Scripture Readings:
Hebrew Scriptures – Amos 7: 7-15
7This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. 8And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; 9the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”
10Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. 11For thus Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’” 12And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; 13but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.” 14Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, 15and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’
Gospel Lesson – Luke 10: 25-37
25Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” 28And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” 29But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
“And Who Is My Neighbor?”
“And who is my neighbor?” We’ve heard how Jesus answered that question put to him by the lawyer in today’s gospel reading. You and I could probably think of all kinds of stories that address how humanity has tried to resolve that same question. The story outlined as the “Words of Meditation”1 in our bulletin this morning is a midrashic2 story that was quoted by Elie Wiesel in an article that he entitled “When Passion Is Dangerous.” Wiesel, who was focusing on the fanatic of today’s society in his article, went on to comment:
What the fanatic will not accept, what you and I cannot forget, is that all of us are in the same boat.3
With all that’s going on in today’s world, then – from the Mexico/Arizona border to the conflagrations that continue to inflict the Middle East and Asia –trying to come to grips with fanaticism has become incredibly important, if we’re ever going to be able to understand human relationships from a global perspective. The very word “neighbor” has gotten all twisted, confused and complicated. Wiesel goes on to say:
If religious fanaticism hides the face of God, so does political fanaticism destroy human liberty. In fact, there are some who, seeking to combat religious fanaticism, battle it with another kind of fanaticism that is equally evil.4
It’s absolutely imperative for us, then, to keep our eyes and ears open to just how much this dispute over who is or isn’t our neighbor has infected the very organization in which you and I serve: the church.
We’ve long seen, of course, how the church has sought to reject and even expel gays, but one startling example that some of you may not know about is that for a long time now (I’d guess for at least thirty years or more) ultra-conservative Christians have abused the right of religious freedom in, of all places, the Armed Forces of the United States of America – particularly on the campuses of our military academies. What’s disturbing to me (along with many others) is that these Christian fundamentalists have tried to secure dominance of their own narrowly-defined points of view, not just on their own behalf, but to then impose them on our men and women in uniform. Other Christians – Catholics and Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Progressive Christians – as well as Jews, Muslims, and people of many other faiths (and those who are, simply, non-believers), not only have been coerced into attending ultra-conservative worship services and forced into agreeing to a particularly dogmatic kind of “Christian” theology, but those same symbols and purposes then have become part of their military obligation. This is a conflict that demands the attention for every single one of us – not just those of us who serve or ever have served in the military.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation,5 then, is a recently created organization that’s become a very important group. It’s sole purpose is to combat this latest chauvinistic kind of religious fanaticism. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation was specifically organized to protect the precious civil rights of our men and women in all branches of the service to worship, speak, think, and act in accordance with their own religious and spiritual views.
It’s worth noting, then, that the MRFF has taken on case after case of service men and women who’ve been pressured and coerced to attend specific religious services and activities against their will and who, if they’ve refused, have been belittled, humiliated, dehumanized, often assigned punitive extra duties and (incredible as it sounds) even significantly more dangerous combat assignments! Too often they are marginalized by their own nation’s military authorities. If the MRFF doesn’t speak up for these men and women, if they don’t advocate for them and aren’t willing to support them, who will? Our service personnel and even the military chaplains (as Roger might be able to tell you if he were still here6) have no one else to stand with them in the face of often relentless religious discrimination.
As the voice of the herdsman and arborist turned prophet, Amos, cries out to us from the pages of antiquity this morning, it’s not enough just to know the torah7 of God; we’ve got to follow it to have life. Amos warned the Israelites that God was holding up a plumb line next to their own political and religious institutions to see if they were in alignment with what was right. If things weren’t square, God was prepared to tear those structures down. The whole place would have to go, Amos warned, so that the people could begin again and build a house that did line up with God’s standards of justice and righteousness. Those same standards should be applied today.
This was the reason that the Methodist Federation for Social Action8 chose the symbol of the plumb line (as you see it on our bulletin cover)9 as it’s logo. Those of us who are active members of MFSA have pledged to not just sit idly by in the face of injustice, but to take action on issues of peace, poverty and people’s rights – not only within the church, but within our community, the nation and the world. As Jesus succinctly put it to the lawyer in our story today, “Do this and you will live.”10 We continue to call our church to expand its understanding of the radical call of the Gospel to be the inclusive, justice-seeking, risk-taking Body of Christ that we believe it was meant to be.
