, "'be justified' ought rather to be translated as 'be strictly observant,'
which means to live a life shaped by Torah, a life which points to the goodness of God and the possibility of safety." In other words, the lawyer was doing what he was supposed to do.
And before we too quickly dismiss the priest and Levite in the story as insensitive and self-centered for their failure to stop and help out the victim of violence,
let's think about the situation. Both the priest and Levite would have thought they were doing the right thing by keeping themselves ritually clean.
If they thought the man was dead and had touched the corpse, they would have become ritually unclean and unable to minister to their own people.
So they did what they thought was the best thing. Something else to note is the fact that road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a dangerous, winding, meandering road
known as the "Way of Blood" because of the blood which was often shed there by robbers. And as Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out, "It's possible that the priest and the Levite looked
over at that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking, and
he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked,
the first question that the Levite asked was, 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?'" So this isn't really a story about the good behavior
of the Samaritan versus the bad behavior of the priest and Levite. What I think it is about is whether we look at life from the narrow perspective of an ever-shrinking circle
or the perspective of a wide and inclusive circle. Let me briefly explain what I'm talking about. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark also describe the same encounter of Jesus
which led to the telling of this morning's parable. But in those gospels, the questioner goes beyond asking Jesus what must be done to inherit eternal life.
In the other gospels, he also asks which is the greatest commandment in the Torah. So with the gospels taken together, we get the sense that the lawyer wants to know
what portion of the Torah needs more attention, which tends to be a constricted perspective, an exclusive one, one that gives more attention to one portion
of sacred scripture than another. And he continues in that vein of exclusiveness when he asks Jesus, "So who is my neighbor?" In essence he wants to know who he is supposed to love.
Who is entitled to his kindness and mercy? And so the implied question is "Who is not?" This is what I mean when I say the lawyer's was a narrow perspective
and an ever-shrinking circle. But interestingly, Jesus doesn't answer the question. Instead he shifts the focus to a different perspective – a broad and inclusive one.
He tells a story that reaches beyond minimum requirements, one that extends beyond the SOPs and bylaws of an institution, and instead, looks into the wide circle of the humanity of each of us.
Jesus refused to respond to the lawyer's constricted perspective which held up the question about who was and who wasn't his neighbor. His response widened the circle
by calling for an extension of grace to everyone. He moves the listener to the edge of her or his comfort level in order for us to begin to truly experience life.
Life doesn't happen within the safety of closets, locked doors, or gay neighborhoods. It only happens as we find the courage to take risks and make ourselves vulnerable.
It happens when we look into the eyes of the "other" and come to realize that there is no "other." There is only "we." And so these words
bring us to a point that would be a very nice place to end today's sermon...but I won't. Instead, I'll point out that when we reach this level of awareness
that there is no other, and when we extend mercy to someone in need, that's only the beginning. In one of his sermons, Martin Luther King, Jr. said,
“We are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed
so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar;
it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." This means that looking into the eyes of our neighbor
and extending a helping hand is not enough. In fact, it's only the beginning because now we are faced with the question, "What about the others?"
It's the calling of this church and the calling of each of us to address that question: What about the others? What are we going to do to ensure that there are no others?
What is God calling us to do to make certain that there are no other victims? No other victims of hunger and poverty. No other victims of violence.
No other victims of bigotry and oppression. No others. It's only when we answer that question and move into action, that we are truly answering God's call of justice and mercy.
And in so doing, we draw the circle wider and wider, still. Never stopping until all feel welcome at the table.
May we open our hearts to God's call in our lives and summon the courage within us to answer it. Amen.