The Heart of the Matter: You Can Do It

Lectionary reflections for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (C)

By Mark Harris

Readings for Pentecost 6, Proper 10, Year C, July 11, 2004

Amos 7:7-17 or Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Psalm 82 or Psalm 25:1-10
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

“The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” (Deuteronomy 30:14)

So on the roads to our various Jerichos, just as we round the bend where the dip in the road provides a ready hiding place for robbers into whose hands we might fall, just as we live into the fear of real life in hard places, the word comes: “You can do it.”

Do what? Keep on truckin', keep on keepin' on? So we can keep up the pace, and, indeed, pass through the valley (or in this case the dip) of death with no fear of no evil? Maybe so. Courage is a first step to getting through the mess alive. “You can do it.”

But living into the Covenant with God is not alone about courage. As it is with so much else concerning faith, it is about the open heart.

In Jesus' parable, which is always spoken of as the parable of the Good Samaritan, it is not the courage to travel the dangerous road that is near the core of the story. It is the willingness to remain open to hospitality, to care, to compassion, in the midst of a lifetime of worries and dangers which do indeed commend courage.

It is all too tempting for most of us to accept the burden of courage and refuse the burden of having the compassion of an open heart.

Those who pass by the beaten and half-dead man in the story Jesus tells are often seen as prototypes of the pious and the careful, the priests, the lawyers and the keepers of the books. But what if they are in fact courageous people, who walk through the valley of the shadow of death determined to get on to Jericho? Who is to blame them, after all, who wants to stay in the valley?

The Samaritan, a.k.a. the unclean and uncouth, always gets the credit for being compassionate, but little do we notice that he too had courage. His courage was to stop in the valley of death rather than to pass by and go on, getting on with the journey.

Compassion, radical compassion, consists in large part in the courage to be with others with an open heart in death's near proximity. That is why ministry in the road, on the streets, in the nasty and the strange parts of town, in the prisons . . . among the lost and losers, is a sign of our attention to God's covenant.

Compassion, radical compassion, consists in large part in the courage to be with others with an open heart in death's near proximity. That is why ministry in the road, on the streets, in the nasty and the strange parts of town, in the prisons, in the work camps of the migrant worker, in the bars and clubs, among the lost and losers, is a sign of our attention to God's covenant.

God says, “You can do it.” And we are called by that assurance to believe that we can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and that we can stop and in compassion stay there for a while, healing and assuring, lifting up and encouraging.

Showing mercy is no easy thing, it is the courage to take on the fullness of God's assurance that “you can do it,” yes indeed, and stay a while too.

The Rev. Canon Mark Harris is author of The Challenge of Change: The Anglican Communion in the Post Modern Era , and a member of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company's ( The Witness magazine) board of directors. He lives in Lewes, Del., and may be reached by email at poetmark@worldnet.att.net .