Walking the Jericho Road

Walking the Jericho Road

Luke 10:25-37

Do ostriches really hide their heads in sand?  I don’t think so, but, I want to hide my head often enough.  Dig a nice comfortable, clean hole and stick my head in it.  In the information-proof haven, I wouldn’t know about the world’s problems: no social inequities, no persisting glass ceilings for women, no Sudanese genocide, no economic wars on the poor, no gay and lesbian persecution, no statistics demonstrating that racial injustice has not gone away but is shrewder. 

Unfortunately, for those of us interested in indifference, God cares and calls for us to care.  God calls us up as prophets to transform the world.  The Holy One calls our heads out of the sands.  “Best man for himself, woman for herself,” is not Jesus’ motto?  His is “love thy neighbor.”   

Barbara Brown Taylor shared in a sermon, “I was driving to work through the early morning drizzle, my seat belt on and my doors locked, when I saw a car with its hood up ....  As I approached, a tall black man stepped into the road, holding a pair of jumper cables and looking me straight in the eye.  Several hundred pieces of information went through my mind in about three seconds.  ‘The man needs help — you are a single woman in a car – the man needs help ---- never open your door to a stranger — go to the nearest service station and send a mechanic — the man needs help — I am sorry, I cannot help — maybe the next person will.”  And I drove on to work, to complete my research on the Good Samaritan.”^[1]

Don’t you have sympathy for her?  I fear that Jesus would have stopped.   I wish I were more decisively courageous.  But, I get stuck in fear, or worse indifference.  “Jesus, send me a clearly unambiguous, clearly safe, and clearly achievable opportunity to save someone and I am the one for the job.” 

Dan and I upset Louisville Seminary.  Dan joined Bread for The World, a faith-based organization that promotes legislative change to alleviate hunger.  I directed the Seminary’s worship.  We decided to do an offering of letters during chapel worship.  We passed out sample letters to members of Congress.  We provided time in worship to write letters promoting a bill to divert Federal funds to food distribution.  We didn’t realize that alleviating hunger could be so inflammatory. There blazed a firestorm of anger.  The bill diverted funds to hunger from the defense budget.  We offended students.  Some were in the military.  Others came to worship to escape the problems of the world.   They didn’t want to hear about hunger or the political tribulations necessary to end hunger.  

The Seminary President reprimanded us declaring that there should be no politics in worship.  He didn’t know he was confronting two of the seminary’s most arrogant students.  We argued; we created a campus-wide debate.  What about the witness of Jesus Christ’s life?  Did Jesus avoid politics?  What about the prophets’ calls for justice?  We argued using a story of the Civil Rights era, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.   

On January 31, 1968 there was a great rain in Memphis.  The black sanitation workers were sent home with no pay.  Their white supervisors kept working and were paid.  A month later, two sanitation workers were killed when a garbage truck malfunctioned.  Memphis sanitation workers went on strike.  A complex and dangerous battle began: meetings, vigils, picketing, boycotts, peaceful marches, violence, arrests, and 16 year old Larry Payne was killed.  Justice-making is dangerous and complicated.

Ministers called their congregations to march peacefully.  Some ministers encouraged children to skip school to march.  Religion occupied politics.  On April 3, 1968, the Rev. King gave the speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”, interpreting in it the Good Samaritan story: “…we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point.   We've got to see it through.  And when we have our march, you need to be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.

Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. One day a man came to Jesus; and he wanted to raise some questions about some vital matters in life. … Now that question could have easily ended up in a philosophical and theological debate. But Jesus immediately pulled that question from mid‑air, and placed it on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho. And he talked about a certain man, who fell among thieves. You remember that a Levite and a priest passed by on the other side. They didn't stop to help him. And finally a man of another race came by. He got down from his beast, decided not to be compassionate by proxy. But ...administering first aid, [he] helped the man in need.  Jesus ended up saying, this was the good man, this was the great man, because he had the capacity to project the "I" into the "thou," and to be concerned about his brother.”^[2]

We cannot stick our heads into the sands.  Christ calls us to a dangerous unselfishness.  The Rev. King urged marching: stepping out of apathy and ambiguity and  stepping into compassion and concern.  He continued:  “Now you know, we use our imagination a great deal to try to determine why the priest and the Levite didn't stop. At times we say they were busy going to church meetings...and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late….But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that these men were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. … It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing ... And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over at that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around.”

Maybe our reluctance to get involved is less about apathy, than about fear.  Of course we care, but like Barbara Brown Taylor, we are afraid to help strangers.  We are afraid to stick our necks out.  We might offend.  We might make enemies.   We might lose the pretended protection provided by burying our head in sand.  We might lose our lives.

I fear that God’s prophetic call is not a safe or simple one.  Surely, the Rev. King was tired of making enemies.  Surely, he recognized the complexities of the sanitation workers’ strike.  Nonetheless, he called the people to a dangerous unselfishness.  He called them to care, to place themselves in the other’s shoes and to act in solidarity. 

He preached that we change our questions.  Stop asking questions of self-protection and self-interest and ask questions interested in the other.  Dr. King continued, “And so the first question that the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’

That's the question before you... Not, ‘If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all of the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?’ The question is not, ‘If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?’ ‘If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That's the question.”