July 11, 2010

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 7     Luke 10:25-37

Video available on YouTube, Facebook

Last weekend Lynette and I were in Murchison for a grandchild’s birthday. It is little more than a crossroads between mountains half-way between Nelson and Greymouth. Prior to the party we went for a drive to enjoy the magnificent surrounding scenery. We came to a lookout over the Maruia Falls. Being ten metres high they make a pretty big splash, but once having lived near Niagara Falls I wasn’t overly impressed. Returning to town we still had time to kill so we visited Murchison’s Historical Museum. There I learned that on June 16, 1929 the falls did not exist. After the 7.8 earthquake the following day there were falls on the Maruia River. Now I was impressed. That is truly a seismic change.

Such a change occurred the day a lawyer decided to test his skills of argument and knowledge of the Torah against Jesus. He wasn’t interested in obtaining eternal life, he was only interested in besting Jesus in a religious argument for his own self-aggrandizement. He got more than he bargained for when he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” He got the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan.

The day before this encounter there was no such thing as a GOOD Samaritan. It was inconceivable. The Samaritans were considered half-breed heretics who it was socially acceptable to despise and hate. After the parable their brand changed. Today hospitals, charitable agencies, churches and laws protecting doctors when assisting the injured are happy to be called Good Samaritan. Along with the Prodigal Son, it is Jesus’ most well known parable. But because of its familiarity we have grown blasé about it. We have forgotten what it was like before he raised our consciousness. Worse, we have stopped thinking about what he was really saying. We assume we know what it is about. For instance, if I were to give a “quickie quiz” and ask people on the street if Jesus answered the lawyer when he asked, “And who is my neighbour?” I think most would answer, “Yes, the good Samarian.” They would be wrong. Jesus does not answer the question, but asks more questions. The neighbour in the story is unidentifiable. He is the one who got mugged. Stripped of his clothing and robbed of his ID he could have been anyone. He could’ve even been us.

Before Jesus told the parable it was perfectly acceptable to think of God’s love being limited to your own kind. People’s gods then belonged to the tribe. I know it sounds a little primitive today to think that God only loves people who sing the same national anthem as we do or share the same colour of skin or have our gender or share our same sexual attraction or worship the same god in the same way, but really people once thought that way. And here is something even stranger, people used to spend a lot of time wondering about just how little they had to do to obtain God’s love. What was the minimum necessary requirement to keep their god on their side? I know, it’s hard to believe that people were once so self-serving. But I assure you it is true. But worst of all, before the parable, people thought holiness and fear could coincide, hand in glove. That’s why the priest and Levite could walk on by their distressed neighbour without apparent guilt or shame. Helping him would have defiled them. They would have jeopardized their holiness. To intentionally become unclean was a fearful thought and an unimaginable act. 

It was this idea of holiness that Jesus challenged with his parable and it was no small thing. It was a 7.8 earthquake that changed the topography of faithfulness. Righteousness was no longer about what we do or don’t do, but about how we are. It was about being. 

The lawyer claimed to be seeking how to obtain eternal life. I understand that to mean God’s unlimited love, compassion and mercy. He was confident he knew the answer. Follow the Law. The Law said, “Love your neighbour.” But surely God didn’t mean everyone? Be reasonable. There have to be limits. He did not hear the irony in his own question. Jesus’ parable played with his blindness. If you are one with unlimited love is it even possible to limit your love? To use our fears or the Law or tradition or Scripture or even our claims on God to limit that love was a non-starter for Jesus. Limited love is no love at all.

