Neighbors

Today, in the United States, we are observing Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. A little over forty years ago, this African-American preacher and civil rights activist preached his final sermon in Memphis, Tennessee. The next day, April 4, 1968, he was assassinated.

In that speech, Dr. King spoke out in support of the striking sanitation workers in the city and quoted Jesse Jackson who earlier had said that up to now only the garbage men had been feeling the pain, and now we must "redistribute the pain."

What did that mean? He described the situation in terms of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan. When Jesus taught that we ought to love our neighbor, a man approached with a question to trick Him. "Who is my neighbor?" This could easily have ended in an involved theological and philosophical debate, but Jesus' response was a simple story.

A certain man was traveling the winding road from Jerusalem to Jericho. It is a dangerous place, well-suited for ambush by thieves. Not surprisingly, the man was attacked, beaten and robbed, and left for dead. A priest came by, but did not stop to help. A Levite too passed by without stopping. Dr. King said,

"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—an ecclesiastical gathering—and they had to get on down to Jerusalem so they wouldn't be late for their meeting. At other times we would speculate that there was a religious law that 'one who was engaged in religious ceremonials was not to touch a human body twenty-four hours before the ceremony.' And every now and then we begin to wonder whether maybe they were not going down to Jericho to organize a 'Jericho Road Improvement Association.' That's a possibility. Maybe they felt that it was better to deal with the problem from the causal root, rather than to get bogged down with an individual effort.

"But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that these men were afraid. . . 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 [at]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 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?' "

With compassion, he gave aid to the wounded man, took him to an inn, and arranged for his care there, promising to pay for whatever was required. "Now then," Jesus asked, "who in the story was a neighbor?" Obviously, the one who helped was neighbor to the one who was in need.

We are neighbors to the suffering people of Haiti. We are neighbors to the homeless and hungry in our own city. If we do not stop to help, what will happen to them? If we close our eyes to need, something closes off in our hearts—compassion—even if there is not very much that we can do to bring actual aid. If we can't be bothered even to care about abused children and laid-off workers, we get calluses on our spirits.

If we do not redistribute some of the pain, what will happen to us?

MaryMartha

Art from http://www.lavistachurchofchrist.org/Picture.htm