(RNS) — The congregation at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, outside Atlanta, wasn’t expecting Kamala Harris to preach last Sunday. When she uttered the words “the Gospel of Luke,” the sanctuary filled with murmurs of surprised excitement. What followed was an ironic reflection on the parable of the Good Samaritan that gently critiqued Trumpian Christian nationalism and nudged her audience to vote blue.
The only problem was that the text she chose wouldn’t behave. The valid critiques and challenges she mined from the parable indicted not only the hostile racism of MAGA Republicans but also the benevolent racism of the Democratic Party. Harris didn’t even seem to notice.
“The parable of the good Samaritan teaches us to love thy neighbor as thyself,” she said, needing to stop for the congregation’s applause. “These words are simple,” she continued. “However, one must ask, are all people of faith living those words? Do we have leaders who understand that, in the face of a stranger, one should see a neighbor?”
Harris was alluding to what we already know: Donald Trump and his movement wouldn’t survive the good Samaritan test. Even if he were inserted into the parable as the man beaten on the side of the road, Trump would reject the aid of the good Mexican — uh, Samaritan — and instead call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on him. Trump is not even the equivalent of the priest or the Levite who step over the beaten man to perform their religious duties: He is closest to the robbers who beat the man and leave him for dead, justifying his lack of care as protecting the border, the unborn, religious freedom or civilization itself.
What we don’t seem to get — judging from the roaring congregation — is that Democrats could just as easily be cast as the robbers, the priest and the Levite as well.
There’s not enough room to recount the many instances where the United States has beaten and plundered other nations, or facilitated the beating and plundering of other nations. Nor is there space to detail the many ways the United States seduces and coerces its people to step over the bodies it has strewn across history. But Palestine is enough to make the case.
The world powers that back the occupation of Palestine by sending arms and money are the assailants who, if not directly beat the Palestinian people and left them by the roadside, have made the crime possible. They try to reframe this crime as a legitimate act of “self-defense” or they simply sic the police on us for protesting it, so that — like the priest and Levite – we’ll step over all the bloodied, dust-covered, mutilated Palestinian bodies we’ve seen online over the past year.
Harris’ sermonette is live footage of someone throwing stones to hide their hands. The Democratic Party can’t honestly claim to be the party of loving your neighbor as yourself — not when a Democratic administration continues to send arms and dollars to the state of Israel, knowing those arms and dollars will be used to massacre innocent Palestinians. We all know that if we lived in Gaza, we’d want America to stop sending the bombs and bullets that kill us. Nothing less.
Harris may not yet have the authority to call for an arms embargo, but she’s made clear that she wouldn’t call one even if she could. She’s also promised to continue actively sending aid to Israel, unconditionally. Those are not the politics of compassion and respect she asked about at the top of her message. That’s the presidential version of leaving the beaten man on the roadside, if not participating in the beating itself.
Unfortunately for Harris, the text isn’t red or blue. When the text provokes her to ask if we have leaders who see the face of a neighbor in the face of the stranger, it’s asking her too. When she concludes that “It is not enough to preach the values of compassion and respect; we must live them,” that must apply to the Palestinian people, whose suffering she upholds by refusing to — at least — put conditions on her support for Israel.
To be sure, Harris did a great job mining the essence of Jesus’ teaching from his parable. She should also practice what she preached.