Healing the Spirit of the Nation

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, December 4, 2005

Reading

from the Biblical story of the Good Samaritan in Luke

And he asked, “And who is my neighbor?”

And Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed leaving him half dead.”

Now by chance a preist was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, a stranger, as he journeyed came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper saying, “Take care of him and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.”

“Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He answered, “the one who showed mercy on him.”

And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Every morning we wake up to the same question. We aren’t always aware of this question. It lurks unarticulated, it hides among small concerns- unaware of the larger question, we wake up thinking… we just feel lousy or fine, happy or not…but disguised unconsciously behind these small concerns…we are asking one really big question- What is the nature of reality? What is my reality on this day in this place at this particular time in my life?

Upon waking we often remember something difficult that we were recently told. A loved one has cancer. The memory floods back.

Or we remember the shred of a dream. What might it mean, what else was there?

Soon we notice the weather, the room is hot or cold, we look out the window, it’s cloudy or sunny.

Getting up we notice our body, stiff or limber, hungry or thirsty. We listen for others in the house. We miss those no longer there with us.

In the first few moments of rising, in all of these awarenesses, we are taking the temperature of the day’s reality. We are putting together our life in the world. What is the nature of our reality today?

If the radio is on, we are quickly caught up in the reality of the larger world. We carry the question downstairs and as soon as possible, we look at the newspaper. What is the nature of reality in the international world today? In the sports world? In the metro section of the city? Reading the gossip columns as well as the editorials we seek clues to the nature of the reality within which we live.

This is also part of the reason we come to church on Sundays, to check out our assumptions about the nature of reality. To see if there is something we missed or forgot. To find ways to make meaning out the reality we perceive, and also to imagine, dream, and create a new reality.

As preacher and congregation, in this crazy one-sided dialogue called “sermon” we have three tasks. The first is to name the present reality as accurately as possible. As Christian theologian Walter Brueggemann puts it…”ministry is for the truth-telling of the shape we are in. And that truth-telling makes us free.”

So, let us attempt some truth-telling this morning.

The second task is to bring the story, the wisdom of our liberal religious tradition to illuminate or challenge the existing reality of the world. It is the creative task of offering an alternative vision. Knowing that even our vision, our dream will be partial and flawed and that we will hold it with ambivalence.

The third task is to trust in something larger than ourselves. To trust that we already have all we need to bring a new reality into being.

So let’s get about our tasks. Let’s tell some truth. Explore our tradition for an alternative vision. And take the leap of faith necessary to bring a new world into being.

“Healing the Spirit of the Nation”, my sermon title was inspired by the work of Rev. James Forbes, long time minister of the Riverside church in NYC. A couple of weeks ago, I attended a week-long seminar at the college of preachers at the National Cathedral with Rev. Forbes and 25 clergy from various denominations. I had heard Forbes speak at a UUA General Assembly and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be with him in a seminar setting.

Jim gave us permission to use his title. His is going around the country speaking on this topic. Bill Moyers had Jim on his TV show and was inspired to go to the board of Riverside Church and ask them to give Jim a special leave so he could take his work across the country.

If Bill Moyers ever comes to ask our board for a special leave for me, I hope you will hear him out.

Healing the spirit of the nation is a statement about the nature of the reality in our country today. Jim Forbes know that the spirit of our country is in need of healing. We know it too. There is a malaise in the nation.

The symptoms are obvious. There is a lack of truth-telling at the highest levels of government. There is greed. We live in a culture that believes that the whole world and all its resources are available to us without regard to our neighbor, that assumes that more is better.

And there is fear. Fear arising from the promises and assumptions of our consumer culture and fundamental existential anxiety.

Walter Brueggemann in the current issue of the Christian Century, speaks of the dominant script in America today. It is the same unhealthy script that Jim Forbes critiques. Brueggemann calls it the script of therapeutic, technological, consumerist, militarism. And it permeates every dimension of our common life.

He uses the term “therapeutic” to refer to the assumption that there is a product or treatment or process to counteract every ache and pain and discomfort and trouble…the myth is that life may be lived without inconvenience.

Just watch the commercials on evening television – it is amazing the endless array of drugs available to Americans…and insurance and financial advisors- endless products to take away the pain.

By technological, he refers to the assumption that everything can be fixed and made right through human ingenuity. Don’t worry about global warming, we can fix it…someday. Don’t worry about genetically altered foods…if there’s a problem, we can fix it.

The consumerist label is about our greed and the arrogance that says if you want it, it’s’ your right. I am overwhelmed and depressed by the sheer volume of clothes, jewelry, socks, toys, towels, and candles to choose from in any Target or Hecht’s.

Brueggemann asserts that the militarism, both in fact and attitude, that pervades our society exists to protect and maintain the system and to deliver and guarantee all that is needed for therapeutic technological consumerism. This script, this view of the nature of reality in America, promises to make us safe and happy.

And this script has failed, and it has brought our country to a state of ill health, the spirit of the nation is sick…sick with fear, anxiety, greed, stress and grief.

Brueggemann says it is the task of the church and its ministry to detach us from this powerful dominant script and to articulate an alternative script that will indeed make us safe and joyous.

So where do we look for an alternative script? What resources are at hand to create a new vision of reality? What does our faith tradition tell us?

