Prejudice
St. Luke 10:25-37
A Sermon Prepared and Delivered by James E. Norton, Guest
Preacher
Vance Memorial Presbyterian Church, Wheeling, WV
July 14, 2013
It’s rather curious that
we listen to the parables that Jesus told, especially considering how in one
way or another, the parables include all people (the people we call “good” and
the people we call “bad”) in what Jesus calls the “Kingdom of God.” One difficulty for us when reading the Bible,
living as we do in a democracy, is its language of feudalism: kingdoms, kings
and lords; empires and emperors; masters and slaves, concepts that seem so out-of-step
with our more equalitarian ways of the popular vote, electing officials to
represent us in a government of, by and for all the people. But then, maybe there’s more feudalism in our
thinking than we realize. Remember the
Christmas card Dick Cheny sent out while Vice President, quoting this line from
Benjamin Franklin: “And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without (God’s)
notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without (God’s) aid?” Perhaps our thinking is more feudal than
we’re willing to admit. But I digress,
and that’s a topic for another time.
The more central issue of this make-believe story that
Jesus told is that he takes human beings we keep separate in our minds, and he
puts them together and calls them “Kingdom.”
Jesus, who associated with the common people and whom the common people
heard gladly, who dined with tax collectors and prostitutes and other sinners, includes
everyone in the same community.
Look at the title given to this morning’s
parable we have just heard: “The Good Samaritan.” There is no way a Samaritan could be good
from the point of view of Jesus’ fellow Jewish citizens in the first
century. Samaritans were people whom
first-century Jews loved to hate for what they thought were good reasons. Generations before that time, Samaritans had
cooperated with invaders while the faithful Jews had been rounded up and exiled,
carried off by the invading armies to foreign lands, and the Samaritans then snatched
up the good Jewish lands. Samaritans
also intermarried with the invaders and were held in contempt by upright decent
Jews as “half-breeds.” Samaritans were
therefore viewed as political traitors and as racially inferior. A few years before Jesus told this parable,
some Samaritans took their pack animals into the holy places of Judaism and let
them defecate there to show their disdain for the Jewish religion, so
Samaritans were regarded as blasphemers as well. Think of the worst names you have heard
applied to members of another race or to persons whose lifestyle is different
from what you regard as “normal,” and you may come close to the intensity of
the hostility that existed between Jews and Samaritans.
There’s another detail in this story
that we usually overlook. The priest, as
Jesus tells the story, is going down the road (that is, from Jerusalem to
Jericho). Jesus takes away any excuse
the priest might have for not stopping to help.
If the priest had been going up the road (that is, from Jericho to
Jerusalem), then he might be justified for not stopping, for he might have been
on his way to perform priestly services in the Temple. There were roughly 5,000 priests in Jesus’
day and each was paid a yearly salary through the taxes collected by the Temple. Yet, each priest worked at the Temple only
once or twice a year. Nice work if you
can get it. If the priest in this story
were on his way to the Temple, stopping to help someone not only might delay
him from reaching the Temple on time but also might make him ritually
unclean. As a priest, if he were to
touch someone regarded unclean, he would then be ineligible to serve in the
Temple until after he had gone through purification rituals, rituals that would
take weeks to complete. But this priest
is not on his way to the Temple in Jerusalem, he is going the other direction. He is returning to his 360-day-a-year
vacation and still does not help.
How can we apply this parable to our
lives today? Try this. Imagine that you are the person who has been
beaten up and left by the side of the road or down in a ditch. Your pastor drives by and notices something,
but he is too busy to stop. Some of your
friends in church are on their way to a Presbytery meeting and because they’re
running late, they don’t even see you lying there in a ditch. Now think of the person you would least
expect or even want to stop. Think of
the person whom you consider to be evil.
Maybe it’s the person for whom you still hold a grudge because of the
time he or she beat you up in high school.
Maybe for you it would be a bare-chested skinhead with tattoos all over
his body and earrings protruding from every conceivable orifice. Or it could be a modern day equivalent of
Adolph Hitler or a drug dealer or a gay prostitute. Considering my luck, the person reaching down
to help me would probably be someone like Pat Robertson or Joel Olsteen, or
Michelle Bachman or Ted Cruz or some other representative of the religious and
political extreme right, or a former bishop who went out of his way to publicly
embarrass me, or a member of the KKK, or one of my homophobic colleagues in the
ministry. Visualize, if you can, Adolph
Hitler as the Good Samaritan of the week.
Mind boggling, isn’t it? But
that’s precisely what Jesus was doing when he cast a Samaritan as the helping
one.
