Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

Like other American children, I gathered with my family around the TV set on July 20, 1969, as we huddled close to watch Neil Armstrong take those first steps on the moon. It was the summer after my second-grade year, and we had traveled from our home in Houston to Austin, Texas for a visit with my older brother and his wife. I remember the scratchy feel of the thick shag carpet on my bare legs; I can picture my daddy sitting on a footstool, leaning forward in focused anticipation. I remember the grainy images of men in cumbersome suits and the sounds of beeps and static. But most of all, I remember watching the screen with anxious intensity.

Usually, “space stuff” was old hat to me. My father, “Doc Downs,” was a NASA scientist, a “Technical Assistant for Advanced Systems.” To me, NASA meant the plain office building where he went to work early each morning, the place we would take out-of-town guests to look at old rockets in a field in the Houston heat. The moon itself was my favorite bedtime story, the luminous mystery he would show me every night as he carried me outdoors and told me about the stars. On July 20, however, my father’s work at NASA took on real meaning for me. He was one of the team of scientists given the task of designing the American flag that the astronauts were to place on the moon. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the flag was a last-minute decision, an opportunity to show the world who had beaten the Russians in the space-race. All I knew then was that my father and his team had to figure out how to make it fly where there was no gravity and how to store it safely on the lunar module.

“It will pop out like an umbrella,” he had told me and my mother, as he showed us pieces of the material that they had been hurriedly testing. It was what he said during the lunar landing that lodged in my young heart, though: “If this thing doesn’t pop out—if it doesn’t work—we’re just not going back home,” he announced as we watched those first steps on lunar soil. He was half-joking, of course, but I took it as a statement of fact. As the family kept their eyes glued to the screen, my young mind veered off in terrible directions. Where would we live? Where would I go to school? Would I ever see my friends again? Would my father lose his job? When the flag opened without a hitch, the whole family cheered … but no one was more relieved than I was!

On this fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing, I thought about the family behind each of the many NASA scientists and astronauts: the wives and children who watched their fathers zoom away into space, wondering if they would ever return home; the spouses and children of NASA’s contractors, who had to move every few years, following the demands of the booming aerospace industry; the families of the dedicated scientists, who watched and lived the struggle to make something happen that no one had ever done before. Earlier this week, as I looked outside at a beautiful full moon, I also thought about my father and his love for creation, both the heavens and the earth. I heard the words that I say so often on Sundays as an Episcopal priest, recalling “this fragile earth, our island home.” Even in all of the excitement of our explorations, it is home, after all, that matters.

When Jesus Comes to the Protest Planning Meeting

Proper 10C

Luke 10:25-37

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today, it would be so easy to preach about the goodness of the Samaritan. Our Lights for Liberty vigil on Friday was an amazing success, with a large crowd of compassionate and like-minded neighbors gathered in front of our church. And there I was, wearing my collar and standing proudly with my poster, quoting the Bible, no less: “You shall love the stranger as yourself,” it read.

It felt good to shout about what is right. “So there, all you heathens who don’t agree. I’m not that priest crossing the road to avoid the suffering of the marginalized. I know who my neighbor is. I know what God wants. The good Samaritan stopped to help. He came close to suffering. He didn’t hurry on his way, bustling with business as usual. He made himself vulnerable. See, I can be good like that! Look at me, doing what Jesus said to do.”

Ahh, but Jesus’ words are never all that simple. How deep down does my goodness really reach? What about the time that I walked right by a hungry man, even though I was holding a huge bag of bagels? That day, I didn't stand for a cause. I was visiting my grown children in New York City. My goal was to walk a few blocks from my hotel on the Upper West Side to buy bagels. I was supposed to bring them, on the subway, to Brooklyn, where my daughter lived. By the time I found the store, I was running late. As I approached, I saw a huge line ahead of me, snaking all the way down the sidewalk. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a bedraggled man standing on the curb right outside the bagel store.

“I’m hungry,” he called out to passers-by.

“I’m hungry,” he called out to me. No one seemed to be stopping to give him anything. I thought to myself, “This is easy. I can be a good neighbor! I’ll just get some extra bagels and give them to that man.” But then I began to waver, “What if he grabs my purse or yells at me? Does he really even want bagels? Should I even approach him? Should I do this, or not?”

Before long, other worries crowded out all thoughts of the hungry man: “What kind of bagels did my kids say to get? How much cream cheese do we need? How many people will be there and how many bagels will they eat? Now, which subway lines am I supposed to take?” Worry after worry passed through my mind as I waited in line. Finally, late and bagels in hand, I came out of the store to see him still standing there and calling out for food. I gasped. I had forgotten the simple act of getting extra bagels. But I wasn’t about to get back in that long line again to get some more. Afraid not to have enough if I shared, I scurried quickly by, eyes on the pavement. I crossed the street and was gone.

