Deciding Not To Walk On By

If we were all in a room together, I’d start this reflection by asking people, “What is a sin?”

Growing up Catholic, I heard a lot about sin. I grew up just at the tail end of the Baltimore catechism (which some of you might painfully remember) which had an entire section on “Sin and its kinds…” It starts with original sin and works its way into venial (minor) sins and mortal (major) sins – with A LOT of commentary in between!

The Baltimore catechism was known for asking a question and then providing the correct “answer” to that question. I often think about Fr. Jim Callan’s observation that the “church is always answering questions that no one is asking.” That was my experience of the catechism. And most of what I heard about with respect to sin focused on morality – like sex and “impure thoughts.” 

Maybe your experience was different, but I’m guessing that if you were raised “Christian” and are over 40 you’ve had some similar experiences!

But in the ancient world that Jesus came from, the understanding of “sin” was quite different from the one that we tend to experience in modern Christian circles.

In Jesus’ time, the word for sin was chata which was about missing the goal or straying from the path. Moreover, it was always seen in a relational sense – both in one’s connection to God and in one’s connection to creation. So to sin was to stray from the path that connected you to God, neighbor or creation.

The ancient Greeks also had a similar notion in their word for sin (hamartia). To sin was to miss the mark (from the field of archery) and often reflected a fundamental ignorance of the profound connections that link people to one another and creation.

So it’s not that strange that Paul would say in his letter to the Galatians today that he “was amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel.”

Paul is kind of bewildered at how little it took for the people of Galatia (who are no different from you and me) to let go of the authentic good news (gospel) and stray down a different path!

In his time, he was concerned at how quickly the church at Galatia was making “faith” about performance or following the rules. And in his letters to other communities, Paul is concerned at how quickly the church in other places was willing to forsake the gospel for money or wealth or power or privilege. 

I wonder what Paul might say in our era? How might you articulate what Paul would be concerned about these days? How would you finish this sentence, “I can’t believe that you abandoned the gospel for ___________?”

The point I want to make is how quickly we can be lured by the world to let go of the teachings of the gospel and ignore fundamental connections between and among people (or between and among people and creation) – adopting other criteria as a measure for our faith response or ignoring the call altogether.

For many of us, this is just the world or faith that we inherited. But it was not the faith of Jesus.

Our gospel today from Luke 10 is one of the most famous. It is called the “Good Samaritan” and is told in response to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” I have written a bit about this parable previously and you can read that here. In the story, Jesus tells of two religious leaders who walk by an injured person on the side of the road. We don’t know why they keep on walking by, but we’re told that the Samaritan (a group despised by the Jewish audience that Jesus was addressing) is the only one who stops and tends to this person.

The Samaritan did not ask who the person lying on the ground was. The Samaritan did not check their national origin. The Samaritan was not trying to get any brownie points. They just saw a need and responded as best that they could. In short, they recognized their connection to the injured person.

I always find this such a powerful teaching story.

As I reflect on this scripture passage, Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, has been in the national spotlight because a criminal investigation has been re-opened against the university and seven current and former male students for their role in an alleged gang assault/rape of a former female student.

As many of the details come to light from this incident in 2024, one that has emerged is that there were about 50 young men who were members of a group text related to the fraternity where the incident happened. A crude text was sent out about the victim’s being incapacitated and available for sex. To the best of our knowledge, not one young man in the text chain called the police. Not one objected to what was happening. Not one intervened.

They all walked by. They either could not see, did not want to see or had been conditioned not to see their connection to this young woman and to the other men in the text.

This incident at Cornell and its being in the national spotlight has rightly brought a lot of attention to the behavior of men, male violence and the need to address rape culture. As part of the conversation related to what has happened, numerous groups have shared the “Rape Culture Pyramid” (from 11th Principle: Consent) which lists various behaviors at the bottom of the pyramid and culminates in rape at the top of the pyramid. At the bottom are behaviors like sexist attitudes, locker room banter or catcalling, and as the graphic reminds us,  “tolerance of the behaviors at the bottom, supports or excuses those higher up…”

The point of the pyramid is that is shows us, in visual form, the varying degrees of disconnection that happen – or that we “normalize” – and that what happens at lower levels makes the higher levels possible.

I cite the Cornell situation because I think that it is a powerful testimony to the willingness of so many men to walk by sexism or rape culture without getting involved in any way. But that’s not the only issue that people walk by.

I think about Gaza.
I think about the climate crisis.
I think about people living in poverty.
I think about anti-trans hate.
I think about racism in its many forms.
And the list goes on.

In all of these cases, so many people and so many Christians, not unlike the Galatians, have ‘forsaken the one who has called us’ – the One who gets involved. The one who ‘takes sides.’  And we walk on by.

In his compelling book, Jesus Takes A Side: Embracing the Political Demands of the Gospel (Menno Media, 2022), author and pastor Johnny Rashid argues that Jesus did not ‘remain neutral’ in the face of harm. Nor did he cross to the other side of the street. Instead he embraced what Rashid calls a “prophetic center” that gets involved. It is a position that speaks up. Intervenes. Places our bodies in the way. Gets our hands dirty.

In the world we live in, it can be difficult to know what our speaking up or acting might do. We may conclude that it doesn’t matter in the face of such enormous challenges. Furthermore, there are so many issues that we feel like we need to be speaking up all the time.

The Samaritan might have felt similarly, and yet he did what he could in that moment. My guess is that he had “practiced” many smaller actions along the way – making a commitment to intervene at many lower levels of the pyramids that existed in his day – and that what we hear of in this story is the culmination of this practice.

There’s a lot of research that says that witnessing someone doing a good act (or even reading about someone doing a good act) makes it more likely that we, too, will do good acts. We truly have no idea what it will set in motion for others, and those small acts matter for the people we are tending to.

Of course we need large scale social change and social action. But let’s not forget the gospel we are called to – a gospel that invites us to stop and act where we can when we can.

Going back to how we started, if we think about “sin” as disconnection, then the opposite is honoring connection. If we “see something” this week, may we say or do something to honor the deep connections that exist between all of us.