Ask, Seek, Knock.

Luke 10:38-11:13. 

I.

            In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus lifts up active compassion and generosity towards even enemies as the truest expression of divinely inspired love.  It is a word for activists, people who know that Jesus is calling us not just to talk, but to do good in the world.  Faith bears fruit in love, and love is outwardly active.  It has to do with real service to people who are really suffering. 

            Immediately after this parable, Luke tells us that Jesus is welcomed into the home of two women named Mary and Martha.  The story is not a parable but it kind of functions like one.  One woman, Martha, probably the older, is very busy getting the house ready for a large meal.  The other, Mary, spends her time sitting with Jesus listening to his teachings.  Martha is active, involved in the world, devoted to serving her guests.  Mary is contemplative, attentive to Jesus, absorbing his words, and not accomplishing anything tangible and concrete.

            Martha gets upset.  She asks Jesus to instruct Mary to be of some use in the work that needs to be done.  It is not unreasonable. 

            We hear Jesus’ affection for Martha in the way he repeats her name.  “Martha, Martha,” he says, “you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

            In his popular time-management books, Stephen Covey talks about not letting the urgent get in the way of what is important.  There is a lot of stuff that is always urgently demanding our attention.  But so much of what is considered urgent, is really a matter of someone else’s agenda: your boss, your client, your customer, your employee, your parents, your child, even your ego, and so on.  A lot of it may be your attempt to provide against future eventualities, or prevent past disasters from recurring.  Covey urges his readers to identify what is really important to them, what they are truly called and gifted to accomplish in this life, and make that their priority.

            We all have to choose between the demands of the many, which had Martha so frazzled and burned-out, and the promise of the one thing that can truly give our life meaning and purpose.  It’s this one big thing in your life that ought to govern and determine all these other little things.  The little things need to serve the big thing, not distract from it.

            Jesus is saying that if we don’t listen to him, if we don’t spend quality time with him, if we don’t pray and meditate, study the gospels, reflect with others, participate in worship and the sacraments he gives us, then we’re likely to get swept away by the chattering blizzard of urgent but not important business.  Only if we are firmly grounded in the Presence of Jesus Christ in our lives, will we be focused and collected enough to have these many other concerns under control and serving that one big thing.

II.

            How do we do that?  What strategies, techniques, and practices can we undertake that will help us to be like Mary, choosing the better part? 

            In order to reflect on questions like these and help us build on Mary’s insight, Luke then recounts a time when the disciples asked Jesus to instruct them in just this.  They see Jesus regularly going off to quiet places to pray.  They remember how John the Baptizer taught his disciples to pray.  They ask Jesus for some clear instruction in how to keep the main thing, Jesus, the main thing.   They want to know how to pray.  That is, they want to know how to sustain Christ’s presence with and within them.

            It might be a little surprising that they have to ask.  Maybe Jesus thought his presence and example were enough.  I think they are asking for our benefit.  In any case, they require something more explicit, and Jesus tells them.

            And what he gives them is more than the words of a prayer we can mouth unconsciously and imagine that we have satisfied some requirement… which is what we usually do, and Christians have done for two-thousand years.  Rather, he gives us in outline his form of life.  He gives us the basic stance in the world of his disciples.  This is how we imitate Mary and sit at our Lord’s feet.  This is a summary of what he was likely saying to her.   

            He tells them: “When you pray, say:
’Father, hallowed be your name.
 Your kingdom come. 
Give us each day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
 And do not bring us to the time of trial.’”

            He starts by insisting that God is both “Father,” a term that would have been too intimate for many, and “holy.” 

            While we like to wallow in the sentimentality of the “loving daddy” image, Jesus’ use of the word Father may be more of an affront to our earthly fathers.  He is saying basically that God is our real father, our real supporter, leader, and sustainer, not our earthly father or, by extension, our earthly leaders. 

            Like the confession that Jesus is Lord actually undermined the authority of earthly lords, so calling God Father means that our earthly fathers are not over us; they are our siblings with us in God’s household.  God does not authorize and justify the hierarchies of this world; God smashes them by claiming all authority, power, respect, and reverence for God’s self.  So the first thing we are affirming when we pray the Lord Prayer is that we say to all those “leaders” who want to control and restrict and exploit us, “You’re not the boss of me.”  Only God is.

