Tag Archives: Samaritan

Why the story of Samaria matters today

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Theology

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Last week during a bible study I lead, we talked about Acts 8:4-40.  It’s the story of Philip in Samaria.  To our modern ears, that sounds like Philip got in the car and drove down to the next city over and started preaching.  But it’s far from that.  There’s a ton of history underlying this situation – centuries of animosity and deep-seated division.

It’s this deep-seated seething that makes the parable that Jesus tells about the “good Samaritan” so shocking.  But explaining all of this takes some time.

So I’m going to offer a modern-day version of the parable so you might get the effect of what Jesus was saying.

There once was an American who traveled to the Holy Land.  He wore his American flag shirt so everyone would know he was an American.  He was traveling along and seeing all the sites in the region when he was mugged and beaten by some local thieves.  They beat him badly and left him for dead.

As he lay there, wondering if he would survive, along came a tour bus full of American tourists.  The bus driver knew that this was not a safe area that he was driving through, so he kept on going for fear of robbers jumping the bus and robbing everyone.  As they pass, the tourists snapped pictures of the poor local who benefited from American’s generosity with our clothing.

The man was distraught and was starting to give up hope when along came a pastor on a motorcycle.  He saw the man on the side of the road but kept going – he had many committee meetings to get to and had to make an important presentation about the finances of the church he served.  He reasoned that someone else would stop.  As he left, he offered a quick prayer and went on his way.

The man who was beaten lay there, dying.

A third man approached.  This man looked nothing like the people from two other groups.  He was a member of ISIS – a sworn enemy of the American.  He came across the man who was beaten badly and he was moved with compassion for him.  He took what first aid materials he had and used them on the American.  Then he lifted him up and took the man to the local emergency room and told the intake person that he would pay for the care of the man.

And Jesus asked “Which of these three was the neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

So, now do you get how radical Jesus’ parable was?  Do you get how unlikely it was that the Samaritans would have listened to Philip?  And yet, they did.  Amazing!

Theology of the Neighbor

22 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by in Humanity, Society, Theology

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mr-rogers-hello-neighbor

The last several weeks I’ve done a great deal of thinking about what it means to be a neighbor.  The Gospel reading two Sundays ago was the parable of the Good Samaritan in which the lawyer asks: “Who is my neighbor?”  He wants to know who is with “us” and who is with “them.”

The political conventions this week and next will offer their own definitions of who is with “us” and who is with “them.”  And people will lap it up because it speaks to something very human – identity.  More specifically – tribal identity.

Who is part of my tribe?  By tribe I mean, who is part of the group I identify with.  The tribe can be based on nationality, political leanings, skin color variations, type of work I do, language I speak, dialect I speak, what sports team do I cheer for, religion, subgroup within a religion, etc.  We are told that our tribes are the ones we should care for – we should defend.  They are like family to us.  Anyone else is not our tribe – they are not to be trusted.  In fact, they have less worth and deserve less respect than members of our tribe.  Besides we have God on our side – we can point to some random verse taken out of context to support why we divide people the way we do.

Most of the time, this tribal mentality stays inside people’s heads.  It might come out in the words that are communicated to others not part of the tribe – making for heated exchanges.  It might come out in other ways too – some kind of physical representation that shows pride in a tribe – like a flag or other object that people can easily identify with.

But we also see physical violence as well.  This becomes a concern when trust in institutions break down.  We turn to violence when words will not solve our differences, when words become gasoline on a lit fire.  We turn to violence when we no longer trust – even if the trust we had was extremely small.

Resorting to physical violence is really only the outgrowth of what we think.  We have violent and dehumanizing beliefs about our neighbors, although we don’t call them neighbors – we have other labels for them instead.  And so we can speak in dehumanizing ways with violent labels.

It is just a small step to take, a small line to cross, to carry out violent actions against our neighbors.  Besides, if we have believe that they are less than human, less than equal in rights and respect, then when institutions start to brake down, we must act to uphold those beliefs we have held dear.  We can’t rely on institutions to maintain the status quo.  We can’t rely on them to provide us a safe space to hold our beliefs that there is an “us” and a “them.”  We can’t rely on the status quo to keep “us” separated from “them” – to keep us safe from the vermin. We must have war.  We must take the law into our own hands.  We must defend our honor.  We must avenge the offense.  We are justified!

When this happens we have to come face-to-face with “them” and that has become too much because something has to give when we interact with the “them.”  Most likely it would be our beliefs about “them.”  That is too painful for many people to even consider.  Especially in an age when we will only look for evidence of how vile “they” are rather than be open to seeing who they are – people just like us, but with some differences.  So we act out of the pain.  We act out out beliefs.  We become violent – forcing “them” to become the very people we hate and dehumanize.  It justifies our beliefs.  It makes it much easier to kill, hurt, or defile someone that you hate or you deem as a threat.

But the theology of the neighbor is far different.  Jesus presents a story to the lawyer.  He tells the story of a man who has been beaten and the hero of the story is the Samaritan – someone the lawyer has been taught is not part of his tribe, not to be trusted, someone who it’s ok to hate and revile.

