Reflections on the Lectionary text Luke 10:25-37

Journey, way, path of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10

Two different kinds of trips are indicated in Jesus’ parable: the priest is characterized as going “by chance” (κατὰ συγκυρίαν) somewhere, and the following Levite travels “similarly” (ὁμοίως) – also “by chance”?.  The priest is simply “going” (κατέβαινεν) down the path (ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ), and the Levite simply “came to that place” κατὰ τὸν τόπον ἐλθὼν) but both continue on their way – taking pains to avoid contact by walking “on the other side” (ἀντιπαρῆλθεν).

“The path” (LXX:  ὁδὸς, Hebrew: ‏דֶּרֶךְ) is a frequent metaphor in the Old Testament for the way set forth for the people by the Lord himself.

The first question is, can you go down “the path” (ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ) “by chance” or without thought; cavalierly?  If the Old Testament use of the image of “the way, the path” is relevant, then following it, staying on it, not turning away from it, is a matter of great importance – even life and death.  Can one stay on the path of life by traveling “by chance”?
By contrast, the Samaritan was not merely “going” along; rather, he was “on a journey” (ὁδεύων).  Would it be “over-translating” to render this present participle as “was journeying”?  Perhaps the contrast between the two ways of traveling, by chance or by intentional journeying is intentional.
If so, what “journey” was the Samaritan on?  What was he leaving behind, and where was he going?

It is noteworthy that this parable has been preceded by a Q&A from the “lawyer” and Jesus about the way one can guarantee his “inheritance” of “eternal life”.  The answer has been agreed by both the lawyer and Jesus: the great Shema (Dt 6:4), with its command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength,”  to which was added  “and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

The shema’s command of total intentional obedience was echoed specifically as a definition of the meaning of walking in “all his ways” in Dt. 10:12 “walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,”.
“Walking in all his ways” was also the criteria by which Israel was told she could remain in the land, frequently called her “inheritance” from the Lord “If you will diligently observe this entire commandment that I am commanding you, loving the LORD your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him,  23 then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and mightier than yourselves.” (Deut. 11:22-28).   The lawyer asked Jesus how to guarantee his “inheritance”, having just cited the shema.  He believed he was on “the path” which would produce the result he longed for.

The question is, can you consider yourself “on the (right) way” without purposeful “journeying” to people in need as the Samaritan did?

Perhaps Jesus’ question “which one of them was a neighbor to him?” could be rendered “which one of them was really “on the way”?

Relevant verses:

Deut. 5:33 You must follow exactly the path that the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you are to possess.

Deut. 8:6 Therefore keep the commandments of the LORD your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him.

Deut. 10:12   So now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

Deut. 11:22   If you will diligently observe this entire commandment that I am commanding you, loving the LORD your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him,  23 then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and mightier than yourselves.  24 Every place on which you set foot shall be yours; your territory shall extend from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the Western Sea.  25 No one will be able to stand against you; the LORD your God will put the fear and dread of you on all the land on which you set foot, as he promised you. 26   See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse:  27 the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today;  28 and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known.

Shema “Hear”

Deut. 6:4   Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.  5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.  7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead,  9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Sermon on Lectionary text for Pentecost C, May23, 2010, Genesis 11:1–9, Acts 2:1–21

Genesis 11:1–9

Acts 2:1–21

“God is really among them”

In our Thursday Bible Study we just finished 1 Corinthians 14.  Paul is helping the church that he founded learn how they should worship together; not everyone had the exact same idea about what was appropriate for worship (imagine that!  We always agree on what is best in worship – right?  No?).

But anyway, after giving them instructions about the way to use the gifts of prophecy and tongues, he makes an intriguing statement: if the church worships as it should, a non-believer should, after seeing and hearing you, must conclude:

“God is certainly among you.” (1 Cor 14:26)

There would be an overwhelming sense that this was not a purely human gathering, but rather an uncanny awareness of a Presence in the room – God was there – the Spirit was undeniably among them.

Being Spirit-people, like Jesus

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day we celebrate the fact that now we are Spirit-people!  Just as at Jesus’ baptism, so too at our baptism, we have been given the Spirit of God – in fact there is no such thing as a person who is a Christian who has not received a Spirit-baptism along with the baptism in water (Rom. 8:9).

God is here, with us now, by his present Spirit.  God is here by his Spirit to hear our songs, to listen to our prayers, to strengthen our faith through hearing the word – as we are doing now, and God is present by his Spirit to seal the word in our hearts at the Lord’s Supper.  We are Spirit people: God, by his Spirit, is present.

