One Flock, One Shepherd (Good Shepherd Sunday; Easter 4B)

One Flock, One Shepherd

Easter 4B
29 April 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Anthony A. Hutchinson 

at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18 

“The day after they had arrested Peter and John for teaching about Jesus and the resurrection, the rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:5-12) 

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

We have been having a lot of funerals here at Trinity in the last weeks.  At a couple of them we have used as the Gospel reading the passage from John 14, where Jesus says that in his Father’s House there are many way stations.  The passage is warm, reassuring, and comforting.  It ends with Jesus saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one comes to the Father, except by me” (John14: 6).   One of the deacons asked me somewhat abashedly if she could read the Gospel but end the reading before that last half-verse, “no one comes to the Father except by me.”  “It might be offensive to some of the visiting bereaved, who might not be Christians.” 

She asked as if she were afraid my response might be “But this is the BIBLE we are talking about here, and I’ll not have a verse of GOD’S WORD edited out because it might be offensive to those who are going to destruction anyway!”  But she asked it anyway, because she knew that I am no fundamentalist, and believe that in order to be understood, God’s word on occasion needs to be reframed or even rephrased. 

Today’s Gospel reading, shares the same problem.  “I am the Good Shepherd” Jesus says, not “a good shepherd.”  And he adds, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”  Likewise, in the Acts reading, St. Peter ends his short speech on Christ being the stone once rejected but now made head cornerstone by saying, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

We here at Trinity Church glory in the fact that we are inclusive.  One of our core values is hospitality.   We believe that inclusiveness and hospitality are what God calls us to.   We believe that because of what scripture teaches us. 
During the life of Jesus, everyone knew that one of the great images of the Hebrew scripture for God’s saving act at the end of time was that of a great banquet. Even though there were plenty of passages that said, like Isaiah 25:7, that this banquet would be for people of all nations, many of the religious teachers around Jesus taught that this would be an exclusive event limited to a few of God’s chosen only.

Jesus replies to such a stingy image of God with parables. He points to the weather and says that God gives his rain and sunshine to both good and bad people alike (Matt. 5:45). He says this tells us about God’s love for all and should be a model for us in how we treat others. Jesus points to families and notes that when children ask for bread to eat, parents do not give them stones, or when they ask for an egg to eat, do not give them a scorpion. “If even average parents try to give their children good things, how much more generous will God be?” (Matt. 7:9-10; Luke 11:11-13)

Jesus’ actions matched his words. He regularly ate and drank with people that his religion told him would make him unclean. He had dinner parties with drunkards and prostitutes, much to the horror of Jesus’ “righteous” opponents. “It is the sick who need a doctor,” he would say, “not healthy people.” (Matt. 9:12)

But not everyone wanted a God as generous as the one Jesus described. They would quote scriptures that “proved” God was picky and exclusive. Jesus would reply by quoting other scriptures, where God looked more loving. 

Jesus reserved his deepest anger for people he accused of “refusing to enter God’s door, and also barring the way to others” (Matt 23:13). He told other parables to explain why it was that despite God’s overwhelming goodness and generosity, some people were right with God and others were not.  The ones who were not truly thankful for God’s generosity, and were not likewise generous to others, were the butt of such parables (Luke 18:10-14).

When Jesus described what he believed the dividing line on the Last Day will be between those who stand and dwell with God and those who do not, he said that it was whether people had been hospitable, and whether they had cared for the marginalized  (Matthew 5: 35-40). 

So inclusiveness and hospitality are core to the Gospel, not just affectations of Trinity Ashland.   

What, then, are we to make of the verses of the New Testament that seem exclusionary? 

