Painting: The Good Samaritan by Asian Artist He Qi
“Good energy,” as my sister-in-law would say, has a life of its own, and last night it kept nine members of the spirituality group laughing and talking even after we had left the dinner table. Having moved into the living room, we presented a challenge to Noreen, the one who was charged with leading the unruly bunch in prayer and reflection.
I looked around the room and silently gave thanks for each person. We have been gathering once a month for seven years, committed to companioning one another as we move through life’s joys and sorrows. Years ago we christened our gathering place “Sabbath House” because it provided a safe place of rest, renewal, and prayer, things I crave these days as I scrabble through a particularly thorny patch.
Noreen had copied the gospel from her devotional magazine “Living With Christ.” Fr. George Smiga’s reflection on Last Sunday’s gospel of the Good Samaritan moved her, and she thought it would be meaningful to us as well. We began with an oral reading of parable.
“How many of us can identify with the priest in the story, walking sway from a difficult situation?” she asked. Everyone’s hand went up. “What about the Levite…the Samaritan?” The response was the same.
She looked down at the magazine, but I didn’t want her to continue, not yet.
“What about the man who was beaten?” I asked. “I identify with the man who was robbed.” As I said, this is a thorny patch.
That was where she was taking us. She read from the article and asked us to consider sharing some time, past or present, when we experienced God’s rescuing grace from an unexpected person or event, like the man in the story saved not by church leaders or those he assumed would help, but rather by a member of an outcast group he hated.
Stories flowed out of our hurts and times that challenged our faith and broadened our vision of who or what could bear God’s grace to us. Karl Rahner says all grace is mediated, coming to us through the world, but sometimes WHERE it comes from is surprising enough that we miss it all together.
As I drove home after the meeting, the image of lying in a ditch lingered; lying in a ditch, as Fr. Smiga had written, waiting for God’s rescuing grace. I am in a ditch much of the time, and even though someone or something eventually helps me out, I roll back in, or as was the case with the man in the parable, life beats me up, robs me, and throws me back down. One would think that after many years of being rescued, I would trust Gods Grace no matter who or what delivers it, but I dont always. Instead I become angry at lifes unfairness, angry with the ones who beat me up, and angry with God who seems to stand by in silence. I become a dishrag that doesnt want to get up off the couch or out of bed in the morning.
I also miss the lesson to be learned while I am laying there, eloquently voiced by a man suffering with aids who was offering a bit of Grace to a young man dying of the disease: On the other side of anger and suffering I will find peace and a more compassionate heart better able to reach out and offer Gods grace to another who is waiting in a ditch.
© 2010 Mary van Balen
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