America on the Brink

Chapter Seven Christians Can Be Bad Neighbors? Reflections on Luke 10:25-37 and My Visit to the United Nations

Last month, I had the honor to represent BSK’s institute for Black Church Studies at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York City. The occasion was the Second Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent held on May 30 to June 2. 8 It was one of the highlights of my career and definitely an Ephesians 3:20 moment (“God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all I could ask or think”). How did I arrive at such a place? What is a minister and religious scholar doing at the United Nations? Over the past few years, God has been dealing with me about human suffering. I have always touched on these issues in my research and writing on topics such as African enslavement in America, clergy suicide, and nihilism. God has continued to impress upon my spirit the need to give more attention to this. Interestingly, God used the story of the Good Samaritan to give new focus to my work. In the story, religious persons are not the heroes. For whatever reason, they refused to show compassion and love for a neighbor in need. Instead of viewing myself, people in church, and American citizens in general as good Samaritans, as heroes and heroines, God confronted me with the realization that, in some instances, many of us are like those religious persons who refuse to show compassion and love for neighbors in need. In particular, God opened my eyes to the systems and daily processes that preoccupy us, so we do not see the profound amount of suffering happening all around us. So many of us are insulated and isolated from the toll of suffering because “there’s always somewhere we have to be, something pressing that we have to do.” The gospel is, among many things, a call to disrupt the perverse forms of insulation and isolation that leave our neighbors sick, alone, starving to death, and dying in the streets. I have been wrestling with this text and our world. I have preached on this and used aspects of this story in lectures. I have spent many hours studying, including watching videos of people living in abject poverty and inhumane conditions. I sat with their faces and conditions and refused to look away. Often, I tried to imagine if that were my life – what would I think of God,

8 For more information about the forum go to https://www.ohchr.org/en/permanent-forum-people-african-descent .

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