Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost Lectionary 15; Proper 10; Series C

July 11, 2010 St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran, St. Paul

Keith Olstad

The texts:

The first lesson: Deuteronomy 30:9-14 NRSV

Psalm 25:1-10 NRSV

The second lesson: Colossians 1:1-14 NRSV

The Gospel: Luke 10:25-37 NRSV

The Children’s lesson:

Good morning. How good to see you again. I’m so glad that you’re here.

In a few minutes I’m going to read the gospel lesson in which Jesus tells a story that has come to be known as the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus considers it a very important story for us when we wonder who are neighbor is, and how we should respond to people in need.

So this morning, I want to tell you a version of the Good Samaritan story in terms of something that has happened in our day, not two thousand years ago, and happened to someone in our midst.

Some of you have met Patricia Mokoena and her son, Thabiso. Patricia has lived through an experience quite a bit like the experience of the man who is helped by the Good Samaritan. I want you to move with me as I tell you about the story.

Patricia, where were you born and grow up? In Zimbabwe. And where were you living two years ago with your husband? In South Africa. A mob of angry South Africans attacked your community of immigrant workers and killed your brother-in-law and almost killed you and your husband, including your unborn baby.

Skipping way ahead, you escaped and in airport in El Salvador—like the victim lying next to the road in the parable—you had your baby, Thabiso.

Again skipping ahead, you met members of our church, including Pastor Anita, at the bishop’s compound in El Salvador, and eventually tried to take you baby in the United States or Canada. But like the victim in the parable, the coyote who took you across the US border abandoned you, and when you were picked up by the border patrol, a judge couldn’t take time to confirm that you had experienced such violence in South Africa and denied your petition for asylum.

It was then that Pastor Anita and others from our congregation, like the Samaritan in the parable, responded to your situation, helped you get a reversal of the judge’s rejection of your petition for asylum, and brought you here to Minnesota, where you and Thabiso have been living with Pastor Anita and Janelle for over a year now, and where you have been working both to obtain your asylum and arrange for the immigration of your husband, who is still in South Africa.

Thank you, Patricia, for letting us know your story and participate in your life. Your very hard and dangerous experience helps us to know that the parable of the Good Samaritan is as important today as it has ever been.

The sermon:

Friends, grace to you and peace from God, our Creator, and from our loving Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Pastor Anita and I, along with a good many of you, spent much of the past several days at “Let Justice Roll,” the Lutherans Concerned conference. With orderly euphoria, we celebrated the decision for ELCA policy change made last August. We delighted that at the large number of first-timers participating in the conference, and at the large overall registration. The high-energy participation confirmed that Lutherans committed to LGBT justice did not go to sleep after last August’s church wide assembly. In fact, the movement has a new surge of energy, a renewed passion for a more inclusive justice in the church and God’s world. In the context of that bright passion for God’s justice, I read this morning’s texts.

“…We have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will…,” writes Paul in his letter to the Christians at Colossae, “so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord,…”1 Paul’s phrase is tricky to translate from the original Greek. What we have here translated: “lead lives worthy of the Lord” is expressed in other translations as “live a manner of life worthy of the Lord”2 or “are able to live as the Lord wants.”3 The Greek verb, “peripateo,” should be literally translated as: “to walk together with, to walk in union with, or live together with.” This is what Paul wants to talk over with us: how can Christians best live walking in union with—hand in hand with—Christ.

Jesus addresses the issue directly in today’s gospel lesson: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,…soul,…strength, and…mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”4 Jesus then illustrates his meaning with the parable of the Good Samaritan, an inspiring example of mercy and justice.

As though cued from the parable, the “Let Justice Roll” assembly pressed over and over for a more inclusive understanding of justice. In language that most Lutherans never hear in church, one speaker proposed that heterosexuality has become an oppressively dominant dogma about how everyone should be in orientation and in practice. Rather than being simply one of the ways God makes some people, it has become a violently enforced mould into which everyone should fit. We need to challenge that oppression. In another session we talked about what it might mean to allow that God has in some sense created everyone to be queer. That means: not just a bit different—but truly distinctive, individual and unique. It means together we seek ways to free people to be who God created each to be.

This is pretty radical stuff. It needs a lot more conversation than any sermon can offer. Like the Good Samaritan parable in its day, these ideas challenge categories we too glibly use for each other. They invite us into deep and probing conversation about the justice God seeks for each of God’s people.