Spirit like unpredictable fire

God’s Spirit often looks and acts like fire.  He (and we must call him “he” – or “she,” as we do persons; not “it” as we use for impersonal forces) is powerful and unpredictable: which path will he take?  What will he do?  Will it be exactly what he did in the past?  No, if anything is clear from the stories of the Spirit in the book of Acts is that he is always doing the unexpected: coming on unexpected people (like gentiles) in unexpected places (like outside the temple walls – even in private homes) and at unexpected times (like, even before people even have a chance to get baptized) – and never the exact same way twice.

If we have inherited a church-tradition that believes that we always have to do the exact same thing we did before – does that mean we are following the Spirit, or something else – a question we do well to reflect on as Presbyterians.

Spirit like quenchable fire

The Spirit is like fire in another way as well; like fire, the Spirit can be quenched.  It is possible to extinguish the flame and end its effects (1 Thes 5:19).  All Christians have the Spirit of God, but the flame may be smoldering.  As he wrote to his church in Corinth, Paul did not assume people would automatically sense the presence of the Spirit – that was only if they worshipped as he was instructing.  It was equally possible to worship in such an inappropriate manner that people would come in, Paul said, and say, “You people insane!”  (1 Cor. 12:23)

The question is, when people come in our door, what do they sense?  Which do they say: “God is certainly among you” or not?  Do people sense that we are Spirit-people, or that we have quenched the flames?

What is it that would show people that we were in tune with the Spirit?  What would they see that would tell them that what was happening was evidence of the presence of God among us?

To answer that crucial question, we need to hear some stories.

The Tower of Tar

The first story is from Genesis 11.  Once, when the world was much younger than today, everyone spoke the same language.  They were all alike.  They understood each other deeply.  When someone suggested, “Let’s build a tower up to God” everyone pictured the same tower – right down to the bricks and mortar.

They had one goal: to make sure they were able to keep things exactly as they were  - everyone would stay the same – and to make a common name for themselves.  They would build their unity tower all the way up to heaven – where the gods lived, to demonstrate what they had achieved.

Now God gets wind of this, up in heaven, and has to look down to see this puny little thing.  Not only is this thing hopelessly far from the heaven they are trying to reach, but it has no hope of standing.  Their construction technique is as ridiculous as their plan is pretentious.  They planned to mortar their baked bricks together using bitumen – which is tar.  The tower will melt like a stick of Babylonian butter in the Mesopotamian sun.

So, as if God was threatened by them, he comes down to confuse their languages, so now they are not one people, all alike anymore, and they scatter in babbling confusion.

The story of the tower of Babel is of the foolish and failed quest to make a kingdom out of people who were all alike.  We would never do that – right?  Isolate ourselves from people who looked differently, spoke differently, smelled differently, looked at the world differently?  Would we?

Pentecost and languages

The next story we consider is the Pentecost story in Acts 2.  When the fire of the Spirit came down on those people, what were they like – as a group – and what  did the Holy Spirit change?  As they waited in prayer together, the disciples of Jesus all spoke the same language, all had the same ethnic background, all ate the same food, and had the same view of the world.  To them, there were exactly two kinds of people in the world: us, and them; Jews and gentiles.

Then the Spirit came down like an unpredictable fire, and did the utterly unexpected.  The Spirit somehow made it possible for them to preach the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, in such a way that everyone heard them speaking in his own native language.

Now there are not just Jews and Gentiles present, but there are people, from real places:

9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,  10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene…  11 Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

The miracle of the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost was this: suddenly it is clear that God’s love is not exclusive, not just for one group, not for people who are all alike.  It is precisely the affirmation of the acceptance of others as “other,” who would stay “other” in their own native languages that meant that God had done something powerful and unexpected.

Babel reversed?

In the story of Babel, it was all about conformity; when the Spirit came, it was all about diversity.  Sometimes we say that Pentecost reversed Babel – but that’s not quite true is it?  The Pentecost miracle of the Spirit was not a new conformity, but a celebration of God’s love extending beyond the limited circle of the disciples and into the whole wide world that had come to Jerusalem that day.

It is not a sign of the living flame of the Spirit of God that people who all look alike, think alike, dress alike can gather at peace an a pretty, air-conditioned room and worship.  But what a witness to the living unpredictable fire of the Spirit among us if we gather as people who are not all cut from the same cloth.

Times of Division

We live in times of deep divisions. Young people hardly speak a language we understand in any depth – and when they do speak, they speak on social networks and by text message, to which most of us are foreigners.

