Life on the other side of the street

The Bible can rightly be called a storybook. As I was growing up in a small town Baptist church, the good folk taught, acted out and interpreted many key Bible stories. I have remembered them. Jesus from Nazareth was an uneducated, but brilliant storyteller. He knew and repeated the great stories of the Israelite tradition. He created and told a new genre of stories. We call them parables. My prejudice, with some justification, considers Jesus the greatest storyteller who ever lived. I consider the story of the Good Samaritan a masterpiece, possibly the greatest story ever told.

The story is so well known that I need not repeat the whole tale. A short version, however, I will retell. A Jewish man was traveling between Jerusalem and Jericho. He was beaten and robbed and left half-dead beside the road. People passed by on the other side of the road, and thus remained uninvolved with what had happened. A Samaritan, an outcast to many Jews, who remains nameless, saw the battered man, crossed the road and tended to his needs, immediate and longer term.

Typically when the story is retold, the significance of crossing the road is ignored. I would argue that crossing the road is the crucial element in the story. It is the initiator of all other actions.

Roads have long been important public facilitators. In the ancient world roads made it possible to walk from one city to another, possibly through many cities, to arrive at a large metropolitan area. Roads have become much more than that in a modern world. Roads have become servants of the automobile and have produced a way of life, not always positive. Today more people are traveling. They are traveling much faster and much further. The scenery along the road has become a blur, a fallen victim of speed.

In the reorganizing of American society, Departments of Transportation have become the unintended number one actor. The goal of DOT is always to speed up traffic to get more use out of the road.

Our roads, streets, and highways, as they have been developed, have made it very difficult to cross to the other side for any reason. Roads have led us to and locked us into enclaves that some want to call neighborhoods but are in fact ghettoes. Streets without companion sidewalks now lead to garage doors that dominate the front of houses. With a punch of a button the garage door opens, the car is driven in, the driver slips into the house without ever having to waive to a neighbor across the street. Streets have done their work. Their God is the automobile and their victim is community life.

What has this to do with the Good Samaritan? The Samaritan crossed the road and found meaningful life. The Samaritan crossed the road and found a person of a different ethnic background who was in need. He met the needs of this newfound friend. Who was the big winner in this story? I would argue that the big winner in the story was the Samaritan. His actions were inconvenient, time consuming, and expensive. However, in my mind’s eye I see the Samaritan going to his nighttime sleep with a deep sense of satisfaction. He probably had been late for whatever appointments he might have had, but he had the joy of doing God’s good.

By God’s grace I am a Christian. I see myself as becoming more devout every day. Jesus got so many things right, and he wants me to get life right. When asked “What should I be doing in the name of Christ?” my best answer is taken from the parable of the Good Samaritan. In my understanding, my most meaningful life work is across the street in the unknown of a troubed world. I suspect that this challenge can be found only on the other side of the street.

What will I find on the other side of the street? In today’s America across the street you will find people unlike yourself. The development of our road systems has created the most segregated society in the history of our country. In the past, segregation in America was based on race. This is no longer true. Segregation in America is now based on economics. On a large scale the development of suburbs is based on economic segregation facilitated by freeways. People of means fled the diversity of cities for the security of life with people with similar resources.

In other areas on a smaller scale, a recognizable pattern has emerged. The development of exclusive, sometimes gated communities is prevalent. Nearby may be found housing for low-income families, housing for moderate income families, and affordable housing. Each is separated from the other. This housing pattern has been entrenched. Housing by economic category has enveloped an entire nation. Economic segregation is the looming danger of our nation.

Economic segregation in housing today is determining the schools that children will attend, the churches they will attend, the jobs and resources that will be available and the community programs that will be available. Already housing segregation determines not simply which college a person will attend but will determine whether or not a person will attend a college at all.

I strongly suspect that the great challenge to American churches and individual Christians will be figuring out how to deal with a segregated society based on economics. The first challenge is our willingness to cross the streets that the world has built. The Samaritan got it right. He crossed the street.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.