Faith is having our lives be fired and ordered by a vision of Shalom Shabbat, Sabbath Peace. Where hospitality is the law, because human dignity is a given.
Jesus is telling the Samaritan that just as his profound gratitude is a verb, the faith at the man’s core is also a verb, and the fruits of that faith – wellness, wholeness, and salvation – are verbs as well. None of them are one-time events, but processes to be lived out and shared in the lives of others. The most important part of what Jesus said to him was, “Get up and go.”
“We are worthless slaves. We have done only what we ought to have done.” You won’t find that mantra in any self help manual. But if the church can be a community of honest humility and thankfulness to God about how we got wherever we are, and a community that nurtures the hope even a tiny seed of faith can create, lives will be changed.
I struggle with the idea that the chasm is permanently fixed in the unknowable next chapters, but I know for a fact that the chasms are not fixed here. Whether or not it was too late for the rich man after his death, this story tells us that it’s not too late for the five living brothers and that it’s not impossible for us.
There is a longing for home in every human heart that ever was. We need to come to terms with the truth that this longing won’t go away. And, friends, this isn’t just a matter of self help for our individual souls. The longing for home that’s been shaped by a hopeless, violent, unjust world, will keep looking for a place where it will be accepted and affirmed, no matter how distorted and destructive the terms of acceptance in that false home may be.