If you don't want politics in the pulpit...

I would like to have a chat with JD Vance’s Sunday School teachers. Specifically, whomever told him that Jesus says there is a hierarchy of people you are supposed to care about.

I have no idea how anyone could interpret the Good Samaritan story to say “you’re not a citizen of my country, therefore I am not required to care if you live or die.”

Let’s take a look at the text, shall we? Here it is, from Luke 10 (NRSV):

Samaritans and Jews hated each other. Samaritans, you see, were the people left behind when Israel was overthrown and many people taken into exile. They adapted, they intermarried with the people who were exiled from other lands into theirs, and without the temple, they began to worship God in different ways and places. They saw themselves as the true keepers of the true faith, because they stayed in the land.

Meanwhile, those who returned from exile in Judah (later called the Jews) had also adapted their faith to their circumstances in different ways. They had written scriptures, new forms of prayer and worship, and new habits and languages. They began to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, and saw themselves as the true keepers of the true faith, because they maintained their faith even through exile.

So basically, both sides thought the others were heretics and usurpers. In Jesus’ time, they each stayed in their own space and tried to avoid each other as much as possible. If they had to coexist in the same area, they just pretended the other didn’t exist. (This is why the woman at the well was like “um, why are you talking to me?”)

When the lawyer stands up to test Jesus and asks “okay, I’m supposed to love my neighbor - but who is my neighbor?”, he’s really asking “who is not my neighbor?” And the lawyer almost certainly expects a list like Vice President Vance laid out: here is the hierarchy of who you care about, and in what order.

But instead, Jesus tells a story. The priest and the levite both see the dying man and cross on the other side of the road. The lawyer likely expects the third person, the good guy, to be someone like him - a lawyer, a scribe, a Pharisee, etc. Instead, Jesus pulls out the Samaritan. The Samaritan, the heretic, the enemy - this guy is the one who picks up the dying man, puts him on his own donkey, bandages his wounds, and makes sure he’s taken care of. Of all the people to come along and save a man’s life, it has to be a Samaritan?

The entire point of this story is that the Samaritan understands that there is no hierarchy. There is no ‘I don’t have to care about you’ circle we can draw around ourselves in which part of the world is ‘neighbor’ and part of the world is ‘everyone else.’

Because we are children of God, we are obligated to love our neighbors - and our neighbors are everyone. Even if we think they’re the worst.

What we’re seeing from Vance and other Christian Nationalists is another layer of the post-Christendom shift. In the US, when Christianity was not only ‘the norm’ for many communities, but normative in our wider culture, it was socially expected that you at least pretended to care, a little bit, about other people. If you were going to be considered a leader, an up-and-comer, a ‘good person,’ you were expected to at least engage in a facade of charity, kindness, and benevolence.

That era has ended.

Now, the masks have come off and they’re saying the quiet parts out loud: we don’t care, we’ve never cared, and we shouldn’t have to.

This puts compassionate Christians in a weird spot, suddenly feeling like outliers and rebels in the faith we thought we all shared. We’re learning the hard way that some were handed the plow of “love your neighbor” and managed to forge it into the sword of “blood and soil.”

Once that pandora is out of the box, it’s nearly impossible to go backwards. We’re not going to shame VP Vance or most others into pretending to care again.

So what do we do in the face of this blatant misuse of scripture and Christian theology?

We use our own hands and voices, over and over and over and over and over and over again, to proclaim the truth in word and deed. We continue to care, even when others refuse to, even when it doesn’t benefit us.

This may mean we find ourselves at odds with government policy, but here is, for once, a piece of good news: the President, the Vice President, Congress and the Supreme Court combined have no power over what churches do on their own dime, in their own spaces. My ministry receives zero federal funding, so that threat doesn’t scare me. JD Vance can be mad about it, but in and through our ministries we can continue to care for immigrants and refugees, affirm our trans and nonbinary siblings, teach the best and worst of American history, promote diversity, equity and inclusion, and encourage one another toward welcome and compassion in all things.

Even if everyone else is off in left field, we can and must continue to follow Jesus.

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