A Way from Estrangement

"Not to judge someone who sins differently than I do."

My question to the congregation during a recent Sunday morning worship service was "How will we cultivate goodness and mercy by our actions toward our neighbors?" The line above was one of the replies. I heard gasps from the congregation after I shared it aloud. Some people made the "Ooh!" face, and some grimaced. I said both "Ouch!" and "Wow!" and then read it again.

The wider context for the question was framed by the story of the Good Samaritan. In that story, a Jewish pilgrim gets mugged and beaten brutally, left by the side of the road to die. The first person to come down the road is a religious leader, and he promptly averts his gaze - but only after crossing to the other side of the street. Another supposedly pious person comes next and does the same. The third person to come along is a Samaritan, traditionally despised by and hateful toward Jews. What happens next could change everything.

Unlike the learned scholars of scripture, the Samaritan fully and absolutely sees the glorious and full humanity before him. He looks past cultural norms, through layers of learned bigotry, in order to behold someone utterly worthy of compassion, even sacrifice. I pause here in my own retelling to assess the times when I have walked city streets and reacted to people in ways that prompt me now as I did above to say "Ouch!" 

About 12 years ago during one of our Workcamp Trips in Philadelphia, my son Elias and I broke off from the group to grab a snack in a bodega. My role on these trips as group leader usually has my guard high, my focus on the safety of the kids. This means that I don't always know how to behave when we meet someone who appears to be different or "other." I am not proud to admit that I cannot say that I haven't been tempted to cross the street to avoid an interaction. As we approached the bodega, we were approached by a black woman asking for help with cash or food. I let her know we were getting a snack for ourselves and that we'd of course grab a sandwich for her, and I went inside. Elias and the woman stayed outside. I ordered at the counter, poked around for a few other things, and then looked out through the bodega window and saw this:

I felt a bunch of things as I took the photo, including pride, gratitude, honor, some sheepishness, and more. Where we might be tempted to see two "others" separated by a chasm full of differences in age, race, gender, socioeconomic status, and life experience, I was given the chance to behold two people pausing to listen with love. My kids - biological as well as those of the church community - continue to teach me, thanks be to God. 

In the Gospel story, the Samaritan does not merely pause briefly to drop some coins. He disrupts his travel plans entirely to ensure that this Jewish victim gets a room in the inn (after putting him on a donkey - this should ring bells), staying with him overnight and then paying extra to the innkeeper the next morning. "Wow!" indeed.

We all sin. I embrace Paul Tillich's definition of sin as "estrangement" or deeds that hurt our relationships. We fall short. We say or do - or fail to say or do - something that creates or widens the gap between us, hurting people, planet, God, and true best self. It's of course terribly tempting to name this dynamic in others while pretending we are doing just fine. Jesus and this Samaritan show us a new way.

Jesus is prompted to tell the Good Samaritan story when he's asked by a legalistic trickster, "Who is my neighbor?" We hear in the question our wish for dividing lines, our tendency for tribalism. The legalist wants a binary worldview reinforced, especially convenient if it can be bolstered with the name of Jesus attached to it. Masterfully, Jesus uses the story to bring all of us to the more central question: "How can I be a better neighbor?" The trick has been turned, and we are given the chance to see a once-hated "other" as another pilgrim on this occasionally perilous journey. We are given a glimpse of the best we have and are deep within, seeking and savoring wholeness.

I pray not only that I might be less judgmental, less inclined to blame others for stumbling into estrangement. My deeper hope is that I might see others more like the Samaritan does, looking beyond absurd, learned prejudices to see the divine within. I am weary of estrangement. May the divine within us each find and nurture the divine within us all.