See, respond, reach out

The text of a sermon preached at the Eucharist on 14 July. The familiar parable of the "Good Samaritan" is familiar, yet calls out readings which continue to challenge us.  Deuteronomy 30: 9-14; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

Writing a cover story for the New Statesman, Rory Stuart asks “What is wrong with us?”

Reflecting on his failure to translate his  #RoryWalks campaign into success in the Tory leadership election, he writes that ‘our country has entered a midlife crisis. The answer cannot be to try to lurch back to an adolescent fantasy of being saved by superheroes, but instead to move forward into maturity’.

For Stuart, maturity means recognising that our democratic life isn’t about echoing prejudices, comforting abstractions or only talking about economics. Maturity celebrates success; it is angered by injustice in modern Britain. 

Maturity, he argues, demands an urgent and ambitious response; a response that harnesses the energy across parties rather than gravitating to extremes. 

To see what is around us.

To respond with urgency.

To reach out across political divides.

Seeing, responding, reaching out.

As we hear one of the most well loved of all Jesus’ parables. It feels familiar, safe and comforting. We know how it goes and it’s easy to miss how demanding it is. The challenges of our political and social landscape makes us different questions of this text - to appreciate afresh just how radical it is.

Our national midlife crisis leads to the headline, ‘what is wrong with us?’

A lawyer’s question about inheriting eternal life, leads to a lesson in love.

Jesus invites the lawyer to answer on the basis of his own expertise - what’s been written; what does he read?

His answer takes us to the heart of the commandments: to love God and neighbour. 

Observing the commandments and decrees of the law is a source of blessing. God delights in this: human lives are more fruitful when love is at the heart of our undertakings. 

Such obedience is life-giving.

We are to turn to the Lord; and to turn towards each other. 

This law of of love leads to the fullness of life; it demands all that we are, in heart and soul. 

This word of love is near to us: as intimate as every breath we take; every heart beat; every gesture.

We are to love with every fibre of our being; in thought and feeling, word and action. In a delightful phrase of Paula Gooder, we are to love God with all our ‘muchness’.

Do this, says Jesus, and you live. 

But the lawyer, presses on probing the limits of neighbourly love: who qualifies, he asks? 

The Hebrew Scriptures sets out commitments to two circles of neighbour: one’s own family, the bonds of kith and kin; and the stranger, the foreigner in your midst. 

Jesus himself goes on to stretches our imaginations even further. Rather than defining boundaries and recipients of love he asks the question - who shows compassion?

The Good Samaritan - Eugène Delacroix

This is a story of someone who was attacked and abandoned. We’re in the ditch with him - semi-clad, semi-conscious. 

This is a story of people going about their business on that  dangerous road. We walk with them weighing the risks; shouldering responsibilities; thinking about the consequences. 

This is a story of someone moved with compassion; a stranger who sees, responds and reaches out. We look upon this outsider, the despised one who does the right.

There’s oil to sooth, wine to cleanse and cloth to bind up wounds.

A journey is disrupted; transport redeployed; time, money and energy are devoted to the care of another.

This is subversive because, as one writer puts it [Levine/Witherington on Luke]: ’It is one thing to learn that the command to love encompasses anyone who is in need, even the outsider or enemy; it is far more disturbing to have to acknowledge that the enemy or outsider may be more quick to show love than those who are certainly fellow “insiders”.

That we call this one ‘good’ challenges us too. 

To see what is around us.

To respond with urgency.

To reach out across political divides.

Such seeing, responding, reaching out might mean that we recognise the goodness, compassion and energy in those with whom we disagree.

To say ‘good’ implies offence; as if this person is the exception within a group viewed negatively; yet even the apparent enemy can respond with mercy; can become friends; can break the cycle of violence.

The good Remoaner.

The good Tory.

The good Socialist.

To say ‘good’ challenges us to recognise acts of generous and costly love being displayed by those we see as ‘other’; those we disagree with; those society criticises.

The good Brexiter. 