Here in post-modern America, with its wide diversity of religious and non-religious traditions, it is always a temptation to simply ignore these verses or deny that they hold any truth or value.   In a landscape of radical diversity, all religious options seem equally valid, valuable, and true, with the exception of views that exclude or subordinate others, or claim unique truth or authenticity.   This often finds expression in a consumer’s approach to religious belief:  pick and choose those things of religion—any religion—that appeal to you, that suit you, and moosh them all together into your particular faith.  “I’m spiritual but not religious” is a common tag line of such boutique faith.  A little bit of Christianity, of Buddhism, of mystic Islam or Judaism, stripped of their authoritative claims or difficult doctrines, of their craziness, and you can arrive at a pleasant blend all your own, like some customized pipe tobacco or drug stash.

To those who might find boutique religion attractive, it is important to remember wise words from the Dalai Lama.  He says that if you take a little of this faith and mix it with a little of that one, you have neither the one nor the other and cannot be properly formed by either. You never will sink your roots deeply enough into a single tradition to truly grow and mature spiritually.  It is only when you sink your roots deep, with an open heart and mind, and acquire some spiritual maturity that you can “branch out” and truly enjoy the fruits of another tradition.  “If you are Christian it is better to develop spiritually within your religion and be a genuine, good Christian. If you are a Buddhist, be a genuine Buddhist.” (H.H. the Dalai Lama, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, p. 46).

Historically, the Church has read these verses and taught that Christ is the sole savior.  This usually entails claims that other faiths are deficient, and are only true or valid in the degree that they copy or agree with elements of Christian faith.  The most exclusionary form of this for the Roman Church has been the doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside of the Church, there is no salvation”).   Protestants have their own form of the doctrine, based on Romans 10:9.  Paul’s “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” in this view becomes, “unless you declare this with your mouth and believe this in your heart, you will not be saved.   

But this exclusionary doctrine has undergone a great shift in the last 40 years, primarily due to the work of Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, who developed the doctrine of the Anonymous Christian.   The idea is that a person can live in God’s grace and attain salvation through Jesus even outside explicitly constituted or stated Christianity.  If a person, say a Buddhist nun or a Muslim imam, tries to do the right thing, be right with whatever God they conceive of, and follow his or her conscience, that person might be considered an anonymous Christian and be saved through Jesus’ victory over death and sin.  They would not have to explicitly accept Jesus or Christianity, or might even, because of circumstances and constraints, have rejected these explicitly.  But God’s universal salvific will and the greatness of God’s grace would save them too. 

The idea of the Anonymous Christian was promulgated as official Roman Catholic doctrine in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. 

The idea is also found among Protestants. The final book of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, has the character Emeth, a Calormene prince who had fought against Aslan and Narnia and served his own god, Tash.  He has done his best to live uprightly within the traditions he as raised in.  In the end, Aslan receives him as one of his own with these words, “I and [Tash] are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.^”  

The doctrine is also found in our Prayer Book, where we pray, “Remember all who died in the peace of Christ, and those whose faith is known to you alone; bring them into the place of eternal joy and light” (p. 375).

Some have criticized this effort at Christian inclusivity saying that it is condescending.  “I’m Jewish, thank you very much, and do not want to become Christian, even anonymously” expresses the idea.  These critics say that a tradition is truly inclusive only when it recognizes that other traditions have truly separate paths and confesses that these too are valid, without need for any “anonymous” adoption into our tradition.  

There is, however, a prior issue here.  The verses that Christians use to endorse exclusivist claims, when examined carefully, don’t actually teach the doctrine of exclusive, brand-conscious religious truth.  They are concerned, rather, with something else.    Remember that Paul in Romans did not write, “if you don’t confess and believe, you won’t be saved.” 

Take also the verse at the end of today’s Acts reading: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”  That phrasing should strike you as odd if indeed what Peter had meant to say was “there is no other name by which we can be saved.”  The problem is starker in the Greek of the passage, which says “by which it is necessary for us to be saved.”  The context of the verse provides the clue necessary for us to see what it is actually trying to say:  Peter is answering the authorities’ question of how, or under whose authority (“by whose name”) he has performed a miracle.  In verse 9, Peter says he is explaining “how this man has been healed.”  The word healed translates the verb sosthenai, “to be saved,” the same verb he uses when he says “there is only one name given under heaven by which we must be saved.”    The logic of the argument in the passage requires that the verses in question mean something like this: It is through Jesus’ name that we healed this man.  Such healing does not come from just anywhere.  For Jesus is the only one God has ever raised from the dead.  Thus, if you use his name, you just have to be healed. You can’t say that about any other name that I know of.” 

