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Who Is My Neighbor? Recently, a friend forwarded me a letter from Bishop Spong, regarding the Church of England’s formal apology to Darwin in late 2008. Here he shines fresh light on “the basic Christian myth of a perfect creation, the fall into sin, the divine rescue carried out by Jesus and the restoration through faith” and asks whether the theological mantra that Jesus died for our sins may need revisiting. Certainly this apology to Darwin is long overdue as was the apology to Galileo by the Vatican in 1991, but a fresh model for turning away from sin and the violence of apathy lies in the story of the Good Samaritan. Here the path of discipleship and making peace converge in radical ways. Today, this parable from Luke’s Gospel is reaching across the millennia, inviting each of us to explore the question anew: Who is my neighbor? In The Rivers North of the Future, by Ivan Illich and David Cayley (and edited by CPF’s Lee Hoinacki) Illich argues that this is in fact the pivotal moment in the gospels, a spiritual point of no return, that the seed has the power to radically transform our lives if it is allowed to germinate and take root in our hearts. Beyond the Good Samaritan that we think we know, he suggests that this familiarity belies the shocking nature of the story: “in today’s terms, imagine the Samaritan as a Palestinian ministering to a wounded Jew” (Illich/Cayley, pg 50). Going further, Illich invites us to discover in the free choice to come into relationship with the other, the grace of communion, a gift of the Spirit. The radical notion that we can and must love our neighbor (and our enemy) has the power to rewrite the course, “the way,” of our faith, but more importantly rewrite our lives and our connection with one another. Let’s step back from our collective journey and reflect upon the question: What if, in conjunction with the sanctifying death and resurrection of the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the church had embraced the life and teachings of Jesus beyond the events at Calvary? Which is to say, instead of a movement/institution crystallized around what Jesus did for us, what if the faith had coalesced around who Jesus is through us and how, in our being Christ to one another, by following his example to love our neighbor, to love our enemies and to daily, moment by moment, succumb to the Holy Spirit’s prompting, we boldly ask: Who is my neighbor? What if? It’s effectively a creative writing exercise from at least the first Council of Nicea forward and beyond what can be discussed here. Painting with a broad brush, let’s review the past four centuries of European (read Christian) conquest of America, particularly our tiny corner of North America, through the eyes of the Samaritan. When did we leave our neighbor in the ditch? As Europeans, was not our neighbor the local Lenape here in the Delaware Valley, who were moved to assist the bedraggled travelers from across the oceans? What of the Indian tribes whose land we stole, villages sacked, one forced removal after another, turned outlaws on the sacred lands of their forefathers, an ethnic cleansing, clearing the way for progress? Were not the African people we shackled and brought over in crowded ships in a massive barbaric relocation and forced into brutal slavery that centuries hence are still reeling, our neighbors? Was our neighbor the peasant in the subcontinent whose land was again and again stolen to make way for plantations, industry and progress? Were not these crimes roundly rationalized, sanctioned by a flawed reading of the bible and applauded by virtually all (whites) Christians? When did we so wholly succumb to a collective amnesia as to our actions as church that we came to condemn our brother to this violence? When did we part company with the Prince of Peace? When did we leave him in the ditch, avert our eyes, turn up the radio and just drive by? Today, we find ourselves in the modern 21st-century American empire, no longer satisfied to have just dominion over and de facto or proxy control over the continent, but to have as well overwhelming influence in many places and until recently was capable of extending its arm of influence to the far corners of the globe, our power lust virtually unchecked, and this not from some godless nation, but one distinctly Christian, if by extension Catholic in flavor. Now the cornerstone of our entire economy is war, war for sale and war for export. The subtle pervasive perversion of the teaching of Jesus and banishing to the fringe the very traditions of hospitality, service, and non-violence that defined, grounded and sustained the early Christian communities. Perhaps we can look up from our dream to hear the cry from the ditch, the cry from our neighbor, and we can hear our cry too. From the current state of affairs, a bankrupted empire mired in perpetual war, how can we find the grace to breathe, to begin again to ask anew: who is my neighbor? As travelers on the path of peace within the broader Catholic and Christian context, inspired by the stark witness of the Good Samaritan, what role do we play in the modem theaters of war and empire? As a rising chorus of voices is telling us, we Catholics comprise the largest single group among American Christians and through our taxes buy the most bombs and bloodshed of any other group. Can we dare imagine an alternative scenario where the American Catholic community would, on moral humanitarian grounds and in alignment with the radical example of the Good Samaritan ministering to a stranger, refuse to participate in war-making? What if the military industrial complex had to make war without us? What if we imagine our way of being to be defined by reaching out to the stranger, even an enemy, with the warm embrace of Christ? I must confess I find the simple act of asking both liberating and empowering. I am free to embrace this moment and greet the other. The grace that flowed through the Good Samaritan, allowing him to be fully present, flows even today. His example leads me to embrace the journey, to wade in the water against the prevailing currents, with greater enthusiasm to embrace the other, with fresh curiosity to seek out and find out who is my neighbor, the willingness to be a fool, to drink three cups of tea. What if the simple poetry of this question and the grace to respond had the power to drown out the chorus of fear and bigotry that hold us ransom. What if the question in our hearts and minds, the question we yearned to answer were simply this. Herein lies the core of the path and discipleship of the peacemaker, indeed, and perhaps even in a parallel universe the core of our faith, the essence, the thirst for Christ. Rogean Cadieux-Smith |