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‘What if the First Creation Story had it Right?’

God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night and there was evening and there was morning, the first day. God called the dome Sky and there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. And God saw that it was good. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

What if it is what we do with creation that is our responsibility and that is the meaning of the second creation story? Hosea 11: verses 1 to 11 is full of God’s parental love and patience with a wayward and disobedient child. And we are pretty sure that Hosea was writing from the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  We are also of the view that Hosea was writing from Israel after the split between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah.  The Assyrian empire was invading and much of Hosea’s prophecy revolved around the theological implications of the fall of the Northern Kingdom. This period in Israel and Judah’s history was marked with a great deal of political intrigue and instability, and it was at a time when stability was needed to defend Israel from Assyrian attack. Local Canaanite religious practices seemed to have made their way into Jewish practice, particularly of the god Baal. The Canaanite god, Baal, was the storm god and was associated with rain and fertility. It seemed that Israelites were turning to, or perhaps syncretistic incorporating, Baal worship. This suggests that the text is wrestling with two things at least. One being the understanding of just who this God is and how this God operates and two what does this God want from his people?

In a classic text on the prophets, Abraham Joshua Heschel asserts that the prophet’s passion is energized by her or his vision of the divine pathos. The prophetic God is passionate for justice and God’s passion for justice is grounded in God’s intimate care for the world in all its wondrous messiness. God not only loves humankind, God loves individual persons and grieves when one of God’s children is homeless, abused, unjustly treated, or neglected. God is equally passionate in God’s response to those who commit injustice. God still loves them, but God’s passion may sound like what Hosea describes as a lion roaring in the wilderness.

Hosea’s words epitomize the divine pathos. God’s people are bone of God’s bone and flesh of God’s flesh. God mourns, laments, struggles with mixed feelings of love and rage, and vows to be faithful to God’s people despite their infidelity. God sees the people suffering as a result of their injustice and mourns for them, knowing how painful the consequences of injustice will be for them. Again, we have this call to see the goodness that is part of creation and the priori for respoinse.

In effect, Hosea’s God is literally mad as hell at these wayward people. But, love tempers God’s anger at their behaviour. Like a parent whose child has gone astray, God is angry and anguished, but this cannot nullify God’s love. While we may have more “rational” and “dispassionate” understandings of God’s love, we need to ask ourselves imaginatively questions such as “What would anger God about our nation’s behaviour? Where have we brought pain to God?” We must ourselves, “Where are we turning away from God? Where are we oblivious to God’s call through the experience of those persons who, to use Howard Thurman’s words, have their backs against the wall due to poverty and injustice.

Hosea is speaking to the nation, and of course this also includes individual decisions as well. We are the nation and we cannot evade – those of us who “have” – our complicity in our nation’s waywardness. The prophetic God would be rightly angered by the vast gulf between the rich and the poor, our destruction of the environment, our abandonment of children, our voicing family values and yet supporting business policies that destroy family life, our failure to provide sufficient incomes for the working poor, and the institutionalized injustice inspired by prison systems driven by profit rather than human wellbeing motives.

Nichole Torbitzky a university teacher comments that she hears regularly from her undergraduates about the unfortunate comparison between the ‘wrathful’ God of the Old Testament and the ‘loving’ God of the New Testament. She actually enjoys this discussion because it gives her the perfect teaching moment to correct a theological mistake. Implied in this observation is that two different gods are at work here and almost always, the student will backtrack and clarify that what was really meant is that God is the same God in both testaments, just that God became more loving and forgiving in the New Testament. This is when Torbitzky refers to our passage for this Sunday from Hosea.

The people of Israel had broken their end of the covenant with God by worshipping Baal and other Canaanite gods alluded to throughout the book of Hosea. Hosea sees this as a refusal to trust in God to protect them from the invading Assyrians. The Northern Kingdom’s lack of trust in God could also be seen in the many political intrigues that marked this period (see 2 Kings 14–17). 

