Bible, Improvisation, and New Community

True reconciliation is hard. The past few days I have been talking about Jesus' friendship notions as illustrated by his parable of the Good Samaritan. One of the possibilities I have touched on is that engaging in friendships may be one of the ways in which we bring healing and reconciliation to our racially divided communities. Peter Slade, in his book, Open Friendship in a Closed Society,  studies how the work of Mission Mississippi  (see yesterday's Advent reflection ) encourages racial reconciliation through the formation of friendships in twice weekly prayer breakfasts. He uses the concept of the embrace, developed by the theologian, Miroslav Volf. If you look at the painting of the Good Samaritan by Vincent Van Gogh, you can see the Samaritan helping the wounded wayfarer onto his pack animal. If you look more closely, you can see the wayfarer embracing the Samaritan. In this painting we see an illustration of Volf's concept of the embrace. Reconciliation is har...

I live in Albemarle, North Carolina, a small mill town that has lost most of its manufacturing base, has an aging population, with one of the largest opiod addiction problems in the state. It is probably one of the most racially divided places I have ever lived. Can Jesus' friendship notions address issues of racial division in the contemporary North American context? One of Jesus' most famous parables is that of the Good Samaritan, a story in which the Samaritan comes to the aid of a man who has been wounded and left for dead by robbers on a lonely wilderness road (Luke 10:25-37). The man was not aided by a Levite, or by a priest, who both pass him by. The text is typically interpreted to accentuate the virtue of the Samaritan who helped his neighbor, even though Samaritans were not generally friendly to the Jews. I have a different take about the meaning of the parable, but more about that on a later date... What would it take for us to befriend people who are different tha...