Valerie Rae Hanneman
Luke 10:37 "The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." (NIV)
Luke 18:11 "The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank You that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector" (NIV)
I was driving to church one Sonday morning when I saw a young African-American man crossing Millbrook right past Ashlan. He was dressed all in black - shoes, pants, shirt. He had a long black duster coat on and one of those head coverings that wrap around the head and fall behind the head - a “do-rag” - also in black. My eyes narrowed just looking at this young thug. ‘What trouble are you headed for?’ I thought to myself. Much to my shock he suddenly started jogging across the street towards an elderly white woman on the sidewalk. ‘Oh my gosh! What’s he doing? How am I going to help her! He’s probably got a gun - a knife - something hidden under that duster!’ I panicked inside - instantly thinking the worst. As I started to slow down to help her, he caught up to her as she was half-way up a walkway. As they continued up the walkway, he said something, she laughed, he then opened the door to the Ebenezer Presbyterian Church for her and followed her in. The door shut behind them.
Our verse in Luke 10 comes at the end of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. We call it the parable of the good Samaritan - although Jesus never called the Samaritan "good." If he would have called the Samaritan "good," His listeners would have thought that the Samaritan was dead because for the Jewish people the only good Samaritan was a dead Samaritan. Ethnic tensions ran high between the two groups. The Jewish people looked down on the Samaritans as half-breed mongrels not even worthy of speaking to. (And they didn’t speak to them - remember how shocked the Samaritan woman at the well was when Jesus spoke to her?) The Samaritans resented the Jewish snobbery and the Jewish insistence on Jerusalem being the only real place to worship Jehovah. When Jesus told of the Samaritan helping the half-dead Jewish man, shocked silence probably filled the room. The idea of a Samaritan being a neighbor to the Jewish man was more than they could fathom. Their prejudice ran so deep that when Jesus asked the expert in the law who the neighbor to the injured man was, the expert could not even say, "The Samaritan." Instead he choose to continue to ignore the ethnicity of the man by answering "The one who had mercy on him." Even in the Presence of God Himself this expert could not let go of his prejudices.
In the second parable Jesus told of a Pharisee - the creme de la creme of the religious folk - who went to the Temple to thank God that he (the Pharisee - not God) was so holy and so righteous and so good that he wasn’t like any other man - and most of all - he wasn’t like the tax collector who was also in the Temple. He was prejudiced against the tax collector because of the tax collector’s socio-economic position.
It was probably a toss-up on who the Jewish people despised most of all - the Samaritans or the tax collectors. They despised the Samaritans because of their ethnicity, they despised the tax collectors because of their socio-economic position. That God would welcome either of these groups into His presence was simply incomprehensible to them. There was just no way that God would expect them to share Heaven with these dredges of society.
And these prejudicial people were God’s chosen people.
Just as I am God’s chosen child.
Father has brought me back to that Sonday morning several times. I don’t like going there to much - it certainly wasn’t my finest hour. But Father brings me back to remind me that sometimes what I am seeing is not what I am seeing.
What I saw was a young man dressed in black walking across the street then hurrying to open the church door for an elderly woman. But using the filter of my own prejudices, my mind convinced me that what I was looking at was a thug - a gangsta - looking to cause trouble - probably going towards that woman to rob her. Because of that - I didn’t see what I was seeing and I saw what wasn’t there.
That young man is a person with whom Father desires to have a relationship with. In fact, just knowing that he was going into the church increases the odds that he is already in relationship with Father. But I took one look at his age, at his clothing and said "thug" and because of that - I counted him unworthy. I counted him as less than me. And in doing so made myself no different than that expert in the law or the Pharisee in the Temple.
Father doesn’t like it when His children act that way. Father expects us to look at others in the world the same way that He does. Father doesn’t see the ethnicity or the age, He doesn’t see if they are "religious" or not, rich or poor, Gucci clothes or Goodwill hand-me-downs. Father sees souls in need of a Savior - and He expects me to see them the same way.
When I look at a person and see them through the false filters of my mind rather than through the eyes Father wants me to see them with then I block the flow of love that Father has for this person. I need to look at everybody with God’s eyes.
It isn’t easy to do - to filter everybody through God’s eyes, but in the Kingdom - Father wants us to be seeing what we are really seeing - and not what our mind is seeing.
Holy God, bring me back to that Sonday morning as often as I need to be there. Remind me to not see what I think I am seeing - but to see what You see.
Posted by Valerie at May 20, 2005 08:19 AM