Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, Ph.D.
(This is the full text of the sermon delivered at the Chapel Worship Service at Oxnam Chapel, Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC on Tuesday, February 2, 2016.)
In the city of Baltimore, where I do ministry, several communities have come to be designated and known as “Blue Light” neighborhoods. These are considered to be 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 our communities, and the people who live in them and travel through them. It is my sense that these “blue light” neighborhoods are not unlike the Jericho road that Jesus was speaking about in scripture.
Jesus uses what has come to be known
as the story of 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.
It seems as though the times of Jesus
were not much unlike ours. We are reminded
of the arduous nature of some of the proverbial “roads of life” today.
Jesus offers the example of this
certain unnamed man who had been beaten, stripped and robbed, and left on the
road to die. We are told that a priest
and a Levite chose – for some reason - 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 meetings, and knew that to
stop and care for this man would have made them late.
And lest you and I hold these
religious leaders of the Lord’s day in too much disdain, let us remind
ourselves of the ways that people in need today are passed by in our churches
and society. Racism and classism and
militarism continue to afflict the church and society. Crime and violence continue to permeate many
of our streets. Poverty, hunger and the
lack of adequate health-care continue to afflict too many among us (still over 20
million persons have inadequate health-care in America). If the truth is told, people are too often
passed by on the roadsides of life today.
It is against this backdrop that Jesus
seeks to teach some road rules.
And so what are the some
of the rules of the road that we need to attend to today?
Martin Luther King, Jr. helped us in
a sermon that he preached at Riverside Church in New York in April 1967 (49
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.
Social theorist, Michael Eric Dyson
points out that King believed that charity was a poor substitute for justice. Charity alone 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 feeling to do the
right thing. Justice 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 to move 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 type of 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 creative altruism
of the Samaritan was universal, dangerous and excessive.
When we practice such creative altruism,
we are led to not only offer a handout, but we ask why people need a handout in
the first place. Such creative altruism not
only offers help to the beggar, to the stripped and robbed among us, but
questions the conditions that lead to poverty and violence in the first place.
But wanting to justify himself, he
asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Through this parable, Jesus disclosed
his definition of a neighbor. A neighbor
is both Jew and Gentile; he/she is Russian and American; he/she is Muslim and
Christian; he/she is black and white and Hispanic and Asian. He/she is richer and poorer – left and right
– conservative and liberal -Democratic and Republican. A
neighbor is “any certain man or woman” – any needy person – on any of the
numerous Jericho roads of life.
Perhaps, we can learn something today
from the acts of Good Samaritan.
Perhaps he sang as he lent a helping hand:
Perhaps he sang as he lent a helping hand:
If I can help somebody as I 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.
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