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

Repent and believe; pray and vote

A Sermon preached at Guildford Cathedral on the First Sunday of Lent

Texts: 1 Peter 3:18-end and Mark 1: 9-15

Hurrah for hypocrisy! 

So writes Giles Fraser in his  column in The Guardian. He continues: it's a large club, but few people admit to membership. He doesn't see how it is possible to be a Christian and not be a hypocrite. Why? Because, to follow Jesus Christ is to be committed to a moral and spiritual vision for the transformation of the world; and guess what? We don't live up to it. But that isn't a cause for either despondency or complacency.

It's a challenge to confront the reality of our human condition.  In Christ we know forgiveness and are called to repent and believe. That truth gives us the impetus to strive to live up to the demands of God's Kingdom; praying that the Spirit will equip and inspire us.

Lent is a time to be honest about our failures; but it not a time to give up because there's a gap between aspiration and reality.  For as Giles reminds us, the only way to get rid of that gap is to get rid of the aspiration. And that way real darkness lies.

On Ash Wednesday, we confronted the frailty of our mortal nature, our human propensity to make mistakes; we received afresh the assurance of forgiveness of our sin and the invitation to turn to Christ and remain faithful to our calling.  Prayer draws us back to God as our first love; disciplines of fasting make us consider how we direct our desires; acts of kindness deepen our engagement with others as we live out of God's abundance.

Lent calls us to renew our moral vision.  We consider afresh our relationships and what it means to be the body of Christ in this place, dedicated to the fruitful activity of the Spirit. Our waiting on God will also give us the courage to engage in the political life of our nation in the run up to the General Election.

On occasion, an audacious vision will lead to charges of hypocrisy; when the gap between our aspirations and our lived reality is acknowledged. And yet, we do not lose heart because our hope is rooted in the ultimate reality of God, and his power to save and transform.  Just as Jesus Christ knew our human weakness, so in him are we caught up in sharing the outworking of God's Kingdom.

Unlike the other Gospels, Mark plunges straight into Jesus' adult life - we move rapidly from baptism, temptation and the beginning of his public ministry within a dozen verses.  Mark distils and intensifies the good news of God with us; as we hear it afresh perhaps we are surprised, amazed or challenged. The story arouses our curiosity and demands our attention.  Today we are like those hearing it for the first time.

Will we take the risk of being addressed by Jesus afresh? He is one who identifies with us as we stand on the muddy banks of life's river, knowing the fragility of our human nature and depth of our longing for love and acceptance. He is the Father's beloved Son; the one who abides with God from the beginning.  And now as heavens are torn apart, the Spirit also descends; pointing us forward to the moment when a temple curtain will be rent asunder, as sin and death are defeated; pointing us forward to a time when that Spirit will be poured out on all flesh.

Will we take the risk of being drawn into this changed reality?  Mark declares that this Jesus is good news. This means more than a bit of pleasing information - it's a radical and important public announcement. As Rowan Williams puts it: This is - we are being warned - a deeply serious story, a world-changing story, whose ramifications extend well beyond the villages of Palestine. And if these events do indeed change the world - change the regime - then the central figure is someone who has the authority and the capacity to change anything and everything in the world.

Will we take the risk to be drawn into this story and to encounter Jesus Christ?  He will reveal our hypocrisy and forgive us; he will enlarge our vision and change us.  The one who proclaims the good news is the one who spent 40 days in the wilderness.  Jesus confronts the reality that tempts and overwhelms us; he goes to the heart of our inner turmoil, all that draws us away from God. His endurance is the source of our hope.

Jesus leaves the wilderness and begins his public ministry, declaring that the time has been fulfilled. God's Kingdom has come near - we glimpse it and we are to participate in it.  Repent says Jesus. Acknowledge the gap between reality and our longings, between our failures and our moral vision. Acknowledge that Jesus bridges that gap.  Acknowledge that the Spirit turns our hearts back to God. Repent. Change. Believe. Live.

That is the point of this good news: placing our trust in God means entering into the gift of abundant life. To echo the words of the marriage service, this is not something we enter into lightly or selfishly, but reverently and responsibly. As members of the body of Christ we are drawn into a relationship with God which is, to use biblical language, covenantal.

It is that language that makes sense of our reading from 1 Peter: it describes the way in which God reaches out to us.  Christ is the righteous one who brings us to God.  He overcomes sin and death; he also brings new life in the Spirit. God's love reaches down to the very depths of humanity - it touches the hurts and vulnerabilities that make us defensive; it heals the resentments and losses that embitter us; it waits patiently with us as we confess our hypocrisy.

Jesus Christ suffers, dies and rose again; he now reigns in heaven. In baptism, we belong to him. We are restored penitents; hypocrites who've been renewed.  As we gather to share in the living bread from heaven, we pray that our faith will be nourished, our hope increased and our love strengthened. We pray that our desires will be re-directed from selfish pursuits towards the service of a vision that is morally dense.  We pray that we will abide in and live by God's word.

That has a practical outworking for each of us - not just in our private lives, but in our public engagement as people of faith. Our Bishops have issued a pastoral letter reminding us of our obligation to engage constructively with the political process.  Christians share responsibility with all citizens to participate in the democratic structures of our nation. We have to be part of the conversation in the run up to the General Election - the good news of Jesus Christ means that citizenship is a spiritual concern; theological concepts such as justice and compassion shape our pursuit of the common good. The pastoral letter is about our vision for a better world; it recovers the concept of virtue within communities, not atomised individuals; it articulates the contradictions of a society which celebrates equality yet denigrates the most vulnerable.

Our Bishops'  plea is that we are defended against the temptations to apathy, cynicism and blame, and instead seek - because we are disciples of Jesus Christ who long for a more humane society - a better politics for a better nation.

This Lent, let us take the risk of being drawn closer to Jesus Christ; let us risk being drawn into the world changing response to good news; let us risk getting involved by engaging in debate.. Let us risk hypocrisy because of the depth of our moral vision; and pray that the Spirit will enable us to narrow the gap between reality and our hope. As citizens of a Kingdom that has come near: repent and believe; pray and vote.

© 2015 Julie Gittoes