Roger Ray, pastor
July 14, 2013 Proper 10
Luke 10:25-37
25Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 26He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" 27He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." 28And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." 29But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 30Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, 'Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' 36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" 37He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."
We stood out on the church lawn yesterday and some of us speculated about the jury's verdict in the Zimmerman trial. I was confident that though there was not a premeditated murder here there was at least a manslaughter conviction that seemed to me to be inescapable. No one in America was more surprised than I was at the announced "not guilty" verdict. What is perhaps more sad is how many African Americans who were not surprised, for whom this verdict looked more like "business as usual."
In 1852, in a speech entitled, "The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro," freed slave, Fredrick Douglass, said:
"At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation's ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced."
It is that quickening of conscience that I am looking for this morning. This is not a time for wit or irony.... It is time for us to expose the hypocrisy of our nation's racial failures. It may be that the facts of the February 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin left the jury unable to move beyond reasonable doubt but had the roles been reversed.... Had a seventeen year old black teenager followed an unarmed white man through a dark neighborhood and, in the midst of a confrontation, had shot and killed the white homeowner.... Then that young man certainly wouldn't have gone home and slept in his own bed after the police were called and he would not have come away from the trial with a "not guilty" conviction or even a manslaughter conviction. Had Trayvon Martin shot George Zimmerman he would have been lucky to avoid the death penalty.
Race was surely an issue in this case as was class. There is no way to prove it but I am personally convinced that had O J Simpson not been a famous rich person, he would not have been found not guilty in the murder of his former wife and her friend. Race is a huge factor in our judicial system, second only in unfair rulings to the presence of money. It is very uncommon for an impoverished David to ever win in court against an economic Goliath.
The jury, charged with the difficult task of rendering a decision in this case, decided that Zimmerman was not guilty which is a long way from saying that he was innocent. But I would say in this incident that Trayvon Martin is dead and not a one of us here is "not guilty."
We are all a part of the society that has made it unsafe to walk down the street while being black.
There are 30,000 gun deaths in America every year, more than 10,000 of which are homicides and young black men figure in that number at a disproportionate rate. So, there are several thousand young black men gunned down every year in the United States. This one case has risen to national attention because the circumstances around seem to perfectly symbolize our American angst.
Things are better than they used to be but none of us should pretend that racism is a thing of the past. Nor should we be silly about switching from one kind of prejudice to just another kind of denial of reality. He has been quoted so often now that he probably regrets having ever said it but the Rev. Jesse Jackson remarked that nothing makes him more uncomfortable that hearing footsteps behind him on a city street and turning and being relieved when it is a white person.
Crime among angry young black men is not an urban myth. It is real. Of course, poverty causes crime regardless of race. Bad schools, lack of decent and safe public housing causes crime. Broken down family relationships and addiction causes crime..... crime is not a race issue and, besides, when you take the long view of history, no one has killed more people, enslaved more people, tortured more people and stolen land and property from more people than white men..... in that sordid race, my peeps are still undefeated.
What we saw in the Zimmerman stand off with Martin was an employed homeowner in a neighborhood with a crime problem and a black young man who was visiting in the neighborhood with his father's girlfriend.
Trayvon Martin fit the profile of the kind of person Zimmerman didn't trust and Zimmerman fit the profile of what made Trayvon Martin angry...... if it takes anything to make teenagers angry. The inequality here is that the creepy cracker was able to get a conceal and carry license and this morning he can legally be back out in his neighborhood with a firearm, loaded, round in the chamber with no safety on, just like he was that night last February. Applause for the NRA!
We are all aware of this trial because of what it represents which is all about race, class and stage of life. In the dark, in a high crime neighborhood of Florida, these two met one another and only one walked away.
Now, if I can ask you to make a great leap in time backwards, four, maybe five minutes ago, Patrick read to you the familiar passage from Luke that we know as the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Most of you have had this story interpreted to you by preachers and Sunday School teachers since before you could take the training wheels off of your bicycle. In spite of how familiar it is to you, I would like to ask you today to picture the scene in your minds again, only this time I want to ask you to see it as an encounter, not of a Samaritan and a Jew, but as Travon Martin and George Zimmerman.
