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Let’s understand one thing from the beginning: Jesus was a political creature, meaning that what he said and how he lived and healed and taught on those ancient hillsides deeply challenged the government and the structure, the affairs and the power of both the Jewish and the Roman hierarchies. There was little separation between “church” and state where Jesus was concerned, or to put it in more historically accurate terminology: there was little distance in Jesus’ mind between one’s spirituality and the political structures of the day. His gospel was a political gospel destined to upset the status quo in his century and in ours. And his message a political message delivered to bring deliverance to those oppressed by politics as usual.
There are few parables that make this point more directly than the one we have come to call “The Good Samaritan.” We know its storyline like we know our own name. Poor guy, mugged on a desolate and dangerous road, ignored by those trained to know better, finally helped by—of all people—a despised Samaritan from the wrong side of the tracks, who cares for the injured man as if he were his own brother. Then we hear the dramatic highlight of the teaching, when Jesus asks his lawyer detractor, “Which of the three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” Gulp… Cough… Clearing of throat… Another gulp… Dare the lawyer answer directly? Dare the lawyer—a man justified by the religious system, a man who knew Hebraic law like he knew his own name—dare he identify the Samaritan out loud, in front of all these Jewish witnesses? No, he cannot, he dare not. Without saying that dreaded “S-word” the lawyer answers Jesus vaguely, “It was the one who showed mercy…”
Often, when we discuss this familiar parable, we spend most of our time trying to understand the make-believe characters in the story, or to interpret their behaviors and intentions. We excuse the priest and Levite, for example, as being busy and preoccupied with religious obligations; and in their excusing, we too, feel relief at being let off the hook of spontaneous compassion. Or perhaps we empathize with the suffering one lying on the road waiting for help, and list the many groups or individuals who, in our day, take the form of that injured man. As the story progresses, we may proudly place ourselves in the shoes of the Good Samaritan, counting out our money as we sanctimoniously care for those injured ones among us. But friends, these are made-up people…characters in Jesus’ movie, if you will, characters designed to startle the real people into real change.
The hearers, those assembled to listen to this rabbinic teacher from
Nazareth
, were probably tuning their ears to catch the usual joke as Jesus began…“Did you hear the one about the priest, the Levite, and the Israelite?” Yes, if Jesus were telling the story with politics as usual, it would have been a humble Israelite who played the good guy. And the crowd, along with the lawyer, would have gone wild with applause when Jesus gave them the storyline they expected to hear.
But no, Jesus upsets the politics of the customary religious system and introduces a hated Samaritan as the hero. The Jews in the crowd that day, upon hearing that it was a Samaritan who provided life-giving care, would have been shocked and deeply offended by Jesus’ choice of hero. Certainly the lawyer embodies that collective shock and offense, for, even with Jesus prompting him to state the moral of the story, the lawyer cannot bring himself to say the word, “Samaritan.” Samaritans were hated by Jews because they were half-breeds—half Jewish and half foreigner. They were considered traitors who stubbornly lived in the north, refusing to participate in the restoration of
Jerusalem
hundreds of years previously. More recently, it was the Samaritans who had sided with the Syrian leaders in their wars against the Jews. No self-respecting, law-abiding Jewish person would want to receive the aid of a Samaritan, even if Jesus ironically called him “good.”
The earliest Christians hearing this story later in the first century would have remembered a few verses in the previous chapter, when a Samaritan village had refused to welcome Jesus. Samaritans, according to early Christians, weren’t even hospitable enough to welcome the Savior…nothing good was to be found in
Samaria
. To Jewish listeners and to Christian readers alike, Jesus’ Good Samaritan was a most shocking and unwelcome hero for either audience to accept. Politics it is, as Jesus sets about to change a few prejudiced minds and hearts that, he hopes, in turn will change the racist mind and heart within the political structures of his day.
Such injustice as Jews hating Samaritans and Samaritans hating Jews may have been the direct result of politics as usual—where enemies remain enemies long beyond the original slight, but such injustice was to have no place in the kingdom of Jesus. In this realm, according to the gospel story we’ve heard again this morning, all are to be cared for, no matter the price. All are to be care-givers, no matter the risk. All are to participate equally in God’s kingdom of justice for all.
The message of the prophet Amos in the eighth century before the common era (or BCE, as it is now termed), was also one of justice in the political realm. Like Jesus who followed him 800 years later, Amos was not so much a fortune-teller or future-teller, as he was a community seer. Like other ancient prophets, Amos could see things in society that others were too greedy or too busy or too preoccupied to see for themselves. What Amos saw was that
Israel
was not acting favorably in God’s sight. Earlier in the book, we read that
Israel
was selling the poor in order to acquire tastier food and better clothing. They were abusing widows, children, and others with no societal recourse. Their national policies were causing widespread pain on a scale heretofore unknown in
Israel
. With mounting aggressiveness in his prophetic voice, Amos speaks for God in saying to Israel: “I hate and despise what you are doing…let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” By the time we arrive at the reading from Amos for today, the heat of the prophetic argument has cooled to incorporate a series of visions. These visions, for the most part, are ones in which Amos sees earthly things, and the emphasis in each account is not on sight but on the dialogue between the prophet and God. From this dialogue with God, Amos does what all the ancient prophets did: he takes a risk and actually speaks about these societal maladies in ways that others were too fearful to speak. In other words, Amos gets political.
