Sermon: Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church of ManhattanThis sermon continues the summer series on the windows of Trinity Lutheran Church - Iglesia Luterana Trinidad. You can get a view of these windows, including the one discussed below, as part of Trinity's calendar. (Be sure to check out all the other products you can order to support Trinity!)
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Pentecost 10C (varying from lectionary): Ps 49.1-12; Lk 10.25-37
Jeremy D. Posadas
8 August 2004
My Sisters and Brothers: Come, let us meditate on the Word of God for all of God’s people!
As many of you know, this summer we have been preaching on the windows of Trinity. Each week focuses on the story behind one of the windows. Just imagine my surprise, then, when Pastor Heidi assigned Margaret and me the window of Jesus teaching, right over there (indicate window), third on the right. All the rest of the windows are connected to a specific story in the Gospels: the Calming of the Storm (indicate), the Road to Emmaus; Jesus Welcoming the Children. Some of the windows are even attached to special stories which have big theological names: Annunciation, Passion, Resurrection, Ascension. This one window, however, is not based upon any particular story in the Gospels. After Pastor Heidi told me that was my window to preach on, I hazarded a guess, “Oh, that’s when Jesus is teaching the crowd before Feeding the 5,000, right?” “I have no idea, I know just as much about it as you do.” Now when those words come from The Revered Doctor Heidi B. Neumark, they’re not very reassuring. All this week, I’ve just kept reminding myself, “At least there’s NO wrong answer.”
Looking at the window-without-a-story, it could be any story; is there anything really surprising about Jesus standing with his hands raised talking to people? But look more closely at those people, and you’ll see that the window has characters from many stories. There’s a man who hasn’t walked since he was born, in the bottom corner. And there’s a man in a funny hat, who could be one of the Pharisees that the Gospel writers placed as Jesus’ enemies. There’s a woman with a son, maybe one of the children who came unto Jesus. Below her, there’s a woman who seems like she’s trying to get as close to Jesus as she can, maybe to stop 10 years of bleeding by just touching his cloak. If you look carefully in the distance, you’ll see some people on camels and donkeys — maybe more of the Magi, looking for the blessed one they had heard about when their friends came home from the first Epiphany. Further in the distance are some shepherds, perhaps looking for the child they were told about years ago, in a psychedelic moment, wondering if there was something funny in the goat-milk they had had that night.
This window has characters from many of our favorite stories in the Gospels. It’s like the reunion episode of Survivor: Jesus Island, or, seeing Jesus on stage with all the stars at the BET Music Awards. This window is not about any specific story, and it doesn’t remind us of any of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Instead, this Greatest Hits of Jesus’ Life window teaches us something that C.S. Lewis in The Chronicles of Narnia called “deeper magic from before the dawn of time.”
This deeper magic from before the dawn of time — this Good News of Jesus — is that through Jesus, God calls us into new life in a new community. New life in a new community is much more important to God than whether we believe any story in these windows actually happened. Our ancestors in this church called Trinity put in this window to remind us why all the other windows matter in the first place. They don’t matter so that we believe that Jesus really said the exact words that were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They don’t matter whether or not we believe that Jesus actually did the miracles that are recorded in the Bible. These windows matter because the stories in them — the stories Jesus told to the people and the stories that people told about Jesus after he died — these window-stories are what brought together a new community of people who eventually became Christians. In this new community, they experienced a new life, a life shaped by the very same stories.
Every Sunday, we gather together to hear more of these stories, and God doesn’t care whether or not we believe Jesus actually told them or whether they actually happened. When we gather to hear these stories, we create a new community all over again, the new community in which Jesus promises we will find new life. The window reminds us that what matters most is the new community — and the window tells us just what kind of new community Jesus expects. Look again, and see all the kinds of people who sit and stand, side by side, gathering to hear Jesus’ stories. There’s a man who’s been homeless and jobless for five years, his foot festering from untreated diabetes because he cannot pay for healthcare. There’s a single mother, fearfully holding her child, kicked out because her baby’s daddy just found his new baby’s mama, and desperately hoping to avoid the EAU hellhole. There’s a young transgendered teenager, straining to get close to Jesus, so afraid that the whole world rejects her because of her identity. There’s an immigrant worker — dressed in the style of a rural poor worker in nineteenth-century Germany — looking for work like the day-laborers in all the New Jersey towns I’ve been visiting this summer. There are unnamed, faceless, hidden people in the crowd — unnamed and faceless like the 1.2 million refugees in Darfur, Sudan; hidden, like the human beings crammed more tightly than cargo in trains and trucks, risking their lives to get into a country where they will be discriminated against, disrespected, and called “aliens.”
