For folks outside our tradition, the tradition of Unitarian Universalism, I think it’s sometimes hard for them to understand our rather generous interpretation of scripture - I mean, the interpretation of what is scripture as well as the interpretation, then, of that scripture. The Good Samaritan is a parable familiar to most people as scripture, but I didn’t really learn this story, get this story, until I directed a production of Godspell while in college. As you may know by now, many a Broadway show, for me, is elevated to the level of scripture…even when it’s not based on Bible stories.

Theodore Parker in his sermon, The Transient and Permanent in Christianity, said that almost every sect makes Christianity rest on the personal authority of Jesus, and not the immutable truth of the doctrine themselves. "Yet it seems difficult to conceive any reason," said Parker, "why moral and religious truths should rest for their support on the personal authority of their revealer, any more than the truths of science on that of him who makes them known first or more clearly."

Bascially, the lesson of the story of the Good Samaritan is sound whether you first heard it from Jesus’ lips, read the words maybe recorded by someone possibly named Luke, or the Stephen Swartz musical. It’s not meaningful because it’s in the bible, but the story got into the canon because of its deep meaning.

"and who is my neighbor?"

Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarri, gave them to the innkeeper, and said "take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "the one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "go and do likewise."

I’m no expert on health care, or health care delivery, or even health for that matter, but I do get the theological truth behind the Covenant for Health Care by the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Our health is inextricably tied to the health of our planet and all of our neighbors on the planet, and we can, like the Samaritan, be moved with pity and do something about the health of our planet, our neighbors, and ourselves.

Health is more than the absence of disease in the body., but is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.

A time in my life where I felt healthiest, was sometime during my two years in the Peace Corps in Honduras, Central America. Partly because of the lifestyle - walking being my major mode of transportation, and weather which made walking pleasant most times of the year. I was physically more active than ever in my life - hauling water to get it to my house, washing laundry by hand, going across the street for the latrine. The food I ate was also healthy - fish, bananas and plantains, cassava, rice and beans. The culture shock and emotional roller coaster of living among people with different languages and customs and understandings meant that I wasn’t always socially comfortable, but I understood enough why, and I was well. I was mentally challenged, clearly, learning two new languages - learning so much every day. And except for an occasional bout with dengue fever and - I was often free of disease in my body.

Now, I took aralen while there - a malarial preventive, thanks to modern medicine. I took mega-vitamins - which strikes me as odd now, because I think the vitamins I got from my food were probably richer and better than in my diet now - though green foods were mostly absent. And besides the aralen and vitamins, I think my health benefited from a healthy lifestyle, a challenged mind, and a close community.

Something about the community, too, you must know. Now, sometimes a close-knit community derives it’s closeness from sameness, from an intolerance of difference - those like us are in, and those unlike us are out. But the village I lived in seemed to embrace difference. There were some remarkable differences that were welcomed in that community, it seemed to me, that were not as well-embraced in the world I came from. I’ll just mention two, but you can extrapolate to other such examples.

One was a woman who was deaf, who had developed her own natural form of sign language that those in the village seemed to understand and use. It was so natural, that the first time I met her at the water well, I swear, she and I had a complete conversation - using no words, just hand signals. Now, it was probably a conversation that was so ordinary in that context - are you doing laundry today? No, I’m getting water for a bath, kind of conversation… nevertheless, it struck me that in the world I came from my interactions with people who are deaf had nearly always been mediated by an interpreter or through written language - and that people who were deaf were not so integrated into the communities I came from.

My second example is that of a man who was quite effeminate and wore skirts instead of pants He was always laughing and making jokes - and I wonder if that was a defense and if he wasn’t as integrated into the community as it seemed…. But I was struck how in this village heavily influenced by a wider machismo culture, how integrated this man in drag was into the life of the village. I didn’t hear him talked about, or ridiculed. He was just accepted - and that was just the way he was. It struck me at the time what a big deal we make of differences in the world I came from.

Now, I describe all this aware that what I understood of village life was limited by understanding of language and culture and relationships and foreign-ness. As foreign workers go, Peace Corps volunteers are relatively sophisticated in our understanding of the host country because we tend to live in such close-knit communities, at a similar poverty level, and speak the language.

I did not always understand the groups of foreigners who would come to these communities for quick fix solutions ignorant of the culture they were entering…. My mom clipped out a newspaper article and sent it to me about one such person who traveled to Honduras for some kind of relief project, and I remember well the statement made by this person, that Hondurans don’t even know that you’re supposed to eat your Cornflakes with cold milk - that they put warm milk on their cereal…. It made me laugh so hard I almost cried. What that person didn’t know is that their milk comes straight from a cow, not a commercial dairy that pasteurizes and cools the milk, so it’s either fresh and warm or freshly boiled to prevent disease…. So, as I said, I didn’t always sympathize with the relief workers that would come trying to help people they didn’t understand.

However, I was fortunate to have my bias challenged… I had been teaching women to read and write in their native language, and in Spanish. I had quite a few students, many of whom really weren’t familiar with print. And so the work was slow. But one time, a group of ophthalmologists came to the village I lived in and tested everyone’s eyes and handed out glasses…. And though I begrudged their arrival and criticized their lack of Spanish and real misunderstanding of Black Carib culture - I noticed when they left, that a few of the women I taught all of a sudden knew how to read and write. They simply couldn’t see before. What a revelation that taught me an important lesson about passing judgment.