The good immigrant.

The good journalist.

Jesus doesn’t answer the lawyer’s question; he illustrates how to love.

Jesus doesn’t define who the neighbour is; he illustrates what a neighbour does.

Jesus presses us further in inviting us to see, respond and reach out. 

The Good Samaritan - Dinah Roe Kendall

The good Samaritan’s open-ended and costly commitment points us to the sacrificial love of God.

The God for whom there are no limits.

The God who is with us In Jesus.

The God who binds up and brings soothing balm; who cleanses and saves; who restores life. 

In telling this parable, Jesus demonstrates the outsiders act of unexpected love to the wounded traveller; he also points us to the life-changing power of that love as he is raised up on the cross. 

It is Jesus’ death and resurrection love reaches to the depths and transforms the universe.  In the words of Paul, God has rescued us from the power of darkness; and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. Life in Christ begins with the obedience of the one who restores us; in who we have redemption and forgiveness. 

When we look at our nation and ask ‘what is wrong with us?’ we are called to see, to respond and to reach out. Our nation needs people who can be channels of mercy not hate; people who build up, rather than destroy; people who heal rather than harm.

The word of God is very near to us. As we take bread and wine, the word of in in our mouth and in our heart. We become one in Christ; and as his body we are to observe that word. By the power of the Spirit, worship and service are one act of generous self-giving.

Go, Jesus tells the lawyer, do likewise. 

God and respond to the other with compassion and wisdom: on the Tube, in the supermarket and at work. Go and learn from those we’ve disagreed with or dismissed. Go and bridge the gap between us and the wounded, and pray for them today.

Paul’s letter is full of patience and joy; grace and strength; it is rooted in faith, hope and love. Our capacity to be fruitful is rooted in the truth of Christ and our maturity rooted in prayer for each other.

Nourished by the goodness of God’s word of self-giving love, may we bear the radical claim of love in seeing, responding and reaching out. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2019

Kindness to strangers

The kindness of strangers: Are good Samaritans the exception or norm?

So ran a headline on the BBC news website only 10 days or so ago.  

Uplifting stories of strangers intervening to offer practical help or even to save a life catch our attention. Some of those momentary encounters cost very little. Some might seem undramatic, others heroic; a matter human instinct, just doing my job, or being in the right place at the right time. 

Vincent van Gogh: The Good Samaritan canvas (Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo)

In the face of fear, visible intentional support of the other strengthens bonds of community.

The BBC article drew on social psychology to explore what happens when we witness an attack, an emergency or person who's taken ill. Our minds go through rapid, unconscious, calculations in an instant. Is it dangerous? Can I help? Will others step in? What's my responsibility. 'The longer you leave it', says Professor Levine, 'the harder it is to make a decision'. 

We might walk on by.

But if one person acts, others join in. We are most likely to intervene, the article suggests when we 'feel some sort of group kinship with the victim, even something as superficial as wearing the same football shirt'.

 A sense of shared identity; a sort of group kinship.

We are different from one another: what we eat and our accent; the languages we speak and what we wear; our name, our family. What matters, is how we respond to difference. Our identity is shaped in relation to others; we recognise shared concerns or passions, a common humanity.

The imperative to strengthen bonds of recognition across difference is vital to our national life; to take a stand against racism and prejudice; working together because our liberation is bound up with the other. 

We face generational and regional divides; we've been confronted by normative judgements about motherhood and competitive claims about having a stake in our future.  All this is disrupted in today's reading. We are too look beyond difference and see the stranger as an intimate, our own familiar friend.

Perhaps the familiarity of the story makes us complacent; we disconnect it from the challenging questions which surround it. Let's pay attention afresh.

Can we do anything to inherit eternal life? Perhaps it's a trick question; inheritance is itself a gift. We can't do anything to earn it. Yet it is bound up with relationship or kinship; with the nature of love.  In inviting the lawyer to answer on his own terms, we're taken to the heart of the commandments. To love God and neighbour.

