ROAD RULES - LESSONS FROM THE JERICHO ROAD

Last Sunday, I had the opportunity to worship with and preach at Mt. Vernon Place United Methodist Church in Baltimore. Mt. Vernon Place is an historical congregation which is located in the center of the city which served as the founding location of Methodism in America in 1784. In fact, Mt. Vernon Place is the place where the the first bishop of the Methodist Church in America, Francis Asbury's burial plate is located, and each week the gospel lesson is read from the pulpit that Asbury used when he preached in Baltimore. Mt. Vernon Place sits at the crossroads of much that defines Baltimore – east and west, north and south, older and newer, richer and poorer, multi-ethnic community. Thus, the title of my sermon for the day – “Road Rules.” The following are excerpts from the sermon.


But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)

We note (in Luke 10:25-37) that Jesus is being asked to address this matter of neighborliness against the backdrop of his teaching persons to love God and to love each other. Neighborliness is to be understood within the context of love – ultimately the love that God has for each of us.

Jesus uses the story of what has come to be known as the Good Samaritan to teach those of his day and those who would hear this story even today, some “road rules.” The Jericho road was known to be a dangerous road – a winding and dark road - where it was not unusual for people to experience the type of violence that Jesus points to in the story of the Good Samaritan. Thus, we need to be reminded of road rules.

It seems that the times of Jesus were not much unlike ours. We are reminded of the arduous nature of the proverbial “roads of life” today.

It seems that we live in a time when “road etiquette” among us continues to deteriorate. Let’s take a look at the highways around us. For those of us who have the occasion to travel the roads of today, we know that roads can be dangerous and mean places. People seem to drive with a sense of heightened rage and angst, where it’s not unusual today, to turn on the news, and hear of another case of “road rage,” and violence on our highways.

Perhaps this type of rage is emblematic of our society in general, where a certain sense of meanness, and anger, and angst seems to have permeated much of our life together. I read in the newspaper not long ago, where violent crime in America is increasing for the second consecutive year. I also read where new prisons are being built in this region, and the prisons are at capacity even before construction on them is completed.

In the city of Baltimore, several communities have come to be known as “Blue Light” neighborhoods. These are some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city, and at night one can see the constant blinking of blue lights overhead. These lights are a reminder of the crime and violence that has affected and often afflicted many of these communities, and the people who live in them and travel through them. These blue light neighborhoods are not unlike the Jericho road that Jesus was speaking about in scripture.

In talking about road rules, and what it means to be neighborly, Jesus offers the example of this certain unnamed man who was beaten, stripped and robbed, and left on the road to die. We are told that a priest and a Levite chose to pass this beaten man by on the other side of the road. We don’t know for sure, but perhaps they were late for important religious gatherings, and knew that to stop and care for this man would have made them late for their church gatherings.

And lest you and I hold these religious leaders of the Lord’s day in too much disdain, let us remind ourselves of the way people in need today are passed by in our churches and society. Racism and classism (and other “isms”) continue to afflict the church and society. AIDS and Malaria are killing many in the two thirds world. Crime and violence continues to permeate our streets. Poverty, hunger and the lack of adequate health-care continue to afflict many among us (over 40 million persons remain uninsured in America). If the truth is told, people are too often passed by on the roadsides of life today.

And so what are the road rules that we need to attend to today?

Martin Luther King helped us in a sermon preached at Riverside Church in New York in April 1967 (40 years ago):

"On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s road side; but that is only the 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."

Philosopher Michael Eric Dyson points out that King believed that charity was a poor substitute for justice. Charity is a hit-or- miss proposition; people who tire of giving stop doing so when they think they’ve done enough. Justice seeks to take the distracting and fleeting emotions out of giving. Justice does not depend on felling to do the right thing. It depends on right action and sound thinking about the most helpful route to the best and most virtuous outcome. King understood, and embodied, this noble distinction. People who give money to the poor deserve praise; people who give their lives to the poor deserve honor.[i]

For Christians, our road rules must be rooted in true compassion. True compassion is always coupled with justice, and challenges each of us in the church and society towards what Martin Luther King called forms of “creative altruism.” This is altruism that makes concern for others the first law of life.

King indicated that Jesus revealed the meaning of this altruism in his parable here about the Good Samaritan who was moved by compassion to care for “a certain man” who had been robbed and beaten on the Jericho road.

King asserted that the altruism of the Samaritan was universal, dangerous and excessive. His altruism was universal since he did not seek to inquire into the nationality of the wounded man to determine whether he was a Samaritan or a Jew. He saw that he was “a certain man” in need, and that was sufficient for him to intervene.

