What is the priority in our public life? Should it be helping others, or should it be purity of ideology?
Yesterday afternoon (Saturday), I had lunch in a little local restaurant in small town Indiana, in a part of the state that typically votes Republican. The family at the next table greeted a friend who walked in. The talk was about work, and who was employed, who was looking for work, and whose house had been lost to foreclosure.
"There is a house down the street from us," the woman said, "which is being sold by the bank. Those people didn't lose their jobs, but their medical bills were so bad that they lost their house."
Their friend said, "I know three families like that. One of them lost both of their cars and their house to medical bills. Now they live with their parents, and are driving their grandpa's car, the one he's had for twenty years. They are scared about how long it will last, 'cause they need it to get to work."
"Something has to be done--this is just so terrible for people."
On a different Saturday . . .
One Saturday morning, there was a guest speaker at the weekly gathering. One of the faithful was a crippled woman, who had been that way for 18 years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. The guest speaker, one Jesus of Nazareth, healed her.
The leader of the synagogue, however, was indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, and he kept telling the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."
But Jesus answered him by saying, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? So ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for 18 long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?"
When he said this, all his opponent were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
Luke 13:14-17, NRSV, emended.
The next time some Christian Republican talks to you about how it is important NOT to bail out people from their mortgage troubles, or about how it is important NOT have the horror of socialized medicine, refer them to the 13th chapter of Luke.
What did Jesus do?
Go and do thou likewise.