April 13, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Easter 4     Luke 10:29-47

Sentence of the Day:

"There are only two feelings: Love and fear. There are only two languages: Love and fear. There are only two activities: Love and fear. There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results. Love and fear. Love and fear." – Michael Leunig



Prayer of the Day:

The debris of true gods and false gods litter the pages of history,

testimony to our inability to hear strangers' truths and live with

difference. May love be our guide to avoid the pit of fear. Amen.

He was an immigrant and an outsider, who lived inside the borders of Israel. He spoke with an accent. He worshipped another god, a false god. As a foreigner he was viewed suspiciously. He was a Samaritan. 
– Glynn Cardy

Sermon:

Peter Brown, the Deputy Leader of NZ First, articulated ‘anti-Samaritan’ sentiment last week when he warned of the “real danger we will be inundated with people who have no intention of integrating into our own society. They will form mini-societies… that will lead to division, friction and resentment.”

This is the politics of suspicion and fear. It persists through every age and nation like a virus that won’t go away. Ironically it foments the division, friction, and resentment Brown and his ilk allegedly want to avoid. Fear is the motivation that justifies the powerful pushing the racially, and often economically, less powerful into prescribed roles and functions. Prejudice and racism are the gates that keep them there.

Brown, of course, wasn’t talking about Samaritans per se but those he lumped together as ‘Asian’. But Brown could have been an American politician talking about ‘Hispanics’, or a British politician talking about ‘Muslims’. Or he could have been a leader of a synagogue in first century Palestine.

There was also in our biblical story an insider. Unlike the Samaritan outsider he was a faithful Jew who prayed daily to the true god. Like his contemporaries he listened as people bemoaned the influx of immigrants into Jerusalem, heretics like Samaritans, and by his silence assented to the moaning.

We don’t know too much about this insider until the boundaries of his world were violently shattered. He was beaten up on the Jericho Road and left in pain, semi-conscious, lying in a ditch. He didn’t know who did or didn’t help him until much later. He just groaned, and ached.

When the Samaritan saw the beaten man he had no way of checking on his credentials. He didn’t know whether this was one of those bigoted racists who petitioned and demanded that foreigners go home. He didn’t know whether this was one of those religious purists who would have considered himself contaminated in the presence of a Samaritan. He didn’t know whether the beaten man was nice or nasty, generous or greedy, loved or hated. He didn’t know, and he didn’t really care. Right race or wrong race, right face or wrong face, right god or wrong god… it didn’t matter. This Samaritan’s urge to help overruled any misgivings. Kindness was stronger than suspicion.

One of the critical issues most nations and cosmopolitan cities face is finding the balance between on the one hand the need for cultural identity and on the other hand the need for wider social cohesion between multiple cultures.

Immigrant groups are usually tolerated to the extent they blend in - although it’s always hard to blend when you look and sound different, or when the racial/cultural hegemony keeps you at the periphery of social and economic power. Blending has usually meant learning and adopting the language and perceived cultural norms of the majority and relegating your own native culture and language to the status of a ‘hobby’. Such blending has been justified in order to maintain the social cohesion that the power-holders deem acceptable.

All people need to some degree to feel a sense of cultural identity and belonging. Minority cultures need places where they are nurtured and where they can exercise autonomy over their affairs. These are needed not least because culture and spirituality and mental health are so intertwined. To be a strong and vibrant nation or city there needs to be strong and vibrant individuals secure in their cultural inheritance. Only when there is that security can there be the openness and fearlessness to embrace that which is foreign and strange and to discover what unites people across cultures. Rather than the powerful imposing social cohesion, social cohesion will emerge when cultures, races and faiths give each other the respect and resources they need. When unity is imposed it quickly becomes uniformity. When diversity is honoured the willingness to come together is enhanced.

The issues of unity and diversity, identity and cohesion, are not new. As the story of the Good Samaritan indicates they were prevalent in Jesus’ Palestine and throughout the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire, like our globalized world today, attracted to its metropolitan centres a great and wide variety of cultures, languages and religions. Religiously the Romans valued tolerance as a practical measure to aid the cohesion of the Empire. Paganism – namely the worship of the Roman gods and goddesses – tolerated Judaism and Christianity as long as they demonstrated religious tolerance and acknowledged the ruling class system. In the early 300s however the Emperor Constantine saw the benefits of switching from using Paganism as a cohesive force to using Christianity. Christianity was sharpened as an instrument of uniformity.

Unfortunately for the Empire it didn’t work. The Great Council of Nicaea and its successors were ultimately political failures. In the name of trying to get all people to believe the same they labelled one set of beliefs ‘right’ [or orthodox] and another ‘wrong’ [or heretical]. The former were rewarded and the latter punished. The wisdom of orthodoxy didn’t hold the Empire together. Those Goths who sacked Rome in 410 were so-called Christian heretics who traced their theology back through Arius.

For any society social cohesion is important but using a religion for that purpose – as some would want to do in our country with the ‘Christian nation’ ideal – simply doesn’t work. It produces insiders and outsiders. And the only way an outsider can become an insider is by shedding their cultural identity, language, and religion.

Within Christianity itself the fixation upon right beliefs has done a huge disservice to our integrity and impact upon the world. We have become known for justifying wars, oppressing creative thinkers, and being intolerant towards other faiths. If only we had followed the way of the Good Samaritan who didn’t preach to the roadside victim nor to the innkeeper… who didn’t try to convert or control anyone… who didn’t try to profit from his intervention... If only we had followed the Samaritan who was simply kind and generous.

At its heart the parable of the Good Samaritan underlines that action is what speaks most powerfully. It is not what we believe but how we act that counts. It is not my true god verse your false god but our acts of kindness that manifest our spirituality. It is not my culture that’s in the ascendancy that is important but the hospitality and compassion that any culture is capable of extending. It’s not about power but service, it’s not about privilege but people, it’s not about beliefs but acts of kindness.

Suspicion and fear are viruses that spread particularly during times of social unrest and change. It is all too easy to blame the immigrant, the one who looks and talks differently. It is all too easy to say the immigrant must change and be like us, or get out and leave our prejudices intact. Jesus’ response to this virus was to tell a story about how a Jew was beaten up and fellow Jews - the pious and the powerful – walked on by. Then an immigrant, a man with a different god, a heretic, stopped and helped him.

For Jesus it wasn’t your race, culture, or god that was important. It was whether you had the courage to be kind when your society was cowering in fear.