To me, one of the most exciting and at the same time unnerving aspects of our religious tradition is its nonconforming nature. Think about it: just when we think that we finally understand who God is and the ways in which God is working in our lives, something happens that seems to turn our understanding inside out.
It started for us Christians with a humble rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth who, incredibly, was executed as a common criminal for his radical points of view. We were told to love our neighbor, and when we asked just who that might be, we were told a story that showed us that he might just be the very person that we’ve despised and vilified for most of our lives. For the lawyer in our parable, you see, Samaritans were heretics, outcasts; his people considered them untouchables. It was unthinkable, then, that a Samaritan might be compassionate, that a Samaritan might be the one to fulfill the law when the religious leaders failed to do so.
“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” Jesus asks. “The one who showed him mercy,” replies the lawyer – I imagine that he choked against even being able to say the word “Samaritan.”
Who might be today’s “Samaritan” for you or for me? A member of the Taliban11 or Al-Qaeda?12 Who would we be outraged to discover that they ever could have the capacity to be compassionate?
According to a biblical scholar of the Jesus Seminar,13 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.14
That’s a major shock, because it challenges the hearers’ understanding of God – both then and now - and of whom God approves. Incredibly, it’s the Samaritan, who is both a lay person and an outsider, who embodies the true interpretation of the heart of Jewish tradition: to show compassion.
And compassion isn’t just simply feeling sorry for somebody else’s misfortune; it includes a strong desire to alleviate that person’s suffering. Its opposite is exemplified by the disgust or indifference of the other characters in our story who turned away. Matthew Fox (author of Original Blessing and other wonderful books) even suggests that compassion is actually about understanding that we’re all in this together – we really do need each other – and it’s just this “awareness of kinship or togetherness that urges us to seek after justice and [to] do works of mercy.”15
John Donahue, for many years Professor of New Testament at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, describes compassion like this:
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.16
Who is my neighbor? From my experience over the years as a pastor and preacher, when most people have heard this story and asked themselves that question, they’ve identified with the Samaritan. But it’s not as easy being a “good” Samaritan as it first seems. The stories told by our own cultural storytellers – movies and television – tell us that most of us continue to look the other way and pass by on the other side.
One of my own mentors from, again, the Jesus Seminar – in fact its founder – biblical scholar Robert Funk, spent many years studying this parable; and he asked of it this compelling 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.17
Funk suggested that had the victim in the ditch, himself, been a Samaritan and the hero, say, an ordinary Judean, a very different question would had to have been asked: who in the Judean audience would then have wanted to play the role of hero to a Samaritan victim?18
Let’s face it, all too often in our culture 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 neighbor? That’s the supposed context of this story and the most common question asked by those of us who hear it. It’s the one that I’ve centered on in sermons over the years. But there is another question in this story – another “word,” if you will, that we’ve also got to consider if this story is to be understood as the parable that it is – instead of just another morality play. And that is: “Whom would I allow to be my neighbor?”
Megan McKenna, an internationally known author, theologian, storyteller and lecturer, makes a very suggestive comment about this question. I offer it for us all to ponder as we go our separate ways today:
If we were in the ditch [and] 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 [else] 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 neighbors? 19
Our honest answer to that question will get us to the heart of this parable. What’s more, it just might really surprise us.
1 The story goes like this:
A man is on a boat. He is not alone but acts as if he were. One night, he begins to cut a hole under his seat. His neighbors shriek, “Have you gone mad? Do you want to sink us all?” Calmly he answers them, “I don’t understand what you want. What I’m doing is none of your business. I paid my way. I’m only cutting under my own seat.”
2 Midrash (in Hebrew, literally meaning "to investigate" or "study") is a kind of preaching or teaching method that Jewish rabbis use when interpreting scripture. The term also refers, though, to an entire compilation of Jewish homiletic teachings on the Bible. What’s truly wonderful about Midrash, I think, is that it’s a way of interpreting biblical stories that goes beyond doctrine or dogma – or even the simple distillation of religious, legal or moral teachings. It fills in the many gaps left in the biblical narrative about the events and personalities that are only hinted at.
