The Good Samaritan in 2016

My mother-in-law would tell the story of being lost with a group of people in Adelaide. They had no idea where they were or how to get to the venue they were heading for. While they were standing on the side of the road in their Ascot finery a group of Harley Davidson riding bikies in full club colours rode by. Imagine their surprise when one broke ranks, turned around and roared to a stop in front of them. He said they looked lost, could he help? They said where they wanted to go and he gave them the directions. This story was told (often) to remind us not to judge the book by the cover. Help comes in many shapes and sizes. Knowing my mother-in-law, this was indeed a moving moment because one she would not normally have associated with, under any circumstances, helped her.

In the light of the outcome of our recent general election, it is more than appropriate todays gospel is the story of the Good Samaritan, an oxymoron for the audience in Luke’s story, nothing good comes out of Samaria!  Here was a despised person taking the central role in an object lesson on who is my neighbour and how to be neighbourly.

Those who were the obvious doers of good crossed to the other side, for no other reason than for the fear that what had happened to that unfortunate traveller may indeed happen to them, and no amount of doing good was worth putting self at risk. They were good, were deemed good and were responsible for doing good in their lives in other ways, in the temple, in their religion and in their practice. Somebody else would deal with this situation. It wasn’t their responsibility.

It is the question sitting at the back of our heads, or at least mine, how would I react in a similar situation? It is fine to do good when there is no risk, when the one we are doing good for is like us, shares our values and our lifestyle, but what about when it is a possible life threatening situation or the one needing our help is unlike us or is our enemy? Would I act as the Good Samaritan does? Would I do the right thing then?  I can never be sure of the answer.

As a country the recent election answers this. How do we respond? Not very well. We are more concerned with the protection of our lifestyle and safety. We have ignored those who are our neighbours and have prevented others from caring for them as well.

Our neighbours? Those without a country, those who seek to find a better place in this world, those who are homeless and unemployed, those who have their land and country taken away from them. These are our neighbours and we have supported policies and ideals which isolate, marginalise and persecute them through the continuing support of hard-line policies ranging from the One Nation rhetoric through to the mainstream parties strong borders and close the gap policies and more.

Luke’s Jesus says enough is enough. Our neighbour is our responsibility. Our neighbour relies on our neighbourliness for hope, life and a future. We cannot avoid this responsibility by pointing to all the good we do elsewhere if we cross to the other side and leave people stranded, victims of injustice and violence, to be violated again and again by our limited goodness.

Luke’s Jesus expands the Deuteronomy 6 definition of neighbour beyond the borders of a state (Jews and aliens living in the community) and spreads it out to include all, even the dreaded Samaritans. Neighbourliness is the hospitality we owe to all even at the risk of our own wellbeing.

It is also important to note the Samaritan was the first responder who placed himself at risk. After helping the traveller he took him to an inn and delegated e task of neighbourliness to the inn keeper. We do not have to stay involved for ever. This is a task to be shared.

Luke’s Jesus equates neighbour with the one who should act and the one who needs our action. Here is the discarding of duality – the doer and the one for whom it is done are the same one. This is not charity. Charity is the embedding of power and the embedding of hopelessness. The one being done for is seen as a lesser being because they need someone to help them.

For Luke’s Jesus, we are one with, same as, united with the one we assist. We are aware we may in fact require them to be neighbourly to us at some time. We are vulnerable, frail, ordinary human beings whose life circumstances may very well mean we are laying by the road side waiting for a neighbour to wander by.

Thomas Merton writes:  “A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.”

How do we answer Merton? What is the end we live for? How is our lives shaped by that end? Are we indeed shaped by a spirituality grounded in neighbourliness or are we living simply for the immediate, the safety of the moment, out of fear of the other? Merton is direct, as is Jesus: “You are made in the image you desire”. Luke’s Jesus responds with, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

Merton and Jesus reminds us, just as the duality of helper and the one needing helps is false thinking, so is the duality of spiritual and secular. You either act out of your spiritual experience or you don’t, you either remain faithful to the faith you attest to here at the Eucharistic table or you seek only your own wellbeing.

It is at the Eucharistic table we celebrate, not only the breaking open of the the life of Christ, but the breaking open of our own lives to the other, to the neighbour and it requires us to be neighbourly at all times, especially with those so unlike us we must exhibit the obedience that took Jesus to the cross.

In our church, in our country we are called to be inclusive, welcoming, empowering, giving, at the risk of losing all we hold dear. The growing world wide epidemic of isolationism by states is an epidemic contrary to the growing out into the world of the neighbourliness essential to the Christian faith and contrary to the example of Jesus.

How do take on the role of neighbour? By becoming, as we concluded last week, open-hearted, open-minded and open handed. Critically so. By this I mean we must critically reflect on our practice, how we engage with, talk about and listen to those who need our neighbourliness. We must challenge our conventional thought, leave behind our intellectually lazy acceptance of seemingly acceptable thoughts and behaviours and begin to wrestle with the reality in which we live.

