True love of our neighbour means that we receive as well as give

Here's the sermon that I have shared at St Mary's Runwell and St Peter's Nevendon today:

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10. 25 - 37), don’t we? And we all know what the story is about? It’s very clear, isn’t it? It’s a call to kindness, a call to care, a call to help others, unlike those who passed by on the other side. We know all that, don’t we? So, there’s really no point in my reiterating what we already know and therefore I can just leave you to reflect on the calls to kindness that you experience in your daily life. How do you meet those? How do you respond?

There isn’t really anymore to say, so I’ll just leave it at that for today. Or, is that actually the case? Is there perhaps something more to this parable that isn’t generally spoken about? Might there actually be an aspect to this parable that is generally overlooked?

Let’s think for a moment about the hero of the parable – a Samaritan. Samaritans were contemptible people, as far as the Jews of Jesus’ day were concerned, considered as social outcasts, untouchables, racially inferior, practicing a false religion. While Samaritans claimed that they were the true Israel who were descendants of the "lost" tribes taken into Assyrian captivity. The Samaritan’s had their own temple on Mount Gerizim and claimed that it was the original sanctuary. They also claimed that their version of the Pentateuch was the original and that the Jews had a falsified text produced by Ezra during the Babylonian exile.

Samaritans were of mixed Jewish and Gentile ancestry, claimed descent from Jacob and worshipped the God of Israel. So, Samaritans were close to the Jews in their birth and beliefs but they were also different in significant ways, a volatile combination in any era. As a result, Samaritans and Jews engaged in bitter rivalries, which in Jesus’ day could lead to political hostilities that, sometimes, required intervention from the Romans.

Both Jewish and Samaritan religious leaders seem to have taught that it was wrong to have any contact with the opposite group, and neither was to enter each other's territories or even to speak to one another. Jews avoided any association with Samaritans, travelling long distances out of their way to avoid passing through a Samaritan area. Any close physical contact, drinking water from a common bucket, eating a meal with a Samaritan, would make a Jew ceremonially unclean - unable to participate in temple worship for a period of time – this may be part of the reason why the priest and Levite don’t stop to help.

The artist Dinah Roe Kendall painted a version of the parable of the Good Samaritan which set the story in South Africa at the time of apartheid. Doing so, seems to me, to be an accurate parallel with the kinds of emotions and cultural practices that were at play in the relationship between Jews and Samaritans and it shows up clearly the twist in the tail of Jesus’ story.

Jesus, as a Jew, didn’t illustrate his point - that people of every race, colour, class, creed, faith, sexuality, and level of ability are our neighbours – by telling a story in which a Jew was kind to someone else. Instead, he told a story in which a Jew receives help from a person who was perceived to be his enemy. The equivalent in Kendall’s painting is of the black man helping the white man, who represents the people that have oppressed him and his people.

So, Kendall’s version of the story brings out part of the twist in the tail that Jesus gives this story; the sense of receiving help from the person who is your enemy. What her version doesn’t deal with, however, is the idea that the enemy who helps is someone of another faith. The Jews were God’s chosen people and a light to the other nations and faith, so what would have been expected from this story would have been for the Jew in the story to bring the light of faith to the Samaritan. But that is not how Jesus’ story unfolds. Instead, the person who is one of God’s chosen people receives help from the person of another faith.

For Jesus to tell a story in which a Samaritan was the neighbour to a Jew was, for the reasons we have been considering, deeply shocking. We can sense this in the story as recorded for us by Luke, as the lawyer in the story is unable to bring himself to utter the word ‘Samaritan’ in answering Jesus’ question. The story is doubly shocking because the Jews in the story, the Priest and Levite, do not act as neighbours to the man. And trebly shocking, because it was probably their expression of devotion to God that prevented them from being neighbours. Priests were supposed to avoid impurity from a corpse and Pharisees thought that one would contract impurity if even one’s shadow touched the corpse. It was safer, therefore, not to check than to risk impurity.

