Did you hear the one about the man whose bathtub was overflowing? He decided he better do something about it, because his house was flooding, and someone who lived with him wasn’t too happy. So he went and got a bucket and mopped and mopped as hard and fast as he could – but to no avail! The room was still flooding. So he went to the store and bought a bigger bucket and a bigger, newer, and better mop. He even got a friend to help him mop up, two are better than one after all; but the bathtub kept overflowing and flooding his house. It seemed the harder he mopped, the behinder he got. He finally went and took an online class on how to be a more effective mopper, and he then googled how to get rid of water in your bathroom. Man, was he well prepared to beat this thing now. However, his bathroom was still flooding. “I know what I’ll, do, I’ll hire a consultant.” After that failed to produce any change, he decided to take a two day workshop in a faraway place on how to be a more effective mopper and how to keep your bathroom clean. But to no benefit, his bathroom was still flooding. He then formed a committee to study the problem, but you already know how that went. Ah, he thought: I’ll go buy a shop-vac– it’ll suck that water up in no time. But at the end of the day, he was losing the battle and his house was really being flooded. Finally it occurred to him he had to get to the root of the problem and not just try some sort of fix. Starring at it the whole time, he realized that the answer had been as plain as the nose on his face– So he reached over and turned off the faucet, and opened the bathtub drain.
OK, that is a silly story that would never happen in real life, but sometimes our most persistent problems have an answer as plain as the nose on our faces. You see the truth is, we have to get to the root problem, and quit treating the symptoms. We just need to drain the tub. Sometimes it’s what we don’t see on the evening news that is a key to what we do see on the evening news. Maybe we need to quit treating the symptoms and look deep within for our most pernicious problems in our society.
Unless you have been living in a cave, you know of the racial tensions in our country, and the rising Black Lives Matter Movement. For me as a white male, I now somewhat understand the concept of white privilege, but honestly it took me a long time to get to this point of acceptance. I never felt privileged- but more importantly I never felt the Black man’s plight- not in the least. And that is because I view life through a privileged filter when it comes to people. I have a hard time looking out my window and only seeing my world- the world according to Stan.
It seems to me we have a number of solvable problems in race relations in this country. But we have not solved many of them, not 46 years after the Civil Rights Law, or 145 years after the 13th Amendment. Those laws were clues that we as a society were broken, at least some recognized that, and that’s a step, but they didn’t deal with the root problem: prejudice.
Prejudice is the window that colors our world. Prejudice is the fuel that feeds our ignorance and our fears. Prejudice is indelibly ingrained deep inside our psyches at a very young age. Prejudice is the most insidious, most cloaked, and often most dormant force that hides in our souls. Oh, prejudice is a learned behavior to be sure, but it incubates effortlessly in our fallen human hearts. Prejudice- you sometimes have to uproot a lot just to even know that it lives in your heart.
Religion has been my business for 44 years, and we talk a good game in the church. We are for social justice, we are for reform, we preach against racism from our stained glass sanctuaries- you know those places of worship which hold the most segregated meeting of the week. We give money, we may even join a peaceful protest. I’m here to say that is not enough. We have a spiritual, not a religious problem as humans. It is our hearts people—and if you look deep enough, no matter how small, prejudice lies in your heart, even if latent, it’s waiting to devour you and I like a lion, the first moment we are vulnerable. And that is a spiritual problem.
I am reminded of the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan. It is an iconic parable of Jesus that represents his ministry and mission in a nutshell, so we really ought to forget all the church stuff and pay attention here. You know the story: A good Jew was traveling along the road when some robbers came along and beat the tar out of him leaving him in a bad way. He needed help worse than Donald Trump’s hair stylist. But wait! Thank God a holy man was coming along, a priest who probably just finished doing some priestly business. He was the best of religion. How lucky could an unlucky man get! But the man walked on by.
Holy smokes, who would have thought it! But then a second man, a Levite, who was just a little lower than a priest in the religious order of things, was tooling down the road. He too, walked on by lick-ity split. Surely all hope was lost. But then came a Samaritan- a hated Samaritan. You see, there was great hatred between the Jews and Samaritans of Jesus’ day. The victim probably thought he was coming by to finish the job. Bad luck comes in threes, everybody knows that. But the Samaritan did not walk on by. In fact, he came through for the guy in a big way. He doled out compassion like nobody’s business in a way that even those aforementioned two good people could not comprehend.
The point is, that what we do is more important than what we say or even believe. It more important than what we preach or teach. You see, that heresy of belief is no match for heresy of practice. The priest and the Levite were not bad people. They were the best people that came to Jesus’ mind for the story, and that’s the shocker. But loving our neighbor means putting teeth behind our words. Love comes from the heart- a changed heart. Loving our neighbor is a radical component in the Kingdom of God, and in case you are wondering, our neighbors include a lot of people that we wouldn’t dream of walking across the street to speak to, let alone go out of our way to help. For the Kingdom of God is made up of such neighbors. Who is our neighbor? It’s that person that you deep down dislike, hate, resent, fear, or just prefer to avoid for reasons that you can’t even verbalize.
If the Samaritan teaches us anything at all he teaches us to not hate but to love and to serve. The truth is Jesus wants to fix our hearts, and a big part of that is putting into practice his ethic. Jesus said to love your enemies, to do good to those who hate you, to bless those who curse you, to pray for those who abuse you. Jesus taught us to react to those who strike you on the cheek, by offering the other also, and from those who take away your cloak, not withholding your coat as well. To go the second, mile when you are only required to go one. And to refrain from being judgmental, to give to everyone who begs from you, and of those who take away your goods, do not ask them again. And as you wish that others would do to you, so do to them.
Prejudice is a problem of the heart, and until we get that right, we will not get anything right in race relations. We begin by turning to the one who changes hearts, who births us anew. When we give our hearts to the Jesus of the gospels, and seek his kingdom and ethic, we have the chance to change society- beginning with us. We are able to let his law of love rule our hearts and minds, no matter what.
Black Lives Matter, it is easy to say for us progressive white folk- of course they do! But if you saw a black man on the side of the road needing help, maybe in a part of town where you feel like you wandered into and don’t belong, what would you do? Would you walk on by, submitting to that prejudice that’s looking for a crack in your psyche to breech. Or would you do what a citizen of the Kingdom of God always does: Love your neighbor, as yourself. If you choose to walk on by on the other side of the road, you have missed the boat on what Jesus was all about, period. There is nothing else. And frankly if that’s the case, you may have missed eternal life. May it not be so- it’s not too late. Turn off that faucet; and unplug that drain.
Providence Cyber Church 