Similarly, when Jesus in John says “I am the Good Shepherd, … and there will be one flock and one shepherd,” this is more an affirmation of the reliability of Jesus and an exuberant expression of how good this is, not how deficient others might be.  Though the text contrasts this model shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep with other “hireling” false shepherds, it chooses the Greek word for “one” that means “one among many” (heis) rather than the Greek word for “one and only one” (monos).   

We often lose the point of the image of the model shepherd:  shepherds, to be effective, need to establish a caring relationship with their sheep, being attentive to their various wanderings, bad choice of plants to eat, and the first signs of sickness.   It is the quality of the relationship with Jesus experienced by the believer that is at heart of the Good Shepherd image, and lies behind all the passages that might be construed as exclusionary. 

This is why we should not ignore these verses or believe they have nothing to teach us. 

We who have experienced the joy and sweetness of being shepherded by Jesus are bound by the quality of that experience of faith to share it with others.  But this is sharing, not sales promotion or brow beating, and must be based in the joy of our experience and our love for others, not some silly and misdirected fear that somehow they won’t be saved or blessed by God if they aren’t like us.   And this joyful sharing to which our experience and God calls us can only be cheapened if it is linked to a looking down our noses at the experience and faith of others as deficient or inadequate.   

Bishop and theologian Krister Stendahl once said that Christ calls us Christians to be the kind of people that others want to be around, not to constantly harp at others to become like us.  We must so show the joy of the good news that others will wonder at and want what we have, whether in their own tradition or by adopting ours.   

St. Francis said that we should preach the Gospel at all times and in all places, and only occasionally open our mouths to do so.   

That is why I told the deacon to go ahead and not use that half verse.  “I am the way, the life and the truth” was sufficient for our purposes at the funerals, and “no one comes to the Father except by me” raised far too many questions with little time to answer them. I happen to agree that it is almost inconceivable to experience God as Father in as an intensely personal way as Christians do apart from a faith in Christ as the Son of God.  But that does not mean that God is not at work in other faiths. 

May the love of the Good Shepherd, the power of this Jesus who calls us into relationship both with him and with those who differ from us, help us be the more respectful of others, and more intent listeners when their stories diverge from ours.

In the name of Christ, Amen.   

A Dog Named Hoover (Proper 15A)

 

A Dog named Hoover

14 August 2011

Proper 15A

Beijing, China

Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133  Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

Jesus left Gennesaret and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matt, 15:21-28; || Mark 7:24-30)

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

I once had a friend who was facing a pretty horrible situation tell me that he did not feel he could pray and ask for God’s intervention or even sustenance because, as he said, “I’m just too rotten a person.  I’m not even sure there is a God, and if there is, I definitely am not the kind of person he would be interested in helping or listening to.” 

The fact that society at large and religions in particular create and define themselves by establishing boundaries can be a real burden to those who find themselves outside of those boundaries.  My friend had a hard time believing in God, and clearly rejected many of the rules and moral strictures he thought were taught by the Church, but curiously had let these seep into his heart and sprout into a sense of guilt and shame that made it hard for him to approach God in prayer. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a person who by all standards is outside the boundaries of the right and proper—he is traveling near the primarily Gentile territory of what is now Southern Lebanon, and a woman approaches.  Strike One—women were not supposed to directly engage with strangers who were men.  She is a Canaanite.  Matthew’s use of the Old Testament word Canaanite is deliberate, and against the common usage of the period:  she is thus portrayed as an unclean pagan who might be engaging in idolatrous worship possibly involving sexual rites or child sacrifice.  Strike Two.   In Mark’s version of the story, she is a Greek, of mixed Syrian and Phoenician heritage.  A half-breed pagan to boot, coming from the two great oppressors of the Jewish people before the Romans arrived.  Strike Three.  In the telling of the story, she might as well be wearing a bell and calling out before her, unclean, unclean. 