We don’t speak the same cultural language.  Republicans and Democrats are almost unable to agree that that the sun is shining, and the gap between haves and have-nots in our country is wider than it has ever been, and is growing.  And to mention the obvious, all around us are people from different countries whose languages we literally do not speak.

The “grab a brick” reaction

The human reaction is predictable and consistent.  When we feel threatened, we get the bricks out and start building – a tower, a wall, or whatever it takes to protect “our  kind” from threat.  Fear of “the other” drives us – and more fearful of others we are, the more bricks we compile.

It is no sign of the Spirit that people who are alike enjoy being alike together.   But it is a sign that the Spirit has been quenched when Pentecost is nowhere to be seen, and only one language is spoken.

Our mission: be Spirit-people

We are Spirit-people.  Pentecost has come; the Spirit is present here, now!  Let us celebrate Pentecost by celebrating the work of the Spirit among us.  We have a mission to fulfill.  We are here to love God – but not only on the condition that he never does anything new or unexpected, nor on the condition that we love him together with people who are just like us.

We are here to grow in faith – which means growing in our acceptance of the work of the Spirit outside the walls of “our kind of people.”

We are here to share Christ’s love – and yes, that may mean learning to speak languages that feel foreign to us now: the language of the young, the language of the poor, the language of the people in the “wrong” political party, and even the language of the immigrant.

The God that we expect to be present when we need him most, at our bedside, in the hospital, in the crisis, is present by means of his Spirit.  We need him then; let us not quench him now.  Let us fan the flames of the Spirit by our welcome of the stranger.  Then when she comes in the door, she will say:

“God is really among you!”

Simon, Peter, Hanukkah, Revolution and Jesus: Matthew 16:17-18

Menorah

Matthew 16:17-18

17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,

Jesus re-named his lead disciple from Simon to Peter.  The fact that Simon’s parents gave him that name is huge.  The fact that Jesus changed it is even more huge.  Simon was named for a great hero.  The story goes like this: (the Wikipedia pages on this period are on the  money and I’m using some quotes below)

Every year Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah in commemoration of  Jewish independence from the  Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty from 164 BCE to 63 BCE.

Here is how it happened: a Jewish priest named Mattathias, or Matthew, when asked by a Seleucid Greek government representative under King Antiochus IV to offer sacrifice to the Greek gods, not only refused to do so, but killed the Jew who had stepped forward to do so. He then attacked the government official that required the act.

Upon the edict for his arrest, Mattathias (Matthew) took refuge in the wilderness of Judea with his five sons, (including Judah, Simon, and Jonathan) and called upon all Jews to follow him; many did, and they were eventually successful at gaining national independence for nearly 100 years.  Note the names of 3 of his sons: they come up in the Gospels as Judas, Simon and John.

Matthew (Mattathaias)’s son Simon was the one in leadership when the Jews finally won their independence.  It was Simon who had the honor of riding into liberated Jerusalem. Simon assumed the leadership (142 BCE), receiving the double office of High Priest and prince of Israel, the founder of he Hasmonean dynasty.  This is the Simon that Jesus’ disciple was named for.

Apparently, giving your sons the names of your national heros of independence was not uncommon.  Two out of Jesus’ 4 brothers were named for national heroes: Simon and Judas (Matt 13:54-55).  Jesus himself was actually named Joshua in Hebrew, after the successor to Moses who led the Israelites to conquer the land of Canaan.

Independence ended 63 years before Jesus was born.  I think it would be safe to say that everyone who was Jewish in Jesus time wished desperately to regain that independence again, this time, from the Romans.  That quest was, after all, exactly the agenda of the Zealot movement.  They wished for it badly enough to name their sons for the heroes of their most recent independence movement.

The quintessential icon of Judaism for most of us is the Menorah which comes from the “Festival of Lights” or Hanukkah, which celebrates Jewish Independence.

All that to say this: Jesus changed the name of Simon, the great hero of Jewish national independence, to Peter, rock, something to build on.  This was not accidental nor trivial.  Everyone in Jesus’ circle of companions would have understood the significance of that change immediately.

Peter confesses Jesus as “Messiah” – a loaded title full of expectations about national liberation (see N.T. Wright on this:  Jesus and the Victory of God, especially p. 481, ff. and 528, ff).

Certainly this name-change was a dramatic act of re-defining what it meant that he was Messiah, Christ.  Jesus was not going to champion the movement for national independence.  For Jesus, the hopes and dreams of Israel were going to come true, but the kingdom was not a new Jewish state.