The new community in the window brings all of these people together, hungry for the word of new life that Jesus has to offer. But there are also people in the crowd who are much better off. There is a well-dressed urban professional, who has decided not to insulate himself from those in distress by living a life of privilege, but to live and be present with the sufferings of others. While most of the crowd must walk, there are some who drive fancy vehicles — camels, after all, were the SUVs of the time — but they are still on their way to hear Jesus and be among the crowd of seekers. In this crowd, there are men and women who make seven figures, who wouldn’t need to offer doves at the Temple because they could afford bulls, who own and manage the businesses where single mothers and undocumented immigrants and people of color are most concentrated. It doesn’t matter how much wealth or how many degrees or how much power they have: they, too, have heard Jesus’ call to a new community, and they, too, have left the life of their privilege to celebrate the new life in that community.
This is the deeper magic from before the dawn of time — this is the Gospel of Jesus Christ — this is the reason our Trinitarian ancestors put in this window: that through Jesus God calls us into new community, and that all people will find new life, life forever, by living together in that community. Ultimately, this is the window through which God looks upon us and judges us: this window, not some picture of the Apocalypse or a scene from Left Behind: The Movie. For every Sunday, light streams through this window and creates an image of God-in-community. And we, we in this house and we in these pews, we are called to reflect that image. Sometimes, we truly do reflect that image of gathering all people, across lines of race, class, power, sexuality, education, legal status, gender, employment, age, and body. But more often than not, we fall short of the glorious vision — the light streaming through that window proves just a little too bright, and we close our eyes and make some people invisible.
This indeed is the window through which God sees us and shines upon us, but how in the world are we supposed to reflect such an image of our Creator? How will we know what to do, if we are trying to build that new community? That’s why we gather, isn’t it? We gather to listen to these stories of Jesus, again and again — the stories will help us know what to do. So while the window for today doesn’t tell any particular story, I chose a story that could easily be one that Jesus was teaching that diverse crowd in the window: the story of the Good Samaritan. I chose this story because it helps us know how we can build the new community, and points to a good, concrete example. You see, if we hear Jesus’ call to new life in new community, and want to make it a reality, we must become Samaritan Neighbors in a Samaritan Village; and we must make that village no smaller than the whole world.
The story of the Good Samaritan begins with a lawyer who thinks he knows everything about righteousness: love God, love your neighbor. But he wants to show Jesus just how righteous he is, so he goads Jesus: “Well, who exactly is my neighbor, anyway?” So the story of the Good Samaritan is not really about doing good works, but about how we find our neighbors in this world. The Good Samaritan was good only because he knew what it meant to be neighbors. Now the word neighbor in English, as well as the words for neighbor in Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, and many other languages, have roots that mean near, and this is the first lesson the Samaritan teaches us. For Luke says that the Samaritan “came near” to the one who had been beaten, robbed, and left for dead. The Samaritan came near, after others had shown depraved indifference to this human life dying on the road. And the Samaritan came near to someone he had every reason to see as an enemy, not a neighbor. For Samaritans in Jesus’ day were despised, discriminated against, and marginalized —the Gospel-writers themselves show prejudice against them. The Samaritan, however, came near someone who was different from him, someone he had no reason to care for. Being a Samaritan kind of neighbor means choosing to come near those we think of as different from us, and those who, deep in our hearts, we think are less worthy, in whatever terms, than ourselves.
But there is a second layer of being a Samaritan Neighbor. It’s not all about our own choices to come near others, it’s about caring for those others have made distant. The structures in our world that rob people of life and livelihoods, beat down their bodies and souls, and leave them for dead are bigger than any one person’s choices. Nothing I or you alone did makes others poor, and nothing a poor person has done is the ultimate reason that poverty exists. Nevertheless, poverty does exist, and disease and starvation and homelessness and domestic violence and lack of education and rape — and being a Samaritan Neighbor means refusing to leave for dead those who are being killed by these forces. It’s not just coming near to those we think of as different, but seeing just how many people the world has left for dead, and coming near to them to bring life instead. As strange as it seems, in a sense, those we must choose to come near as neighbors have already also been chosen for us by forces that rob, beat, and leave for dead millions of people.