III.

            Keeping God’s name holy means more than simply not using it as an expletive when we bang our finger with a hammer or slice a drive deep into the woods playing golf.  It means that the One we claim as Father is the transcendent Lord and Creator of the universe. 

            Keeping God’s name holy is more than the little language game we like to reduce it to.  It means approaching not just God but by extension everything God has made with reverence, love, respect, care, non-violence, thanksgiving, and humility.  The truth is that if God is holy so is everything else.  Because everything bears the imprint, and is animated by the breath of the Creator.  God’s holiness and transcendent does not mean that God is impossibly far off, remote, and distant.  It is the whole insight of the Trinity that God’s transcendence is itself transcended in God’s shining forth in creation, in the Incarnation, and in the giving of the Spirit.

            In this view, Samaritans are just as chosen as Jews, animals are just as blessed as humans, and non-living things are just as infused with God’s Spirit as lifeforms.  As Gerard Manley Hopkins says in his greatest poem about the whole world being “charged with the grandeur of God.”  God’s holiness is God’s Presence.

            Keeping God’s name holy means being blown away by the miracle of each little thing that God has spoken into being.  It means cherishing every created manifestation as a demonstration of what God can generate out of nothing.  Jesus says that even flowers, and birds, and foxes are parables of God’s presence.  The creation is not stocked with objects for humans to exploit, deplete, waste, and pollute.  The whole place points to and reflects the light of the One who made it, and can only be approached with deep thanksgiving and humility.  For we are surrounded by miracles at every instant.

            Seeing this truth is what Jesus means when he talks about “repentance.”  In Greek the word has to do with gaining a new mind, a new way of thinking, a new perception.  We conveniently reduce it to mourning over our sins in guilt and shame.  But true repentance is not about looking back over whatever we might have done wrong in the past.  It is about being in tune with God’s love at work in the world now. 

IV.

            Which leads us directly to “your Kingdom come.”  This is less an appeal for something to happen which hasn’t happened yet, as it is a cry for us to be able to perceive and dwell within a reality that is already here all around us, but from which we have separated ourselves and to which we have made ourselves willfully blind.  The worst way to interpret what Jesus says here is to assume that what he means by “your Kingdom” is something we will only experience after we die or at the end of time.

            God’s Kingdom, God’s realm, God’s commonwealth of justice, goodness, beauty, and peace, is already here.  It is embedded into the very structure of matter and energy, and life itself.  It is we who have wandered off like the younger son in Jesus’ famous parable in chapter 15, squandering our inheritance on self-serving foolishness.  “Your Kingdom come” means more like “may your household come into view as we follow your commandments and carry our sorry butts in humility back to you, the One we have in our greed and pride forsaken.” 

            Then we pray that God would nourish us for this “journey,” this exhausting effort, like in one of those dreams where you can’t open your eyes….  We pray for “bread,” and not just literal bread to feed the body.  The word we usually translate as “daily” literally means “substantial” or “necessary.”  So while feeding the body is essential, so is feeding our inner nature.  Jesus refers to himself and his teaching as the bread of life.  He gives us his body as bread in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  Mary is clearly receiving this dimension of nourishment as she sits at Jesus’ feet listening to him.

            Jesus has us pray for participation in the matrix of forgiveness or release.  We receive the forgiveness of God and others as we ourselves forgive others.  There is a reciprocality of mutual liberation here in which we do not hold people’s sins against them, but welcome them in joy and blessing.

            Not forgiving someone who has wronged you is kind of like taking poison and hoping they will get sick.  Holding on to anger, resentment, hurts, and dreams of retribution only serves to block God’s life and forgiveness and freedom coming to you.  In any case, forgiveness is the light of the new community; it is what keeps us alive and functioning with each other.

