BEYOND US AND THEM
(The Good Samaritan and Trayvon Martin)
7 14 13
LUKE 10: 25-37
ANTHONY E.ACHESON, M.DIV.
Today’s story of the Good Samaritan is one of the greatest
pieces of concise wisdom in history’s spiritual library. In one short
passage of ten sentences, Jesus presents nothing less than a
potential roadmap and skeleton key, a diagram, diagnosis and
prescription, for the very structuring of human society itself. We
Americans take great pride in the structuring of our society through
the US Constitution. But if we embraced the Good Samaritan as
seriously as we do our Constitution, we could go a long way
toward reconstituting our society into the true “city on a hill” our
national rhetoric aspires to, and some of our prominent voices
proclaim we actually are. Despite all the talk of this being a
Christian nation, though, most of us don’t take the Good Samaritan
story anywhere near as seriously as we take the Constitution as a
text for ordering our common life. Why is this?
One part of the answer has to do with the main theme of the
constitution; namely, power, and how to structure its lawful
expression; and how to keep concentrations of power at least
somewhat diffused and balanced. Since we don’t usually think of
the Good Samaritan as a story about power, we don’t usually have
any reason to think about it in relation to – or in comparison to –
the Constitution. In a certain sense, though, and one much less
obvious, the Good Samaritan can and should in fact be seen as a
story that is also about power. But in contrast to the Constitution,
the emphasis of this great parable of Jesus lies not in gaining,
exercising or sharing power, but rather in the importance and
centrality of being willing and able to share, and even surrender
power – or, at least, to surrender power in the forms that it is most
usually sought and exercised in ordinary social, economic and
political life.
I recognize that it might seem strange to interpret the Good
Samaritan in terms of its implications about power. We usually
think of this as a story about compassion. It is that, to be sure. But
what is involved here is more than a simple admonition to act more
lovingly. More subtly than that, the point of this parable is based
on a second idea: that embracing love, and truly doing the work of
love, involves transitioning ourselves into a fundamentally
different relationship to power from what our culture habitually
conditions us toward. There is an implication in Jesus’ story that
being able to live lives structured around love and compassion
requires significant changes within ourselves. And among those
changes is acquiring the willingness – and the ability -- to give up
our habitual patterns of seeking advantage over other people
through exercising power, control and domination over them. This
is why I would say that a major theme of the Good Samaritan does
indeed have to do with power insofar as it calls us to the surrender
of those forms of power that bring advantage to ourselves through
ways of living that cause, or allow, the infliction of hurt and harm
on others.
Let me be more specific about how the Good Samaritan
speaks to this. One of the most common forms of power we
humans frequently seek out is the power of collective muscle, the
power that comes from connecting ourselves to larger social
entities that are strong, and act that strongly on our behalf. This
psychological striving is an important dynamic behind our deep
desire to be part of a social in-group, to be part of an an “us.”
There is nothing wrong with being part of advantageous
social groupings. The human psyche, to be sure, has an inborn
drive to be part of something larger than itself. That need is met in
several different ways. Just as it is met by being in our mothers’
arms (and can be met by resting in the Everlasting Arms) one
major way we try to meet that need to be part of something larger
is to be part of powerful groups. Our psyche looks to these larger
collective affiliations as vehicles that can protect us and provide
for us.
As a consequence we humans like very much to be part of
larger, powerful things. We like to be part of powerful nations. We
like to be part of powerful tribes or clans, religions or empires,
sects and civilizations. We like to be part of powerful corporations
or unions. We want very much to be part of an economic class that
has the clout to cushion our lives. This desire to be associated with
or identified with a powerful group can be as benign as feeling part
of Red Sox Nation, or as destructive as taking part in National
Socialism. It can be as benign as taking advantage of group buying
power through Groupon or Costco, or as damaging as consenting
to an economic system in which large clothing companies have
their shirts and jeans made in hell-hole factories like the one that
collapsed in Bangladesh on April 24 of this year, killing more than
600 people.
But even though identifying with larger groups is not an
inherently negative phenomenon, I would argue nonetheless that
the overwhelming majority of human wrongdoing; the
overwhelming majority of the hurt and harm we humans in fact
inflict; the overwhelming majority of the sin that we human beings
commit, to use Biblical language, is the wrongdoing which we do
through the groups we are part of. Most of the evil men and
women do is done through collectives. The bulk of the cruelty and
killing, oppression and needless impoverishment that takes place in
the world is brought to pass through these groups and collectives
and, very importantly, through the willing consent of the
individuals who comprise them and who identity with them.
Most social groupings, in other words, have a shadow side.
And it is one of our most major moral responsibilities, first, to see
and acknowledge this; and, second, to understand some of the
pathways through which this phenomenon works. Specifically we
need to see the following contrast: that whereas most people won’t
and don’t do terrible things as individuals, a great many of us as
individuals are more than happy to let our nation, army or
intelligence services; our religions, tribes, genders or economic
classes inflict major hurt and harm upon large numbers of people
who are not in our own home group (like Samaritans) who are
therefore not one of “us,” but one of “them.”
There is an important feature of this story in Luke 10 that is
often overlooked. The text tells us that this conversation about
loving our neighbor takes place between Jesus and a lawyer. In
approaching this parable we are wise to ask:who are lawyers; and
why is a lawyer at the center of this teaching tale? Lawyers are
people who deal with the way society is legally ordered and
structured. The fact that the story is framed as a teaching offered in
response to a lawyer’s question how people should be treated
clearly that the parable aims to answer one of the most basic of
questions: by what rules is society best structured? Around what
principles should a society be built? And when we enact specific
laws, and evaluate social practices, what major themes should be
the guiding lights for how the human society conducts and orders
its business?
Consider the way Jesus responds to the lawyer’s question,
“who is my neighbor?” The answer Jesus gives has two parts.
