“Living at the Corner of Righteousness Road and Justice Junction”
Rev. Dr. David E. Gray
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
June 27, 2010
Psalm 33: 1-5; Luke 10: 25-37
On the day before his death in April of 1969, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about the road from Jerusalem to Jericho referred to in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan in his famous speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”
King said, “I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road I said to my wife, ‘I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable. It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about twelve hundred feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about twenty-two feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the ‘Bloody Pass.’ And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest probably asked, the first question that the Levite likely asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’”
Our second lesson this morning is the familiar and powerful story of the Good Samaritan. As our Chancel Players share it now from the 10th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, think about what did happen to the Samaritan and to the wounded man in this parable. And then think about what you would do and how you would be impacted if confronted with such a situation.
We hear the Great Commandments that we are to love God with all our soul, mind, heart and strength and to love our neighbor as ourself. These commandments have deep roots within the Hebrew tradition and the Torah.
From the commandment to love God fully comes the concept of righteousness, our being in the right relationship with God, ultimately made possible through Jesus Christ. From the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves we draw our emphasis on social justice. Treating each other equitably, fairly, kindly, as we would like to be treated.
Sometimes we wonder if these two concepts draw us in opposite directions, one towards God and one towards each other. But the more we focus on them, the more we realize that the streams of righteousness and justice converge in places in our lives. And those places can be holy ground.
There are some things in this world that do not fit well together. Sports columnist Rick Reilly has traveled the globe in search of the world’s craziest sporting competitions and compiles the results in a new book called, “Sports from Hell: My Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition.” Some of the sports that Reilly includes are “competitive sauna,” a sport in Finland where people see how long they can stay in a Sauna at 260 degrees. The winning time last year was 13 minutes. There is competitive “rock, paper, scissors,” - best out of 10. Apparently there is a strategy to it.
My favorite sport that Reilly includes is “Chess Boxing.” In the growing European sport of “Chess Boxing,” two burly men begin the competition in a boxing ring punching each other. After three minutes, the officials bring a table, two chairs and a chess board into the ring and the two men play timed chess, sometimes with the guys sweating and bleeding on the chess board. Then after four minutes of chess, they remove the chess board and they return to boxing. A competitor can win by either a knockout punch or by capturing his opponent’s king. Usually the people who are really good at chess and the people who are really good at boxing are not the same types of people so it’s interesting to see these two activities paired together. I don’t think they fit all that well together though.
The wise Psalmist saw righteousness and justice as important characteristics of God that do fit together. The phrase “God’s righteousness and justice” is listed several times within the psalms. The Psalmist wrote in our first lesson that “God loves righteousness and justice.” To paraphrase the famous Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup slogan, righteousness and justice are two great theological concepts that go great together. They go together because of how we can live them out in our lives.
Being human is difficult. We must make difficult choices at times and often fall short of being the people God created us to be. So God gives commandments, prophets and the example of God’s son to help show us the way. Yet we often wonder if we are on the right path.
Within the Hebrew tradition there is a concept called “derech eretz”, which means the “right way.” In our own way, we each ask ourselves, “are we on the “derech eretz” - the right way or the right road in life. For people who take discerning and doing God’s will seriously, there can be no more important road to take than the one where righteousness and justice meet, for that is the road where one looks to fulfill the two great commandments. When we are able to do what is right and stand up for what is right at the same time, we have found holy ground.
Righteousness is about doing the right thing. In his book, The Justification of God, theologian John Piper defines righteousness as “God’s unwavering commitment to doing what is right.” That righteousness is defined then by Godself and by God revealing to us in part how to act through scripture and spirit. When we act in ways consistent with God’s revelation, we act rightly. Ultimately, it takes God’s revelation through Christ to make things right between us imperfect humans and God. Yet there are many times when we know what the right thing is to do, and we just have trouble doing it. If we could just do the right thing when its right in front of us; when we know what it is, rather than taking the short cut or selfish path, that would go a long way in making the world a better place.
Justice is about standing up for what is right. When we think of Biblical justice we might be tempted to think about the retribution of God against God’s enemies or the punishment of sinners. But commentators on the Bible clarify that the justice of God is less about punishment and more about protection. God’s justice can include punishment, but it is fundamentally about the protection of God’s people, particularly about protecting the vulnerable. When we see something that we know is not right with the conditions of our society, do we stand up publically to change it or do we walk away?
The places where we are able to do the right thing and stand up for what is right at the same time are unique places. Holy places. Places that those who want to draw closer to God should seek out, for as John said if we cannot love our neighbors we cannot love God. We see such a place in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. As Jesus tells it, a Samaritan was traveling the road of life, and came upon a wounded man who had been mugged, beaten and left for dead. Other people were walking past, including a priest, who would be expected by his profession to stop and help, but didn’t. A Levite passed by. Assuming the wounded man was Jewish, which most scholars argue, the Levite might have been expected by his race to stop and help. But he didn’t. However, the Samarian stopped and helped the wounded man. Given the state of Samaritan-Jewish relations at the time, it was a risk for the Samaritan to stop and help the Jew. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was a busy public road. By stopping, the Samaritan was not only doing the right thing by helping a man in need, he was standing up for what is right by making a point publically that justice requires protecting the vulnerable and overcoming the barriers that divide us. Jesus told this parable as the answer to a question from a lawyer, an expert in the Jewish law, about “who is my neighbor?” By telling this story to define neighbor, Jesus was making a point about crossing the traditional boundaries and expectations of racial and ethnic divisions of the day. That in the cause of justice and compassion, our religion, race, creed, class, shouldn’t matter. The Samaritan did the right thing by helping a wounded man, but also by breaking barriers for justice, and fulfilling God’s call to help the vulnerable. He did the right thing and stood up for the right principle at the same time. Through his courage in crossing boundaries, he made the road from Jerusalem to Jericho a place where righteousness and justice met.
