Podcast: 

homily20100711.mp3

I recently had the opportunity to watch the movie “Invictus”.  
Its stars Morgan Freeman, playing the role of Nelson Mandela, 
the first black leader of South Africa 
after years and years of apartheid 
and oppressive white regimens as the minority of the country.  
It is a brilliant movie and I highly suggest watching it.  
It is a powerfully-told story about how Nelson Mandela 
used the white people’s love of the game of rugby, 
to have them rally behind his government 
and to help to have a unified government.

There were some particularly moving parts of the movie:
At the beginning as he takes over the governmental offices, 
he and all of his black entourage walk into the new offices
and you see all the white people packing up their boxes 
assuming that every one of them will be fired.  
He was moved with compassion and looked upon them, 
and called a full-staff meeting of everyone, blacks and whites.  
And in that meeting, he says, 
“We are not here to take over; 
we are here to run a country together.  
I invite you to stay and to help me to do that.
But if you cannot work for me because I am black, 
then it is probably better that you do leave.
If you cannot work with me because I am black, 
it is probably better that you do pack up your boxes and leave.  
But if it doesn’t bother you, 
you being white does not bother me either.  
And the movie goes on. 
There is a crystallizing moment when his security detail, 
whom are all black, demand more help because 
he has an incredibly busy schedule going from one place to the next, 
and it takes a toll on the security force.
So the head of the security demands more men for security.  
In arrives his three new security men and 
they were the former security guards, three white men, 
who had protected the previous President Botha.

The head of security is outraged.  
He storms out of the office and goes up to Mandela and says, 
“What do you think you are doing?  
There is no way we can leave your security in their hands.  
Only a couple of days ago, they would have imprisoned 
every single one of us without a single need for a charge.  
I cannot do it.”   
Nelson Mandela looks at him and says, 
“Yes.  You can.  I know it is hard 
and what you say is true, but now is a time to be different.  
They expect us to do this, but what I ask you to do 
is to forgive them and to be different.”  
And the security guard says, “I don’t know if I can do that.”  
Mandela says, “That is what is called of you and I 
and you can do it and I ask you to do it for me.”  
And he does, and the movie continues on with 
his security detail being both black and white.

That whole idea of “it is you and I who are called to do it” 
is a very poignant part of the gospel message.  
We always hear this particular gospel story of the Good Samaritan
and we say, yeah, yeah, yeah.  “You need to do it” 
but often times we do not apply that message to ourselves.  
Today’s gospel is a perfect illustration of it.  
None of us here listening to this story 
have heard this story for the first time.  
We have heard it umpteen times.  
When we hear it, I suspect that most of us 
imagine ourselves to be the Good Samaritan.  
Most of us hope and intend to be the Good Samaritan in every situation. 
But if we are honest with ourselves, 
we are more like the priest and the Levite, 
who cross over to the other side 
and do not want to have anything to do with 
that person who is in danger, 
that person who is a victim.  
If we are really honest, we rarely act as the Good Samaritan
even though we want to and know it is the right thing to do.
Even though we have the Good Samaritan law enshrined in our country, 
we still find it easy enough to turn away from those in need.

“Who is my neighbor” Jesus is asked.  
And the answer in the story is, “Anyone in need.”  
Any one in need is our neighbor. 
The Samaritan is held up as the ideal; he is held up as the model right.
We have to understand how the Jews would have heard this;
it would have been outrageous.  
The Samaritan was the lowest of their society; 
they were not considered even worth talking to.
And the law of the Jews said that if somebody was bloody, 
you should not touch them because that would contaminate you.  
You would be dirtied by their blood.  
And so the priest and the Levite were only doing 
what the law prescribed which is to avoid contact of blood.
But there are times, Jesus says, when we must go above the law to do what is right, to reach out to those in need.

At some point most of us have walked past 
the homeless or destitute person.  
We turn a blind eye.  
We pretend we do not see them; we walk away.  
We do that because this person makes us uncomfortable.  
We turn away from them, pretending we do not see them.
But we do and we know in our hearts we do 
but we don’t know quite what to do to help them.  
If we give them money are we really helping them, 
or just enabling their continued destitution.  
There are no simple answers.  
It is not just the homeless we walk away from 
but we often say that people who are immigrants 
are people who should not be here.  
That is what the law says.
Yet these are people are our neighbors; 
they are our neighbors because they are in need.  
That is hard for us to hear because they are in need 
even though they are illegally here.  
They are still human beings in need.

Many of us disagree with why we give handouts to people 
who are on the streets because we just enable them.  
But they are still our brothers and sisters in need.  
There are many other examples.  
We might say of a family member or a friend 
who has hurt us they don’t deserve it.  
The immigrants don’t deserve it.  
The homeless people don’t deserve it. 
But it is not about deserving it.  
The scripture says nothing about the law, 
or the righteousness of it; 
it is about compassion and mercy.  
It is about reaching into our own hearts 
to tend to the basic needs of somebody in need.  
It is a hard gospel my friends.  
It is a hard one to live, but that is what we are called to do.

So how do each one of us come away different this week.  
I suggest that we take one, just one way, 
some one way in which we are going to apply the gospel 
whether it be to somebody who is in need of our forgiveness or mercy in our own family or friends, or whether it is a homeless person;
Or whether it is an immigrant or some other person
—that we do some one definitive thing differently this week, 
that we act with mercy and compassion, 
that we genuinely open our eyes and we reach out, 
and not close our eyes and cross over on the opposite side.  
It might be a family member, a friend or it might be a stranger.  
But today, the gospel compels us to change the way we live; 
our neighbor is anyone in need and 
our work is mercy and compassion.