Lucky for me, and for all of us, today’s parable is about more than the goodness of the Samaritan. Let’s see if I can modernize it for us a bit.

Let’s say that some Episcopalians were planning a protest rally against detention camps.  The committee, made up of multi-ethnic, progressive-minded parishioners, was meeting beforehand to iron out the details. All of a sudden, in the middle of their deliberations, Jesus appeared in their midst! They blinked and rubbed their eyes. Yes, it was Jesus alright!

The chair of the committee, a professor by trade, stood up to offer Jesus a seat in their circle. He cleared his throat in a scholarly way:
          “Welcome, Jesus. Tell us: Our churches are shrinking and our country seems to have lost its way. What can we do to have new life?”

“What does the Bible say?” asked Jesus.

The professor spoke up again,  proud to be the first one with the answer: “It says that we’re supposed to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves,” he recited.

“Good answer!” said Jesus. The professor beamed. Everyone else looked a little jealous. Trying to impress Jesus, a woman chimed in:

 “Don’t we also promise in our baptismal covenant to ‘seek and serve Christ in all persons … and to respect the dignity of every human being? That's what our rally's all about, right?’” Before Jesus could answer, everyone seemed to forget that they had asked him a question.

“That’s right!” they shouted loudly. “God welcomes the stranger! No to the camps! Abolish ICE!” they chanted.

Jesus held up his hand for quiet. “Let me tell you a story,” he suggested:

“A devout Episcopalian is going to one of your protest rallies, held at the cathedral. She’s walking from the parking lot, when a thief hits her over the head, grabs her purse, and leaves her unconscious, without ID in the dark alleyway. While she is lying there, the bishop’s car zooms by. He’s late for his flight to an important meeting in New York. He’s fretting about missing his plane. He doesn’t even notice the woman in the shadows and passes her right by.

Next, a car carrying a priest and a deacon comes by. They see the body in the alley, but don't stop to look closely. A wealthy and influential parishioner is dying at the hospital, and they don’t want to make the family mad by getting there too late. They text the parish secretary, hoping that she’ll get the message and help the injured person. They rush away.”  

When Jesus stopped speaking, everyone on the committee was smiling and nodding their heads. They could see that clergy might need to get taken down a peg or two. They knew that a lay person like one of them was going to be the hero, the one who stops and takes care of the hurt Episcopalian. It’s obvious. After all, they were spending their evening planning a whole rally about loving their neighbors!

Jesus continued: “Next, a burly ICE agent, coming from a raid on an undocumented household, is heading toward the cathedral. He’s on his way to harass the protestors at the rally. He’s driving a big, gas-guzzling SUV with a “Honk if you love Jesus” bumper sticker. He sees the bloody Episcopalian lying on the pavement and takes pity on her. He stops and goes over to her. He gives her first aid, including mouth to mouth resuscitation, and then wraps her in his own shirt. He lays her bloody head on the leather backseat of his SUV and drives her all the way to the hospital. He gives them his own credit card to pay the bill, since her insurance card was in the stolen purse.”

        The committee members had stopped smiling. In fact, they found themselves sprawled on the floor in a most undignified fashion, their chairs vanished into thin air.  
        “What do you think?” asked Jesus, as they lay on their backs and looked up at him, dazed. “Which of these was a neighbor to the injured Episcopalian?
          “The … the one who opened his heart to her,” they all stammered.
         “Go home and do the same,” answered Jesus.

At first, nobody moved. They lay there on their backs, looking up at Jesus. It dawned on them that they were the Episcopalian in the alleyway, broken and lost and clinging to life by a thread. They pictured the kind of person they most judged and despised, holding out his hand, offering to lift them up, to pour life back into them. They didn’t want to take his help. They had to swallow fear, pride, years of moral judgments …. But as soon as they took that hand, their hearts too were opened. They saw that it was actually Jesus’ hand that they were grasping, the life-giving hand of our merciful God.

Jesus might not walk into our meetings, but his words do. Parables are powerful, dangerous tools of transformation. The parable of the Good Samaritan, as scholars point out again and again, is not a tame story about choosing to be a good neighbor. It’s about choosing whether or not to take the mercy offered to us as we lie on the ground, beaten and broken by the perils of our common humanity. Even as we stand with the marginalized, may we reach up for the boundary-breaking, healing hand of the Holy One, who makes us all neighbors.