Pastor Jeanine Dagger filled in for pulpit supply this week and gave us a very timely message about empathy and understanding – in a very graphic way. The gospel reading was the story of the Good Samaritan. She started her sermon by asking us to all slip off our shoes. She then asked us to pass them to the person on our right, and then asked us to slip on the other person’s shoes. “How did that make you feel?”, she asked. Responses were, “uncomfortable, vulnerable, self-conscious”, among others.
With the past week’s horrific events of two black men killed by police and then twelve police officers shot and 5 killed by an angry black man, she talked about what national solutions might be. First and foremost was that we follow Jesus’s command that we “Love the Lord our God with all your hearts, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. (Luke 10:27)
She shared about the Parent’s Family Circle – a group of Isreali and Palestinian parents who have lost children to the violence between their two peoples, and how they are working to end the violence so that no more children must die. She spoke of the Blood Relations project where Israeli and Palestinian people donate blood together to intermingle the blood supply hoping that this might wake up all to the fact that everyone is a human being with equal need for dignity, respect and love.
As we talk about ideas for coming together in our own nation, we must listen to each other, understand the obstacles in each other’s lives – and be “shoe-wearers and cross-bearers” for God.