Homily – July 10

And who is my neighbor?  That is the real question.  The lawyer who was questioning Jesus has been trying to trip him up.  He wants to show the crowd how smart he is and show them that this Jesus was really a fraud.  So when Jesus turns his questions back at him, he is forced to concede that Jesus is right.  We are called to love God and love our neighbor.  But stinging from what he perceives as a rebuke in front of the audience, he smarmily asks Jesus, “and who is my neighbor?”

There follows the story of the Good Samaritan, a parable we all know well.  I don’t need to tell it to you again since we all know it by heart.  The point for us to take is that everyone, EVERYONE, is our neighbor.  The lawyer was trying to parse Jesus’ language, to draw a distinction that would allow him to recognize only those like him as his neighbor.  In other words, only other Jews, and not even all Jews, but only other Pharisees.  Those were the people he thought of as his neighbors, so he was trying to get Jesus to let him off the hook, to tell him that he only need worry about those that the man deemed worthy of being his neighbor.  Jesus is of course having none of it.

We all know that the priest and the Levite fail to do the right thing; that they walk right by the man without doing anything for him.  But what if we shake things up just a bit?  What if the priest stops, says a blessing over the man, but then walks on without doing anything to help him?  What if the Levite stops, and throws a few coins on the ground near the man, but then walks on without doing anything to help him?  Does that change the story at all?  Have we ever found ourselves doing exactly that?

I got a new car last year (well, at least it was new to me).  It came with free satellite radio, which I had always thought of as kind of a dumb idea since radio is already free.  But I have to admit, I have grown to like it.  There are hundreds of channels to choose from, and I have found a number that are now my “go-to” stations.  They play only the music that I like, with no commercials.  If I don’t like the song they play, I can hit a button and switch to another station that plays all of my favorites.  I have become a convert and find that I like the idea of getting only what I want.

Then my son asked me “what do you think of that new song by so-and-so”?  I had to admit I had never heard it since I was now listening to only what I had pre-selected.  Then it hit me.  By choosing to only listen to what I already know that I like, I have sheltered myself from anything else.  I no longer hear anything new; I don’t hear anything I don’t like.  I have insulated myself from anything that I don’t want to hear.

This week we had the final disposition of Secretary Clinton’s email issue.  Now before you get nervous, I am not going to talk about politics from the pulpit.  Sermons are far too important to talk about politics.  But I did notice something that I want to share with you.  I have a couple of hundred Facebook friends.  They run the gamut from extremely conservative to extremely liberal.   What I noticed watching all of the posts was that each side claimed victory and their posts showed that they were not swayed in the slightest by what happened.  Those who saw the Secretary as innocent still felt she was innocent while those who thought she was guilty were still convinced that she was.  And it made me think again about my satellite radio.  I wonder if we as a nation have insulated ourselves too much from other viewpoints?  Do we really listen to other people, or do we only listen to people who agree with us?  I don’t know too many of my conservative friends who watch MSNBC or too many of my liberal friends who watch Fox news.  Have we as a society made it too easy to stop listening to people we don’t agree with?

I think we have.  We are seeing terrible instances of gun violence, of people being killed regularly.  So much so, that it has become almost a commonplace occurrence.  This violence cannot continue; we cannot allow it to continue.  Violence is never the answer.  But we cannot seem to come to agreement on how to stop the violence.  It seems that each time a shooting happens, we look for someone or something to blame.  The left blames the right, while the right blames the left.  And lost in the noise is the ability to listen to one another.

That has to change.  We have allowed ourselves to become so insulated from opinions that differ from our own that we have lost the ability to have a civil exchange of ideas.  We focus more on the words that others use, words that may be deemed as offensive or harsh, and in the process, we lose the ability to hear the point that the speaker seeks to make.  We cannot allow this to continue.  We have to be able to listen to one another and really hear what is said.  We must put aside our intolerance of the words others use, so that we can get to the solution to our problems.

I was speaking to a minister friend from Atlanta who was trying to arrange a public forum and conversation between the police and his predominately black church.  He too feels that talking together and listening to one another is the best way to address the problems we face.  Sadly, his invitation to the police officials was politely declined.  He was very puzzled by this as his church had an excellent relationship with the police department.  When he called the chief to discuss it, he was told that their lawyers had advised against attending as the risk of them saying something wrong, or perceived as inflammatory was simply too great.  It seems that anything you say can, and will be used against you, in the court of public opinion.  My brothers and sisters, when we have become so polarized that even a civil conversation about our differences is too difficult, then something has to change.

This past week two black men were killed in confrontations with police.  Five police officers were killed by a man angry about the loss of black lives.  And rather than focusing on the loss of life, the conversation has become about whether you believe that black lives matter or that police lives matter.  What no one wants to recognize is that it is perfectly possible to be both.  Black lives, blue lives, orange, pink, plaid and polka dot lives matter.  ALL LIVES MATTER.  That is what Jesus tells us.

Jesus teaches us that everyone is our neighbor.  Our neighbors are lying at the side of the road, bloodied, beaten, and dying.  The priest offered a blessing and walked on by.  The Levite offered some money and walked on by.  It was only the Samaritan who stopped and listened to the man who was able to understand his problem and bind his wounds.  Offering prayer is important, offering money is important, but we must do more.  We must stop and listen to the victims if we are to bind their wounds and heal our broken world.