This Sunday’s Gospel story is without doubt one of the most famous in Christian scripture…we all know it…we all get the point…or do we? As a majority Christian nation we certainly fail to live up to it!
We find ourselves living in a country of great extremes: on one hand we have sinful waste and staggering excess and on the other hand we have ever growing numbers of our sisters and brothers living in crushing poverty. And, so very many of our citizens seem to not care at all about the suffering of the poor, nor do the majority of our elected politicians. Our political discourse has degraded to an increasingly violent and vitriolic distain for not only competing ideas but for the actual persons who hold those competing ideas and visions.
The more hysterical the rhetoric, the more clicks and reposts it garners and then more support among what appears to be a callous and morally bankrupt faction of our nation. Somewhere along the journey we have lost sight of the meaning of the parable of the good Samaritan.
Samaritans were considered by the Israelites to be “subhuman”…not unlike the dehumanizing rhetoric we hear used today by public officials toward immigrants and refugees, towards women, towards members of the LGBTQ+ Community, towards persons of color, towards the unhoused and towards those who are differently abled. Samaritans were often compared to dogs…not cute cuddly puppies…but rather mangy half-starved denizens of the night who wander the dark streets in search of a morsel of food. And this is precisely who Jesus makes the hero of this parable.
It is the “outlier” who is really the “insider”; it is the one who acted as God would desire all of us to act toward another human being in need. Who was his sister? Who was his brother? Surely not an Israelite, who after all hated and despised his people. But in the midst of that knowledge the Samaritan was moved with pity and cared with gentleness and kindness for the one who hated him.
This Sunday’s Gospel offers us the chance to reflect on who we wish to be: the hardened, heartless priest who passes by…or the good Samaritan who risks being gentle and kind to someone who most likely despised him?
God cries out to us to be compassionate and kind toward others -- especially those in need; especially to those whom our society marginalize and despise, just because of who they are.
We know all too well who the marginalized and despised are…what are we willing to do for them? Are we willing to risk being a good Samaritans by refusing to remain silent in face of genocide, racial profiling and injustice, cruel and inhumane attacks? Are we willing to continue to call, to write and march for what we know is morally correct and just? Because your every phone call, your every letter, your every form of protest matters -- individually and collectively. It matters.
Because it means that we are willing to cross to the other side of the road and do the right thing. To demand true justice and to call our politicians back to a previously established moral and ethical standard from which they have walked away from, no longer “seeking a more just and more perfect Union”.
The dream has dimmed…but is not gone. Not as long as we continue to fight for it -- in our everyday words and actions demanding to form a more just, peaceful, kind and caring society where everyone is seen, valued and respected and cared for.
God’s Blessings,
Fr. Tim
We find ourselves living in a country of great extremes: on one hand we have sinful waste and staggering excess and on the other hand we have ever growing numbers of our sisters and brothers living in crushing poverty. And, so very many of our citizens seem to not care at all about the suffering of the poor, nor do the majority of our elected politicians. Our political discourse has degraded to an increasingly violent and vitriolic distain for not only competing ideas but for the actual persons who hold those competing ideas and visions.
The more hysterical the rhetoric, the more clicks and reposts it garners and then more support among what appears to be a callous and morally bankrupt faction of our nation. Somewhere along the journey we have lost sight of the meaning of the parable of the good Samaritan.
Samaritans were considered by the Israelites to be “subhuman”…not unlike the dehumanizing rhetoric we hear used today by public officials toward immigrants and refugees, towards women, towards members of the LGBTQ+ Community, towards persons of color, towards the unhoused and towards those who are differently abled. Samaritans were often compared to dogs…not cute cuddly puppies…but rather mangy half-starved denizens of the night who wander the dark streets in search of a morsel of food. And this is precisely who Jesus makes the hero of this parable.
It is the “outlier” who is really the “insider”; it is the one who acted as God would desire all of us to act toward another human being in need. Who was his sister? Who was his brother? Surely not an Israelite, who after all hated and despised his people. But in the midst of that knowledge the Samaritan was moved with pity and cared with gentleness and kindness for the one who hated him.
This Sunday’s Gospel offers us the chance to reflect on who we wish to be: the hardened, heartless priest who passes by…or the good Samaritan who risks being gentle and kind to someone who most likely despised him?
God cries out to us to be compassionate and kind toward others -- especially those in need; especially to those whom our society marginalize and despise, just because of who they are.
We know all too well who the marginalized and despised are…what are we willing to do for them? Are we willing to risk being a good Samaritans by refusing to remain silent in face of genocide, racial profiling and injustice, cruel and inhumane attacks? Are we willing to continue to call, to write and march for what we know is morally correct and just? Because your every phone call, your every letter, your every form of protest matters -- individually and collectively. It matters.
Because it means that we are willing to cross to the other side of the road and do the right thing. To demand true justice and to call our politicians back to a previously established moral and ethical standard from which they have walked away from, no longer “seeking a more just and more perfect Union”.
The dream has dimmed…but is not gone. Not as long as we continue to fight for it -- in our everyday words and actions demanding to form a more just, peaceful, kind and caring society where everyone is seen, valued and respected and cared for.
God’s Blessings,
Fr. Tim
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