There is a positive part that describes what to do, what should be
done. And then there is a negative part about what not to do, what
to avoid. The positive part is clear enough: be compassionate to
those in need.
Today I want to to focus mostly on the second, negative part
of the story, the “what not to do” aspect. It’s relatively easy to say,
“Be compassionate,” but it’s much harder to be specific about what
that means, and to translate the love-principle into a tangible
result. Doing that requires taking on the second, negative, side of
the equation which has to do with challenging and interrupting
what people have become accustomed to doing, but may need to
stop doing. The traditional, Biblical term for this is repentance.
When Christianity advises and counsels us to repent, it is urging us
to be willing to, first, identify negative behaviors that have become
entrenched in us, and, second, let go of repeating them.
And that is what the second half of Jesus’ story does. He
starts by stating the positive side, “Love God, and love your
neighbor.” But he doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say, by
implication, “If you are serious about loving your neighbor and
structuring your life around compassion, here are some things you
will need to stop doing.” If we want to respond to Christ’s
teachings, in other words, there are not only truths we need to
learn; there are also patterns we need to unlearn. And in this Good
Samaritan story he gets to the nub of one behavior specifically that
needs to be unlearned: our deeply entrenched human tendency
toward putting up lines of demarcation between those who are
inside our own social networks, and those who are outside them.
We need to unlearn seeing our fellow humans in terms of who is
one of “us” and who is one of “them.” We need to unlearn looking
at another person – any other human being – and viewing them the
way many Jews in Jesus’ day viewed Samaritans: as suspect and
dangerous, as inferior and degenerate, as less than worthy of our
affection and respect.
We live in a time in which there are great cultural forces that
not only are divisive, but also pressure us into becoming divisive
ourselves. There are numerous examples we could cite of this
pressure. For today I want to close by citing just one example,
which came to my attention in a headline of this morning’s New
York Times. It describe the verdict that came down yesterday in
Florida in the Trayvon Martin murder case.
You may remember that Trayvon Martin was an unarmed,
black teenager wearing a hoodie who was shot to death on
February 26 of last year in Florida while on a quick run to buy
some candy. Yesterday, the defendant in that case was acquitted of
that killing. The Times reports that the jury accepted his argument
of self-defense. It accepted his attorney’s assertion that he was
justified in using lethal force because of his fear of great bodily
harm.
As we consider today’s theme of how people from within
social groups and identities, I want to invite you to engage in a
mind-experiment that has to do with imagining what might have
happened if the major players in that Florida drama had had
substantially different group affiliations. This mind-experiment has
two parts to it.
First, imagine that the man walking down the street to a
convenience store in that Florida town on February 26, 2012 had
been a white, middle-class, middle-aged man wearing a suit and tie
and carrying a briefcase. Do you think it is likely that someone
who was active in a Citizen’s Watch program in that neighborhood
would have felt that he or his family were in danger from such a
man who had that kind of white, middle class appearance? I
strongly doubt it. What is much more likely is that a caucasian,
establishment-looking man walking through that part of town
would have been barely noticed, let alone accosted, by a zealous
Citizen’s Watch volunteer. In this first scenario, it is highly likely
no one would have been attacked, and no one would have been
killed. But Trayvon Martin was killed, and the facts of the case
suggest strongly that he was initially viewed with suspicion by the
defendant because of the way he looked. He was young. He was
black. He was male. He wore casual clothes that did not suggest
affluence.
Let’s turn to the second part of our mind-experiment. This
time suppose that a shooting had in fact taken place on that same
street, but this time the white, well-dressed middle-aged man we
imagined a moment ago was the victim who had been shot and
killed. And let’s imagine again that person accused of the shooting
had been a teen-aged, black male, wearing a hoodie. How likely do
think it might be that an American jury – a southern American jury
-- would have handed down an acquittal under those
circumstances? How likely do you think it is that such a jury would
have decided that such a shooting – of a white middle-aged guy by
a black teenage male -- would have sprung from a justified fear of
great bodily harm, as yesterday’s jury apparently did?
I think the chances are substantially high that a case like,
with a white establishment victim and a young black man, would
have led to a very different result and a guilty verdict. Why?
Because it is a fact of our condition – and ongoing dilemma of the
human mind – that the decisions that many human beings make in
many emotionally charged cases is determined by their
predominant group identifications. And in our culture there is a
substantial and historically well-document willingness by the
mainly white middle-class culture to be more than willing to inflict
hurt and harm on young black males, but to protect middle-class
and middle aged white men and give them the benefit of the doubt.
Was that dynamic was at work in the Trayvon Martin case? I
cannot, of course, be absolutely sure about any single case, and
want to be honest about that ambiguity. But I am absolutely sure
that that kind of dynamic has happened and does continue to
happen in our culture with disheartening frequency. It happens
continually. And the reason it does happen is that people who
identify with the majority, established white middle class in-group
in our society have a long-standing, historically habituated
tendency to regard young black males as potentially dangerous and
expendable. In white middle-class America, young, black
seemingly swaggering males are a form of Samaritan. Just as many
of Jesus’ co-religionists expected no good to come from a
Samaritan, there is a deep seam in the American mind that expects
no good from young, black men. There are many among us indeed
who tend to see young black males not at all as one of “us” to be
protected, but very much as one of “them” to be suspected; to see
them as “one of those Samaritans”: dangerous, lesser and
expendable.
I offer that today as one example of how identification with
larger social groups whose members feel like “us” can give us an
entitled sense of permission to do or consent to insidious, terrible
acts against people who belong to other groupings than ours; and
to do or consent to acts that we would be highly unlikely to do as
mere individuals, or against someone who looks like “one of us”.
I look forward to taking up some of these themes again with
you the next time we meet.