“Gospel” means good news. Where is the good news in all of this? If we see good as coming only from those we
consider to be good, there is very little hope; for, comparatively speaking, we
see very few persons as good. But if we
see good coming from those we consider bad, then there is a great deal more hope,
for we see many persons as bad. The news
is filled everyday with those we consider bad; so there are vastly far more
resources for good news.
Who are the Samaritans today? Bringing the story into the present day, it
becomes clear that what we are talking about is prejudice. In the parable as Jesus told it, the “good”
people could not see beyond race. The
root meaning of prejudice is “to prejudge,” to “profile” in a judgmental way
based on stereotypes rather than facts.
Prejudice has something to do with the way we may tend to judge certain
characteristics or behavior as “bad.”
Sometimes it seems that we humans are forever finding some group to be
the object of our prejudice. When I was
growing up, it was the communists, and there was much to-do about the “red
menace” and those “pink-o” sympathizers.
Then there was the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties led by Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., and all the hatred we witnessed in those turbulent
years. When Dr. King was assassinated, one
of his colleagues was asked to state Dr. King’s greatest accomplishment. Very seriously, the reply came, “He taught
Gov. George Wallace how to say ‘NEGRO’!”
Sometimes, I find myself questioning
whether our nation’s present political process with seemingly impossible
gridlock and outlandish combativeness is not just about honest disagreements in
health care, immigration and the other problems besetting us, but also, and
maybe more so, about more deeply-seated prejudices. If there is truth in that possibility, then
it is sad, very sad indeed!
An unfortunate and tragic occurrence
that took place on July 3rd, 2000, in the town where I live may
point to a present-day target of prejudice.
A young, disabled Afro-American man, Arthur “JR” Warren, Jr., was
brutally beaten by two very strong adolescents who afterwards mangled his injured
body by running their car over him four times.
Some argue that it was a hate crime against an individual who was
considered “bad” because of the way in which he was different; others say that
the brutal murder was an attempt on the part of the two youths to cover-up
their own behavior involving the victim.
Either way it probably was a hate crime in that if the perpetrators were
trying to keep past indiscretions with the victim from becoming public, then
they were acting out of a fear that they would be judged as “bad” when their
secret was out. The prejudice of society
against certain people would become directed at them.
As the slaying of “JR” gained national
attention, the focus shifted more and more on his homosexuality than on the
qualities reported by those who knew him: his gentleness and kindness, his
quiet, courteous and shy manner. A week
after JR’s murder, a vigil took place in front of the Courthouse, a vigil made
up of mostly church people. Among them
were the Rev. Fred Phelps and his followers carrying huge posters that read,
“God hates fags,” and “Fags die; God laughs.”
Such beliefs about God’s attitude toward LGTB individuals as exhibited
in such persons as the Rev. Phelps clearly demonstrate how prejudicial and
hate-filled humans can become. It is the
very same kind of hatred that the Jews felt toward the Samaritans.
But the posters carried by Rev. Phelps
and his followers were not the only banners present at the vigil. There were other people on the other side of
the street who carried signs like “Christ professed love, not hate.” Which signs came closer to reflecting the
understanding and teachings of Jesus?
When Greg Luganis, who at one time was
probably America’s best competitive diver, disclosed his homosexuality and the
fact that he is HIV positive, he became the target of many Christians who see
their responsibility as condemning the likes of Luganis. Nearly everywhere he went, there were crowds
of protesters—Christians!—with their hate-filled posters and their outcries of
contempt. Someone asked Greg, “How do
you handle it?” He replied, “One cannot
respond with hatred to all the hatred in the world and expect to live a full
life.” Who is the real Christian?
PRAYERS
Gracious God, by whom our life is
sustained, we praise your name for your presence that never fails, even when we
have failed you. We give thanks that by
your love we know love and are able to love; that by your justice we are able
to know what justice requires of us; that by your peace we learn what we must
do to be peacemakers; that by your forgiveness we know both how to give and how
to receive the forgiveness that can bind up this world’s wounds and heal our
divisions.
Hear us as we offer intercession for
all who stand in special need of your blessing.
We pray for those who are ill, especially _____. We pray for all who mourn the loss of loved
ones. We pray for those in this time of
year who are on the road on vacation, that their time away may be refreshing
and relaxing, and that they may return safely home again. We pray for those most directly caught in the
madness of war. We pray for the
perpetrators and victims of violence. We
pray for all who seek in earnest and do not find you. We pray for all who lack food and
shelter. Bless hurting persons, O God,
with the awareness of your presence and the strength of spirit to rise above
their reasons for despair into a higher hope.
These things we ask in the name of our
Savior, the Jew who praised a Samaritan; who interceded for an adulteress; who
ministered alike to Jew and Gentile, slave and free, women and men; who was not
afraid of your kind of loving; and who taught us this prayer we now pray
together, saying:
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