It is with humility and a deep
sense of gratitude that I speak to all of you today. As most of you know, my name is Jeff Guhin
and I was a Dominican Volunteer in 2003-2004.
I served in the Bronx and I lived with Blauvelt Dominicans. I’m now on the Board of Dominican Volunteers
USA. When I was reflecting on what I
would say today, I thought how today’s Gospel is kind of old news for all of
you: what has the last year been for you except to serve as the Good Samaritan,
to serve our neighbor as much as we can, whoever (and wherever) that neighbor
might be?
But then I realized that the story
hints at another challenge, one all of you face now—how do you be a Good
Samaritan when the volunteer year is over, when you have a job, a rent payment,
bills, a spouse, and kids? I think there
are answers here if we work together to uncover them, and I’d like to think
about them by taking a few positions in the story.
First, let’s imagine we’re that man
on the side of the road, unconscious and alone.
When we went down, we probably thought we were dying, and yet here we are
awake, in a beautiful room, with all the food and medical care we need, and
even some extra money to help get us home.
And we cannot even see the person who brought us these gifts! We are only assured that it was someone with
remarkable compassion, someone who insisted we were worthy of a truly
unbelievable amount of love. What do we
do with this when we wake? How do we possibly repay this debt? Of course, the similarity to God’s infinite
compassion for us is obvious, not only for the gifts God has given us but the
very fact of our lives, the facts of glazed apples and grain fields, of
cellular mitosis and solar flares, of laughter and friendship and afternoon
naps. How do we possibly repay
that? Well we don’t. We live in gratitude. And that gratitude is easier from the
experiences we have all had, knowing the contingency of it: we could easily
have died on that side of the road, could easily have been the people we were
serving this year. And yet we were
not. We don’t deserve the gifts God has
given us, and yet we have them.
Gratitude and mystery. And a desire to get back on that road that we
ourselves were on—that we could have died on!—and help those who need that
help.
And I think that’s where a lot of
you are right now. And that’s a great
place to be! So let’s think now about
someone else in our story. The Good
Samaritan. Let’s imagine that this is
really the first time he’s done anything like this. He saw the man dying on the side of the road
and thought, you know what? That guy’s my neighbor. I’m gonna help him. And so he really does, he really goes all
out. And man, after he leaves that
hotel, he feels great. It’s unbelievable
how good he feels. But then—well, he’s
out of money. And he’s got to get home,
because his wife and kids are probably wondering where he is (no cell
phones!). And how is he going to explain
those missing coins to his wife, by the way? And let’s say he’s a manual
laborer, and he’s got a lot of work to catch up on for his boss because he’s
been busy with this man on the side of the road situation. And he’s thinking
about all of this as he’s walking out of the inn, and a few miles on his was
back home, he sees another man on the side of the road. I imagine him looking up at God and saying,
Seriously? Didn’t I just do this for
you?
I’m sure all of us have had
something like this experience in our ministry work, or in our interactions
with those experiencing homelessness or any other marginalized group. You’ve all at this point figured out on your
own some smart lessons about developing boundaries, about learning that our
justice and charity work plants seeds for plants we may never see. We all know this stuff is hard, that Jesus
tells us “the poor will always be with you,” and that the struggle continues
because it never ends. And I hate to
tell you, it won’t get any easier. When
I was an inner-city high school teacher, I made around 30,0000 a year, which
for New York City was not that much and was a lot less than I knew I could have
made if I had gone into some other field.
So did I still have to give 10 percent to charity? If my work was a ministry, should I still
volunteer? Now, as a sociologist working
with Muslims and Evangelicals to correct religious stereotypes and trying to
improve the relationship between science and religion, should I be spending
more day-to-day interactions with marginalized people like I used to? Is it bad that I travel so often I can’t
really have a role in my parish’s liturgy?
I still honestly don’t know the answer to these questions, and I don’t
think there are easy answers. But I
think there’s a helpful perspective, which is to remember ourselves not as the
worn-out Samaritan but as the man on the side of the road who wakes up in a
beautiful room, incredibly grateful to be alive. I think we might feel less overwhelmed by the
needs of all of our neighbors if we can live out the non-attachment Sisters
Margaret and Carolann have been telling us about. Remember that we should have died on that
road. Everything from that moment on is
a gift. Don’t feel upset you can’t help
everyone; feel grateful you can help anyone at all. What can we do in a spirit of gratitude, in
celebration for the wonder of our existence?
