Prejudice & Segregation Have No Place In God's Kingdom

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

July 10, 2016 - Proper 10

Luke 10:25-37

Prejudice & Segregation Have No Place In God’ Kingdom

Jesus blew some minds and likely ruffled some feathers with his response to the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?”  As understood in Leviticus 19, an Israelite’s neighbor was one of his own kin, a fellow Israelite.  Neighbor was therefore narrowly interpreted so that loving others outside of Israel was not required.  Certainly loving a Samaritan was not required.  In fact, Samaritans were so hated and vilified by Israel, that being loving toward one of them may have even been seen as the wrong thing to do, or at least something that brought scandal and gossip. 

“I heard Joe was being friendly with a Samaritan the other day.”   

“Ewe!  Do you think he ate with one of them?  They’re not friends, are they?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we should be seen with Joe anymore.”

“No.  Not if he’s going to consort with those types of people.”

Into this insular nature and narrow definition of neighbor, Jesus told the parable of the Samaritan who helped the Israelite.  The people hearing Jesus’ story couldn’t have wanted to identify with the priest or the Levite who saw an Israelite beaten half to death and went on by, leaving the man dying by the side of the road.  They would have had to identify either with the Samaritan or with the beaten man who received help from the Samaritan.  Either way, they were rather uncomfortable, their minds blown, wondering “how could a Samaritan be good?”, and also struggling with the point of Jesus’ parable.  Their narrow definition of neighbor didn’t fit with God’s kingdom.  They were segregated into Israelites and everyone else, and that segregation didn’t fit into God’s kingdom.  Their prejudice and feeling that all Samaritans were bad didn’t fit into God’s kingdom.

Jesus showed them that there were bad Israelites and good Israelites, just like there were bad Samaritans and good Samaritans.  Some were willing to hear and accept Jesus’ teaching, and others were not.  The problems of prejudice and stereotypes still assault us today and often erupt into acts of violence, like the shooting of the police officers in Dallas last week.  Such violence can lead us to double down on prejudice and stereotypes, to double down on fear and mistrust of others.  I think Jesus was pretty clear that such doubling down on fear, mistrust, and stereotypes has no place in God’s kingdom.

Such was the conclusion of one man who attended the rally in Dallas and was leaving just before the sniper’s bullets began to fly.  I read in the Huffington Post about this man, Kellon Nixon who had taken his son to the rally and left towards the end of the rally as some bad actors, not associated with the rally, began shouting negative things.  Mr. Nixon is a 34 year old black man, a pastor at a church in Dallas, a husband and father, and in reflecting on the killing of the police, and running for his life and his son’s life, he said:

You start to think it’s me against the world. And with that type of mentality, we’ll implode as a people…We’re all one race at the end of the day. If we get a ‘me against the world’ mentality ― last night I was thinking, maybe it’s not black lives matter or all lives matter, maybe it’s just my life matters. Maybe it’s just my family’s life matters. I had to recover from that spiritually.

I had to be reminded that love conquers all.

He then talked about showing mercy, and like in our story today, that mercy did not come from where he expected it to come.  He said

At a point in my life, I sold drugs, and the honest truth is that the mercy that was extended to me wasn’t by other drug dealers, it wasn’t by African-American men. But it was by two Anglo-American officers that found me with drugs and they extended me mercy. And from there I was able to be a husband. I was able to be a father. I’m a pastor and a preacher now. And at the same time, when I’m in a three-piece suit, from the police I’m treated worse than when I was a thug.

So it proves to me that everybody’s not bad,” he continued. “That everybody wearing a badge is not bad. That every African-American is not bad. But we have to change our concepts. We have to change our ideology in this country. We’re so segregated in everything. We’re segregated in our schools still. We’re segregated in our religion. We’re segregated in churches. And it destroys us.

Segregation, prejudice, doubling down on fear and insularity does destroy us.  It was destroying Israel in Jesus’ day.  Israel was meant to be a light to the nations, and yet in Jesus’ day they had turned insular, segregated from the rest of the world, and prejudiced against others.  Their insular nature and disdain for others was hiding the light they were meant to share and destroying them as a people.  It is hard to have a heart that is prejudiced and segregated only against a few without that heart eventually turning prejudiced and segregated against many, or even most.  Indeed, there were factions and prejudices within Israel, various groups fighting among themselves for who was following God’s laws the right way and who was anathema. 

Their prejudice and segregation was a cancer, and Jesus said, “No more.  Love one another.  Show mercy.  Stop being so self-righteous than you constantly notice other people’s sins and shortcomings while ignoring your own.  Stop thinking you’re better than anyone else just because you are an Israelite or just because you are this particular brand of Israelite.  Be united in loving one another and showing mercy.  That is the way to eternal life.”

Those same words could be said by Jesus to the church today.  “No more.  Love one another.  Show mercy.  Stop being so self-righteous than you constantly notice other people’s sins and shortcomings while ignoring your own.  Stop thinking you’re better than anyone else just because you are a Christian or just because you are this particular brand of Christian.  Be united in loving one another and showing mercy.  That is the way to eternal life.”

I know that we in the Episcopal Church think that we’ve got the best possible way of being a Christian and following Jesus, and that is true, except of course that it isn’t true.  Being an Episcopalian is absolutely the best way of being a Christian for me, but not for everyone.  There are plenty of ways of being a Christian, plenty of denominations that just wouldn’t work for me, but they work great for other people.  That’s part of the beauty of the Body of Christ.  We get to be very different in many of our practices and ways of life, but we are still united in Jesus.

I like to think that being a Christian is the best way for everyone, and yet there are so many wonderful people out there who aren’t Christian.  They love people and show mercy, and they are therefore our neighbors and brothers and sisters. 

There are bad actors within any group, within any ethnicity, race, religion, etc., and we tend to want to classify whole groups based on those bad actors.  It is a way of self preservation based on fear.  Jesus tells us, however, that doing so does not preserve our lives, it actually destroys them.  In Luke 17:33, Jesus says, “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.”  Trying to keep our lives secure through fear, segregation, and prejudice ends up destroying our lives.  Embracing others and taking the risk to love those whom we fear brings us eternal life in God’s Kingdom, not only in the next life, but in this life as well.  It’s risky, but that’s life in God’s kingdom, and risking life together is the only way forward, the only way that doesn’t lead to destruction.

We are the Body of Christ, broken on the cross, sealed in the tomb, and resurrected to life everlasting.  We carry the light of Christ, and we have been charged by Jesus to risk our lives for the sake of others.  We have been charged to love others, to show mercy, to call everyone neighbor.  And so I leave us with the words of a rock band called Rush from their song, Everyday Glory.

If the future's looking dark

We're the ones who have to shine

If there's no one in control

We're the ones who draw the line

Though we live in trying times

We're the ones who have to try

Though we know that time has wings

We're the ones who have to fly

We follow Jesus into the uncertainty of love, denying our fear, prejudice, segregation, in order to show mercy to all, living his kingdom of love and light.  Amen.