A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, July 14, 2013.
“OBSTACLES
TO UPWARD MOBILITY”
(Homily text:
Luke 10: 25 – 37)
Down through time, human beings have
consistently longed for freedom, and for the ability to better their situation
in life. Succinctly put, we might say
that human beings long to have the ability to be upwardly mobile, to be able to
live life without barriers to a better tomorrow.
If we examine some significant
events in our own nation’s history, we can see this desire and longing in
practice……For example, just ten days ago, we celebrated the 237th
anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which stated
that “all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Essentially, that declaration of independence from the British crown was
a declaration that we, the people of the United States, are entitled to pursue
our own betterment and welfare, and to determine our future for ourselves. It was also based on the idea that we need
not be second-class members of the gathering of the nations of the world. Another such example exists in the Civil
Rights struggles of the 1960s and 1970s.
This movement was dedicated to the principle that no person should ever
be relegated to second-class citizenship because of their racial heritage or
ethnic identity.
Second-class citizenship lies at the
heart of Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan, which we have heard in our
gospel reading for this Sunday. The hero
of the story is a second-class citizen, a Samaritan.
Before we look at the implications
of Jesus’ teaching in this parable, let’s take a moment to look back into
history to determine just why it was that the Jews of Jesus’ day disliked the
Samaritans so much, relegating them to second-class status.
As we go back into history, we must
travel back to the eighth century BC, to the time when the Assyrian Empire
conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
When the Assyrian army defeated the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC, the ten
tribes that had made up the kingdom disappeared as many of them were scattered
abroad. Some remained, and those that
did eventually intermarried with newly settled peoples whom the Assyrians had
brought into the area. The resulting
inhabitants of the land, known as Samaritans, were racially part-Jewish,
part-something else. These Samaritans
maintained their own version of the first five books of the Bible,[1]
those that were written by Moses, and they maintained their own places of
worship.[2]
So, from a Jewish point-of-view, the
Samaritans were second-class persons, who were racially impure. Moreover, they were unclean, because they
didn’t worship at the right mountain, and because they had a “corrupted”
version of the Scriptures. Worst of all,
from the Jewish perspective that was common in Jesus’ day, these Samaritans were permanently in this situation,
because of their bloodline.
As we look at the Parable of the
Good Samaritan from the perspective of the expected Jewish regard for
Samaritans, we get the idea that Jesus’ intent is to shock His listeners by
making a Samaritan the hero of the story.
It is the Samaritan, after all, who does the right thing in caring for
the injured man.
But what of the priest and the
Levite, who are members of two of the three classes of priests in Jesus’
day? They flunk the test of what is
right to do, given the injured man’s presence along the road. Why? The
reason has to do with being “clean” or “unclean” for ritual purposes. If the priest and the Levite were to come
into contact with the injured man, and especially into contact with his blood,
they would become ritually unclean themselves.
So, the point Jesus seems to be making here is that their concern to
remain ritually clean is less important than caring for a fellow human being
who is in dire need.
(The great concern that people of
Jesus’ day had for being clean or unclean seems to us to be a very strange way
to organize one’s life, given that that concern was often applied not only to
moral considerations, but instead was quite often applied to everyday
situations, things like how far could own walk on the Sabbath, or whether one
could pluck grain on the Sabbath.)
Jesus’ teaching shatters the
expectations of the people who had gathered around Him. His teaching foretells the coming of the
Kingdom of God, a new kingdom that will welcome all persons to be its citizens,
giving to each one who comes to citizenship in this new kingdom the ability to
be upwardly mobile in relationship to God, a kingdom that will welcome Jew and
Greek, slave and free, male and female.[3] All will be one in Christ Jesus.
And what of us? What about our attitudes and regard for
others, especially those who differ from us in one way or another?
Are we aware – through the guidance
and presence of the Holy Spirit – of the ways in which our culture encourages
us to put people into categories, and to keep them there? Alas, unredeemed human nature being what it
is, it would be easy for us to allow the “spirit of the age” in which we live
to seep into our own thinking and acting, categorizing people as being from the
wrong part of the country or the world, from the “other side of the tracks”, or
in some other way regarding them as “other”, as something lesser than we are.
Are we aware of the ways that we, as
Christians, fail to fully claim God’s promise of new life and a new beginning
to all who come to Him in faith? For
example, some Christians make permanent second-class citizens out of those who
have been through the trauma of divorce.
For another, some Christians make permanent second-class citizens out of
those who have succumbed to one addiction or another, or who have gone through
a period of living far apart from God’s holy desires for us.
But we say that we know that God can
forgive and receive each one of us anew.
After all, in the time after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension into
heaven, even the Samaritans received the Good News of Jesus Christ and were
made citizens of God’s kingdom. So, too,
down through the ages, countless numbers of the lower classes of society, of those
who were guilty of all sorts of serious wrongdoing, of those who had lived far
apart from God’s standards of holiness and righteousness, all these were seen
by God as worthy of His love and His forgiveness. In the process, obstacles to upward spiritual
mobility were taken away by this loving and forgiving God that we follow,
worship and adore.
Perhaps Jesus’ parable before us
today still has the power to shock us into seeing people as God sees them, so
that we might live out our baptismal covenant by “seeking and serving Christ in
all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.”
(From the Baptismal Covenant, page 305 in the Book of Common Prayer,
1979).
May God’s Holy Spirit enlighten us
and enable us!
AMEN.
[1] The Samaritan version of Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are still in print.
[2] In Jesus’ day the Samaritan holy place was
located at Mt. Gerazim. The question of
which mountain was the proper place to worship God (Mt. Gerazim in Samaria or
Mt. Zion in Jerusalem) figured prominently in Jesus’ conversation with the
Samaritan woman at the well. See John,
chapter four.
[3] These categories are spelled out by St. Paul
in Galatians 3: 28.