That message rattled the windows of the powerful and knocked their means of control off their neatly stacked shelves. It created a chasm in the social order. It shook the ground of their being. It was an unexpected message that made him exceedingly dangerous. Their only hope to restore order was to silence the messenger. But while you can clean up and rebuild after an earthquake, the landscape is forever changed. Putting the unlimited love of God back in the box of our religion after the parable of the Good Samaritan is proving to be impossible, but not for lack of trying.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve witnessed lots of attempts to limit God. Recently the Presiding Bishop of the US, Katharine Jefferts Schori, was in England. When she was invited to preach at Southwark Cathedral, Archbishop Rowan Williams forbid her to wear her mitre, the sign of her office. As she put it, “How bizarre!” But not so much in a country that is arguing this week at their synod whether or not God intended women to be bishops. But before we start referring to them as “bloody poms,” when she was here recently the Bishop of Christchurch forbid Katharine to even be in her cathedral. A woman bishop forbidding another woman bishop to be in her cathedral goes beyond even bizarre. Her reason was not Katharine’s gender but seemingly her belief that God limits love by demanding unity within the Anglican Communion. Since the US is ordaining gays and lesbians as bishops, Bishop Victoria attempted to keep Christchurch pure by being inhospitable to the highest-ranking leader of the American church. Happily, not all of New Zealand chose to be 100% pure. When in Auckland the Presiding Bishop was invited not only to preach at the cathedral, but to wear her mitre as well. (I’m told both she and it were greatly admired.) 

Following this week of attempted God-containment came the Hermeneutics Hui I mentioned two weeks ago I was attending. It was another effort to put God back in the box. The structure was built around the three Tikanga of Pakeha, Maori and Polynesia. Each took responsibility for examining a passage from either the Old or New Testament that has been traditionally used to justify the condemnation and exclusion of homosexuals. There are not many to choose from so the Sodom and Gomorrah story, a passage from Leviticus and Paul’s letter to the Romans and first letter to the Corinthians were looked at. You might ask why not a passage from any of the Gospels? It seems Jesus never thought an issue that is fracturing the Anglican Communion today was worth mentioning then. 

It turns out that these passages that clearly condemn homosexuality are not so clear after all. Three Pakeha theologians from Auckland, Waiapu and Nelson presented first on Sodom and Gomorrah. Two of them pretty much demolished the idea that the sin of Sodom was homosexuality. Violent, abusive sex, yes. Inhospitality, yes. Homosexuality, no. The theologian from Nelson tried to make a case for the sin being homosexuality, but it was pretty weak. I’m not certain even she was convinced.

The next presentation was by the Maori Tikanga on the Holiness Code prohibition of a man lying with a man like a woman in Leviticus. While generally conservative theologically, the Maori presenters were not troubled by the idea of including gays and lesbians into their common life. It is a matter of hospitality. One Maori synod only a couple of weeks ago approved by an overwhelming 80% to ordain gays and lesbians. It still has to be approved by the whole Tikanga but I found that encouraging.

Tikanga Polynesia gave the third presentation on Paul’s letter to the Romans. It became evident that the Polynesian Church while in many ways the most conservative of the three Tikanga, is untroubled by what they consider the third gender, homosexuality. But while they are a long way from focusing on whether or not to ordain gays and lesbians, they already associate the third sex with the sacred. I found that promising.

The conservative Evangelicals were not particularly pleased with how the Hui was going up to this point, although some admitted it was opening their thinking on the subject. However, their moment came in the last presentation made by an evangelical professor of New Testament. He built his case against inclusion of the GLBT community on Paul’s prohibition of male homosexuality in his first letter to the Corinthians. Paul gives a list of people whose actions are obviously not loving, like adulterers and murders, to which he adds a word for men who lie with men, sometimes translated as homosexuals. Paul states these people will not inherit the Kingdom of God, which is his way of saying eternal life or God’s unlimited love, compassion and mercy. The question raised is should the church exclude them as well? After his presentation I asked if he thought Paul believed a homosexual was incapable of showing God’s unlimited love, compassion and mercy because that would mean he was already a recipient of eternal life? He had no answer. I found that hopeful.

While reading about the Maruia Falls in the museum, I found it interesting that when the earthquake first created them they were only a few metres high. But over the next eighty years the falling water eroded further the riverbed below making them their present more dramatic height. I suppose it is possible in a 1000 more years they might approach the height of Niagara Falls.

The parable of the Good Samaritan was a mighty earthquake. It unchurched God. It made love, compassion and mercy more important than holiness. It made hospitality more important than the law. While the church still tries to limit God’s love, the aftershocks of the parable continue to be felt. The unlimited love of God continues to shape the landscape. Even the church cannot contain it.