Perhaps we can get a sense of how shocking this was by asking ourselves who, in our own day, are we least likely to think of as neighbours? Who do we think of as those least like us? Who do we think of as enemies? Who do we think of as contemptible? The point of the story is that Jesus says our neighbour is not our own people but those we think of as enemies or as contemptible because of their birth or beliefs. The least likely people, the people least like us, these are the people that Jesus calls our neighbours.

To find a contemporary equivalent for this aspect of the story, we have, perhaps, to think about relationships in this country between Christians and those of other faiths, and within those relationships, recognise that relationships between Christians and Muslims are often those which are currently most conflicted, with some Christians believing that Islam represents a threat to the Church and Western civilization. Within this context, the parable of the Good Samaritan challenges Christians as to what we can receive from those of other faiths and, particularly, those who we might view as enemies. Jesus says to us, through this parable, that loving our neighbours is not simply about what we can give to others but also about what we receive from others.

Our neighbours, understood in this way, are those to whom we should give – “go and do likewise”, Jesus said to the lawyer - and they are those that we should love as we love ourselves. They are also those from whom we should receive because it was the Samaritan in the story who provided help, not any of the Jewish characters. So, we need to ask ourselves how we can receive, grow, learn from and be blessed by those we think of as enemies or as beneath contempt because of their birth or beliefs.

You see, if our focus is just on what we can give, then we are in a paternalistic relationship with our neighbours or enemies. If our focus is just on what we can give, then what we are saying is that we hold all the aces and we will generously share some of them with you. In other words, we remain in a position of power and influence. Immediately we acknowledge that we can receive from our neighbours or enemies, then the balance of power shifts and we make ourselves vulnerable. In this parable, Jesus says that that is where true love is to be found and it is something that he went on to demonstrate by making himself vulnerable through death on the cross.

We often protect ourselves from the need to engage with, learn from or show love to those who are different from us by using aspects of the Bible to justify our lack of contact or compassion. But Jesus rules this approach out for his followers by giving us the examples of the priest and Levite. George Caird has written that “It is essential to the point of the story that the traveller was left half-dead. The priest and the Levite could not tell without touching him whether he was dead or alive; and it weighed more with them that he might be dead or defiling to the touch of those whose business was with holy things than that he might be alive and in need of care.”

This is religious rule-making justifying a lack of compassion. Caird says that, “Jesus deliberately shocks the lawyer by forcing him to consider the possibility that a semi-pagan foreigner might know more about the love of God than a devout Jew blinded by preoccupation with pettifogging rules.” Who do we, as the Church, stay away from because we are afraid of contamination or defilement? What aspects of scripture do we use to justify our lack of contact?

Jesus told this story in order that we reach out across the divides and barriers that people and groups and communities and nations construct between each other. He told this story so that Christians would be in the forefront of those who look to tear down the barriers and cross the divides. To the extent, that we fail to do this we are more like the priest and Levite in this story that the Samaritan who was a neighbour to the person in need.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the sting is in the tail, the deepest point is that one of God’s chosen people receives help from his enemy who is of another faith. Jesus is taking us deep into the heart of love and saying that we will not truly love our neighbour until we understand and accept that we have much to receive from those that we perceive to be our enemies. In other words, true love of our neighbour means that we receive as well as give.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

True love of neighbour means we receive, as well as give

Here's my sermon from today's Communion Servive at St Catherine’s Wickford:

We all know the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10. 25 - 37), don’t we? And we all know what the story is about? It’s very clear, isn’t it? It’s a call to kindness, a call to care, a call to help others, unlike those who passed by on the other side. We know all that, don’t we? So, there’s really no point in my reiterating what we already know and therefore I can just leave you to reflect on the calls to kindness that you experience in your daily life. How do you meet those? How do you respond?

There isn’t really anymore to say, so I’ll just leave it at that for today. Or, is that actually the case? Is there perhaps something more to this parable that isn’t generally spoken about? Might there actually be an aspect to this parable that is generally overlooked?

Let’s think for a moment about the hero of the parable – a Samaritan. Samaritans were contemptible people, as far as the Jews of Jesus’ day were concerned, considered as social outcasts, untouchables, racially inferior, practicing a false religion. While Samaritans claimed that they were the true Israel who were descendants of the "lost" tribes taken into Assyrian captivity. The Samaritan’s had their own temple on Mount Gerizim and claimed that it was the original sanctuary. They also claimed that their version of the Pentateuch was the original and that the Jews had a falsified text produced by Ezra during the Babylonian exile.