His politics are controversial, for like Jesus, they challenge the status quo…challenge it to turn from greed to generosity, to change from hoarding to helping, to be transformed from a community in which injustice is rampant into a community which practices compassionate justice for all. So controversial is Amos that Amaziah, the keeper of the sacred place at Bethel, prohibits Amos from preaching there, and that is the little diversion we read this morning. Amos however, undeterred from God’s message of justice, rails back at Amaziah in particular and at Israel in general, saying that God will see them laid to waste…wives becoming prostitutes, sons and daughters dying violent deaths, precious land taken away, and the people fleeing into exile. This is the Bible’s way of dramatically saying, “It would be a pretty good idea for you and your nation to turn around and go in a different direction before it is too late.” Politics as usual? You’ll be sorry if you do prophecies Amos. Better to try a different path, a path of justice for all. Better to walk singing the song of the psalmist, reminding yourself and your nation that God gives justice to the weak and to the orphans, to the lowly and the destitute…God rescues those without strength, those who are in need, delivering them from wicked hands that would seek to wring from them for their own self-serving purposes, every last drop of life.
Are we as people of faith to steer clear of the political scene? Can we do so, after reading Jesus’ story, or singing the psalmist’s pointed piece, or hearing Amos loudly proclaim that God’s justice is a gift that all are entitled to unwrap and use? Must we not only see the truth of injustice as did Amos and Jesus in their respective centuries and cultures, but also, like them, give all we have to challenge and change the systemic injustices we so clearly see.
At the General Synod of the United Church of Christ held last month in Hartford, Connecticut, we had so many opportunities to hear and see and practice God’s justice for all. Beginning with the venue itself… Originally we were scheduled to conduct our meetings in the new, shiny, beautiful Hartford Convention Center. But our denomination’s leadership got wind of a local labor dispute in which the poorly-paid workers were being treated unjustly by management. And so we became a church on the move! The Synod meetings, worship services, and world-renowned speakers were all relocated to the old Civic Center, while the original venue stood vacant.
God’s justice for all continued in the words of keynote speaker, The Rev. Bill Moyers, of PBS journalistic fame, whose pointed comments jumped from Amos’ eighth century directly into ours. “I have come to say, that America’s revolutionary heritage—and America’s revolutionary spirit—‘life, liberty and the pursuit of justice, through government of, by, and for the people’—is under siege…And if churches of conscience don’t take the lead in their rescue and revival, we can lose our democracy…” He told a story of sitting in a pew in church recently at The Riverside Church in New York City, where he and his wife worship, and being captivated by the gospel message of justice for all. In his words,
“…how in the past generation as the number of the poor has increased, wages fell, health and housing costs exploded, and wealth and media became more and more concentrated, prophetic religion lost its voice and the religious right drowned out everyone else, and they hijacked Jesus. The very Jesus who stood in his hometown and proclaimed, ‘The Lord has anointed me to preach the Good News to the poor.’ The very Jesus who told 5,000 hungry people that all, that not just the people in the box seats, would be fed. The very Jesus who challenged the religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who said ‘The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to little children,’ who raised the status of women, and treated even the hated tax collector like a citizen of the Kingdom…The indignant Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple has been hijacked, and turned from the friend of the dispossessed into a guardian of privilege, a militarist, a hedonist, a lobbyist…sent prowling the halls of Congress in Guccis seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful, costly new weapons systems and punitive public policies for people without political power…Yet it was this very Jesus, the Jesus aroused by indignation when the sacred was profaned. It was this Jesus who inspired a Methodist ship caulker named Edward Rogers to crusade across New England for an eight hour day; who called Frances Williams to rise up against the sweatshop; who sent Dorothy Day to march alongside auto workers in Michigan, brewery workers in New York and marble cutters in Vermont; who roused E.B. McKinney and Owen Whitfield to stand against the Mississippi oligarchy that held sharecroppers in servitude; who summoned the young priest named John Ryan ten years before the New Deal to champion child labor laws, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage and decent housing for the poor; and summoned Martin Luther King to Memphis to march with the Sanitation Workers, the garbage workers, in their search for justice…
My friends,” Moyers continued, “they say your church is ... dying. 1.2 million against the Southern Baptists, 16 million and growing. They say your church is ... lame, and limp, and liberal. And they're coming after you. Read the book recently done about how the Institute for Religion and Democracy is after your local congregations. But you know ... they don't take on people they're not afraid of. And it is a small, committed, determined People of Conscience who can turn this country around! [This] new struggle for a just world – it's not a partisan affair. God is not a liberal or conservative. God is not a Democrat or Republican. She may be a Baptist, I don't know. (!) But to see whose side God is on, just go to the record. It's the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the poor who are blessed in the eyes of God. It is kindness and mercy that prove the power of faith, and it is justice that measures the worth of the state…”
When one class of people is subjugated by another through racism and stereotyping, such as were the Samaritans in first-century Palestine, it is playing politics with human life.
When an entire nation benefits from policies that enslave or abuse other citizens just because they are poor or are wrapped in different-colored skin, such as was occurring when Amos lived, it is playing politics with God’s compassionate heart. When the collective cares more about its own fat than for the food and shelter of its most vulnerable citizens, it is playing politics with the Biblical mandate that all are to be treated with justice.
We who follow in the footsteps of Jesus cannot shy away from the politics of justice. What makes us think that God’s politics are any different today than they were in the eighth century BCE or the first century CE? To use our parlance, and to reference Jim Wallis’ popular book of a few years ago, God’s politics are neither republican nor democrat. They are not bound by any party, unless of course, it is the party to which the host invites those who are lost, or least, or last, or lonely. To that party, and that party alone, does our loving God subscribe. And to that party, God invite us to go…with our loneliness and our lostness to be enfolded in lovingkindness. But the party doesn’t stop with our fulfillment or satisfaction; God urges us to attend also with our resources and our gifts, with our prophetic words and daring actions, with our courage and our compassion…we must attend and participate daily in the party of God so that justice will come to this land. For we are the only lobbying hands God has.
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