In the midst of all of this unfaithfulness, Hosea used parental imagery to describe God’s faithfulness. God appeared as a parent-figure who calls, loves, teaches, heals, leads with kindness, embraces/hugs, bends, and feeds. Even in the face of the people’s disobedience and unfaithfulness, God’s heart cannot bear to punish, but grows warm and tender. This is not a picture of a wrathful God. Contrary to popular belief Hosea depicted a loving and forgiving God, who invites reconciliation. God is good and it is we who make the response.

Today’s passage provides a huge amount of rich material. Not only does Hosea’s image of God reveal the constancy and loving compassion God has toward humanity throughout the Bible, but he also highlights that the truth about the nature of God is so important to a view of the human-divine relationship. For Christianity and for process thinkers in particular, this passage from Hosea highlights the truth that God never promises individuals, groups, or nations, that they will never have to deal with adversity and hardship. Rather it claims that hardship is real. Adversity is unavoidable (especially when we are making foolish decisions). The other truth is that God is Love and love never abandons us even in our hardship and adversity, and poor decision-making. Love does not negate our hardship and adversity but rather acknowledges it as part of living. Even, at our lowest, even when we are forgetful, fearful, and unfaithful, our God is with us, calling and directing us toward the path of the divine life, the divine pathos.

When we read our New Testament text for today, we see that back at the end of chapter 10, Jesus visits Martha and Mary, who are most often said to be located in the town of Bethany (John 11), about two miles southeast of Jerusalem. Jesus goes from there to pray, have dinner with some Pharisees, and to cast out a demon. No mention is made of the specific geographical location since Martha and Mary’s house, but it is probably safe to say that he is in Judea during the events of our text for this Sunday.

When we look at the background for this text, we see the Laws of inheritance: In our story, a man in the crowd asks Jesus to intervene on his behalf in a question of inheritance. The man requests, “tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Here are some of the assumptions that we usually make around this passage

1. This is a younger brother making the request.
2. The younger brother is getting no inheritance at all and is asking for ‘his’ half.
3. There are no other brothers.
4. There are no sisters.
5. There is no mother.
6. All of an inheritance passes without question or division to the oldest son.
7. All of an inheritance passes without question or division to the oldest son as a matter of ‘birthright.’

It would be fair to say that most of us have made these assumptions when reading this text and perhaps we might have been challenged to ask if these assumptions are that accurate. For example, it appears that ‘birthright’ inheritance is not set in stone in Jewish law and certainly not in Roman law. Why? Because Jesus, it seems, is quick to see past the assumptions to the possible complications and mitigating factors in inheritance squabbles. He doesn’t ask if the man has a right to half of the inheritance, nor does he try to get to the bottom of whether or not it is fair that a man should get half of the inheritance.

So, what if the man is asking Jesus to choose laws of Israel over the laws of Rome or vice versa. This would not be the only place in the gospels where someone tried to trick Jesus into making a declaration that could be used as evidence of sedition. Perhaps that is what is going on here. But, then again, it was not unusual in Jesus’ day to seek the opinion of a learned and respected Rabbi on matters such as this. (we have our lawyers and our theologians present,) The Talmud (the book of Jewish legal interpretations) is full of questions and opinions to help settle matters just like this. Perhaps the man in the story is simply looking for this popular, young, charismatic rabbi to shake things up regarding inheritance law. Jesus has, after all, just been denouncing the Pharisees (see Luke 11:37-12:3). He did have a way of upending conventional wisdom. Just a few sentences back he exhorted his listeners to “not fear those who kill the body” (Luke 12:4). Considering all of this, perhaps the man in the crowd is not crazy or hiding ulterior motives when he asks this question.