I didn’t set out to use the Biblical story of the Good Samaritan as sermon material…I first chose the quote from Dr. King- “Those men were afraid. You see, the Jericho Road is a dangerous road.” Because I wanted you to know that when we set out to heal the spirit of the nation… we are setting out on a dangerous road and it is wise to be afraid.

Dr. King was suggesting that the priest and the Levite passed by the injured man on the Jericho road, because it was a very dangerous road. The reality was that robbers had laid claim to that stretch of road…everyone knew the risks inherent in going beyond the confines of your own safe neighborhood, beyond the boundaries of your particular identity group.

The dominant script of that day and time, was stay safely at home, stay safely with your own kind, or you just might be robbed and beaten.

So all who traveled that road were afraid. All who traveled that road were at risk. It was every man for himself. If you stopped to help someone, you increased the element of risk.

How many of us have faced a similar dilemma. Should you help a stranger, should you intervene to offer aid and comfort? I myself have passed cars stuck alongside of 495 and wondered whether or not I should stop…I always pray that they have a cell phone and that help is on the way.

The dominant script of our time, says that stopping to help would be an act of foolish risk. It is sad and terrible that this is so.

So the priest and the Levite were afraid and following the dominant script passed by on the other side.

But a Samaritan, a stranger, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine…

Oh how good the Samaritan must have felt in his bed that night, not wondering if he had done the right thing, not worrying about whether someone else had come to the rescue…

The Samaritan was a stranger…maybe he didn’t know the script, maybe his perspective on reality was different. Maybe he wasn’t so afraid, didn’t fully appreciate the danger.

There’s much debate lately about immigration…it has been my experience that usually immigrants bring a different and often a more trusting view of reality to our country. A stranger can bring a needed corrective to a cultural script…this is true in churches too…the newcomer just might bring a fresh perspective, a way of doing things free of old patterns of anxiety or distrust.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be afraid only of might happen when we stop on a dangerous road…perhaps we should be afraid of what might happen if we don’t stop. The Jericho road of today runs straight through Maryland and into Washington…straight down 270 on toward the capital. To question the dominant script has become dangerous. To offer an alternative vision often seems foolish. But what if we don’t? Isn’t the danger , to both our own spirit and to generations to come…even greater if we do nothing?

Maybe we are so afraid because we have done so little.

And the nation is ill…the script has failed.

The Good Samaritan parable offers an alternative reality, a good answer to the question…Who is my neighbor?

The Samaritan didn’t stop with first aid, he put him on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he gave money to the innkeeper saying, take care of him and whatever more you spend I will repay you.

Wow! What a radical story! We have become so afraid of helping people. So afraid of reaching out to strangers. So afraid of acting on our compassionate impulses. The danger to our spiritual health is great indeed.

And we have become so afraid of speaking out, of demanding fairness, of acting on our principles, of creating an alternative vision.

We have become so jaded that we have forgotten what has been entrusted to us in our great religious tradition. Our legacy of social gospel, our legacy of Enlightenment freedom, our legacy of movements for civil rights and justice, our legacy of understanding God as Love. All this, has been entrusted to us.

The Bible parables are part of our tradition. So too, is the wisdom of James Luther Adams, Unitarian theologian at the University of Chicago Divinity school in the 1950s. JLA is the author of the idea…that we in congregationally based churches are a “Prophethood of All Believers”…meaning that everyone is a prophet, every life is meant to be a prophetic life.

JLA articulated the core of our faith as Five Smooth Stones, each stone representing a core value of liberal religion.

They stand relevant today as the possible basis for a counterscript, a new vision of reality;

1. Revelation is continuous. The openness of our theology continues to be a healing message. No strangers are abandoned because of their beliefs.
2. Relations among persons should rest on consent, not coercion. The Samaritan modeled right relation…offering a love untainted by power.
3. Religious people have a moral obligation to establish a just and loving community. How might the nation move toward health if it were to again take up the moral obligation of building many healthy communities founded on love and justice.
4. Good things don’t just happen, people make them happen. This is the good news of human agency, the actions of the priest and Levite and the Samaritan affected the whole community…it matters what we do…or don’t do.
5. The resources available for change justify an ultimate optimism. Healing and wholeness are possible with the gifts and talents and blessings already at hand. We don’t have to wait. The brightest legacy of liberal religion is ultimate optimism. This is the good news of all my sources. We already have what we need to create a new reality, to craft a new, healing script. Brueggemann acknowledges that the new script of his liberal Christian faith is flawed and that many are ambivalent in the face of the contradictions inherent therein.

But he calls on us to renounce the dominant script. Just as Jim Forbes calls on us to tell the truth about the ill health of our nation…just as the parable asks us to do something dangerous.

Only then, is a new space opened up…only then can a new spirit begin to work…only when we die to the old script can we imagine something truly new.

The hallmark of the church is not certitude, but openness…to new ideas, and to the spirit. The spirit is wind, not wall, opportunity, not threat. Moving beyond ourselves and our small concerns is only possible if we listen to the big question that greets us every morning….what is the reality of my life at this very moment in this particular place.

What if we applied the wisdom of the Samaritan story to issues of today, what if we thought of Iraqi people as neighbors, or those with HIV-AIDS or those on death row, or the homeless on the streets of our city.

The story in Luke concludes:

“Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He answered, The one who showed mercy on him.

And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Amen