It’s an important question for us to remember, especially as we move
forward in our commitments to justice and peace. This is where the Dominican commitment to
relationship is so central, and why it has to be paired with a sense of
gratitude: it is our relationships that make us feel the need to act for justice,
and it is our gratitude that helps us do so with patience, non-attachment, and
a calm and loving awareness of our own limitations (and the limitations of
those we’re serving).
Which brings us to another
perspective in this story, Jesus’s audience.
Remember that Samaritans were not at all well-loved in Jesus’ s time,
and the phrase Good Samaritan was an oxymoron, along the lines of all of just
having seen Malala’a speech at the United Nations and someone telling us about
the “good member of the Taliban.” What,
we might respond. What could we possibly
have to learn from those people? And yet
it was this person who was our model. As
all of you leave your volunteer year, it’s going to be harder to find a
community of accountability, sadly enough right at the moment of transition
when you most need one. You might find
that your Catholic friends are not the same as your social justice friends, and
your religious friends are not the same as your intellectual friends. That’s okay.
There are virtues to be learned from all of them. Yet that makes it all the more important for
you to have friends who you can call at any time and who will hold you
accountable to your Gospel mission. For
me, I have three friends and my wife, and all four of those people inspire me
constantly to ask myself hard questions about how I’m living out the Gopsel,
and doing so in a spirit of love. As
with my friends, that sort of accountability will rarely be us asking each
other the hard questions, like, is that job really doing God’s will?—though
those questions are important too.
Instead, the accountability will be by the lives we lead, which inspire
each other to challenge ourselves, and to remember our gratitude, to remember
that this life, that our life, is God-soaked, to borrow a term from Sister
Maryann and Sister Carol.
And it’s in that spirit of
gratitude that I want to think briefly about another group in this story: those
who aren’t there. Where are the women
here? Where are the Samaritans who might
hear this story, complaining that they’re being used as an example of how
ridiculous it is they would do good?
Where are the non-students who might feel intimidated to be part of the
conversation? How are all of these
people reacting? Are they listening in
on the boundaries? What can we do to
welcome them, grateful to be able to talk to anyone, and eager to share what
none of us—including us—have earned, but all of us, being made in God’s image,
deserve?
Which brings me to the last person
in our story I wanted to talk about.
Jesus. Notice how, in Luke, it’s the member of the crowd that says the
Greatest Commandment, not him. Jesus can
tell these are some people who can handle some heavy stuff. And so he lays it on them. What I’m most struck by in the Gospels is how
differently Jesus reacts to
everyone. He tells some people to give
up everything, and he tells other people to keep what they have and throw a
party. How to explain it? I think the only answer is that Jesus
recognizes we are all beautifully, wonderfully different. Sister Joan Chittister reads the Tower of
Babel story as ultimately about how God separated us so that we might come to
recognize each other’s difference. I love the Gospel of Luke’s story of the
rich man, you know, the young man who knew all of the law and asked Jesus what
else he should do, and Jesus said give up what you have and follow me, and the
rich man couldn’t, because he had many possessions. In Luke, there’s this small addition where before
Jesus tells him what he has to do, it says “Jesus looked at him and loved
him.” That’s so important.
We need to remember—I need to
remember—as we challenge ourselves, as we challenge each other, and as we
challenge the world, to do so always in love.
And to accept that challenge with gratitude for the ability to act on
the challenge, and the life to carry it out.
And then we can all try to live like these characters inside of us: the
man on the side of the road, the Good Samaritan who saves him, the students who
asks a question of the Lord, and the Christ who answers all questions the same
way: with patience, gentleness, and love.
So while the details of figuring out how to save every neighbor might
appear impossible, remember the answer is as much the peace of its telling as
the mystery of its words. And make no mistake: this story is a mystery. How to actually help everyone in the radical
way Jesus asks us to do is quite literally impossibly hard. So the key is the spirit of the answer, the
peace of Christ’s response. I hope that
if we live in that peace—and in gratitude for the opportunity to do so—we will
provide a space for that mystery to unfold.