Maybe the man is not completely crazy, but he certainly does not get the truth Jesus is there to speak. Jesus’ response is quick and one might say; delicious. He, responds to this question with a question, “Who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you” (Luke 14)? Jesus is clearly not interested in getting involved in these kinds of squabbles. The next question we come to is “why not?” Why does he not have anything to say about inheritance rules? Jesus has had a lot to say about the treatment of the poor, the vulnerable, the outcast, and the marginalized. Why would he not have something to say about ensuring that inheritance is used for those same ends? Why would he not take this opportunity to upend the inheritance rules of both Roman and Jewish societies that tended to favour the oldest son? Why not proclaim that inheritance should be split equitably between all of the children, including the daughters? Why not proclaim that an inheritance should not be claimed until the mother passes away too, to protect widows? Frankly, we would not have been surprised if Jesus had made these kinds of prescriptions for life in the coming Kingdom. Some of us even treat the bible as though it does.

Rather than answer the man’s question directly, as he so often does, Jesus tells a story as an answer. The story is commonly called the “Parable of the Rich Fool.” In this parable, a rich man, who just got richer, decides he needs to build bigger barns to store his grain and riches. The Rich Fool tells himself, ‘then I will be happy, and relax.’ And to be honest, this doesn’t seem all that foolish. Most of us don’t think we have a great deal of wealth. And because of this the wealth we do have, we want to protect. Would it not be foolish of us to fail to protect that which we have worked so hard to gain and save, in hope of one day retiring and enjoying the fruits of our labour and maybe passing a little onto our children (or at least not being a financial burden to them at the end)? To our mind, that is an important part of the dream. So far, the man in the parable seems pretty level headed. So, what is the problem?

Just as the Rich Fool was settling down with his plans and his dreams of retirement, God intervenes and upends these well-laid plans (as this so-called interventionist God is wont to do it seems). God’s words for this man are not what we would have expected. God does not tell him, ‘Well done, wise and faithful servant! You sowed and reaped, managed and saved, and even though tonight is the night your life is demanded of you, you have left a worthy legacy!” Instead, he is reprimanded for his greed and foolishness. God demands, ‘who will gain from all of this stuff you have stored up!?” In the context of this passage, the answer naturally is his heir, probably his oldest son, for the most part.

Again; why would storing up all of this stuff for one’s heir be a problem? That seems only right. And, here is the part where we fall in love with Jesus all over again. Jesus is talking to a guy who is moaning about inheritance inequities as he sees them. And Jesus implies that inheritance laws are a problem. They are problematic because they cause enmity in households, because they leave out the vulnerable, because they are a testimony to the greed that causes one to think only of himself, but they are not “rich toward God.” (Right about now you might be thinking about the family that has had big trouble over what is ‘fair’ when Mom and Dad passed away.) Our current concern in NZ might suggest that the marriage split fairness is an issue in the forefront of our time and needs to be dealt with.

Implied in this condemnation is that being rich is both a spiritual and a very real material and financial commitment to the Realm of God. But wealth hoarded, is foolish. Life is short, and one never knows when their day has come. Wealth shared, bellies filled, lives changed for the better, is wise. It is the Jesus Way. It is faithful to God.

So, Does God Want Us to be Wealthy? What I have just said is deeply unpopular with many good people in many good churches. And this suggests that we have to think very carefully about what it means to be rich toward God. We have to be very careful not to let ourselves off of the hook too easily. An appropriate sermon illustration for today may come from a Bloomberg article about the super-wealthy who promised huge donations to the Notre Dame Cathedral rebuild. According to the Bloomberg article, at the time of its writing, no actual funds had come from these mega-wealthy donors. Instead, all of the money that had been received at that point had come from small donors, particularly donors from the US and from the French government. The ethical questions around giving vast amounts of money to rebuild a building rather than feed the poor or house the homeless is worth spending some time on. The Congregation at St David’s Khyber Pass wrestled with this ethic that supports making their building an A category building. Is this the Jesus Way? Is the restoration of the lovely old building what God would want? Of course, it is. But is it really?