Theologian Henri Nouwen answered the question of ‘who is my neighbor’ by building on the foundation Jesus had laid with this parable. Nouwen wrote in his book Bread for the Journey that:
"We become neighbors when we are willing to cross the road for one another. There is so much separation and segregation: between black people and white people, between gay people and straight people, between young people and old people, between sick people and healthy people… between Jews and Gentiles, Muslims and Christians…. There is a lot of road crossing to do.
We are all very busy in our own circles. We have our own people to go to and our own affairs to take care of. But if we could cross the road once in a while and pay attention to what is happening on the other side, we might indeed become neighbors….
As long as there is distance between us and we cannot look into one another's eyes, all sorts of false ideas and images arise. We give others names, make jokes about them, cover them with our prejudices, and avoid direct contact. We think of them as enemies. We forget that they love as we love, care for their children as we care for ours, become sick and die as we do. We forget that they are our brothers and sisters and we treat them as objects.
Only when we have the courage to cross the road and look in one another's eyes can we see that we are all children of God and members of the same human family."
I asked you a few minutes ago to think about Martin Luther King’s question that each of the travelers on the road, the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan, must have asked, “"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?”
We don’t know what was in the Samaritan’s past that motivated him to act with righteousness and justice. Maybe someone helped him when he was vulnerable. Maybe someone of a different background. What happened to him is that I bet that his experience with the wounded man made him more confident in his relationship with God and more committed to a view about how justice requires us to help others, and to overcome our differences.
Martin Luther King said that the travelers, the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan must have asked, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” Yet King continued:
“But only the Good Samaritan asked ‘What will happen to the wounded man?’”
The experience of the wounded Jewish man of being helped by a Samaritan probably saved his life and changed the wounded man’s viewpoints about Samaritans. I bet the experience of the wounded Jewish man changed his view of righteousness and justice. In the future, that wounded man would be more likely to break racial and ethnic stereotypes himself and to stand up for others as a result of the experience because of how the Samaritan helped him.
It is worth the time to make connections between the righteousness of God as you have experienced it and the opportunities God gives you to seek justice. This largely flows from our experiencing the needs of the world.
Today a mission group of twenty-two members of our congregation, youth and adults, arrive home from Tennessee from a work camp in an economically challenged part of that state. That trip will no doubt have an impact on the faith and outlook of the young people. We hope that their exposure to diversity and need will likely heighten their focus on justice.
Next week, our Presbyterian church General Assembly, our national governing body, will be talking about how to seek justice in the Middle East. Our congregation has taken this issue seriously as something that combines our desire to be right with God with our sense of justice because of a trip many members took to the Middle East fifteen years ago.
Our congregation’s experience of crossing barriers of justice with other faith traditions comes from our experience sharing our space with Bethesda Jewish Congregation.
When I was in college, I become good friends with a Catholic priest who lived in my dormitory. He convinced me to join him twice a week to help collect food from the local dining halls and set it up for local homeless men and women in the urban city we lived in. He gave me an experience that taught me about righteousness and justice. My collecting, bringing, preparing and serving food to people helped plant the seed in me that doing my best to follow God as God has revealed it matters and that caring about justice in the world matters. Something in me came alive in that experience that helped motivate me to become involved in public policy and to become a pastor.
This past Thursday I was walking downtown, returning my D.C. car license plates. I passed a young African American women sitting on a doorstep with her head in her hands. Just sitting there. I bent down and asked her, “Are you ok?” She didn’t look up. I felt awkward. Would she be offended? Was she asleep or passed out. Again I asked the girl. “Are you ok?” She didn’t lift her head. It was lunch time near the Farragut North metro downtown, there were lots of people walking past and several of them looked at me for stopping and asking that question of the girl. I was kind of embarrassed. What would these people think of me? The girl never did raise her head. I didn’t discover if she was doing alright or not. I’m not sure she even heard me. Maybe I was wasting my time. As I walked away I thought, “Perhaps the only ones who had heard me were the folks walking by.” Then I thought, “Maybe that’s ok.” Maybe some of them might reflect on their experience and might be more likely to ask someone if they are ok in the future. I don’t know that though. I do know I’ll be a little more comfortable stopping and asking “Are you ok” the next time because of my experience last week.
There are many activities we can spend our time on in this world. Competitive sauna or chess boxing probably aren’t worth spending time looking for. But finding the intersections where righteousness and justice meet on the road of life is worth the effort. It’s holy ground. It’s where love of God and neighbor meet. It’s where we feel closer to God, where we stand up for something and where we touch others deeply. And isn’t that the path we set out to find in the first place? Thanks be to God. Amen.
