Reference is made in this sermon to a Lenten study on the story of the Good Samaritan. Our congregation spent the six weeks of Lent reflecting on a video series that looks at the story of the Good Samaritan in relation to contemporary social justice themes. To learn more about the series, visit www.juststart.org.
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Away with him!
This was the sentiment expressed by a hospital administrator in Los Angeles after Gabino Olvera was treated there for injuries related to a minor traffic accident. Gabino was a parapalegic-- paralyzed from the waist down. He was also homeless, and had lost his wheelchair in the accident. He had nowhere to go. But he also had no insurance. And so the hospital put him in an ambulance and dumped him back on skid row. According to the hospital, he was an inconvenience.
“Away with them,” cried the sheriff of Los Angeles County.
After the effort to clean up LA’s skid row back in 2005, I was taken on a tour down the street that was formerly home to tents, boxes, tarps, and other make-shift shelters. As we drove down the street, it looked as if the effort to clean up skid row had been successful. Aside from a few people loitering about, the street was basically clear. But then the driver of the van took me several blocks away. I started to see tents, tarps, and shopping carts filled with belongings.
“They said they cleaned up skid row,” the driver told me, “but all they really did
was move the homeless to a place where fewer people would see them.” According to the city of Los Angeles, the homeless were an inconvenience.
“Away with them,” was the cry of the diocese of Philidelphia, after a group of homeless families— mostly women and their children-- took up residence in an abandoned cathedral downtown.
They had been living in a tent city, but conditions had been getting unbearable, with flooding and rats making conditions unsafe. That’s when they noticed St. Edwards, one of many urban churches that had been closed down and abandoned by the Catholic Church. And so, the families moved in. But when the archdiocese which owned the building got wind of what was going on, they announced that the families had 48 hours to get out, or get arrested. Even to the church, these homeless women and children were an inconvenience.
“Away with him,” was the cry of the crowd in Jerusalem, when Pilate brought Jesus before them once more, asking them if they wished to reconsider his fate.
A few weeks ago, we reflected on Jesus’ trial and all of the political maneuvering that may have contributed to his condemnation. It was a hostile and volatile political climate. Jesus was a controversial figure. And let’s face it, the demands he made on his followers and would-be followers were pretty darn inconvenient. He preached that the last would be first and the first would be last-- that the rich and powerful would be cast down from their places of honor. He hung around with tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, and sinners. He defied the religious leaders and their traditions. He healed on the Sabbath. He told people to love their enemies, and threw the moneychangers out of the temple. He told his followers to sell everything they owned and give the money to the poor. He said, “take up your cross and follow me.” Jesus was inconvenient. Jesus complicated things. And that is perhaps yet another reason why Jesus found himself on the brink of condemnation by his own people. They did not want to see him for who he really was. They did not want to hear what he had to say, or have to deal with the implications. And so they cried out to Pilate to take him away, to get him out of their sight. Away with him.
Perhaps it’s easy for us, with our knowledge of how this story eventually ends, to feel a little bit removed from the religious leaders who condemned Jesus to his fate. We know the truth about Jesus, we have the advantage of hindsight, they did not. But the question I always find myself asking when wrestling with this part of the gospel narrative is-- would we have acted any differently? Would we have seen Jesus, if he was presented to us in the flesh? Would we have heard what he had to say? Would we have followed him to the cross? Even today, knowing what we know about how this story eventually ends, do we truly let ourselves see Jesus? Do we let ourselves hear him and be changed by him? Do we let our lives be inconvenienced by the gospel? Do we take up our cross, and follow?
These are just some of the questions we’ve been exploring in our Lenten Good Samaritan study over the last few weeks. Last week, one participant commented to me that although they thought the study was very good, that it was almost too much. Over the past four weeks we’ve heard about everything from extreme poverty, to global disease epidemics, to exploitation and modern-day slavery. Week after week, participants are encouraged to pray that that God would open our eyes to a world in need-- to show us where we can be Good Samaritans. Not to say “away with them,” when we see people in need, but to answer Jesus’ call towards radical love and compassion-— to let ourselves be inconvenienced.
This is a risky endeavor, because when we do open our eyes and look around, when we do make an attempt to respond to the call of the gospel, we begin to see need everywhere-- from the streets of skid row in Los Angeles to the soup kitchens of Stamford, Connecticut. From the pictures of AIDS orphans in Africa, to the exploitation of workers all around the around, including right here in this very city. We see need, brokenness, and injustice everywhere. And all of a sudden, our natural impulse to want to respond, to want to help, begins to shrink in the face of all that need. There are so many demands on those of us who care deeply about the world. And we start to feel paralyzed by the immensity of the problems. And so when we really let ourselves see all of the brokenness in the world around us, our first reaction can sometimes be to retreat, to try and push it all back under the rug, to pretend we didn’t see. Not because we don’t care, not because we are bad people— but because we don’t know where to start. It seems too hard, and we don’t see how we can even make a dent in all that’s wrong in the world. And perhaps, just perhaps, we also realize that to really change things, to really begin to break down systematic injustice, we might have to change the way we live. And that scares us. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s inconvenient.
But here’s the thing about following Jesus: no one ever said it would be easy or comfortable. There is nothing in the gospel that should lead us to think that following Jesus is the path of least resistance. If it was, I have a feeling that the end of the story would have turned out quite differently. Jesus calls us to a life of radical discipleship, a life that is in glaring contrast to the status quo, one in which we see the need in the world around us and we refuse to sweep it back under the rug. One in which see injustice and we refuse to let it be ignored. This kind of life may not be the one that is most comfortable or familiar. It might require taking some risks, trying something new, stirring things up, and God forbid-- ruffling some feathers. But when we look back over the history of the church— it has always been the folks who aren’t afraid to let things get a little messy, a little inconvenient-- who have taken both the church and society forward in the movement towards peace and justice. People like Martin Luther King Jr and Dietrich Bonheoffer, Dorothy Day and William Sloan Coffin. People whose lives show us that following Jesus might be difficult, and awkward, and scary, but it leads us towards a better world and better versions of ourselves.
Now, lest all of this talk about inconvenience and the difficulty of following the gospel be too discouraging, it’s important to remember that there is good news in all of this. There is good news for us, and there is good news for the church. The good news is that every time we open our eyes to the poor, every time we volunteer our time at the soup kitchen or the food bank. every time we write a letter to congress, or donate food and clothing to someone in need-- every time we let ourselves be inconvenienced by the gospel, we are that much closer to the kingdom of God.
Tony Campolo, an evangelical preacher and writer, makes a point of saying that "Jesus never says to the poor: ‘Come and find the church’. Rather, he says to the church: ‘Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, and imprisoned.’ Because that is Jesus in disguise.”
Jesus says to us, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. If you know me, you will know my father also.” To open our eyes to the needs of the world, is to open our eyes to Jesus Christ— and to open our hearts to God.
Every week in church we pray that God’s kingdom might come, that God’s will would be done, on earth, just as it is in heaven. Every time we let ourselves be inconvenienced by the gospel, every time we let ourselves imagine that another world is possible, we are living out that prayer. And I believe that what the church truly needs right now, in the midst of all the brokenness in the world, are Christians who believe so deeply in the truth and power of that prayer that they can’t help but begin enacting it here and now. That would be good news indeed.
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