Now, if that’s the kind of world we live in, then obviously a single Samaritan isn’t going to get very far. No matter how good the Good Samaritan in the story was, if he acts alone pretty soon he’ll find himself poor, robbed, beaten, and left for dead as well. One person and one church can make a difference, for sure, but then again one person alone and one church alone can never make enough of a difference in the face of the millions left for dead throughout the world. So we must become Samaritans surrounded by many more Samaritans, all of us treating one another as neighbors and bringing life to those the world has left for death. That’s the only way we can build the new community that Jesus us call us to, a community of deeper magic from before the dawn of time, where all people can find new life, eternal life. Being Good Samaritans on our own isn’t going to get us very far: we must build a village of Samaritans. Ultimately, our ancestors of Trinity left us a beautiful reminder that our task is no less than transforming our global village into a true Samaritan Village.
And here’s where the story of the Good Samaritan provides one very concrete example of how we will fight for that transformation — an example I would never have seen if I hadn’t had a special internship this summer working with the labor union for janitors and building cleaners. The 75,000 janitors I’ve been working for are among the lowest-paid workers throughout this country and the world. They clean windows like Trinity’s and buildings on Wall Street, and they, too, have been robbed, beaten, and left for dead. They have been robbed of fair wages by companies who as of today still pay non-union workers $6.25 an hour to raise their families. They have been beaten through intimidation tactics when they’ve tried to organize for better working conditions. Many of them have also been beaten with the threat of deportation by employers who have absolutely no intention of giving up their best source of what to them is merely cheap labor. And they have been left dead by not having even minimal healthcare coverage: in fact, there are pets in Manhattan who have better healthcare access than the 70% of the janitors who do not receive regular care for themselves and their families.
Now, if there’s one concrete issue of today that the story of the Good Samaritan applies to, it is healthcare. Luke, who is the only evangelist to include it in the Gospel, was a doctor after all. Sure, the story tells us how to see our neighbors in all the people the world has left for dead, but it also points directly to one way we must transform this global village into a Samaritan village. We don’t know whether the traveling Samaritan in the story was rich or poor, but he gave much of his own resources to provide for the violated one’s care — he is the Bible’s first insurance provider! Healthcare, as we all know, from even the most minor hospital visit or prescription, takes money, lots of money — and the Samaritan is willing to pay all of that and more.
Remaking the world into a Samaritan Village — creating a new community for new life — will involve fighting for healthcare, without question. We Samaritan villagers must refuse to live in a nation where more than 45 million human beings don’t have as good access to healthcare as many Manhattan pets. We Samaritan villagers must demand that all people share in the basic benefits of modern medicine, including affordable drugs around the world. We Samaritan villagers must come near our own neighbors’ lives and fight against the asthma and rat infestation that affect our neighbors in the projects severely disproportionately. We Samaritan villagers must demand that the more than 800 million undernourished people in the world have a better chance to live a full life. These and more are the things that will turn the global village into a Samaritan village. And they will all cost money, lots of money, our money. But we must demand that our leaders, Democrat or Republican, pay no less than the Samaritan did, by changing the priorities of public budgets, and pay the price with their jobs if they fail. We must demand that pharmaceutical companies pay no less than the Samaritan did. And we must ourselves be willing to pay no less than the Samaritan, by supporting a healthcare system that will leave no neighbor, no janitor, and no single mother behind. If we want a Samaritan village, we must cry out a new cry to God, to our leaders, and to ourselves: No Child Left for Dead, in this country or the world.
Just imagine a world where all people have adequate healthcare, and you’ll get a sneak peak at what the world looks in the shining light of today’s window. It’s a world we can hardly recognize, because all people will be cared for. But it’s a world our ancestors and our God expect us to fight for — a new community in which all people will find new life for their bodies, minds, and spirits. To fight for this new community, to transform our global village into a Samaritan village, is how we can obey the only commandments that mattered to Jesus, our storyteller: “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” God grant us the courage to go and do likewise.
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