Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Rob Fisher

St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley

Readings: Amos 7:7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Some years ago, I met a living saint.  His name is Chencho Alas.

Chencho is around seventy years old, about an inch shorter than I am, with thick, snow-white hair, smile wrinkles, and piercing eyes that gleam.

I met him in El Salvador, where he is still known as “Padre Chencho,” even though he is no longer a Catholic priest.  Chencho showed me and my travel companions an impoverished neighborhood on the humid coast of the country.  He introduced us to shrimp farmers, and to teachers and students at a school supported by Episcopal Relief and Development.  All of these things part of a broad project to bring stability and self-sufficiency to this community.

He took us to the home of a woman with a new stove, an inexpensive yet effective stove given by ERD.  The stove it replaced did not keep the heat in, so it used more wood while smoke leaked out making its way into her lungs and the lungs of her children.  The new stove was a small improvement by our standards, but to her it was life changing.  It was her pride and joy.

Most amazing of all was an art school that Chencho showed us.

The background to why this school was created was that this area had been plagued by gang warfare.  After the violent eighties and the civil war had given way to relative stability and civil peace, a new plague of brutal gang activity has risen in its place.  Our driver, for instance, had paid off certain people in order for us to travel “safely” through parts of the country known to be controlled by gangs.  Having paid off the right people, we were less likely to experience trouble.

Chencho is not an intimidating physical presence, but he had personally brought the leaders of the warring gangs in this community to a meeting.  He got them to meet face to face with each other, risking his own personal safety.  One misunderstanding, and he could have easily been caught in the dangerous zone in the middle.  Fortunately, and with courage that he gains by his faith, he succeeded in getting the two leaders to agree to have peace between their gangs and to loosen the stranglehold on the neighborhood.

And here is where the art school was born!

It was revealed that if gang members laid down their weapons, they would need to pick up other occupations.  Chencho realized that many of them were very artistic, and he knew an artist in the country who had taught the blind to paint.  He called on his friend, knowing that if he could teach the blind to paint, he could surely teach gang members to be artists and to help them forge new lives and new identities, choosing peace over violence.  We saw the art school with murals covering its exterior, and we met some of the artists and their teacher.

Chencho is a peace-maker, a living saint.  He is filled with light.  To be around him is to feel the joy of the Lord who loves peace.  He is not dogmatic.  He is just a neighbor to every person he meets.

***

After a day of traipsing around with him on the muddy streets of Bajo Lempa, he brought us to his own home where we stayed the night, and we cooked dinner together.

When the meal was ready, we sat down and he said grace in a way that I will never forget.  He said, “We give thanks for the chicken.  I’m sure she was walking around not long ago.  We give thanks to the avocadoes, who give themselves to this delicious meal.  And we give thanks to God who created all things.”

We ate, and talked and laughed together.

During the meal, Chencho told a story of his younger days.

He was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in a city called Suchitoto in the 1970s.  Many of his congregants were poor farmers.  The government decided that he was a threat to the powers that be, and they sent people to kidnap him.  He was tortured and stripped and left for dead on top of a garbage dump.  In fact, he was the first of many priests to receive this treatment, intended to threaten and terrorize any who challenged the political power structure of the day.  Fortunately for Chencho, they had not perfected their methods yet, and they failed to kill him.  He was badly hurt, but he was still alive.

He was taken to a place where he would be safe, and where he was nursed back to health.

While he was recuperating many priests were afraid of visiting him, for fear that they too would be targeted for similar treatment.  But one man, named Martin, came to see him.  They were not friends, but he knew it was right to visit his Christian brother.  Just to visiting him was a selfless act that touched Chencho deeply.

At the recommendation of Oscar Romero, Chencho left the country for his safety.  He eventually left the priesthood and now has a wife and children.  But he never ceased working for peace in El Salvador, even from afar.

And the priest who visited him became an Episcopalian, and is now the bishop of El Salvador, named Martin Barahona.

***

Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan is not impossible to imagine.

I want to take you behind the story a little bit.

We all know that the man was robbed, stripped and beaten by thieves who left him for dead on the side of the road.

And we all know that two people passed by him and did not stop.

But we need to know the cultural context here.

The first man who passed by was a priest.  He was possibly going on his way to perform his priestly duties.

A priest of those days was not a minister or a pastor in the sense that we think today.  Rather, he stood on the threshold between God and man to perform the sacred acts at the temple.  He was only worthy to do his work when he remained set apart, holy, and ritually clean.

And by the Jewish Law, according to the book of Numbers, chapter 19, any person who touches a dead body shall be unclean for seven days.  That person must then purify himself with water on the third day and again on the seventh day.  If he does not wash on the third and seventh day, according to the Law, he will remain unclean and will defile the tabernacle and must be cut off from Israel.

In this case, the priest may well have been thinking of his obligations.  While being a poor neighbor, he was being faithful to his priestly duties.

Likewise, the second man, a Levite, was also required to be ritually clean to perform his services at the temple.

Remember that the reason Jesus tells this parable in the first place is that he was asked a question by a lawyer.  The word “lawyer” is misleading to modern readers, because a lawyer of Jesus’ day was not someone who resembled at all the lawyers of our day.  Rather, this man was a teacher of the Jewish law.  This man knew the Law of Moses inside and out, including all the teachings on ritual purity.  He would have understood that the first two men were following the purity code.

The third man of the parable is not bound by the purity codes of the first two.  He is a Samaritan, far from home on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.  The Samaritans were treated with suspicion in Jesus’ day.  They were neither Jew nor Gentile.  Interestingly, there still are Samaritan communities living in the Holy Land.

When this man comes upon the poor soul who has been attacked, and he sees him naked on the side of the road—possibly dead—he is moved with pity.  He goes to him and bandages his wounds.  He puts him on his own animal and takes him to an inn, leaving money for his care, and he promises to come back and check on him.

***

It is easy to see who fulfilled the law, but—when we leave this place—why is it so hard to follow the Samaritan’s example?

It is not just about goodness.

Our problem is that fear gets in the way.

When we fail to do the right thing it is often not because we are bad, but because we are ruled by fear instead of being ruled by love.

Saints like Chencho teach us another way to be.

The only way possible for us to become peacemakers, to become healers, to become disciples, is to set our hearts like a compass on the love that God has poured into each one of us.  This is what it means to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength and with all our mind, and to love our neighbor as ourself.  Jesus tells us to simply do this, and we will live.

—Amen.

Life is short,

and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts

of those who travel the way with us.

So be swift to love,

make haste to be kind.

And may God’s blessing, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

be with you and remain with you always.