Oh Friends,
My first impulse this week is to tell you that I am not experiencing a lot of wonder, but that wouldn’t be true. Rather, I am holding a lot of sorrow and rage and wonder side by side. I am awed by the work of so many activists, both those in the streets and those serving in other capacities - providing childcare and meals, transportation, and bail. It takes everyone’s participation to change the world, and it also requires us to ask big questions about who we are as a people.
Besides this vast blend of emotions, I’ve been thinking about how our faith helps us understand our relationships with those who are not like us - or if that’s even possible. After all, on Trinity Sunday we are offered as our first reading, Creation and with it the idea that we are all made in God’s image. How different could we be?
While the promise that we all share in the Imago Dei may be theological truth, we cannot pretend that it represents material sameness. Our lived conditions are not the same, making race so often the difference between life and death. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that one of the other stories that came to mind for me this week is that of the Good Samaritan.
Jews and Samaritans share a history. At their roots, they were one people divided by war, by national borders that did not reflect human connections. Despite this, there was such a great degree of enmity between them. The years and intervening conflicts had driven them apart, which is why it comes as such a surprise when a Samaritan stops to provide aid to an injured traveler, while the Jewish High Priest and the Levite do not. I wonder, though, whether we use the Parable of the Good Samaritan (told here by Jenn Sanborn) to ask the right questions.
In sermons and in Godly Play, we pose the question - who is our neighbor, or the neighbor of those in the story. The smallest children often read this literally, but older children quickly understand that neighborliness is about action much more than proximity. Right now that means turning up in support of Black lives. Still, I wonder what else we might find in this story?
I wonder what about the Samaritan enabled him to overcome what he had been taught about the stranger? We do not know exactly where the traveler was from, but we do know that the Priest and the Levite leave him for dead at the roadside. Is their reaction one based in superiority, as keepers of the Temple? Why didn’t they stop?
We can’t know why it was only the Samaritan who offered aid, but we can ask ourselves what it takes to act like him, to respond to God’s image in everyone that we meet. At a time when so many of us do not know our neighbors, perhaps this will summon a greater tenderness.
For now, keep fighting the good fight. I’d also recommend -
Listen: this update on the classic protest song “Freedom is a Constant Struggle,” with verses for this moment, by Crys Matthews. Now called “We Must Be Free”, this version specifically addresses the Black Lives Matter movement. I’ve recommended Cry’s work before if you’re following along on the Wiggles & Wonder Twitter, but for me, this is in that space where protest music intersects with the hymn.
Let’s start there. Let’s keep going.
In Solidarity & Spirit,
Bird