This would have been very upsetting to hear.  We sense how upsetting it is at the end of the story when Jesus asks the lawyer: which of the people who came upon the man who was beaten was a neighbor?  The lawyer gives an answer – “The one who showed mercy.”  This is technically correct.  He’s a lawyer, so he knows how to give technically correct answers without having to say words he would rather not say. (in a way, aren’t we all like this?) In this case, he can’t bring himself to say Samaritan.  It’s just too painful for him.  It contradicts everything he believes about the Samaritan.  It’s too painful to even think about equating Samaritan with anything good and he can’t bring himself to say Samaritan.

The theology of the neighbor is this – the tribes we align ourselves with are human distinctions and separations.  God sees us differently.  God sees us as a part of creation – something that God loves and even said was good – all of it.  Thinking in terms of creation means taking a much larger view of everything. It goes beyond our little tribes, our little communities, our little language variations, our little nationalities, etc. Thinking in terms of creation is so much larger.  The differences are just so small in the grand scheme of things.

God sees variations in God’s creation, but these exemplify the beauty of creation – so diverse and unique, yet all part of God’s creation.  When we see the unity of it all, we can see others as neighbors, not as threats or as something so radically different from ourselves, because they aren’t – we are all part of God’s creation, God’s kingdom.

Yes, we might think, act, sound, move, and look different, but do we really think that God or creation is so small that these variations and differences create insurmountable divisions?  Really?  Maybe if we believe that God is just like us, or that we can control God.  Maybe if we make God into an idol – something that we create, rather than the other way around.

The theology of the neighbor comes down to this – which way do we go?  Do we believe that God aligns Godself with us, our beliefs about the world, stands on our side, carries our flag and rides into battle to defend us and our way of thinking?  Is God really that small?  Is God created in our image?

Or do we carry a different vision – it is us who are moved to be in alignment with God.  We are the small ones.  We are changed so that that our beliefs about the world and creation change.  We see the world differently.  We are changed by laying down our violent thoughts, beliefs, and actions to take up something far riskier – being a neighbor to all.

Being a neighbor means having our trust in God.  Being a neighbor means seeing past the divisions and labels.  Being a neighbor is costly.  Being a neighbor means doing things that go against common belief.  Being a neighbor means we are more concerned with living out what God calls us to be rather than with being right about God.  Being a neighbor means that we are not in control and that we acknowledge that we don’t know the answers.  Being a neighbor is what we are called to.  Being a neighbor means being vulnerable.  Being a neighbor means taking the first step to be a peacemaker, to show mercy, to offer hope, rather than just talking about it or waiting for someone else to start.  Being a neighbor means acting out of love and with love – a love that is unconditional.

The world offers us conditions, divisions, labels.  God offers creation and calls it good.  Let us see that we are a part of creation, not apart from it.

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent – Year A

23 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Sermon Prep

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The Holy Gospel according to John 4:5-42

5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ 13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ 21Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ 25The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’

27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ 28Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ 30They left the city and were on their way to him.

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ 32But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ 33So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ 34Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” 38I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’

39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. 41And many more believed because of his word. 42They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Saviour of the world.’

The Word of the Lord.

It was a typical Tuesday morning.  I was doing my chaplain hours at the cancer center, visiting with people, both new and people I had visited with before.  I came up to Helen. She was a friendly face that I had visited three or four times before. Helen was in her 80’s.  She had white hair, was a thin woman, but relatively tall.  Her hair was always done up so nice.  She was the type of person who made sure that, no matter where she went, she always looked presentable and her clothes were always wrinkle free.  She was full of life and loved to talk, especially about her family and her church.  This day would be no different.

Helen told me about what was going on with her family – a grandchild who was having a child – she was of course so very proud of this.  Helen also told me about her church.  The seminarian that was there assisting was leaving in May to go on to her first call.  She was happy for the seminarian, but sad for the church.  There would be a dry spell in which the interim pastor would be there by himself.  The congregation enjoyed having seminarians in the church, it was like having fresh water to drink.

All while Helen was talking, I could see in her face that something just wasn’t quite right.  For one thing, her eyes were a bit moist.  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew something wasn’t right.  We visited for about half an hour.  Then Helen’s face got serious and she looked at me and said, “would you pray for me?”  “Of course Helen.  What would you like me to pray about?”  I asked.  This was the opportunity I was waiting for to understand what was going on.

“I’m afraid.  I have to keep drinking water because my body is losing too much.  I’m having a hard time keeping up with so much water. “ said Helen.  She had a tear in her eye.  She was awash with fear.

“Sounds pretty scary,” I said.  “I can hear the fear in your voice. You sound like you are drowning in it.  What exactly do you fear?”

“I’m afraid that I’m not going to be able to keep enough water in me and…and…die.”  Helen said, on the verge of tears.

