| Wanting to justify himself, the Lawyer asked Jesus… (Luke 10:29) |
| Dear Friends, From Sunday’s reading in Luke’s Gospel, I found myself pondering justification. I was not concerned with Priests, Levites, or even Samaritans (good or otherwise). My mind did not turn to the poor man in the ditch half-dead, or of the robbers who jumped him. Nor did I give much weight to the dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho. My mind did not go to the usual physical, embodied, palpable part of the story, the parable. My mind went to the lawyer’s need to justify himself. I thought about our need to justify. As it was for the lawyer, that need to justify is quite a separator between us and God, and our fellow humans. The need to justify exposes a deficit in humility that does harm to, and slows our movement toward, becoming Beloved Community. The word for lawyer that the writer of Luke uses, indicates one who is not only an expert in the law but one who also has authority to teach it. He can teach. He is an expert. But: can he do? Jesus seems to think so. At every chance, Jesus tells the lawyer: Go and do. Can we come to notice when we are working hard to justify ourselves and stop? Can we develop the mental muscles to get out of our heads to justify, and then exercise our physical muscles to do the work of relationship based in true humility? Can we build connections to one another – regardless of what we *think* it might cost us to our place in family, community, work, or world? As for the lawyer, Jesus seems to think so. If we stay in our heads about how to be in the world instead of doing what we know is loving and is as God has made us to be, the separations between us in all aspects of our lives grow wider and deeper. It really does not matter who we are to one another, but how we are with one another. In Peace, Rev. Dina |