In terms of process thought about God, we can see an easy argument for the idea that God wants us to be wealthy. It goes like this: 1. God wants the best possible for every occasion. 2. It is beneficial for us to be prosperous and wealthy. 3. Since it is beneficial for us to be prosperous and wealthy, it is the best possible outcome for mission. 4. Therefore, God wants us to be wealthy and prosperous.

But, let’s stop and take a moment to inspect these assumptions. As Marjorie Suchocki aptly pointed out in The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1994), sometimes the best possible for a situation is something we would deem morally bad. At this point, it is easy to fall down the rabbit hole that justifies disproportionate wealth as making the best of a bad situation. Besides, the rationalization continues, how are we to judge what God deems ‘best’ . . . maybe it is best for a few people to control most of the wealth in the world while the rest suffer and struggle. Here is where we come to assumptions #2 and #3. Since I benefit from prosperity and wealth, surely it is the best possible for me to be wealthy and prosperous.

The parable for this week calls out this way of thinking and answers any questions about God’s judgment on wealth and prosperity. How do we judge what God thinks is best concerning wealth? This is surely, no secret. God has already told us: do not store up treasures for yourself, be rich toward God (vs. 21). Jesus tells us that, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (vs. 15). God pretty clearly states that what we, like to tell ourselves is beneficial, God calls greed. Because assumptions 2 and 3 are false, the conclusion that God wants us to be wealthy and prosperous cannot stand.

Ok Then; if God does not want us to be prosperous and wealthy, what does God want? Maybe God wants us to realize that Faithfulness and blessing are not reflected in our material security. And that, God’s best possible for us does not consist of an abundance of possessions. Instead, Jesus directs us to be rich toward God. But what does that look like? For the man in the crowd, perhaps that would look like dropping the squabble with his brother. For the wealthy would-be Notre Dame donors, perhaps it would look like using their money to truly tackle food, housing, and health care insecurities in their country. For us, for you and me? Well here is a few ideas:

1. What about thinking about how we as a congregation can help others to budget including a line or two for that who have no idea how to? Not because they need it but because it might help them feel normal, included and valued and us feel we are normal too.
2. What about thinking how we as a congregation can help people work through the inheritance issues. We don’t know what the man in this story did, but a clear implication of Jesus’ teachings is that inheritance is a tricky thing and maybe because it always will be, we need to pay attention to our and our society’s expectations. After all, its not about equal shares, its, about fairness.
3. What about spending some time looking at the bigger picture that included the possible outcomes of giving. Maybe giving to sound and effective ministries and organizations has some long-term values for a better society.
4. And lastly, what about not being afraid to talk about money. Jesus wasn’t. And maybe we can be more critical of ideologies and assumptions about wealth, and its management. As we are told the poor will always be with us, so what are we doing about that beyond the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff?

How are we responding to the first creation story that says it was good?

Amen

‘Theopoetics, Prayer, Words beyond Words?’

Today is one of those times in the lectionary when the topic is prayer and one wonders whether there is anything new to say about prayer. So given all that I thought we might begin by placing the challenge in the search for the theopoetics of prayer and the words beyond the words perhaps and just touch into some theological wanderings through the prayer I think is the most used and dare I say it, the prayer we spend the least time on analyzing what it is that we are saying when we recite it out of habit.  Am of course talking about ;The Lord’s Prayer.

Rex Hunt gave some thought to this that I found interesting and so I thought we might see what he says as we explore. Like me he reminds us that most analysis of prayer begins with what prayer is and what it isn’t.

Rex says; that, prayer was not some Harry Potter-style magic where you and say certain words and specific things happen. Neither is it Santa Claus–style bargaining… Be good and you get what you ask for. Be bad and you don’t. Instead he suggested that prayer was more akin to the ‘language of the heart’… Rex suggests that prayer is more like a conversation with oneself than one with a higher power, more an invitation to sense the connectedness of the whole of life – and the “always present God” rather than “an elsewhere God” (Morwood 2003:8).

