Too Busy Digging to Love

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

For all the times we didn’t speak up, for all the times we are silent in the face of injustice, for all the times we breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn’t in our backyard, we forget that injustice seeps through our society, infiltrating good people and making them ambivalent, complicit in the schemes of evil. The forces of evil prevail, and we have been called to stand in their path, we have been called to place a spoke in the wheel of injustice, many of us lose heart and refuse. We wait for someone else to act, we wait for someone else to behave justly, we figure that someone else is going to be the Good Samaritan. And so we do nothing. Preachers say nothing.

But we cannot be silent. The Holy Spirit is convicting us, that in the past six weeks, we read the text of Bathsheba and the “Sinful Woman” the week of the Brock Turner sentencing, and we read the Good Samaritan during the week in which two black men needlessly lost their lives. Philando Castille was shot less than a mile from where I went to seminary, his girlfriend by his side, and her child in the back seat of the car. What are we going to say to this four year old, when she asks? What is society going to tell her? What is the church going to tell her?

Just then, a lawyer stood up to test Jesus, “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to go to heaven?” He said to him, “What is written in the Bible? What do you read there?” He answered: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “and who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Though it was the only road between Jerusalem and Jericho, some people decided that he had no business being on that road. They asked him where he was going and why he was going there. He told them that he was going home from Jerusalem. They asked him for his information, for proof he was who he said he was, and, as he was looking, the people shot him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a pastor was going down that road, and when she saw him, she passed by on the other side. So likewise a council president, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a person who was traveling along the same road came near him, and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds. Then he took him in his own vehicle, brought him to a hospital, and took care of him. The next day, he gave the hospital his credit card, and said “Take care of him, and when I come back, I will pay the rest of his bills.” Which of these, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of those who hurt him? He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

We’re down here in this ditch, Lord, digging as fast as we can, because if we can bury the man by the road, if we can hide the evidence, if we can ignore the truth, maybe you won’t ask us what we’re doing here in this ditch. We talk about black lives mattering, about blue lives mattering, but most of us just want to save our own skin. Most of us care only so far as it is convenient. Most of us pay attention only so long as it glitters. We look closely, too closely, we watch the videos, and then we pass by on the other side. Again and again, we pass by on the other side.

When Jesus said “go and do likewise,” he didn’t say for white people. He didn’t say for straight people. He didn’t say for worthy people. He just said go and do likewise. But we’re too busy justifying guns and violence. We’re too busy trying to find a way to exonerate our complicity. We’re too busy looking up criminal records that don’t exist. We’re too busy making ourselves look like we’re doing the right thing – “Look busy, Jesus is coming,” that we’d rather frantically dig graves in the ditch than heal the wounds. We yell at the ground, from which our brothers and sisters’ blood is crying, telling it to shut up so that we don’t have to listen.

But it cries out, and you hear it. And when you ask us why our brothers and sisters’ blood cries from the earth, that their lives matter, that their blood is on our hands.

Where is the good news? The good news is that we have not yet arrived at the end of the story. The good news is that we are still here, still able to go and do likewise, still able to love our neighbors as ourselves. It will not bring back Alton Sterling or Philando Castille or the officers shot in Dallas or others whose lives have been needlessly lost. But it will mean we can say to a four year old little girl who witnessed the death of a good man in her life, “He taught us to stand up for what is right. He taught us to stand up for justice. We’re sorry he died, and we’re sorry we left him by the side of the road.”

Dear brothers and sisters, we are here in the ditch with the women and men who are shot, with the women and men who are raped, with those who are the victims of hatred, of fear, and of oppression. We are in the ditch with them because they are our brothers and sisters. We are here because this is where Jesus shows up. We are here because of the cross. We are here because Jesus promised us abundant life and sent us into the world to make that abundant life possible for our neighbors. God loves the world, and Jesus has conquered the world, and we have been called to live in the world for the sake of our neighbors, to whom are to show mercy: mercy without regard for skin color, mercy without regard for past sins, mercy that knows only that the person in the ditch is our brother, is our sister, is us, waiting for and dependent on the mercy of Christ.