But this gentile woman is worried about her daughter, whose abnormal behavior appears to result from possession by something or someone outside of herself.  The woman has heard that this Jewish wonder-worker Jesus can expel such spirits.  So she approaches and loudly begs him to heal her daughter, using language that is more Jewish than pagan, “O Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me and my daughter.”  The reference is probably to an inter-testamental belief that King Solomon, literally the “Son of David,” could heal the ill and cure such possession.  She has heard that Jesus is perhaps a descendant of David and has some of Solomon’s legendary power to heal. 

Now the way Jesus reacts is quite offensive to us of modern sensibilities.  It was also offensive to ancient sensibilities, and that is the reason that Luke drops this story from those he borrows from Mark’s Gospel. 

Jesus ignores her.  It is almost like he cannot hear her.  

She only gets louder. 

In the Creed, we say that we believe that God became incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human in the person of Jesus.  But we usually don’t like to see Jesus as quite this human.  Here he seems to be cold and unfeeling. As she gets louder, he ignores her all the more.  

His reaction is strange, given the fact that he has already in this Gospel healed a gentile in gentile territory,  that the verses preceding this story tell of Jesus breaking down barriers of clean and unclean in Jewish Law, and that the gist of many of his parables seems to be the overflowing abundance of God's goodness and grace.  But he remains silent. 

When the disciples just can’t bear the commotion any longer and ask Jesus to break his silence and just send the woman away, his reply is that is he is focused on his work in calling his fellow Jews to change their hearts and ways, and can’t take the time for this woman.  She begs him directly, “Lord, help me.” 

His reply here is no longer simply cold and unfeeling: “I can’t take food set aside for the children and throw it away for dogs to eat.”  The slur implied by the word dogs, seems downright racist and rooted in religious bigotry.  

Christians have tried to explain away the slur, or take it off of Jesus’ lips ever since:  As I said before, Luke simply deletes the story and does not include it in his Gospel.  Some of the Church Fathers say that Jesus was simply testing the woman’s faith by using the slur ironically to see if she would persist (as if this makes the slur all that less offensive!)  Others have tried to take the sting out of the phrase by noting that the Greek word used in the text is a diminutive kynarios “little dog,” instead of the more common kynos “dog.”   So Jesus presumably would be saying,  “It’s wrong to take babies’ food and give it to puppies.”   But again, I don’t think this necessarily makes the slur less offensive.  

Again, Jesus' talk here about the economy of divine blessing almost as if it were a zero sum game is strange.  In his previous feeding of the crowd (including children), there was a ridiculous overabundance of leftovers.  But the point appears to be that Jesus is so focused on his mission to fellow Jews that he cannot hear the woman.  Matthew, with his concern for keeping Jewish Law and portraying Jesus as the new Moses, does not appear to notice the ugliness of the scene as it unfolds.  

My friend, with his fear to pray to God because he was somehow unworthy, or beyond the bounds of grace, would feel right at home with this portrayal of a Jesus wholly consumed by boundaries and limits. 

But the Canaanite woman persists. She takes Jesus’ harsh word and turns it on its head with a bit of wit and chutzpah:  “Oh, but dogs under the table can eat the crumbs that fall, can’t they?”  It is as if he had said, "this food is too good for you, you dogs," and she had replied, "So I'm a dog.  Don't call me Rover, call me Hoover.  'Cuz I can hoover up all those scraps just as they fall from your table!"   This kind of “battle of the wits” exchange is seen in Middle Eastern and Arab literature regularly, and is akin to the Rap world’s commonplace of a contest of insult and replying insult (“Yo’ momma is so fat that…..” “Oh yeah?  Well yo’ momma…”)

Jesus’ reply is amazing.  “Great is your faith, woman!”  The rhetoric and word order stresses GREAT.  “You are a GIANT in faith, lady.  Finally, I find someone who gets it, and surprise, surprise, she’s a gentile!  She’s a Canaanite! She’s a she!”