The Samaritan was a good neighbor who demonstrated dangerous and excessive altruism because, unlike the priest and the Levite who passed by the wounded man, the Samaritan was willing to help any person in distress under any conditions, and he was able to look beyond external accidents to regard the stranger in need as his brother.

When we have true compassion we not only offer a handout, but we ask why people need a handout in the first place. True compassion not only offers help to the beggar, to the stripped and robbed among us, but questions the conditions that lead to poverty and violence on our streets.

Jesus here gave the command to love one’s neighbor, and through this parable Jesus disclosed his definition of neighbor. A neighbor is neither Jew nor Gentile; he is neither Russian nor American; he is neither black nor white nor Hispanic nor Asian. He or she is “a certain man or woman” – any needy person – on any of the numerous Jericho roads of life.

Perhaps, we can learn something from the Good Samaritan. Perhaps he sang as he lent a helping hand:

If I can help somebody as a travel along
If I can cheer somebody with a word or a song.
If I can help somebody as they’re living wrong
Then my living will not be in vain…


[i] Michael Eric Dyson, April 4, 1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Death and How it Changed America (New York: Basic Book, 2008), p. 120.

Keep Dreaming

People of hope and faith today are encouraged to keep dreaming. In a poem entitled "I Dream a World," Langston Hughes offered his dream for the world:

I dream a world where no man

No other man will scorn,

Where love will bless the earth

And peace its paths adorn

I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom's way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul

Nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where black or white,

Whatever race you be,

Will share the bounties of the earth

And every man is free,

Where wretchedness will hang its head

And joy, like a pearl,

Attends the needs of all mankind-

Of such I dream, my world!

Keep Dreaming

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once dreamed that (each of us) would someday be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character. These are days when we are beckoned to keep dreaming of such a world. Langston Hughes shared with us in a poem why it is important for us to keep dreaming:

Hold fast to dreams,

For when dreams die,

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

When Violence Abounds - The Church's Call to Action Against Violence

(This article was first published in June 1999 in the United Methodist Connection, and then in the book, And Yet the Melody Lingers: Essays, Sermons and Prayers on Religion and Race, 2006 by Dr. C. Anthony Hunt)

The recent acts of violence that have littered our national and local news should heighten our collective conscious and raise our level of concern. The trial and acquittal of four police officers charged in the death of Amadou Diallo is but the latest episode that serves to remind us of the pervasiveness of violence and hatred in our midst. While the issues surrounding Diallo’s death – a West African immigrant who was shot 41 times while unarmed in New York – notably points to the problems underlying some zero-tolerance enforcement policies, and rogue police officers involved in acts of brutality, other instances also serve to point to the permeation of violence in our midst.

Whether it is a 6-year-old boy who brings a gun into a Michigan school and kills his first-grade classmate, or two promising high school seniors in Washington, DC who are gunned down after a basketball game, or a Pennsylvania man who fatally shoots three persons because of his alleged anti-white and anti-Jewish views, we find a plethora of evidence pointing to an increasingly violent society.

Violence abounds. Whether it’s the death of Taisha Miller, the young African American woman murdered by police while sitting in her car in California, or James Byrd, an African American man who was dragged behind a truck to his death by white supremacists in Texas, or Matthew Shepherd - the young college student who - because of his sexual identity - was beaten, hung on a pole and left to die in Wyoming - violence is all around us.

The problem of violence is complex and multi-dimensioned to say the least. The death of Amadou Diallo – and the lack of justice (heretofore) for those who murdered him - points to the prevalence of racism in America. Racism has resulted in a double-standard in many policing practices. These practices are the by-products of policies that tout decreasing inner-city crime rates – but often at the expense of the selective interrogation and arrest of innocent persons of color who fit certain profiles – particularly African American males.

Several other factors seem to be complicit in the recent wave of violence in America. Widening economic disparities between the rich and the poor contribute to the escalating violence. We observe that a disproportionate number of those who are victims, as well as many of the alleged perpetrators of violent acts are a part of America’s under-class.

Additionally, the continued right-wing political influence of the gun lobby – spearheaded by the National Rifle Association - seems intent on keeping guns in the hands of any person – of any age – who for any reason wants to possess a handgun. Furthermore – violence in the media and in cyber-space serve as breeding grounds for a preponderance of the intolerance and violent acts that are carried out among us.