            Finally, Jesus has makes us aware of our propensity to temptation.  We are always so easily led astray, distracted by shiny things that come into our field of vision.  There is a certain Attention Deficit Disorder that is endemic to the human condition.  The many concerns of Martha keep calling us away from the blessed single-mindedness of Mary.  We have to keep self-aware, and keep catching ourselves in the act of wandering off the path.

V.

            So in the last part of today’s passage Jesus hammers the need for persistence, perseverance, and patience.  We have to keep at it.  We can’t expect prayers to be answered according to our desires or timetable.  The weight of our blindness and distraction, our cherishing our own ways, and our waywardness, is immense.   

            He has given us this exemplary prayer; now he says we have to pray it fiercely, persistently, continually, and wholeheartedly.  Not just repeating the words like a mantra.  But letting our lives, our thinking and feeling, our words and actions, conform to this brief, simple pattern.

            The persistence is necessary not because God is hard of hearing.  But because we have so many barriers, so much sludge, and such strong gravity in our hearts that have to be overcome.  Even our asking is perverted by self-interest.  Even our seeking is for the wrong things in the wrong places.  And we are habitually knocking on the wrong doors for the wrong things.  Our blindness, as well as our fear, anger, and shame, twist our desires and limit them to the shiny trinkets that decorate our lives, but which in the end are meaningless at best, and at worst kill us. 

            This prayer is about reorienting our desires.  Instead of wanting stuff for ourselves, this prayer is not about us as separate, independent entities anymore.  Now it is about “us” as participants in the larger body of humanity and creation.  Now it is about the advancement not of my personal little kingdom, but of the Kingdom of God.  Now it’s not about the betterment of my self, my family, my tribe, my nation, my religion… but of the whole holy creation.  This prayer is about breaking through those layers of our own ego-centricity that bind us and blind us.

            But if we ask according to this prayer, we will receive what this prayer promises.

            If we seek according to this prayer, we will find what this prayer has for us. 

            If we knock according to this prayer, the door will be opened to the apparently new world of God’s Kingdom, a reality that is always closer to us than we are to ourselves, something already within us, something that is waiting to be born and which is called into our experience by this prayer.

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Go and Do Likewise.

Luke 10:25-37

I.

            After Jesus’ 70 or so disciples return from their missionary journey, and after he has celebrated with them the success they had, a lawyer stands up from among the seated crowd.  He wants to test Jesus.

            Now, I don’t want to reinforce nasty stereotypes or anything, but when I was answering phones for the customer service office of a bank, the calls we most dreaded were from doctors and lawyers.  This was mainly because they talked to us like we were mentally deficient children, and of course they knew how to do our jobs way better than we did, and that the bank should have no problem rearranging the laws of physics to accommodate them and their issue.  Even though we knew that their issue was always their fault.

            So when Jesus and his party are interrupted by this well-dressed guy yelling at them from the crowd, I imagine Jesus smiling patiently.  “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” the man shouts.  Now, Jesus has yet to use the term “eternal life” in Luke.  So far, it has not been part of the way he talks about things.  He prefers to talk about the Kingdom of God, a communal political and economic reality.  The lawyer however insists on talking about eternal life, apparently for himself as an individual.  And the fact that he thinks it is something he “inherits” indicates where he thinks wealth comes from.

            Jesus replies, “Well, what does the Bible say about this?”  Jesus does not want to answer people’s questions for them.  He wants them to find the answers for themselves.  He does not want to be the one people come to first.  Rather, he is there for when we have exhausted all other avenues and still haven’t found what we’re looking for.  So he directs this lawyer to, well, the Law, the Torah, the Bible, which he should know very well, it being his business and all.

            The man says, “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.”  He is quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-5, with one added phrase, and part of Leviticus 19:18. 

            I think Jesus must have been impressed.  It would have been normal for the man to quote the most important verse in the Old Testament, about loving God with your whole being.  That’s not a surprise.  But the lawyer also puts it together with the somewhat more obscure verse from Leviticus.  It is something that Jesus himself comes up with in two of the other gospels.  It is a combination that is basic to his whole message.

            Now he earnestly and approvingly smiles at the man.  “Well, clearly you get it.  You have given the right answer.  Do this and you will live.”

II.