The exorcism is performed at a distance, almost by divine remote control, just like in the two other stories of  Jesus healing at a distance, the healing of the centurion’s servant (Matt. 8:5-13) and of the royal official’s son (John 4:46-54).   Note in all cases, the healing at a distance is done for people seen as beyond the pale.  These are stories about the far reach of Jesus’ grace, not about the worthiness or lack thereof of the recipients. 

Reading this story as if the Canaanite woman is a model of faith for us to follow misses the point:  this is not a story trying to say that if only your faith were great enough, God will hear your prayers and grant you your wishes.  Faith here is not a magic trick.   In such magical thinking lies only pain—because when bad things happen to people, whether they are good people or bad people, this way of thinking chalks it up as the fault of those who did not get their way with God.  And if good things happen, then it is the result of the successful use of the trick.  Such a view reduces the Lord’s Book of Blessings to simply a Book of Spells.  

Put bluntly, this story isn’t about you, and about whether you are worthy or faithful enough for God’s blessings.  The focus of the story is Jesus, not the woman.   In this scene, Jesus, who loves  a good joke and regularly tells parables with brutally witty edges, is bested in a contest of wit by the wise-cracking woman who is desperate for her child’s health.  She takes the callous slur Jesus has unthinkingly adopted from his upbringing and how he has been taught about what is right, and turns it on its head.  Jesus in response, instead of glowering and shouting  “BLASHPEMY, OFF WITH YOU, PAGAN WOMAN!” and blasting her right then and there, he laughs out loud, sees he has been had, and recognizes the faith, the trust, in the woman’s heart that drives her persistence and audacity. 

And so he turns back from—repents, as it were—of the casual callousness that his focus on his mission and on the boundaries his religion has set.  To be sure, we believe that Jesus was like us in all things but sin.  He is not so much turning from sin here as he is opening himself further to the unexplored country to which God is leading him.  This scene anticipates the great shift in the Christian faith from mission only to Jews to mission to all.  It anticipates the great vision of St. Paul where “In Christ, there is no Jew nor Gentile, no slave nor free, no woman nor man.”

To me it is very comforting to think that Jesus could be shamed by a joke into changing his view and learn thereby to spread God’s grace more widely than he previously had thought appropriate. 

To me it is very comforting to think that a Canaanite half-breed pushy woman talking out of turn and beyond the bounds of propriety could get the best of Jesus and as a result Jesus would bless her simply because of who and what he was, and would bless her despite, not because of, who and what she was. 

None of us should feel like my friend, afraid and ashamed to approach God when we need God.  Maybe a little bit of pushy persistence on our part is in order, a bit more witty and humorous audacity.    The woman was desperate and willing to go all out on the off chance that what she heard about Jesus as a healer was true.  When God appears forbidding and unwelcoming to us, that is precisely the time we need to remember the words of the prayer, “O God, whose nature is always to have mercy” and that, despite whatever it may be we think separates us from his grace.  That is precisely the time that we, like this Canaanite woman, this dog named Hoover, need to focus on the Mercy of God rather than on the boundaries that exclude us, or what people say about God's judgment. 