He suggests that the characteristics of this kind of praying would include listening in silence which I think is like taking one’s mind to a place where no words or concepts or anything is required, just a conscious attempt to note all the things swirling around in ones mind as if waiting for a sign or something to take up and still the swirling. A silence that shuts the outer world out and attempts to still the inner one.

He suggests another characteristic is one of giving insights into ourselves and possibly others, and by this I think he is suggesting that the discovery of this silence, this nothingness highlights the fact that we are unique, nothingness is only nothingness when confronted by somethingness perhaps,  there is a self that fills the space, and when we get there we realize that all human beings are alike in this commonality of what it means to be human, sure we know that genetics and environment and relationships all impact on who we are but that commonality is clear and it doesn’t wipe out our uniqueness or our particular input into the wider world, it enhances and clarifies it.

Rex highlights another characteristic as connecting us to each other and here I think he is exploring the world of mirror neurons, of environmental and genetic cause or why do we need to be a particular species. What is being human and why is it important in the greater scheme of things? What is our relationship with the trees and plants and other animals? What is our connection with the planet and the cosmos. I was watching a couple of movies this week. One was Tomorrowland about the insatiable desire of humankind to find another futuristic world and Interstellar about the end of this civilization and the desire of humans to find another planet to live on.

What his this got to do with prayer, well maybe that desire to be connected to one another both at a personal and procreative imperative level and at a planetary survival of the species level. We know instinctively that we need each other yet we spend so much time fighting for our individuality. Is this not at the seat of prayer conditioned by consciousness?

But all this is psychological wandering and its not all that has been said about prayer and its ability to change things. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard once commented: ‘prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays’. Others have refined that a bit, to: ‘Prayer doesn’t change things. Prayer changes people and people change things’. Henry Nelson Wieman went further and suggested that prayer ‘works’ with the: “re-creation of the one who prays, of [the] appreciable world, and of [their] association with others, so that the prayerful request is fulfilled in the new creation” (Wieman 1946:282).

Here we leap to my favourite approach to this. Prayer is about ‘Reimagining the world!  Reimagining relationships!  Reimagining possibilities!

Returning to our text we see that the focus of today’s Lectionary story is again on ‘prayer’.
In particular what we have called The Lord’s Prayer. And our storyteller says the context of the story is a request from the disciples for Jesus to teach them how to pray. And so we are given Luke’s version of that prayer.

If we are honest at this point, we have to says that there is a fair amount of doubt as to whether Jesus actually taught anybody how to pray, let alone a group called the disciples. Recent 21^st century scholarship now suggests this prayer comes from a group of people called the Q People… One of several groups of people who make up the early Jesus movements. Their particular ‘claim to fame’ was they were only interested in the teachings of Jesus “and not on the person of Jesus or his life and destiny” (Mack 1993:1).

It is suggested that during their life together as a community they began to develop a series of strategies to help them survive. Those strategies were:

• they started writing their wisdom down,
• they began to claim Jesus as their founder,
• they began to compose and write down angry sayings, condemning those who rejected them, and
• they began to institutionalize prayer as a response to their situation.

And the outcome of one of those strategies was what we have come to identify
as the Jesus Prayer or The Lord’s Prayer. Named that way because they took bits and pieces of his teachings and wove them together, so every time they said these words, it reminded them of Jesus, their founder. It was a brilliant strategy!

This short prayer showed they believed Jesus prayer life was, and as a result, their prayer life needed to be, basic and broadly focused, “and more broadly focused than that of many religious people today” (Taussig 1999:98)

One of the challenges of this stuff is what I suggested at the beginning when I suggested what prayer might be. All this latter approach to prayer acknowledges the sociological and psychological evolution of human thinking but it is very easily lost as just ‘head’ stuff rather than ‘heart’ stuff. So, what do we do with this? Well, again Rex offers us an option. He tells of a group of refugees in El Salvador where they too have taken the Jesus or Lord’s Prayer and earthed it in their experiences of living in this world. And here is the result of their reflection on this prayer.