How can we love the other as they are unless we're not first filled with the love of God? 

Look around you: loving one another in our difference is a demanding task, even when people are quite like us. It's more than following Jesus as an ethical role model.  The energy and motivation to love deeply, consistently and compassionately flows from the Spirit at work in us.

If Jesus raises the bar on our loving, then the lawyer wants to know the terms and conditions: he wants clarification, who qualifies?

The laws of Leviticus talks of commitments to two kinds of 'neighbour': your own kith and kin, one in your own family line; the stranger, the alien in your midst.   Rather than give such a definition, Jesus tells a story which stretches our imaginations.

We imagine what it is to be attacked, wounded, abandoned, and vulnerable. 
We consider the rules, duties and fears which constrain us.
We contemplate the outsider, despised, who risks everything in compassion for an other.

On seeing a semi-clad, battered and unconscious man, what should the priest do?  There are no ready markers of identity. He goes through the same subconscious calculations as we do: weighing the risks and responsibilities; thinking through consequences. The demands of ritual purity are heavy; he might face punishment.

Ferdinand Hodle:The Good Samaritan (private collection)

The Levite grapples with his own conscience. The one going ahead of him, didn't stop. Does he know better? Would acting undermine or insult the priest? He's a by-stander, a passer by; he keeps going.

The one who is moved with compassion is a stranger. This is the tipping point of Jesus' story.  He acts with hope and care. He responds without judgement; human vulnerability is a sufficient marker of shared identity.

He uses all his resources: oil, wine and cloth to bind up wounds; he takes time and energy; disrupting his journey and using his own transport. He commits his money to care for this unknown yet intimate other.

He risked his life. It was not safe for a Samaritan to seek help. His response extends beyond the act of rescue to an open ended and costly commitment. 

There are no limits.

He binds up and he brings healing balm.  He cleanses and saves. He restores life.

That sounds like a description of the very nature of God.

In the Samaritan, Jesus points us to himself, God with us: the healer who draws all people to himself.

The scholar Kenneth Bailey invites us to see this story afresh through Middle-Eastern eyes, saying: 'in this parable the Samaritan extends a costly demonstration of unexpected love to the wounded man, and in the process Jesus again interprets the life changing power of costly love that would climax at his cross'.

In so doing, he reframes the question for all who walk in his steps: not who is my neighbour, where do I draw the lines in loving; rather to whom to I become a neighbour?

Like the Lawyer, we realise we can't earn eternal life, it is pure gift.  Yet we can become a neighbour; in Christ and the power of the Spirit we can manifest the boundless love of God.

If our lives are woven into God's story, the ethical demands placed on us mean looking beyond language, race, religion, gender, marital or economic status.  

As synod enters into shared conversations about sexuality today, we are acutely aware that as a church we too are learning to respond to the other with compassion; we learn humility in facing those we've wounded, we've stood alongside, we've disagreed with. We pray for them today.

What Jesus' teaches is more than 'kindness to strangers'; he calls us to narrow the gaps that separate others and to attend to a shared identity and group kinship in God.

Bridging that gap is manifested in the church's commitment to education as a means of reducing inequality and fear of the other. But is also manifested in our lives, moment by moment. 

We aren't called to be by-standers but a responsive pilgrim people. Our nation needs channels of mercy not hate. In the train station, supermarket or office, we are called acts of courtesy which bring dignity; in speech and action challenging all that dehumanises.

We are to embody the promises of God: we who take bread and wine, become one in Christ. As his body, we are called to generous self-giving. By the power of his Spirit worship and service are one.

That's Paul's point in his letter to the Colossians:  his letter is full of faith, hope and love; patience and joy; grace and strength. Our fruitfulness is rooted in the truth of the Gospel and unending prayer for each other. Nourished by God's goodness, we can bear the radical claim of love.

© Julie Gittoes 2016

Readings for 10th July 2016, Trinity 7:  Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10: 25-37 

Kindness to strangers: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36596511