This article is running this month in READY magazine, the new brainchild of Gail and Dominique Dudley. They are a mother-daughter team interested in engaging the African American community in transformational living. I’m so proud of these women and the beauty and truth with which they are executing their vision. Here’s the cover with my article listed as ” The Good Samaritan.”
“Then a despised Samaritan came along and when he saw the man lying there, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with oil and wine and bandaged them.” Luke 10:34. Under normal circumstances the Jewish man lying along the side of the road and the Samaritan might run into each other in the market and not speak to each other. Generally, they hated one another because of past political and historical conflicts involving intermarriage. This diluted the power of their race and violated Jewish law. Yet, in this parable the Samaritan, moved by compassion, crossed the road to help. How may of us have crossed the road to help?
This passage follows the question asked by a religious expert in the law, “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus knows that this man already knows the answer so he answers him with a question, “What does the law of Moses say?” Rightly, the leader answers, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus affirms him and offers and encouraging charge, “Do this and you will live.”
We all want to live in peace with our neighbor, but who is our neighbor? In our neighborhood our next door neighbor has the annoying habit of cutting the grass just as we all sit down to eat outside. The smell of gasoline wafts over our salmon salad, but this neighbor works two jobs, nearly around the clock to provide for his family so if that is the only time he can cut the grass then we deal with it. In the Greek “neighbor” means “someone who is near.” In America today if we are going to contribute to the healing of our growing racial divide the definition we use for neighbor needs to be extended beyond the family next door. We, like the Samaritan, must cross the road to the neighbor that others pass by and extend a hand of grace and love that is out of our comfort zone.
A pastor in our church was sent out to start a movement of church multiplication. He came back to the home church at a recent conference and told a story about how things are going. One Sunday morning he felt “moved” to cross the road and attend the African American church service taking place in an auditorium. Afterward he introduced himself as the pastor who led the congregation across the street and offered their church as available for any needs True Freedom church might have in the future. In a simple meeting he extended his home to the pastor next door. The following week, the pastor found himself locked out of his building so he crossed the road to use the phone. After several calls the person with the keys could not be reached. So the pastor said, “No problem, your church can just meet here in our building today.” Thus began a deep friendship between a white Anglican congregation and a community of African American worshippers. These pastors crossed the road.
For about twelve years, I’ve wanted to go to Africa. It started with the notes we exchanged with our World Vision child in Rwanda. Then our church became deeply involved in building the work of God in Jos, Nigeria. We’ve hosted many people from Nigeria in our home for dinner and they’ve lived in our basement. My sons became fascinated with the idea of climbing Kilimanjaro and then friends of mine made the climb and I listened to their tales of overcoming fear and pain to get to the top. This only increased my desire to go, so I prayed about it. When I pray about things I usually get answers in God’s word, in a dream or in the bizarre “it can’t be coincidence” repeating circumstances of life. When asking God to get me to Africa, he kept giving me the unromantic answer I didn’t want to hear, “You need to learn how to go to Africa at home.” Then we met Jessica.
A logical way to learn how to live missionally at home presented itself in the form of a refugee housing complex in the town next door. Cool, highly educated twenty-somethings from our church lived in an intentional community among the refugees and they needed help with their
kids clubs on Sunday evenings. I found myself in a circle of about ten middle school girls with African or Burmese names so unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce that it took about a month to learn and remember them. We made chicken noodle soup swimming in Siracha sauce, think pink chicken noodle soup, we played “high low.” What was the high of your week and the low? We journaled and studied the bad girls of the Bible together, and the good girls too. The apartments were hot, dirty and reeked of unfamiliar spices simmering all day on the stovetop. Some days I forced myself to go. Spending my Sunday evenings in my perennial garden was a selfish pleasure I set aside. As the months ticked by I fell in love with one girl in my group from Liberia. She had a quiet, confident wisdom that my own kids didn’t possess when they were fifth graders. It wasn’t book smarts, but “the wisdom from above that is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.” James 3:17. Her words intrigued me and captured my heart. How could this refugee girl without a mom, living in those conditions, with a father who didn’t work, know the things she knew?
On a freezing winter night we all sat in Burger King and she announced that her dad was moving to Boston and she didn’t want to go. My guts began to churn with that dangerous feeling of compassion which means your life is about to change. All the girls came up with different scenarios which would allow Jessica to stay in our community. None of them seemed likely. After a miraculous God given dream, (which is too long to tell about here, but you can read on my blog at www.margaretphilbrick.com) Jessica moved in with us. He dad went to Boston, married a lovely woman he met on-line and Jess is now an integral part of our family, read “integral” not “integrated.” Jessica is important and loved by us. She is integral.
In many ways the taste and color of our lives has completely changed. I was the only white woman at the Liberian wedding of her dad and new mom, also the only one not wearing a HUGE metallic colored hat. We watch black t.v. shows which I didn’t know existed. We eat HOT food if she makes it, as in chicken feet and goat meat stew. We hang out at other refugee housing communities where her friends live. They come over and jump on our trampoline. Because there are significant gaps in her education we read great young adult fiction together, right now the Crispin series by Avi. I thought I was done with these books after taking our three other children through them, but God is a God of surprises. There is nothing heroic about welcoming someone into your home, but there are adjustments, growing pains and joy with spicy laughter.
It may be an oversimplification and I’m well aware that people have spent their lives studying this, but if America is going to heal the racial divide then we all must cross the road and extend our hearts as neighbors to people God has for us to love. It might cost us our comfort, our to-do list and a sacrifice of self, but if we do this then then we will truly live. Luke 10:27.