Abba/Father…
As God’s children may we build a new earth of sisterhood and brotherhood,
not a hell of violence and death.

may your name be holy

That in God’s name, let there be no abuse, no oppression and no manipulation of the conscience and liberty of your children.

May your rule take place

Not the rule of fear, force or money, of seeking peace through war.

Give us each day our daily bread

The bread of peace, so we can sow our maize and beans, watch them grow and share them together as a family.

Pardon our debts, for we ourselves

pardon everyone in debt to us.

May our relationships not be based on self-interest.

And do not bring us to trial into a trying situation

Let us change lament for songs of life, clenched fists for outstretched hands, and the weeping of widows and orphans for smiles…

This is not some reciting of some well-known words in auto-pilot, like so much of the saying of the Lord’s Prayer in its traditional form, today is. This is basic existence, real life, stuff.

And so is the story which Luke adds to this prayer story. The arrival of an unexpected guest seeking hospitality. Only for the host to have no food in the family larder.
So a neighbour is asked to help out. As Bruce Prewer observes: “…[Luke’s] Jesus is talking about basics.  Good food, not luxuries for the over pampered.  Fish and eggs were the main source of protein in the common person’s diet.  Not snapper or rainbow trout, but plain stubby little fish from Lake Galilee; the ones now called St Peter fish.  And eggs; not caviar but common hen’s eggs.  Basics” (BPrewer web site, 2001). It is for the needs of others that we are told to ask, seek and knock on God’s ‘metaphorical’ door.

That’s what makes this Lukan story, important. That’s what makes the refugees’ reflection, important. That’s what makes the Q peoples’ prayer, important. That’s what makes what we do and say every week, important. Amid the basics of life, and remembering others needs, it invites us to reimagining the world, reimagining relationships, reimagining possibilities. Not for our benefit.  But for theirs, because ‘prayer doesn’t change things. Prayer changes people and people change things.

Paul Alan Laughlin, who’s prayer we will recite in today’s liturgy said in an article some years back that he describes his take on the Jesus/Lord’s Prayer as A Mystical Lord’s Prayer.

“The first and perhaps most important thing that sets this version of the Lord’s Prayer off from the others is its theology, which dispenses entirely with the personal, parental Father-Sky-God of the original, and replaces “Him” with a non-personal, immanent power-presence (or source-force), an infinite one (or One) that is none other (or non-Other) than the spiritual core of the person or persons reciting or singing the prayer.  The implicit theology of this prayer, then, is not monotheism but monism…

“The second distinctive feature of this version of the Lord’s Prayer follows from the first; for having eliminated a personal divine Other above, this Lord’s Prayer… has no petitions for any intercessory acts on behalf of a human individual or group.  In their stead are strong affirmations of how we are already emboldened from within ourselves to become better persons and to accomplish ever-greater things.  This “Lord’s Prayer,” then, can properly be regarded as a daily reminder of our full human potential-miraculous and praiseworthy in its own right-to be good and do good.

“Thus, he says; my Lord’s Prayer is not an invocative device, but an evocative (psyche) exercise in self-realization-or perhaps Self-realization, if the ego-self is to be distinguished from one’s deepest and truest identity, as it is in most mystical traditions.  For humanists, this “within” may be seen differently: as our rational and empirical faculties, perhaps after the fashion of Plato, who equated the human “soul” with the intellect.  In either case, what we have here is an acknowledgement of a mysterious and in some sense sans divine Immanence (versus Eminence) – a reference to the indwelling mysterious Presence and Power that (at least for mystics) permeates or infuses the cosmos, and that (for humanists as well, though probably the capitals) abides in nature, human nature, and therefore ourselves” (Reprinted from The FourthR, Vol 22, No. 6. Nov-Dec 2009