3 Elie Wiesel, “When Passion Is Dangerous,” translated by Katherine Levin, Parade Magazine, April 19, 1992, p. 21.
4 Ibid.
5 The MRFF (www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org) is an organization that has been twice nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize as champions of religious freedom and of our nation’s Constitution. One example of its work is outlined in portions of the following article by Lance Benzel from The Gazette published in Colorado Springs, Colorado:
Few things have the power to wound Mikey Weinstein as deeply as the Air Force Academy. … The 1977 honors graduate sometimes compares the academy to a father-figure. When it disappoints him, he takes it personally — and lashes out. … Weinstein, 55, a former Air Force prosecutor who lives in Albuquerque, N.M., isn’t prone to doling out praise — especially when it comes to any whiff of the Religious Right’s influence on the military.
He founded the nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation in 2006 after coming to the defense of Air Force Academy cadets who complained of a hostile environment for anyone who wasn’t Christian. … The slug-match attracted national attention and resulted in stronger protections for cadets who want their religious lives separate from their careers. The battle also formed a template for the foundation’s future clashes.
The broad outlines of Weinstein’s approach: Condemn in the strongest language possible. Publicly embarrass. Sue if necessary. Each new step raises the pressure on his publicity-averse targets.
Weinstein, who is Jewish, said he enjoys an amicable relationship with academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Michael Gould, an evangelical Christian, despite five years of bad blood with Gould’s predecessors. … Gould, he has said, “gets it,” and is committed to serving his own faith even as he ensures the academy welcomes differing traditions. That’s enough to please Weinstein, who says he supports religious practice as long as it doesn’t interfere with military duties or adversely affect abstainers. … Responsible Christians, he said, recognize “time, manner and place” restrictions on proselytizing.
Today, Weinstein saves the hellfire-and-brimstone rhetoric for new targets, excoriating as “clueless” and “shocking” the people he accuses of placing their religious beliefs ahead of the Constitution. … “Make no mistake: They are a national security threat,” he said.
In January, he picked a successful fight with the Marine Corps, which agreed to alter gun scopes that were inscribed with biblical citations. … Weinstein said the coded reference offended his “clients” — the people who seek help from his foundation, often anonymously — and had the potential to inflame Muslim extremists who seek to portray Americans as crusaders in the war against Islam.
In April, the Army withdrew an invitation to pastor Franklin Graham for a National Day of Prayer event after Weinstein’s group and other critics objected to disparaging comments he made about Islam. … Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, had criticized Islam as a “very evil and wicked religion” in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Weinstein’s latest public battle involves the religious content on Fort Carson’s emblem for the Evans Army Community Hospital. The emblem bears a spiked cross used by Crusaders and a motto translating to “For God and Humanity.” … Weinstein, who said the Army is ignoring his concerns, intends to sue in Federal Court to have the emblem changed.
Such public battles have made Weinstein a target, too. … He regularly receives death threats, and accounts of his exploits are widely circulated among conservative and religious-themed websites in which he is dismissed as anti-Christian, a charge he vigorously disputes.
Moderate critics have blamed him for polarizing sensitive conflicts and bullying military leaders who mean well but don’t move quickly enough to please him.
Weinstein, who appears unfazed by criticism, said he doesn’t feel inclined to soften his approach. … “You can’t really whisper truth to power,” he said. ….
6 Our former Associate Pastor, The Reverend Roger Kimble, III, served as a military chaplain in the Army (in Korea and elsewhere) and can attest to the pressures put upon our soldiers – as well as chaplains like himself – to “toe the party line.” His own commanding officer even wanted to review his sermons, in print, before Roger ever delivered them!
7 The word torah in Hebrew commonly has been translated as “the law,” but it might be more accurately translated as “the teachings,” because it isn’t so much about doctrine or dogma as it is about knowing the right thing to do and then doing it – regardless of the consequences.
The word torah is a tricky one, though, because it can mean different things in different contexts. In its most limited sense, Torah (with a capital “T”) refers to the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. But the word can also be used to refer to the entire Jewish bible (the body of scripture known to non-Jews as the Old Testament and to Jews as the Tanakh or Written Torah) – or, in its broadest sense, to the whole body of Jewish law and teachings.
