Amy and Asking the Right Questions
Advent Reflections on Justice: Justice and Asking the Right Questions
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Luke 10:25
Why do people get evicted?
Why are there so many families in our community with heads of households carrying one, maybe two jobs, maybe also picking up work with Uber or Lyft or DoorDash, and still can't pay the rent?
Asking the right questions can help us as a community discern how we as St. Francis Episcopal Parish-Epiphany Community Center are called to do justice.
In the Gospels, people are always asking Jesus vital questions, life-or-death questions. Jesus never answers them as straightforwardly as we might like. Instead, he tells a story, a parable, as he does when he tells the Parable of the Good Samaritan in response to a lawyer's question about eternal life. The lawyer knows he is supposed to love God and love neighbor - that's what Scripture says. But who is my neighbor? What does neighbor love look like?
In the parable, a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan are walking along the dangerous Jericho Road. They encounter a man, beaten and left for dead by roving gangs, and only the Samaritan stops to help him, putting salve on his wounds, finding him a safe place to stay, and paying for it. Go and do likewise, Jesus tells the lawyer. (Luke 10:37)
The Parable of the Good Samaritan was the favorite parable of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and he preached on it many, many times. (He preached on it the night before he was assassinated - you can read that sermon here https://www.ucc.org/sacred-conversation_dr-kings-last-sermon)
King's sermons on this parable lift up the ways that mercy and justice are interwoven, intertwined, connected, and, like the prophet Micah says, both mercy and justice are required of us who love God.
We are called to tend to the wounded - yes. We are called to reform, transform, tear down if necessary and rebuild the whole Jericho Road, so that people who walk it aren't beaten, abandoned and left for dead.
Why is the Jericho Road so dangerous? Why are so many people hurt there?
Just like with the eviction crisis - there are no right or wrong answers. There are only faithful ones, faithful to the God who breathes life into each of us and promises liberation and freedom for all.