“The doctors don’t know what’s going on, and I just don’t know how much longer I can keep up with all this water.”  Said Helen.  “Pray that they figure out the water situation in me, please,” implored Helen.

In our Scripture passage this morning, we meet the Samaritan woman who is comes to Jacob’s well with one understanding about water and in the course of a conversation also tries to figure out the water situation, and eventually Jesus gives her a new life-filling understanding about true living water.

We are flooded with contrast between this weeks reading and last week’s reading about Nicodemus.  Remember, Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a synagogue leader, who comes in the middle of the night to talk with Jesus and feel him out.  The woman in today’s Gospel reading is for one thing a woman, and a nameless woman at that, without any position in society, and a Samaritan – a group of people the Jews did not get along with to say the least.  This nameless woman is pretty low on the social ladder of society.  There is an ocean of difference between these two figures.

The woman at the well is going about her daily activities – getting water.  She needs water to live and one can guess that she has been coming to this same well, day after day, after day for many years, drawing water to stay alive until the next day, when she would draw new water yet again.  It must have felt like a never ending cycle of labor, just to survive.

This woman’s understanding of water was that it kept her body alive, but it came at a cost – drawing water at the well every day.  This was not life giving water, certainly not living water, but only life sustaining water.

Then Jesus comes on the scene and as usual, when Jesus shows up, things change.

There is a shift for the woman from the material needs of life to the spiritual.  She doesn’t recognize who Jesus is, but understands that Jesus is speaking of an unusual type of water.  She is still focused solely on the body, the here and the now.

The author of John has given us the drama of a soul struggling to stay afloat and rise from the things of this world to belief in Jesus.  We may imagine that she is thirsty. The thirst that Jesus recognizes in her is more than the longing for cold water.  This is a woman who has a hard life, to say the least.

Many people describe her as a prostitute based on the part of the conversation about her having had five husbands, but we really don’t know.  She could be a widow five times over, for all we know.  We just don’t know much about her life situation beyond the fact that she’s at the well at the hottest part of the day.  In one sense, she represents a whole lot of people.  Maybe she represents the outcasts of our society.  It’s not too far fetched – she comes to well at the hottest part of the day, well after others have been there.  Maybe she represents the widows and widowers and anyone else who have lost love ones and feel lost.  She comes alone, maybe in too much pain to be around others.  Maybe she represents those that suffer in life wanting, desiring to be washed clean of pain and suffering.  Maybe she is nameless because she represents so many people.

Jesus sees in her a deeper thirst – a thirst of the soul.  She comes to Jacob’s well, as usual, but also finds Jesus’ well – that well from which we may draw the refreshing gift of God’s grace. Here is a cistern that never runs dry; a spring that overflows because its source is God.

And because of this, her understanding of who Jesus is changes.  It goes from seeing him as a thirsty stranger, just like herself and the many people who come to the well day after day, to a prophet – one who knows things that are hidden away, and finally, ultimately she comes to understand Jesus as the Messiah – the one who brings true life, who fills the emptiness within her, quenches her thirst for life, true life in God.  Jesus gives her this and changes her.  She becomes alive again, dropping what she is doing, and runs to the town to share the good news with others.  And we know from the Gospel that others in the town hear about this, they go out to Jesus and he changes them too.  It’s not stated in the lesson for today, but you have to wonder if there weren’t a whole bunch of baptisms.  You see, when Jesus gives living water, it has a tendency to change things and change lives.

Helen needed a change.  It started when she asked to pray.  It was difficult for her to ask.  She was a woman who, at least on outward appearances, had her life in order.  In reality, she was drowning in fear.

“Pray that they figure out the water situation in me,” was what Helen asked.  She was drowning in a deluge of uncertainty.  She was full of the water she was drinking, but it never satisfied her thirst.  She thirsted for more.  And Jesus provided, just like he provided for the woman at the well.

We prayed and we cried.  We prayed for strength for Helen.  We prayed for healing and for God’s presence in her life.  We prayed for comfort and for the doctors to be able to figure out what was going on inside her body.  We prayed that Jesus would be with her in her fear.

When we ended the prayer, I opened my eyes, and looked at Helen.  Her face had changed.  The fear had gone.  She had a sense of peace about her.  Helen said, “thank you.  That’s exactly what I needed.”  “Oh, in what way?”  I asked.  “I had been so focused and worried about drinking this water and what was going on in my body.  It was consuming me and drowning me in fear.  I talked about church and family as a way to distract myself from the fear I was feeling, but it didn’t work.  I couldn’t face this fear on my own.  I was too weak.  So I finally stopped pretending.  I remembered a different type of water – a water that not only quenches the thirst I have, but also reminds me of the promise that was made to me by God.”

Helen continued “when we prayed, Jesus was present.  Not only present, but Jesus was what I needed and he provided, just as he promised so many years ago.  When we prayed, Jesus swept away my fear.  He gave me living water that quenched my thirst.  I now know that I am not alone as I face this.  And being alone was my biggest fear.  That’s been washed away.  Thank you Jesus.”

Amen.