Jesus engages the lawyer in this deep reflection. We do not know what conclusions the lawyer came to but we know he was challenge to move beyond what was the normal wisdom. It is time for such deep reflection by all of us, individually, as a church and as a nation if we are going to discover the Good Samaritan within.

Life is a Risk - Lent 1

Taking risks is often seen as the specific territory of teenagers, particularly teenage boys. Time and time again we are told the latest tragedy, accident or foolish behaviour is the result of young men responding to the adrenalin rush of going one step further than it was wise to do.

I would suggest we have all taken risks, foolish risks and survived, sometimes in one piece, sometimes a little battered and broken but still standing, mostly a little wiser, at some point in our lives. Looking back over my youth I confess to many such risky behaviours, but how else would I get the nickname ‘Loose’? I was given that name because I consistently went one step further than those around me at the time. I drove faster, drank more and took crazy risks others only talked about. Amazingly, I survived.

Yet, taking risks is a part of all of our lives.  It is dialled in. Perhaps not in the foolish way some teenagers and I have experienced it, but in a calculated and planned manner. No business succeeds without the risk of going broke. No athlete competes without the risk of not finishing. No politician leads without the risk of failure. No person loves without the risk of being rejected. Getting married and having children is a risk. Risk is hard wired into our lives as humans.

Therefore it is no coincidence the first thing God does with Jesus after his baptism is, he takes a risk with him. He sends him out into the desert for 40 days without food. He was fasting. Fasting is no easy task. 40 days without food would mean, not only were you hungry, but your mind would start playing tricks on you, you would start to think dangerous thoughts and begin to look for a way out of the situation you found yourself in.

At the end of the 40 days, ‘he was famished’ and that’s when the temptations begin. Not at the beginning when he was fresh, full of commitment and discipline. Not halfway through when he was hungry but still filled with the desire to get it right. But at the end. God places Jesus in a solitary aloneness where there was no consolation except his relationship with God. Would that hold? Could Jesus experience the desolation of his humanness and resist the temptations that arose with in and without him and hold onto God? Could he?

The temptations come in 3 distinct forms, but they are typical of the temptations we face everyday.

·      In the first Jesus is tempted to use his power to create food for himself, the ‘old rock into bread’ trick. If you have the power and you’re hungry, do something about it. This is the battle between Jesus’ divinity and humanity. If he succumbed he would have denied the Incarnation, he would no longer be human, just a divine actor on a stage called earth. He remained human.

We are challenged many times to do things just because we can, and by so doing, shortcut our experience of being human in exchange for less pain, suffering and joy. Just because we can, should we?

·      Secondly, Jesus is tempted to change sides. From where he is standing he can see the world and us tempted to get what he came for the easy way. This is the ‘old the end justifies the means’ justification. I am here to rule over the world, here it is being offered on a platter, why not just say yes and take it? Doesn’t matter how you get it, but if you get the outcome you need, that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Jesus is being asked if he can trust God with this task, even the process will be difficult, painful and risky. He does. He chooses to trust his relationship with God, even though he suspects that this is going to hurt, that it will cost him and without commitment, discipline and trust there will be no outcome at all.

This is a major temptation for us. We want to avoid pain, suffering and struggle and be happy all the time.  The temptations of the consumer world promise that. Wear the right clothes, buy the right car, live in the right street, use the right toothpaste and it will all be yours. Your can and will achieve the kingdom of happiness. Alas, we know from experience that’s not so and we either become bitter, sad or blame others (especially God), or we simply settle for less than the kingdom God promises. The kingdom of God is only accessible through the full journey of our humanity, a rollercoaster o pain, suffering, discipline, hope, good times, not so good times and more, but they all add up to that moment when we die to ourselves and are resurrected into a new way of being human.

·      Finally, Jesus is tempted to find out if God loves him as much as he says he does. He is asked to take the ultimate risk and leap to certain death, waiting for God to rescue him. He doesn’t.  He simply says don’t set God up; don’t let your expectations get in the way God works. He resists that temptation on the Cross, where people are taunting him and calling upon him to call upon God to save him, he doesn’t. In the midst of the pain of being a human who was deserted, brutalised and lost, he maintains his trust in his relationship with God.

This is a temptation we can easily fall for. When all has collapsed and we are desperate, how about calling God out, seeing what God will do?  Judas tried that and he got more than he bargained for. Like Jesus we are called on to stay faithful in our brokenness, trusting that God will be faithful to our relationship.  But at all times we are to be faithful. That was the purpose of the Incarnation. Jesus came to experience what it meant to be a human in relationship with God and other humans. Like him, we are to grow into it.

For Jesus it was a risk to become human, leaving his divinity behind; for God it was a risk to put Jesus in a place of great risk, that of being human (Jesus could have succumbed, it was always a possibility otherwise we have been deceived); and for humanity, us, it was a risk, for if that happened we would remain eternally lost.

Being human is the only way to live into the risk of God’s love. Go for it!

Text: Luke 4:1-13