Samaritans were of mixed Jewish and Gentile ancestry, claimed descent from Jacob and worshipped the God of Israel. So, Samaritans were close to the Jews in their birth and beliefs but they were also different in significant ways, a volatile combination in any era. As a result, Samaritans and Jews engaged in bitter rivalries, which in Jesus’ day could lead to political hostilities that, sometimes, required intervention from the Romans.

Both Jewish and Samaritan religious leaders seem to have taught that it was wrong to have any contact with the opposite group, and neither was to enter each other's territories or even to speak to one another. Jews avoided any association with Samaritans, travelling long distances out of their way to avoid passing through a Samaritan area. Any close physical contact, drinking water from a common bucket, eating a meal with a Samaritan, would make a Jew ceremonially unclean - unable to participate in temple worship for a period of time – this may be part of the reason why the priest and Levite don’t stop to help.

The artist Dinah Roe Kendall painted a version of the parable of the Good Samaritan which set the story in South Africa at the time of apartheid. Doing so, seems to me, to be an accurate parallel with the kinds of emotions and cultural practices that were at play in the relationship between Jews and Samaritans and it shows up clearly the twist in the tail of Jesus’ story.

Jesus, as a Jew, didn’t illustrate his point - that people of every race, colour, class, creed, faith, sexuality, and level of ability are our neighbours – by telling a story in which a Jew was kind to someone else. Instead, he told a story in which a Jew receives help from a person who was perceived to be his enemy. The equivalent in Kendall’s painting is of the black man helping the white man, who represents the people that have oppressed him and his people.

So, Kendall’s version of the story brings out part of the twist in the tail that Jesus gives this story; the sense of receiving help from the person who is your enemy. What her version doesn’t deal with, however, is the idea that the enemy who helps is someone of another faith. The Jews were God’s chosen people and a light to the other nations and faith, so what would have been expected from this story would have been for the Jew in the story to bring the light of faith to the Samaritan. But that is not how Jesus’ story unfolds. Instead, the person who is one of God’s chosen people receives help from the person of another faith.

For Jesus to tell a story in which a Samaritan was the neighbour to a Jew was, for the reasons we have been considering, deeply shocking. We can sense this in the story as recorded for us by Luke, as the lawyer in the story is unable to bring himself to utter the word ‘Samaritan’ in answering Jesus’ question. The story is doubly shocking because the Jews in the story, the Priest and Levite, do not act as neighbours to the man. And trebly shocking, because it was probably their expression of devotion to God that prevented them from being neighbours. Priests were supposed to avoid impurity from a corpse and Pharisees thought that one would contract impurity if even one’s shadow touched the corpse. It was safer, therefore, not to check than to risk impurity.

Perhaps we can get a sense of how shocking this was by asking ourselves who, in our own day, are we least likely to think of as neighbours? Who do we think of as those least like us? Who do we think of as enemies? Who do we think of as contemptible? The point of the story is that Jesus says our neighbour is not our own people but those we think of as enemies or as contemptible because of their birth or beliefs. The least likely people, the people least like us, these are the people that Jesus calls our neighbours.

To find a contemporary equivalent for this aspect of the story, we have, perhaps, to think about relationships in this country between Christians and those of other faiths, and within those relationships, recognise that relationships between Christians and Muslims are often those which are currently most conflicted, with some Christians believing that Islam represents a threat to the Church and Western civilization. Within this context, the parable of the Good Samaritan challenges Christians as to what we can receive from those of other faiths and, particularly, those who we might view as enemies. Jesus says to us, through this parable, that loving our neighbours is not simply about what we can give to others but also about what we receive from others.

Our neighbours, understood in this way, are those to whom we should give – “go and do likewise”, Jesus said to the lawyer - and they are those that we should love as we love ourselves. They are also those from whom we should receive because it was the Samaritan in the story who provided help, not any of the Jewish characters. So, we need to ask ourselves how we can receive, grow, learn from and be blessed by those we think of as enemies or as beneath contempt because of their birth or beliefs.