Edouard Glissant, long recognized in the French and francophone world as one of the greatest writers and thinkers of our times wrote in his book; Poetics of Relation, that the concrete particulars of reality turn into a complex, energetic vision of a world in transformation. He argues that the writer can tap the unconscious of a people and apprehend its multiform culture to provide forms of memory capable of transcending “nonhistory,” Glissant defines his “poetics of relation”—both aesthetic and political—as a transformative mode of history, capable of enunciating and making concrete a reality with a self-defined past and future. Glissant’s notions of identity as constructed in relation and not in isolation are germane to discussions of our understanding of multiculturalism. In Glissant’s view, we come to see that relation in all its senses — telling, listening, connecting, and the parallel consciousness of self and surroundings — and this is the key to transforming mentalities and reshaping societies. The power of prayer perhaps as that which is beyond yet dependent upon the words.

In closing I want to offer you another translation this one from the Aramaic language. And the reason I do this is because in translation we often reduce, simplify it, and miss some of the richness of thought that is expressed in ancient language. So here is a summarized version of what Jesus’ own language might have conveyed.

O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos,

 Focus your light within us – make it useful;

Create your reign of unity now –

Your one desire then acts with ours as in all light, so in all forms.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight,

Loose the chords of mistakes binding us,

as we release the strands we hold of other’s guilt.

Don’t let surface things delude us,

But free us from what holds us back,

From you is born all ruling will,

the power and the life to do,

the song that beautifies all,

from age to age it renews.

Truly power to these statements –

may they be the ground from which all my actions grow,

Amen.

‘Who Is the Last Person You Want to be Helped by?   

Jesus is travelling in the north for several weeks and turns south making his way along the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. It was a dangerous route since much of it was through a rocky wilderness that sheltered many bands of thieves or robbers.

He is of course not alone. Our story tradition says he traveled with companions and the curious, who were interested in hearing something of what this strange Jewish cynic-like sage had to say about the nature of human life and its prospects.

Jericho, Jerusalem, and a road. Our story is probably the most known and best loved story in our biblical tradition. The story of the so-called ‘Good Samaritan’ seems to have touched into something that many identify with in some way or another. It is a great story, that is without doubt but herein is its problem. Because it is so well known and so well loved it has been domesticated applied to many situations as a metaphor and we miss that it is first and foremost a parable… By that I mean it is a story which turns our ideas and values and worldview upside down. It is perhaps an active metaphor that locates it in our time and in our place with a disturbing element.

Theologically speaking, for years and years the church’s interpretation turned this parable into an ‘example story’. Into a story of two so-called bad blokes and one good bloke. But an ‘example story’ is what this parable isn’t. This demands that we explore a little why we do that.

If the thrust of the story was about good blokes verses a bad bloke, or as an illustration of love of neighbour, or even a diatribe against heartless religious leaders, the offer of aid by a Jewish lay person would have been sufficient. Remember that Samaritans are Jewish people with a differing theology about the place of the temple. They are remnants of the Northern Kingdom, maybe liberals among conservatives perhaps but still Hebrew people. Or at least not too different in world view.

In this the offer of a lay Jewish person would be enough of a challenge to deal with and likewise, according to John Dominic Crossan: “If Jesus wanted to… inculcate love of one’s enemies, it would have been radical enough to have a Jewish person stop and assist a wounded Samaritan…  [But] the internal structure of the story and the historical setting of Jesus’ time agree that… the whole thrust of the story demands that one say what cannot be said, what is a contradiction in terms: Good-Samaritan” (Crossan 1992:62).

And that’s a major shock. Because it challenges the hearers. It challenges them and us and their and our, understanding of God and of whom God approves. The Samaritan, who is both a lay person and an outsider, embodies the true interpretation of the Jewish tradition: to show compassion.