Wright puts it this way:
“Jesus’ redefined notion of Messiahship thus corresponded to his whole kingdom-praxis….  It offered itself as the central answer to other key kingdom-questions.  And it pointed on to a fulfillment of Israel’s destiny which no one had imagined or suspected.  He came, as the representative of the people of YHWH, to bring about an end of exile, the renewal of the covenant, the forgiveness of sins.  To accomplish this, an obvious first-century option for a would-be Messiah would run: go to Jerusalem, fight the battle against the forces of evil, and get yourself enthrouned as the rightful king.  Jess, in facte, adopted precisely this strategy.  But, as he hinted to James and John, he had in mind a different battle, a different throne.”  p. 539

Notes on This week’s Lectionary text – in progress

Ordinary 20 A, Matthew 15:10–20, 21–28

“You Dog!”  – Jesus (in effect) to the Canaanite woman who just wanted her poor daughter healed of her deamons.  This is going to be an interesting week.

If there is one theme that has dominated our poor human specie it is the problem of ethnicity  – in its function as a group boundary marker.  Us and Them has been defined by family, tribe, clan, kinship group since we were primates in the jungle.  We as a specie have demonstrated that there is no action we will not justify and carry out against people we define as “other” – and today the primary way we identify is ethnically.

You may not, if you are North American, Australian, New Zealander, and a very few other places, becuase of your (my) unusually blended nation – but we are in the tiny minority of human beings.  We do the same kind of thing anyway, only our boundary markers are race, rather than ethnicity – but it’s the same thing in the end.  It is a perceived competition for scarce resources and group identity defining the combatants.  There are no new ideas.

So, does Jesus get sucked into this same trap?  What’s going on here?  I’ll be thinking about this passage this week.  Join me.

19th Ordinary, A Matt 14:22-33 Notes

Notes on the Gospel text for this Sunday.

What I’m thinking about:

Locations:

In Space

1. Mountain – links to “texts” of Moses, Elijah – presence of God (Jesus in prayer there)
2. In the boat – symbol of the church?  They are there at Jesus’ command, and yet not kept from danger there.
3. Sea: the quintessential place of danger: from Poseidon and Neptune, to the Canaanite god of the “sea” or yam, to the ancient view of the universe in which the earth was a flat disk sitting precariously suspended just above the waters of chaos in which the chaos monstor(s) lived (hungrily).  Jesus specifically treads the “sea” (not “lake”) – i.e. on evil
4. “other side” – but not much is made of it, and in this story, they don’t arrive there yet
5. on the water – that’s where Peter steps and sinks; this is outside the “boat” – Peter engages the struggle over evil that Jesus is demonstrating by willingness to go out of the boat

In Time

1. Evening, darkening -  time of mysteries – both numinous (Jesus on the Mountain in the dark) and Dangerous (disciples in the boat when it was late)
2. early morning when Jesus arrived – similar to the time of resurrection and appearances

Actions

1. Jesus – prayer, communion
2. Disciples: obediently in the boat, struggle w. storm
3. Nature: waves battered them; wind against them
4. Jesus waling on “sea” (Yam) – evil
5. Peter: asking to join Jesus out of the boat, steps on water, “notices” (becomes aware of) the wind, sinks, cries out “Lord save me” – taking Caesar’s title for Jesus
6. Terror in disciples’ at the “ghost”
7. worship of Jesus as Son of God

Key phrases

1. alone, by himself – Jesus
2. immediately
3. storm triad: battered by the waves,  far from the land,  the wind was against them
4. Jesus’ triad: take courage, it is I (I am), fear not
5. Peter: “Lord”
6. Peter “save me”
7. Jesus: “little faith”
8. Jesus: “why did you doubt?”
9. disciples: “you are the Son of God”

Emotion: fear, terror -> ? (worship)

Issues

• Presence / absence / presence of God (for Jesus and for disciples)
• obedience and suffering, fear, danger,
• engagement of evil – Jesus’ victory, Peter’s provisional attempts and failures
• overwhelming evil; long odds against successful encounter (in or out of the boat, for disciples)
• Peter – as representative of the Jerusalem church, shown in obedience and doubt, faith and failure of faith
• ultimate success: the presence of God in the saving hand of Jesus

Notes:

• Tom Long’s Matthew commentary (WJK) is excellent here.
• The Social Science Commentary on the Synopitic Gospels (Malina nd Rohrbaugh, Fortress, 2003) is full of insight – espec. on “altered states of consciousness” (visions, dream states, and the Western bias against them).