You see, if our focus is just on what we can give, then we are in a paternalistic relationship with our neighbours or enemies. If our focus is just on what we can give, then what we are saying is that we hold all the aces and we will generously share some of them with you. In other words, we remain in a position of power and influence. Immediately we acknowledge that we can receive from our neighbours or enemies, then the balance of power shifts and we make ourselves vulnerable. In this parable, Jesus says that that is where true love is to be found and it is something that he went on to demonstrate by making himself vulnerable through death on the cross.

We often protect ourselves from the need to engage with, learn from or show love to those who are different from us by using aspects of the Bible to justify our lack of contact or compassion. But Jesus rules this approach out for his followers by giving us the examples of the priest and Levite. George Caird has written that “It is essential to the point of the story that the traveller was left half-dead. The priest and the Levite could not tell without touching him whether he was dead or alive; and it weighed more with them that he might be dead or defiling to the touch of those whose business was with holy things than that he might be alive and in need of care.”

This is religious rule-making justifying a lack of compassion. Caird says that, “Jesus deliberately shocks the lawyer by forcing him to consider the possibility that a semi-pagan foreigner might know more about the love of God than a devout Jew blinded by preoccupation with pettifogging rules.” Who do we, as the Church, stay away from because we are afraid of contamination or defilement? What aspects of scripture do we use to justify our lack of contact?

Jesus told this story in order that we reach out across the divides and barriers that people and groups and communities and nations construct between each other. He told this story so that Christians would be in the forefront of those who look to tear down the barriers and cross the divides. To the extent, that we fail to do this we are more like the priest and Levite in this story that the Samaritan who was a neighbour to the person in need.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the sting is in the tail, the deepest point is that one of God’s chosen people receives help from his enemy who is of another faith. Jesus is taking us deep into the heart of love and saying that we will not truly love our neighbour until we understand and accept that we have much to receive from those that we perceive to be our enemies. In other words, true love of our neighbour means that we receive as well as give.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ladysmith Black Mambazo - Homeless.

Receiving from our enemies

Here's the reflection that I shared during today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Samaritans were contemptible people, as far as the Jews of Jesus’ day were concerned. They were of mixed Jewish and Gentile ancestry, claimed descent from Jacob and worshipped the God of Israel. So, they were close to the Jews in their birth and beliefs but they were also different in significant ways, a volatile combination in any era. As a result, Samaritans and Jews engaged in bitter rivalries, which in Jesus’ day could lead to political hostilities that sometimes required Roman intervention.

For Jesus to tell a story in which a Samaritan was the neighbour to a Jew was therefore deeply shocking (Luke 10: 25-37). We can sense this in the story as recorded for us by Luke, as the lawyer in the story is unable to bring himself to utter the word ‘Samaritan’ in answering Jesus’ question. The story is doubly shocking because the Jews in the story, the Priest and Levite, do not act as neighbours to the man. And trebly shocking, because it was probably their expression of devotion to God that prevented them from being neighbours. Priests were supposed to avoid impurity from a corpse and Pharisees thought that one would contract impurity if even one’s shadow touched the corpse. It was safer, therefore, not to check than to risk impurity.

Perhaps we can get a sense of how shocking this was by asking ourselves who, in our own day, are we least likely to think of as neighbours? Who do we think of as those least like us? Who do we think of as enemies? Who do we think of as contemptible? The point of the story is that Jesus says our neighbour is not our own people but those we think of as enemies or as contemptible because of their birth or beliefs. The least likely people, the people least like us, these are the people that Jesus calls our neighbours.

They are the people to whom we should give – “go and do likewise”, Jesus said to the lawyer - and they are the people that we should love as we love ourselves. They are also the people from whom we should receive because it was the Samaritan in the story who provided help, not any of the Jewish characters. So, we need to ask ourselves how we can receive, grow, learn from and be blessed by those we think of as enemies or as beneath contempt because of their birth or beliefs.

We often protect ourselves from the need to engage with, learn from or show love to those who are different from us by using aspects of the Bible to justify our lack of contact or compassion. But Jesus rules this approach out for his followers by giving us the examples of the priest and Levite.

