Column by Mary Lee Talbot
What is the big religious question in our country today? In Jesus’ time and in the United States now, the Rev. Jim Wallis said, the question is “How do I go to heaven?”
Wallis preached at the 9:15 a.m. Monday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “Your Neighbor Doesn’t Live Next Door: The Good Samaritan Parable.” The scripture reading was Luke 10:25–37.
The story begins, Wallis said, with an expert in the law asking a question. He asked the congregation, “How many here are lawyers? It’s OK, my son is in law school. I do like lawyers.”
The lawyer is a learned man, a lawyer in the Washington way. He asked Jesus, “How do I get to heaven?” Jesus turned back to him and asked, “What is written in the law?” The lawyer responded that people should love the Lord with all their heart, soul and mind and their neighbor as themselves. Jesus told the man he was right and to go live his life.
“The lawyer, in the way of Washington lawyers, asked, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ He wanted to know ‘Who exactly am I responsible for?’ He was looking for loopholes,” Wallis said. So Jesus told a story.
The word “good” is not in the text. “In the context of the audience Jesus was talking to, they would not think there were any good Samaritans; they were dirty and false worshipers. There were rumors of cartels in Samaria who were sending undocumented people … oops, different story,” Wallis said. “The way we talk about (migrants) is the way Samaritans were to Jews.”
In the story, two Jewish religious leaders pass by the man who had been robbed, beaten and left for dead. The one who saw him, who took pity, who had compassion, was the Samaritan.
“The Jericho Road was a tough place, and people took a risk in stopping. The leaders might have been thinking the man was part of a plot to rob them. The Samaritan took the risk of stopping and helping the man,” Wallis said.
The Samaritan cleaned the wounds of the man, took him to an inn and gave the innkeeper two weeks’ pay to care for the man. It was a risk taken by a man considered “other” by the man who was beaten.
“The lines of the least are growing in this country, and like Mary Glover, we should see Jesus in the line,” said Wallis, in reference to the Sunday morning sermon. “If Sunday’s sermon was about justice, the parable today is about democracy, about ‘Who is my neighbor?’ The question of democracy is that your neighbor might not be like you — the neighbor may be someone ‘othered’ by society.”
Wallis believes that the United States is on a trajectory of fear and hate, of us versus them, who belongs and who doesn’t, who is in and who is out.
“The lawyer wanted to justify himself. But who we define as our neighbor will determine if we believe in democracy,” Wallis said. “Your neighbor might not be in your neighborhood; your neighbor might be the other in a distant neighborhood.”
Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology, said, “Who is my neighbor? It is not who I find in my path, but it is whose path I put myself in, who I approach and seek out.”
Wallis quoted Martin Luther King Jr., who said the Jericho Road was a place where people were beaten down and left but that one day it would be transformed so that people would not be beaten. “True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it understands that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring,” said King.
Wallis continued, “People often try to tame the Spirit by helping at a soup kitchen every two weeks to feel better. But the parable says we are to love with no expectations. The priest and the Levite asked, ‘If I stop, what will happen to me?’ The Samaritan asked, ‘ If I don’t stop, what will happen to him?’ ”
By 2040 the population of the United States will no longer be a white-majority one, but a “majority of minorities,” Wallis said. “We are closer to a multi-racial democracy than ever before. How can we act like the Samaritan, how can we stand on this parable for democracy? Let us love our neighbor. Amen.” The congregation responded, “Amen.”
The Rt. Rev. Eugene T. Sutton, senior pastor for Chautauqua, presided. Melissa Spas, vice president for religion at Chautauqua, read the scripture. For the prelude, Laura Smith, organ scholar, played “Fantasia in G Minor, BVW 542a,” by Johann Sebastian Bach. The Motet Choir, under the direction of Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist, and accompanied by Owen Reyda, organ scholar, was “With a voice of singing.” Smith played Bach’s “Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542b” for the postlude. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by the Gladys R. Brasted and Adair Brasted Gould Memorial Chaplaincy.