Two people who help us appreciate a much broader understanding of what ‘compassion’ is, are Matthew Fox and John Donahue. Matthew Fox suggests that: “Compassion is not pity…  It is not feeling sorry for someone.  Compassion is about feelings of togetherness. It is about all those risks to self and exposing one’s vulnerability. Turning the other cheek is not just about looking away, not judging, and accepting difference. It is about being prepared to be changed, to see things anew. And it is this awareness of kinship or togetherness that urges us to seek after justice and do works of mercy (Fox 1979:2, 4). Like Matthew Fox was saying last week compassion is not only about caring for each other as fellow human beings it is about deeply caring for the whole of creation, about all the relationships. Each piece of plastic in the ocean is our concern, each decision about the survival or extinction of any microbe, animal, and atom is in need of compassion.

John Donahue also views compassion as something more than just concern for or awareness of. He describes ‘compassion’ like this: He says: “Compassion is that divine quality which, when present in human beings, enables them to share deeply in the sufferings and needs of others and enables them to move from one world to the other: from the world of helper to the one needing help; from the world of the innocent to that of the sinner”   (Donahue 1988:132). So, who is my neighbour? Well we could say that from our experience as a biblical storyteller, when people have heard this story of the good Samaritan many of them ask that same question and then identify with the Samaritan.

But it’s not as easy being a ‘good’ Samaritan as it seems at first sight! The stories told by our cultural storyteller – television, and experience – tells us people continue to pass by on the other side. The story doesn’t seem to be all that powerful a catalyst for change in our behaviour.

So, let’s listen to the story again, but this time we will try to imagine it from the injured person’s point of view. Why didn’t they stop and help me? I thought a minister was supposed to help others. And that church worker… Bet she was only going to another flower roster committee meeting. She could have been just a bit late… Wait on; here comes someone else. Maybe he will stop and… Oh no. Not one of them!

Wait on, I mustn’t be so pessimistic. Here’s one. Oh dear, he’s a Samaritan, this is not supposed to happen. Why a Northerner or maybe a Muslim… Anyone but him really. Perhaps it would be better if you kept going? Please, don’t stop. Keep going. Don’t touch me. O God, more importantly; don’t let him touch me…

The late Robert Funk spent many years studying this parable. He asked this question:
“Who in the audience wanted to let himself or herself be helped by a Samaritan? This is the primary challenge because the appearance of the Samaritan makes sense on no other basis” (Funk 1996:176). Who among you he said; would want to be helped by someone you didn’t respect or have time for or rubbed you up the wrong way? Who among you when you were in dire straits, vulnerable, and at risk would welcome someone you didn’t like to help you?

Funk then went on to suggest that had the victim in the ditch been a Samaritan and the hero an ordinary Judean, a different question would have had to have been asked. The question would be: who in the Judean audience wanted to play the role of hero to a Samaritan victim? What makes this question challenging is that, the role of the victim is the inferior role. The role of the helper is the superior one. And who doesn’t want to be the hero?

Who is my neighbour? That’s the supposed context of this story and the most common question asked by those who hear it. It is about the challenge of identifying one’s neighbour as the one in need but there is another contextual question in this story as well. Another ‘word’ which must also be considered if this story is to be a parable rather than just an example story.

And that can also be shaped into a question: The question is ‘whom will I allow to be my neighbour?” On this question, Megan McKenna’s comment is very suggestive: “If we were in the ditch in that condition, who is the last person we would want to be indebted to for the rest of our lives, especially if acknowledging the debt would cause us to be outcast and associated with that group by everyone in our current world?  Is there anyone or any group that we feel that way about?  Would we rather die than face the fact that this person or these people are our neighbours? (McKenna 1994:149).

That is one heck of a challenge and makes this parable very disruptive of our comfort. It does not allow us to sideline the challenge by putting is aside under the cloak of a story of a good bloke verses a bad one. Our honest answer to the question that risks our integrity, our commitment to justice and our willingness to die for it, gets close to the heart of this parable. And our answer just might really surprise us as well. I know it does for me in my current circumstances as minister of St David’s facing questions about my behaviour, and I know it could for those of you who care about St David’s as well as for me. Who is our neighbour? And Whom will I allow to be my neighbour? These are questions we ask of ourselves when we seek to be compassionate for all people and our planet with whom and for which we share this life. Amen.