George Caird has written that “It is essential to the point of the story that the traveller was left half-dead. The priest and the Levite could not tell without touching him whether he was dead or alive; and it weighed more with them that he might be dead or defiling to the touch of those whose business was with holy things than that he might be alive and in need of care.”

This is religious rule-making justifying a lack of compassion. Caird says that, “Jesus deliberately shocks the lawyer by forcing him to consider the possibility that a semi-pagan foreigner might know more about the love of God than a devout Jew blinded by preoccupation with pettifogging rules.” Who do we, as the Church, stay away from because we are afraid of contamination or defilement? What aspects of scripture do we use to justify our lack of contact?

Jesus told this story in order that we reach out across the divides and barriers that people and groups and communities and nations construct between each other. He told this story so that Christians would be in the forefront of those who look to tear down the barriers and cross the divides. To the extent, that we fail to do this we are more like the priest and Levite in this story that the Samaritan who was a neighbour to the person in need.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields - When I Needed A Neighbour.

The meaning of Jesus (1)

Marcus Borg and Tom Wright, together with their mentor George Caird, represent an important strand in thinking about the Historical Jesus. Their national and political approaches criticise earlier schools of thought such as: the eschatological orientation of Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer; the Protestant liberalism of Adolf von Harnack and his followers; and the German existentialism of Rudolf Bultmann, Günther Bornkamm and Hans Conzelmann. Their jointly authored book, The meaning of Jesus, is a readable and stimulating introduction to their shared approach and to the wider debate.

Despite their commonalities, Borg and Wright take sufficiently different stances for there to be a genuine debate covering many of the issues raised by the search for the historical Jesus. Their differences arise from their methods, personal interests, work contexts and faith journeys. Borg divides the Gospel materials into history remembered and history metaphorised while Wright argues for the basic factuality of the Gospels. Wright approaches the historical materials on the basis of hypothesis and verification: the most satisfactory hypothesis being the one that incorporates the most data. Borg operates on the basis of source criticism, constructing his hypothesis from the sources considered to be earliest. Borg teaches comparative religion in secular institutions and so his portrait of Jesus is painted in language that is not exclusively Christian and emphasises features common to cross-cultural religious experience. Wright is a Church of England Bishop with a fascination for first-century Judaism so, in describing Jesus uses Judeo-Christian terminology and sets him emphatically within his context. Borg’s faith journey has involved rejection first of an undiscriminating Christianity that says it is all true, then of a narrow modernism that says none of it is literally true, so it is not true at all. His approach, therefore, is concerned to make intellectual distinctions between literal and metaphorical truth. Wright’s faith journey, however, has seen his historical debate contained within a continuing, though at times troubling, walk with God. His approach, therefore, is inclusive of that knowledge which comes through relationship.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is their unresolved debate with post-modernism and relativism. Both are at pains to flag up the provisional nature of the conclusions that they draw, influenced, as they understand themselves to be, by the factors noted above. Yet neither can abandon the belief that objective truth can be attained through the application of scientific methodology to historical evidence.

That their debate with post-modernism is unresolved and that they clearly believe in the validity of the quest for the historical Jesus means that they do not fully engage with other approaches to the Gospels. Scot McKnight made a telling comment when he said that: “Historical Jesus study today is actually the place many of us who were once Gospel students belong, since we were more often than not concerned with history than with the literary and narrative shapes.”

Borg and Wright, while the comparison of their differing perceptions does genuinely open up debate, do not engage in this book with other approaches to the Gospels such as the literary and narrative approaches that McKnight mentions. Interpretive thinking often occurs within specialist and developmental streams and, as a result, individual interpreters do not engage fully with the range of insights available across the specialisms and within less contemporary aspects of the interpretive tradition.

The result is that the title of their book cannot be fully accurate. ‘The Meaning of Jesus’ cannot be fully identified through the historical approach alone or by the political and national approach that Borg and Wright share or through their particular enthusiasms. The meaning of Jesus will only become fully apparent through a broader, less partisan endeavour.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steve Taylor - Jesus Is For Losers.