For Jews in Jesus’ day, the Good Samaritan parable was deeply offensive: claiming a lowly Samaritan could teach Jews about the broad embrace of God’s mercy and justice. So how does it sound to us in our day? In today’s society, where racial profiling, sexual abuse, and even simple assault and robbery are altogether too real, it can be just plain dangerous to welcome and help just anyone. I cannot responsibly tell kids to step forward and talk to people they don’t know. I cannot not counsel vulnerable older adults to invite strangers into their homes. Yet somehow, in some concrete way, this timeless story challenges us about what it means for us to walk with Christ.

A number of years ago, I visited a remote Mexican evangelical mission among Mazahua Indians. I was out watching birds at one point when I encountered three mission workers. They were instantly intrigued by my binoculars, so I offered them a look. They literally jumped with surprise when—looking through those binoculars—a tiny bird in the distance suddenly loomed large in their eyes. They laughed and teased each other as they passed the binoculars back and forth. In their delight, I felt a certain bond develop between us.

Then they asked how much the binoculars cost. “Oh,” I said unthinkingly,

“a couple hundred dollars.” Their faces fell, and quickly they handed the binoculars back. Only then the implication struck me. For me the price of those binoculars had been a stretch, but I use them a lot and take care of them. For many Mazahua Indians, that amount of money was almost a year’s earnings. To spend a couple hundred dollars to see birds up close would be worse than sinful: it would be a family disaster. The beauty of the shared moment collapsed into an abyss between us.

You see, those Mexican Christians knew the words we heard this morning: “The Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous…YAHWEH will…take delight in prospering you,…”5 Those native Mexican Christians knew my prosperity was not theirs. They knew that what little they could make would not sell for much. They knew their bodies were malnourished; and their children were under-educated. Their cattle were tired and gaunt. Even their ground was dry and lifeless.

Nonetheless, for these folks, the commandments were not so difficult to follow. They understood Moses’ lines in our first lesson: “this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you,…the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”6 These Mazahua people knew the word of the Lord intimately, and they sought to do it in their lives daily. But prosperity was a long way off. Prosperity as I know it seemed to them as far off as heaven, or at least beyond the Rio Grande.

Throughout “Let Justice Roll,” keynote speakers and workshop leaders pressed that what LC/NA has learned in the previous decade now inspire us to work now in other arenas of life that so desperately need passionate, effective work for justice in all forms. Sexual justice informs gender justice, immigration justice and racial justice, economic justice and more. Effectively addressing our needs as LGBT persons and allies equips us to address the circumstances of others, if we have faith and are willing to risk.

The day after my encounter with those Mazahua mission workers, I took a walk with another mission worker, Efraím. I told him how badly I felt about the incident with my binoculars. I told him how distressed I was by the differences in our economies, and that my wealth was based in part on his country being kept so poor. I bemoaned the injustice of the whole situation.

Efraím smiled knowingly. The previous evening, he said, the mission workers had talked among themselves about the experience with the binoculars and me. They talked about how wonderful it would be to have things like that. But then they talked about how people who have lots of things seem to lose sight of important things in life. Wealthy, prosperous people seem to get caught up in protecting what they have and risk little. They share only a portion of what they have. Wealthy people, they realized, have a hard time being good Samaritans.

“We have very little,” said Efraím, “Often we do not have enough food, but what we have, we share. We believe that this is how Jesus wants us to live.” Efraím was not romanticizing a difficult situation. He was confessing his faith. For him, life was hard. Prosperity in things was something people experienced in another part of the world. But for him, faith had less to do with personal belongings than it did with his neighbor’s well-being.

In that Mazahua mission, the parable of the Good Samaritan was a way of living, not a wonderful story nor a rule. The parable was a reflection of what people did daily. It was a way to walk with the Lord, to “peripateo” with Jesus and with God’s people. It meant responding to people’s needs as they are encountered. It meant valuing a person’s life more than belongings. It even meant reaching out to a gringo in spite of his insensitive, clumsy ways.

This past year, as a result of decades of organizing and risk taking, graceful engagement and tireless work, major policy changes have occurred in the ELCA, inviting changes in other churches and in society. While the policy has changed, there is still so very much to do before something approaching justice for LGBT people is accomplished in our church, let alone the world.

But we have learned something about what is possible through faithful work. We have experienced a taste of God’s promise to “prosper” that work. Now, as we strategize to accomplish the justice that the policy change offers, as we contemplate other arenas for our justice work, we pause to come to a simple table of bread and wine, and know that here, Jesus, our Christ, offers each of us his hand. At this table, the hand of Christ extends to each of us—to each and every one of us, as we are and as we are becoming, as it has so many times before. Christ meets us here to encourage and nurture us, each of us, and then to walk with us, to accompany us together, to prosper our faithful work. So come to the table, be blessed for the gift that God has made of you, for the sake of a full justice for all in God’s whole world.

So be it. Amen.