In the name of God, Amen

 

A Loathsome Stranger's Mercy (Proper 10C; Good Samaritan)

Rembrandt, The Good Samaritan

  A  Loathsome Stranger’s Mercy
Homily delivered Seventh Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 10; Year C RCL)
11 July 2010; 10:00 a.m. Morning Prayer Said
Congregation of the Good Shepherd
Beijing, China
Readings: Amos 7:7-17 and Psalm 82 or Deuteronomy 30:9-14 and Psalm 25:1-9; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Finding a dead body lying out in the open is a very disturbing experience.  When my wife and I lived in West Africa several years ago, one Sunday morning we were running of the beach.  She got ahead of me, as she usually does when we’re running.  I heard her start screaming in terror and hurried to catch up with her.  There beside us, in sand at the high tide mark, was what used to be a human being, now bloated in the heat and already a meal for the crabs.   We ran to get the port authorities, who recovered the body, identified it as a fisherman who had fallen from his boat a week earlier about 25 miles up the coast, and returned it properly covered to his grieving family.  It was not the only corpse I saw in Africa.  Once, on a trip into Lagos Nigeria, I spotted a body lying along side the road.  My driver refused to stop to try to get help, since the area was notoriously known as the haunt of criminal gangs who often would rob anyone who has the misfortune of having to stop their car. 

Today’s Gospel reading is a parable that describes such a disturbing scene. 

A lawyer asks Jesus a question of Jewish Law: “Master, of all the 615 commandments in the Torah, 365 'Thou shalt not's' and 248 'Thou shalt's,” what is the essential that I need to do to please God? “ 

Luke says the lawyer is asking Jesus the question trying to test him (10:25).  Jesus is cautious, and asks the lawyer what he thinks the Law establishes as its core (10:26). 

The Lawyer replies in these words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deut. 6:4) and then “Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). 

This epitome of the Law is probably Jesus’ own.  Matthew and Mark place it on the lips of Jesus himself as he replies to a lawyer or a scribe (Matt. 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31).  The first of these commandments is part of the Shema, the basic creed of Judaism that every practicing Jewish male recites during morning prayer (Deut. 6:4); the second is a commandment found in Leviticus 19:18, part of dozens of rules enumerated in the  Leviticus Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26).

“Love God, then love your neighbor.”  Jesus agrees:  “That’s exactly right.  If you do that, you won’t have any problem pleasing God.” 

Then the story gets complicated.  The lawyer follows up with another question of law, seeking, as lawyers are wont to do, clear definitions of terms of law and the scope of their applicability.  “And who, rabbi, exactly is my neighbor?” 

Luke tells us that the lawyer asked the question in order to justify himself.  The point is clear.  The lawyer wants to know the exact scope of his obligation to love others so that he can have a clear idea of who it is that he is not obligated to love.  

Clearly other people had asked the same question about the Holiness Code’s commandment to love our neighbors.  The Holiness Code prescribes rules for God’s people living in God’s land, including special ones for God’s priests and their assistants in the Temple (Lev. 21-22).  It also gives rules regarding aliens living in the midst of God’s people, both how to treat them and what is expected of them.   It seems to distinguish between “Israelites" or “your people” from “aliens living in your midst” as well as “your neighbors.”  It is not completely obvious from the text whether “neighbors” includes only fellow Israelites, all resident aliens also, or only aliens who keep the rules.  One text, however, clearly also says “The alien who reside with you shall be to you as the citizens among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Lev. 19:34).  

So the legal question “who is my neighbor” was a point of discussion, and different people gave different answers to it. In the inter-testamental Book of Sirach, we read, “give to the devout, but do not help the sinner” (Sir. 12:1-7).   Here the distinction between your fellow countryman and a neighbor is whether one keeps the Law or has the reputation of being religious.  In the Manual of Discipline in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we read, “… seek God with all your heart and all your soul, . . . love all the sons of light, and hate all the sons of darkness” (1QS 1.1-3, 9-10).  Here, even fellow Jews, if they do not accept the legal interpretations of the Dead Sea Scroll sect, are considered beyond the pale of being “neighbors.”   On the other hand, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria two centuries before the common era wrote, “God asks ... [us] to love him . . . and serve him with . . .[our] whole soul” (Spec. Leg. 1.299-300) and says that this is a “duty to God as shown by piety and holiness, and a duty to men as shown by humanity and justice” (Spec. Leg. 2.63).   Neighbors here appear to be all fellow human beings. 

