The Proclamation of the Kingdom

A meditation

This is what it looks like. Not a sermon on a hillside, not a crowd — a road, a ditch, and a man in it.

Look at him lying there. He has been stripped and beaten and left, and someone has already come past and gone on. If you look far back under the trees you can just see them, walking away. That is the picture's other half: the ones who kept going.

And then look at the one who stopped. He has got down off his mule and got down into the dirt, and he is heaving a stranger up out of the ditch with his whole body — you can see the strain in his back. The flask of oil is on the ground beside him. He is not thinking about the kingdom of God. He is thinking about how to lift a man who cannot help him.

The mule waits. The dog sleeps. The road goes on to Jericho without them.

*Repent,* he said, *the kingdom is at hand.* And people have made that word into something sour — but look at it here. To repent is to turn around. The priest did not turn. The Levite did not turn. This man turned, and got down, and that is the whole of the good news in one movement of the shoulders.

You are on the road too, and you know which way you were walking. Stop here. There is someone in the ditch, and you know who. Get down.