            And that would have been the end of it.  Except that the lawyer’s real test question hasn’t happened yet.  He says, “Thanks, but, the thing is, who, exactly, is this person the text refers to as my ‘neighbor’?” 

            Luke tells us that he wants to justify himself.  He wants Jesus to tell him that he is currently loving exactly those whom Scripture tells him to love, and that he may go home content to be in line to inherit eternal life. 

            “Who is my neighbor?” means “Who am I responsible for?”  “For whose welfare am I supposed to look out?”  “Who is entitled to my forgiveness?”  “Whom does God expect me to love as much and as well as I love myself?”  In other words, “What are the limits or boundaries to the love that God requires of me?  I mean, assuming that God can’t possibly mean we have to love everyone, that would be ridiculous.  Surely God means just other Jews, or just residents of my own village, or people in my own family?  Or people who have done good things for me?”  The lawyer has not forgotten but perhaps wants to forget that just a few verses after God says to love your neighbor as yourself, God also says “You shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”

            Jesus doesn’t answer his question directly.  He tells a story. Now, Jesus hasn’t told many parables yet.  The one about the different kinds of soil is the only one we have heard.

            Jesus begins: “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.”  Everyone, even people who had never been there, would have heard of the road to Jericho.  It was infamously dangerous. 

            But there are two other subtexts here.  One is that, hey, we’re paying taxes to these Romans who fill the landscape with their soldiers, but they don’t seem to be able to keep this one road safe.  What’s up with that?

            And the second thing answers that question by realizing that these Romans, and their collaborators in business, politics, and the Temple establishment, are the robbers and bandits, and we are all the ones stripped and beaten, and left half dead in the road.

            So on several levels, everyone hearing this story would have identified with the man who was mugged on the road to Jericho.

III.

            Jesus then has two people pass by the nearly dead man lying and bleeding in the road.  They are not ordinary people.  The first is a priest and the second is a Levite.  These are functionaries and officials in the Jerusalem Temple.  They are two of the thousands of men employed in the Temple complex to oversee and undertake the manifold sacrifices, manage the money, and otherwise maintain this huge, spectacular edifice.

            They represent the religious and economic establishment of Judah.  They represent the institutions supposedly set up by God for worship and service.  They represent the means by which people are reconciled to God and have their sins forgiven.  They are supposed to serve God and the people.  Today Jesus would probably have made them a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister.

            And yet here, when confronted with a person in great suffering, they each find some reason to pass by on the other side.  Their reasons don’t matter to Jesus.  Fear of attack, ritual impurity, the lateness of the hour, whatever.  His hearers would have known what rationale the priest and the Levite would have used to disregard this man.  Jesus doesn’t dignify them by mentioning them.

            So here’s this mugged man dying in the road.  And he has been failed by the establishment.  He’s been failed by the officials, by the maintainers of the national and religious identity of the people.  Is there no one who can help this poor guy?  Is there no hope for any of us?

            I imagine Jesus pausing for effect at this point, letting this reality sink in.  Then he says: “But a Samaritan while traveling came near him.”  And the first thing people are thinking is, “Oh, right, like a Samaritan’s going to do anything.  We know what those people are like.  He’s probably only coming close to see if the robbers left anything he can steal.  Why is he even traveling in our territory?!”

            But Jesus continues: “And when the Samaritan saw the man in the road, he was moved with pity.  He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them.”  I wonder if this is where people start thinking that Jesus’ story is a little far-fetched and unrealistic. 

            Not to rehearse yet again the historical animosity that existed between Jews and Samaritans, but we know these two groups had hated each other for nearly 500 years.  Samaritans were both a different religion and a different nationality, from Jews.  Everyone listening to Jesus would have been brought up to hate Samaritans.  Use whatever parallel from today that you want; I listed a few common antipathies in the Litany for Wholeness earlier. 

            Jesus’ point is that it is the one who our prejudice and stereotypes tell us would be least likely to help the man, who does actually stop to help the man.

IV.