And really, it could go either way, Trayvon is walking back to his father's girl friend's house with a bottle of tea and a bag of Skittles, talking to a friend on his cell phone when he sees George Zimmerman lying in the street, robbed, beaten and half dead. Or you could see it the other way around.... Zimmerman is out on his neighborhood watch, looking for some of those...... who always get away, and he happens on the hoody wearing skinny form of Trayvon, lying wounded in the street.
Look at it either way because these are two guys who are not going to like each other in any setting. They have been trained by very real an often repeated bad experience to despise one another. Either one could have found the other one lying in the street and had a very private moment of satisfaction..... this time the creepy cracker got it.... Or this time the thug got it.
What I'm asking you to consider about this biblical parable is that the guy we call the Good Samaritan may have found this beaten, half dead Jew and even though he stopped, picked him up, took him to get help and even paid for it out of his pocket, he may very well have still hated that man and everything he represented.
The text didn't say that this was the one Samaritan in the region who happened to be such a good guy that he was free of prejudice and that he had entirely forgiven the Jews for what they had done to the Samaritans..... or the other way around.
The choice that the Samaritan had to make in this parable was, when confronted by a person he undoubtedly saw as an enemy, he didn't have to decide about what he thought about Jews, he had to decide who he wanted to be.
When George Zimmerman called 911 to report a suspicious looking person in his neighborhood, it was not the first time he had called 911 to make such a report. It wasn't the 10th time or the 20th time. Over the eight or nine years that Zimmerman had been on the neighborhood watch, he had place 46 calls to 911 all to report suspicious looking people walking through his neighborhood.
When asked to describe the suspicious looking people, would you believe that all 46 of them were black young men.
I'm not saying that there is a pattern here.... Oh the heck I'm not..... George Zimmerman profiled black young men and there is good reason to believe that black young men had perpetrated some of the crime in Zimmerman's neighborhood.
It is also true that neighborhood watch volunteers are not suppose to follow suspects or go out with a lethal weapon. Even if he fired in self defense, this is not an innocent incident..... there were a number of bad decisions that led up to the very sad and very wrong death of Trayvon Martin. But no one here should pretend that there is not someone in this world that you are afraid of.... Someone you distrust from the very sight of them.
In the Ozarks we tend to think that everyone who speaks with a Spanish accent is from Mexico but I can tell you that they are not and that in Central America, Mexicans tend to look down on Cubans and Costa Ricans tend to look down on Nicaraguans and in Ecuador the white European Spanish descendants look down on the indigenous Quechua and, my friends, religious fundamentalists don't often get to be the heroes of the stories we tell in this room, do they?
Yes, yes, yes, many of you have been victimized by fundamentalists, evangelicals, magical Catholics and crazy Pentecostals but right now I'm not talking about who they are, am asking you to think about who you want to be.
If you got George Zimmerman alone in a safe place and asked him about his history with young black men, he might be able to convince you that he had plausible reason for his prejudice.... I'm saying "might"..... for some of us, you have to suspend reality here for just a minute..... but even if he had plausible reason, he had a choice to do something about the problem..... like volunteer to mentor a kid in foster care, or be a reading buddy at the local elementary school. He didn't have to put a gun in his belt and go out roaming the neighborhood at night.
I'm not telling you that there is no reason to be afraid, that there is no reason to be prejudiced, or that I have no sympathy for those who are tired of being victimized. I'm just asking you now, here in the clear light of a sunny Sunday morning to decide who you want to be. Do you want revenge or do you want to grow your spirit to the point of being able to forgive? Do you want to feel safe and empowered and aggressive, or do you want to choose to be vulnerable enough to love an enemy and to show kindness to someone who doesn't deserve it?
Jesus told a story about a man who chose to be bigger than his fear, his anger, his need for safety or revenge. It was just a story. However, you are not just a story. You are real and you have real choices to make.
Please don't assume that I'm neutral here..... that's the job of those other preachers. I'm here to tell you that I believe that the Good Samaritan made the right choice and George Zimmerman made the wrong choice. I want you to make the right choice..... and until it is safe to walk while being black in America all of us need to keep exposing the hypocrisy that is alive an well in our nation.