In addition to the written scriptures, though, Jews have an "oral torah” – more commonly known as the Talmud – which is the rich tradition that attempts to explain just what the above scriptures mean and how to interpret and apply them. Layered on top of that is the midrashim (mentioned in endnote #2 above) which, again, are basically stories expanding on incidents in the Bible that rabbis use to come up with principles, laws, or simply to teach moral lessons.
8 Check out the MFSA website at http://mfsaweb.org/. If you’re at all interested you, too, could get involved. As with “The Progressive VOICE,” our newsletter (formerly published as the “Social Questions Bulletin”), much of the information on MFSA and its ministries can be found online – now even on Facebook.
10 Luke 10: 28. It’s the concept that by both wholeheartedly loving God and your neighbor you actually will come to know what “eternal life” (i.e., “salvation”) is and is meant to be.
11 The Taliban (in Pashto, meaning "students") is a Sunni Islamist political movement that governed Afghanistan from 1996 until it was overthrown in late 2001. It has regrouped since 2004 and revived as a strong insurgency movement governing local Pashtun areas and fighting a guerrilla war against the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The movement is primarily made up of members belonging to ethnic Pashtun tribes, along with volunteers from nearby Islamic countries such as Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens, Arabs, Punjabis and others. It operates, principally, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but U.S. officials say their headquarters is in or near Quetta, Pakistan, and that Pakistan and Iran provide support, although both nations deny this.
12 Al-Qaeda (pronounced /ælˈkaɪdə/ al-KYE-də or /ælˈkeɪdə/ al-KAY-də; in Arabic, meaning "the base") is a militant Islamist group founded sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless arm and a fundamentalist Sunni movement calling for global Jihad. It’s widely considered a terrorist organization. Al-Qaeda has attacked civilian and military targets in various countries – most notably, of course, the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. in 2001. The U.S. government responded by launching the so-called “War on Terror.” Its characteristic techniques include suicide attacks and simultaneous bombings of a wide range of different targets. Activities ascribed to it may involve members of the movement who’ve taken a pledge of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, or the much more numerous "al-Qaeda-linked" individuals who’ve undergone training in one of its camps in Afghanistan, Iraq or Sudan, but not taken any pledge.
Al-Qaeda ideologues envision a complete break from the foreign influences in Muslim countries, and the creation of a new Islamic caliphate. They reportedly believe that a Christian-Jewish alliance is conspiring to destroy Islam – largely embodied in the U.S.-Israel alliance – and that the killing of bystanders and civilians is religiously justified in their twisted misunderstanding of the Islamic concept of jihad.
13 The “Jesus Seminar” is officially known as the Westar Institute (http://www.westarinstitute.org/). I’ve been an Associate Member since the early 1990s. Westar remains to be a member-supported, non-profit research and educational institute that’s dedicated itself to the advancement of religious literacy. Its twofold mission is unique: first, to foster collaborative research in religious studies, but then to communicate the results of that scholarship of religion to a broad, non-specialist public.
For far, far too long, essential knowledge about biblical and religious traditions was hidden in the windowless studies of universities and seminaries – away from the general public. Too many of my own colleagues either refused to, or didn’t dare, teach to the members of their own church what they had learned in seminary. Such research was considered too controversial, too complicated, even too dangerous for lay persons to understand. Far too many biblical scholars, then, fearing open conflict or even reprisal, talked only to each other. The churches decided what information their constituents were "ready" to hear – more often than not they just buried or threw out what they considered to be heresy. So, through publications, educational programs, and research projects (like the “Jesus Seminar”), Westar has opened up a new kind of conversation about religion.
Quite frankly, the Jesus Seminar has literally kept me in the church. Westar has always fostered an honest, no-holds-barred exchange involving thousands of scholars, clergy and other individuals who have critical questions about the past, present and future of religion. Without such colleagues I would have left the church long ago.
14 John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (Polebridge Press, Santa Rosa, CA, 1992), p. 62.
15 Matthew Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion, and the Healing of the Global Village, Humpty Dumpty and Us (Harper & Row, New York, N.Y., 1979), pp. 2 and 4.
16 Fr. John R. Donahue, The Gospel in Parable: Metaphor, Narrative, and Theology in the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1988), p. 132.
17 Robert Funk, Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium (HarperSanFrancisco, New York, N.Y., 1996), p. 176.
18 Ibid.
19 Megan McKenna, Parables: The Arrows of God (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y., 1994), p. 149; see also her website: http://meganmckenna.org/.