            And the help he offers is ridiculously extravagant, over-the-top, surpassing all reasonable expectations, beyond what even a Jew was likely to do for a fellow Jew.  Jesus says the Samaritan “put the man on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  The 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.’”  The Samaritan does not just treat the man like a neighbor; he treats him like family.  He basically drops him off at the hospital and leaves them his credit card.

            Like most of Jesus’ parables, there must have been some who got it and some who didn’t.  Maybe even the majority might have dismissed this tale as absurd, idealistic, naïve, unrealistic, or any of the other usual criticisms leveled against those who present the world in a new way.  Priests and Levites would have been offended, of course.  How unfair to make them look like heartless villains, when we all know that they are all very nice people who work very hard.

            But some of his listeners would have found this story touching their heart, convicting them of their own bigotry, callousness, and paranoia.  Some would have realized that the Samaritans are humans just like us.  And whether or not you could swallow that a Samaritan would actually assist a Jew, some might have asked whether they would assist an attacked Samaritan.  Am I as loving as the Samaritan in the story?

            Jesus wants to cut through the incidental nonsense that people use to separate, divide, judge, and condemn others, and focus on that word “neighbor” which he takes simply to mean another human being, any other human being.  His message is that we are all in this together.  It is as if Jesus says: “Our leaders have failed us and our institutions have failed us if they only serve to keep us divided and at odds with each other.  They care only about their own status and position; they will not lift a finger to assist you when you’re down.  We know this because they don’t do this now!  You all know that the one thing about my parable that is completely believable is that the priest and the Levite passed the man by.  You know that because they pass you by all the time!  The only way we are going to overcome the institutional and other violence inherent in the system is by helping each other: Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans, those labeled as ‘sinners,’ women, the sick, everyone.” 

V.

            Then he says to the lawyer, “Of these three travelers who encounter the man who fell into the hands of the robbers, which one do you think was a ‘neighbor’ to the him?  Which one identified with his suffering?  Which one saw not a category or a stereotype or a label but another human being in need?  Which one was not concerned about appearances, or tradition, or the law, or even his own appointment schedule, but only saw suffering and addressed it?  Which one was there for him?  Which one was present?  Which one would you want to show up if you were the one beaten up, robbed, and dying in the gutter?”

            The lawyer, who started out intending to test Jesus and justify himself, has changed.  He says, “The neighbor is the one who showed the man mercy.”  He still manages not to choke out the word, “Samaritan.”  But he does realize that the word “neighbor” turns all of humanity into a network of mutual caring, support, and healing.  He does realize I think that we are all neighbors to each other.

            Another person who understood this better than anyone was a Presbyterian saint named Fred Rogers, who never tired of reminding and encouraging children to treat each other like neighbors.  “Neighbor” is not about proximity.  It is about mercy and compassion.  It is about always doing for others and letting others do for you, as Bob Dylan sang.  It is about building a community together… not divided by gates and locks and walls, not armed to the teeth with assault weapons, not always ready to lawyer-up against each other. 

            “A kingdom divided against itself will not stand,” Jesus says.  And we won’t stand either as long as we are finding reasons to be divided against each other.  For in Jesus’ eyes, which are God’s eyes and therefore the only eyes that matter, there are no Jews and Samaritans.  There are just people.

            And the divisions we invent and the resentments we stoke are just as idiotic and self-defeating.  There is no “us” and “them.”  There are just neighbors.  Gay neighbors, Muslim neighbors, Democrat or Republican neighbors, Latino neighbors, African American neighbors, Palestinian and Israeli neighbors, poor neighbors, rich neighbors, neighbors who happen to live on the other side of the planet, undocumented neighbors, neighbors with whom we’re stuck in traffic, incarcerated neighbors, obnoxious and annoying neighbors….

            After the man answers well, Jesus says to him, “Go and do likewise.”  Because in the end the real question is not “Who is my neighbor?”  It is “Who am I called to be a neighbor to?”  Who am I called to love?  Who is due mercy and compassion from me?

            It’s a little too easy to say “everyone.”  That’s a bit to abstract.  Jesus would say, “Start with your enemy.  Start with the one who has done you harm.  Start with the one who hates you.  And go from there.  If you want eternal life, that is.”

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