What is the church’s response when violence abounds? First it is incumbent upon the United Methodist Church as a community of the faithful to affirm that the problem of violence in American society is the church’s problem. The apostle James shared that “faith without works is not faith at all.” John Wesley’s notion of social holiness – that we are to “reform the nation and spread Scriptural holiness” - helps us to see that the United Methodist Church is to be prophetically and actively engaged in speaking and acting to eradicate the societal ills that plague us.

Secondly, we must affirm that the problem of violence is shared by all of us. As one of the most diverse communities of faith in the United States, we who are United Methodists are challenged to realize that whether in the city or the suburbs, violence - and its underlying forms of hatred - whether racism, homophobia, sexism or any other forms of xenophobia - must be viewed as our collective dilemma. Violence touches all of our lives, our families and our churches.

Therefore, solving the problem of violence in America is our shared responsibility. Each of our churches - and each member of the United Methodist Church - should prayerfully consider ways that we can constructively address the problem of violence among us. Our collective prayers and thoughts should then spawn us into prophetic social action.

When Violence Abounds - The Church's Unfinished Agenda

(In 2000, a group of United Methodist church leaders in the Baltimore-Washington area began to organize to work on the ongoing problem of violence in our communities and to develop appropriate ways for churches to act. Below is the foundational document which guided the Nonviolence Coalition's work.)

Premise:
· The proliferation of violence in our society affects all of God’s people, and warrants a prayerful, prophetic and proactive response from the church

· The United Methodist Bishops’ Initiative on Drugs and Violence (1988) is heretofore an unfinished agenda, and warrants further action and commitment of resources from the whole faith community

Purpose:
· Gather persons around the common concern for the violence that is a reality in all of our communities,

· Provide analysis of the problem of violence,

· Begin to discern and look at what should be the United Methodist Church’s (and faith community’s) response to violence in our society,

· Begin to consider best practices and develop action steps and church, and

· Develop and strengthen coalitions of persons in churches and community organizations to effectively deal with violence in the society.

Hope in Hard Times - How to Talk About Race

Several recent events have served to heighten awareness as to the ongoing problem with race and racism in America. Among these are Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Justice Sonia Sotomayor; the arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates at his home in Cambridge, MA; and the recent debates surrounding President Barack Obama's efforts toward reforming our nation's healthcare system. During a recent visit to the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL (http://www.splcenter.org/), I and others on the visit were informed that there were over 800 hate related groups identified in 2008, and that this number is on the rise.

In these days it is important that we develop the capacity to talk about race and racism in ways that will lead toward healing among us. In a seminar titled Unlearning Racism, facilitator Lee Mun Wah provides participants with guidelines for initiating and engaging in healthy conversations around race. At the core of the seminar, Wah shares the belief that talking aboout race can lead to healthy listening skills, and that all parties need to be willing to listen to each other, not only with their ears, but their eyes – watching how information is received, and being willing to ask questions that come from genuine curiosity. Conversation becomes more than the cursory greeting, and while requiring more time, can move us past our stereotypes of each other, to understanding.

The following are Lee Mun Wah’s nine healthy ways to build healthy conversations around race:
1. Reflect back what is being said. Use their words, not yours.
2. Begin where they are, not where you want them to be.
3. Be curious and open to what the are trying to say.
4. Notice what they are saying and what they are not.
5. Emotionally relate to how they are feeling. Nurture the relationship.
6. Notice how you are feeling. Be honest and authentic.
7. Take responsibility for your part in the conflict or misunderstanding.
8. Try to understand how their past affects who they are and how those experiences affect their relationship with you.
9. Stay with the process and the relationship, not just the solution.

Lee Mun Wah is the founder of StirFry Seminars. For more information go to www.stirfryseminars.com.

(A part of this article is an adaptation of an article by Jeanene Jones in CORR Directions, a publication of the General Commission on Religion and Race of the UMC , June 2009, http://www.gcorr.org/.)

Signs of Hope - A Legacy of Lessons

The Rev. Dr. Ira Zepp, who passed away on August 1, 2009, was a teacher like no other. He was a mentor to many of us, and a passionate seeker of justice. In his recent book, Pedagogy of the Heart: A Teacher's Credo, Zepp wrote:

"A teacher is someone who is willing and humble enough to drink from the instructional wells of those who have preceded us and continue to be nourished by them: the Hindu sages, the prophets' call for justice, the discipline of the shamans, the wisdom teachers of all traditions, the gifts and graces of the saints, plus every teacher we've ever had. A teacher is someone who is devoted to students and is willing to endure the vertigo of vulnerability which inevitably accompanies the intimacy of human relationships and unanswered questions. This is the pedagogy of the heart."