Jesus’ reply to the question is a story that turns many expectations of that time and place totally on their head.

 Dundee Parish Church (St. Mary's, Church of Scotland) 

Parable of the Good Samaritan

A man goes down the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Remember Jerusalem is 2700 feet above sea level while Jericho is 800 feet below it.  With only 17 miles between, it means there is a 200 foot drop every mile.  There are lots of switchbacks in the steep road where many nooks and crannies can easily hide crooks and baddies. 

He meets up with robbers, is beaten unconscious, stripped of all his clothing, and left for dead. 

But then by chance someone comes by.  It is a Priest, commuting between his home in Jericho and his intermittent work in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Surely a priest—a religious person and an example of doing the right thing—will help a fellow countryman who is almost dead, right?   But when he sees the man, he hurries to the other side of the road, and walks on. 

Then another religious leader, a temple assistant called a Levite, also comes along.   He too avoids what appears to be the naked corpse on the side of the road.  

Now we mustn’t think too ill of the Priest or the Levite.  The Law of Moses stipulated that Priests and Levites had to be ritually pure for their service in the Temple, and also clearly stated that any contact with a corpse contaminated and brought with it ritual impurity.  

It is probably just about at this point in the story that Jesus’ listeners realized that the fact that the man looked dead might in reality cause his actual death through lack of care, and all because of religious people scrupulously trying to follow the commandments of God. 

To be sure, the Law did provide over-ride clauses where saving someone’s life or even helping them save their ox from the mire took precedence over purity requirements.  But even here, such acts of mercy and human sympathy did not get rid of the pollution thus incurred. 

Like good storytellers in any culture, Jesus here follows the rule of three.  We often hear jokes about an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scot, or other ones about a Rabbi, a Catholic Priest, and a Baptist Preacher.  Here is it a Priest, a Levite, and a…

Jesus’ audience knows it will be a normal resident of that part of the country, a Judean.  He won’t be constrained by the heavier purity concerns and he’ll save our poor victim, right? 

No.  The third traveler on his way is not a Judean.  It is a Samaritan.

Now to Jesus’ Jewish audience, having a Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan being the three is like someone today telling story and having the three be the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and Usama bin Laden, or maybe Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and the head of the Mafia.   

Samaritans were seen as contemptible half-breeds, heretics and blasphemers, allies with the foreign occupiers, and immoral.  They themselves were considered by Jews to be ritually unclean and contaminating.   The poor Jewish man who is about to die himself will be ritually polluted by accepting anything from the Samaritan.  But at this point, he isn’t particular about who he can accept help from.  Better unclean and alive and than unclean because you’re dead. 

When this Samaritan sees the wounded man, he stops, is moved to mercy, takes good care of him, and even provides for him as if he were a family member.  

Note that the Samaritans also had their own version of the Torah, and the same basic rules about corpses were found there.  But this Samaritan risks contamination by his own lights and helps the half-dead person on the side of the road. 

Jesus closes his story answering the Lawyer’s question “who is my neighbor?” by saying, “Who do you think acted like a neighbor to that unfortunate man?”

The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say, “The Samaritan.”  He replies abashedly, “the one who showed him compassion.” 

“Go and do likewise.  Be like that Samaritan,” is Jesus’ reply. 

This answer by Jesus places him squarely on one side of a major division within the Biblical tradition. 

Walther Bruggemann, in his magisterial Theology of the Old Testament, points out that throughout the Hebrew scriptures, one finds two great thematic threads. On the one side, there is the striving for purity and ritual holiness, for being special and set aside for God’s service.  “You shall be holy for I am holy,” we read in Leviticus, and there follows hundreds of detailed rules setting boundaries and defining categories to help achieve holiness.  On the other side there is striving for justice, for treating people, especially the marginalized, decently and fairly. 