Sometimes I think it helps to get out of the world we know, to imagine another way. …. I realize that my time in Honduras has become a kind of metaphor for me of healthy living, which is full of irony, I know - as the country is one of the poorest in Central America and life expectancy is short, disease prevalent, and culture both sexist and violent. Suffering was expected and on the surface, and so it seems, small gains in quality of life could bring great joy. Whereas a pair of glasses is generally not a big deal for most of us, in a village with no health care system or ophthalmologists, it made a joyous difference for a few women who were taking classes to learn to read words they simply couldn’t see before.

So the deprivation was real - and there is a difference between our experience of something and a more objective sort of reality.

We tug and pull and shape that objective reality with such initiatives as a national health care plan - we can objectively change the way things are, and we can, to a certain degree, shape our own experience. We don’t control our experience, but we do have some choices and choices in the way we interpret our experience.

The priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan, all had choices about whether or not to stop and help the man who had been left half-dead by the side of the road. But the man who was robbed, stripped, and beaten presumably had no choice in that. ’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "the one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "go and do likewise."

Religion is not for the faint of heart. ‘Go and do likewise’ is as tall an order as a national health care plan. In a New York Times Op Ed piece, Paul Krugman praising the John Edwards universal health care plan - he points out that unlike the last election, most candidates are at least providing lip service to the notion that we need some kind of universal health care system. That it’s no longer acceptable to provide health care only to those who can pay for it - but that we must, as a society, figure out ways to provide insurance for those who otherwise won’t get it.

Insurance is one of those things that doesn’t really seem to matter much as long as you’re healthy. But once you’re sick, it can make all the difference - like a pair of glasses in a Honduran village. We have too many people undergoing serious and expensive treatments in this congregation at this time for us to discount this issue. It matters. And even if the impact was felt only by our neighbors, it matters.

It’s a tough issue. Your board of trustees grappled with it this year for its own employees. The cost of health care and the inability to get it puts such non-profits such as this church at risk. When I first moved here, before my husband got a job, I had to join the Michigan Farm Bureau to get health insurance. And I had many colleagues, ministers serving congregations like this one, who could simply not get health insurance at all, often because of pre-existing conditions. One reason the Board dealt with this issue this year was that the Unitarian Universalist Association, after years of looking, has finally found a company that would insure church workers as a group, which is a significant step forward. Though that insurance is still quite costly…. You can get it now, if you can afford it. You can get it even with pre-existing medical conditions.

At present this church is financially dependent on the fact that your two employees who work full-time and closest to full-time (that me and your Director of Lifespan Faith Development) - as a church, we’re dependent on the fact that we’re married to men and get health insurance through our husband’s work. If we were partnered with women right now, the Michigan Court of Appeals has just made a decision to deny same sex partner benefits to University and State employees…. Your director of Lifespan Faith development’s husband works for the university and my husband works for the state… The church, in its present financial condition, could not afford to pay health insurance for us if we needed it. They’ve committed to do it, but I don’t know how we’d swing it if circumstances we’re any different.

We’ve been invited by the pastor at Edgewood United church, the Rev. Karen Gale, to join their community for a service of hope and healing sometime in February. It is still in the planning stages. I will keep you posted on that event, but it is in direct response to this ruling by the Michigan Court of Appeals to discriminate against same-sex couples.

What else can we do? Continue to work for healthy environments, and do as much as we can to nurture our own bodies, minds, and communities. Understand the linkages between our physical health, and economics, politics, and ecology. Ask candidates for political office to get specific about universal health care proposals. And do our own work.

In the last year, my personal work has been around stress management. Something we all know that impacts our physical health directly, and is largely uncovered by current insurance plans. If it’s covered, it’s probably because the health crisis has already happened, and I’m trying to avoid that in the first place. I’m fortunate to have a job that I think requires me to do my own personal work to explore shadow sides of my personality and help me explore healthier ways of doing and being in the world. I couldn’t stand here in this pulpit and preach every Sunday if I didn’t see it as part of my job to work on myself and on the world in the intervening weekdays. Not that my efforts are always met with great success, but I am always trying.

And if you’ve heard me preach enough by now, you probably know that I think small changes are how big changes are begun. The Covenant for Health Care proposed by the Network of Spiritual Progressives helps highlight the spiritual imperative of showing mercy to our neighbor, caring for the world and ourselves, and re-integrating our disparate notions of health and health care to include spiritual, physical, mental, and social well-being.

These are not spiritual imperatives because the good rabbi, Michael Lerner, declared them to be so, or even because the good rabbi, Jesus, said to go and do likewise. But rather the rabbis are simply declaring what we already know to be true - that our fate is inextricably linked to the fate of our neighbor, that our physical health is inextricably linked to the health of our society, and our spiritual health and our mental health.

We will do well to build a society, to build a land, cognizant of these complicated layers and relationships until, in the words attributed to the prophet, Amos, justice shall roll down like waters and peace like an everflowing stream.

* Sermons are meant to be spoken and not written. I have not edited this homily to written form.

Sermons copyright 2007, all rights reserved.

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