Two mountains stood
on opposite sides of suffering.
From one came the language of holiness:
There may be meaning in the wound.
From the other came the cry of protest:
Why speak of meaning
when the wound can be treated?
And between them—
below the arguments,
below the theology,
below the accusation—
someone was hungry.
Someone was sick.
Someone was sleeping on concrete.
Someone was waiting
for the debate about suffering
to become bread.
Be careful, therefore,
when defending God
that you do not walk past
the person God loves.
Be careful,
when condemning religion
that your criticism does not become
another comfortable place
from which to observe suffering.
For the wounded neighbor
does not live inside our argument.
The neighbor lives
beside the road.
The priest may have reasons.
The Levite may have reasons.
The theologian may have reasons.
The skeptic may have reasons.
The economist may have statistics.
The politician may have policies.
The institution may have explanations.
But the Samaritan has oil.
Bandages.
A beast.
A room.
Money.
And time.
He does not first ask
which philosophy of suffering
will survive the century.
He asks:
Where does it hurt?
There are arguments
we may deserve to win.
There are hypocrisies
that should be exposed.
There are doctrines
that should be clarified.
There are systems
that should be confronted.
There are injustices
that must be named.
But beware—
we can become so skilled
at proving what is wrong
that we never become
what is needed.
Truth that never crosses the road
can remain true
and still leave the wounded alone.
The poor are sacred.
Poverty is not.
The sufferer possesses dignity.
Preventable suffering does not.
The hungry child is holy
in the sight of God.
Hunger is not.
The person without shelter
bears the image of God.
Homelessness does not.
Do not confuse
the holiness of the person
with the holiness of the condition
that is crushing the person.
The Cross does not teach us
to preserve another person's cross.
It teaches us
what God is willing to enter
in order to come near.
Christ did not love suffering.
Christ loved the sufferer.
He touched.
He fed.
He listened.
He healed.
He wept.
He approached those
whom respectable society
had learned to pass at a distance.
The Cross is therefore
not divine admiration of pain.
The Cross is divine proximity.
And proximity changes the question.
From far away we ask:
Who is correct?
Up close we ask:
What do you need?
From far away:
What caused poverty?
Up close:
Have you eaten today?
From far away:
What policy should change?
Up close:
Where will you sleep tonight?
Justice needs the first questions.
Mercy refuses to postpone the second.
For bread tonight
and justice tomorrow
are not enemies.
The Gospel carries both.
Then, after feeding,
ask why there was hunger.
After binding the wound,
ask who keeps producing wounds.
After finding shelter,
ask why shelter became unreachable.
After helping the worker,
ask why labor cannot sustain a life.
After meeting the homeless person,
ask what happened to housing, wages, health, family,
community, and belonging.
Mercy bends down.
Justice looks around.
Love does both.
Perhaps this is where
the two mountains must finally meet.
Not at the summit.
In the valley.
Where arguments acquire faces.
Where statistics acquire names.
Where theology acquires hands.
Where criticism acquires responsibility.
Where charity becomes solidarity.
Where the stranger becomes neighbor.
And perhaps Christ is already there,
waiting beneath our arguments,
asking neither,
“Which mountain were you standing upon?”
nor,
“Which side defeated the other?”
but something far more difficult:
“When you saw Me wounded,
did you come near?”
So speak truth.
Challenge hypocrisy.
Examine theology.
Confront injustice.
Repair systems.
Search for the roots of poverty.
But when you have finished speaking,
cross the road.
Bring bread.
Bring medicine.
Bring shelter.
Bring justice.
Bring your hands.
Bring your time.
Bring yourself.
Because the final examination
may not be whether
we defeated the argument before us,
but whether,
while fighting to be right,
we failed to see
the person lying between us.
Do not win the argument
and lose the neighbor.
Descend from the mountain.
Enter the valley.
Cross the road.
Become the neighbor.
Pastor Steven G. Lee
Street GMC Corps
September 17, 2026
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