The two themes often seem in opposition.  The priests and the Law tend to talk a lot about purity and holiness.  The prophets tend to talk about dealing with others justly, especially those most in need.  For Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Micah and others God says things like:  “I expect obedience, not sacrifice.” “I hate your sacrifices because you mistreat the widow and the orphan.”    “All I really ask of you is to treat the poor fairly, and to walk humbly with me.”  For the priests and teachers of halachic law, however, God say things like, “You will be Holy for I am Holy, says the Lord.”  “You shall not pollute the land with impurity, or I will destroy you.”  “You shall drive out pollution from among your midst and separate yourself from uncleanness.” 

Bruggemann says that the two traditions are both important and mutually corrective. The boundaries established by the Law are what define and preserve the People of God, and allow ethical monotheism to flourish.  But if holiness is not tempered with the call for social justice, it becomes empty ritual, a mode of oppression, and dies.  On the other hand, calls for social justice in the absence of an authentic call to holiness rapidly degenerate into the most obvious self-serving form of interest-group politics.  That’s why it’s love God first, and then love one’s neighbor.  

It is very important to note that in the Gospels, whenever social justice is placed in conflict with ritual purity and Jesus is asked to decide between them, in every single case he opts for social justice.  For him, justice trumps purity and holiness in this sense every time.  

It has to do with his understanding of God as the God of everyone, not just of the Jewish nation, or righteous people.  “God makes the sun shine and the rain fall on both the righteous and the wicked,” he says (Matt. 5:45).  “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbors and hate your enemies, but I say, love your enemies’,” he says (Matt. 5:43). Thus his answer about “who is my neighbor?”  

Jesus sees that the Lawyer’s question has framed the world wrong.  The commandments to love God and to love neighbor are, above all else, commandments to love. When the lawyer tries to interpret them by asking in essence “and who exactly is it that I don’t have to love,” Jesus throws a parable at him.  The intent is to shake his world view.  Like a Zen koan, the parable is meant to shock the lawyer into a new way of feeling and perceiving. 

Professor Klyne Snodgrass in his recently published master work on the parables Stories with Intent says this:  “This parable is evidence of what is obvious elsewhere:  Jesus will not allow boundaries to be set so that people may feel they have completed their obligation to God.  Love does not have a boundary where we can say we have loved enough, nor does it permit us to choose those we will love, those who are ‘our kind.’ With this parable, Jesus in effect says, ‘You should know already from Lev. 19:34 that the love commandment extends to the stranger (or traveler) in your midst.’’” 

Love knows no boundaries, and, in the words of St. Paul, “love never ends.” 

All of us have our ways, like the lawyer, of seeking to justify ourselves and say to the God who calls us to love, “Enough, already!”  We all too often use boundaries as a means to do this, whether national, ethnic, political, gender, or even what we consider to be moral boundaries. 

We do this because it is easy.  It is, in fact, too easy, since we know that we as creatures live and die by boundaries.  We need definitions and limits, or our lives are chaotic and unordered.  Boundaries are generally good, and something we all need.   And this is the case whether we are talking moral boundaries, legal boundaries, or personal space and autonomy boundaries.  We need them because without them we are messes. 

But we must never let boundaries become a strait-jacket that makes us unable to reach out our arms in love to those in need.  

Good fences may indeed help make good neighbors, but not if we do not chat across the fences, and as needed reach over them. 

I challenge each of us this week to look at ourselves.  Take 10 or 15 minutes during your prayer time or meditation time, or even exercise time, and ask these questions:  1) Where am I transgressing boundaries with resulting harm to myself or others? 2) Where am I using boundaries as an excuse to not do the right thing?

Once you have some answers, then look again at this story. 

Remember that lawyer and his self-justifying question.  And then really think about the story of that loathsome stranger doing kindness to a fellow human being, no matter how different, no matter how alien.

And go and do likewise. 

In the name of God,  Amen.