Samaritans (John 4)

"We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world." From the Gospel according to John, chapter 4, verse 42.

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

     Since we have just heard a rather long Gospel reading, I promise to keep my remarks short. There is a lot in this reading to talk about, but I will stick to just two points.
     "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" If we let this remark sink in, and if we recall references to Samaritans elsewhere in the Gospels, the radicalism of this text will become apparent. Later in John's Gospel, someone says to Jesus, "You are a Samaritan, and have a demon!" In other words, you're not one of us, and you come from Hell besides! You can't be any more of an outsider, which is what a Samaritan is, than that! Yet here we have Jesus talking to a potentially dangerous outsider, and a woman too! We already know that Jesus made a point of emphasizing the importance of women, a radical thing to do in the society of the time. So for Jesus to talk to a woman who is also a Samaritan, is itself a teaching about just how new and different he and his teaching really are. Jesus's teaching is still radical, even in our time.
     Jesus makes his point about Samaritans, and so about outsiders generally, in Luke's Gospel, three times. In answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. When Zebedee asks Jesus to call down fire from Heaven to consume the Samaritans, Jesus rebukes him. Jesus later heals a Samaritan, and praises him for his faith. In other words, there is no distinction between Jew and Samaritan, between insider and outsider. The Samaritans are not demon-possessed, are just as capable of faith, just as capable of good moral action, can have just as much faith as any insider. In the Kingdom, there are no outsiders, no demon-possessed enemies, no one incapable of faith. In the words of one commentator, Jesus "did not exclude the either the Samaritans or the Gentiles from salvation, from experiencing the power of the age to come."
      I was reminded of this the other day, when someone asked me, "Are you a minister?" "Yes," I replied, "an Episcopalian!" "Oh good," he said, "the best kind!" So, of course, I allowed myself to feel special, somehow better than all those non-Episcopalians, all those modern-day Samaritans. But I quickly realized that I was giving in to the ancient tribal desire to be an insider, to exclude the outsider. Not what Jesus would do!
     Now I promised to be brief, so I will make just one more point. "The woman said to him, 'I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ.'...Jesus said to her, 'I am he, the one who is speaking to you!'" Here Jesus is accepting the title and role of Messiah, without any qualification or evasion. And he accepts it, not from a Jew, but from a Samaritan! We must try to imagine how remarkable, how improbable, this is. An outsider, a woman no less, has enough depth of insight, of spiritual awareness, that she is able to see Jesus for who he really is. This is completely foreign to what traditionalists past and present, the right-thinking believers, would expect or want.
     Will the outsiders of our world perceive the Messiah in us, the Body of Christ? Will we see in outsiders, in people not like us, people who have the same invitation to the Kingdom that we do? Do we ourselves actually hear the Samaritans when they say, "We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world?" 

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Be perfect. (Matthew 5)

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

 From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to

 Matthew, chapter 5, verse 48.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.    

     We have in today’s Gospel what may be the most impossible

 of Jesus’s teachings. From not resisting evil, to not fighting

 back, to settling for more than we were sued for, to going

 farther than is requested of us, to giving to everyone who

begs of us, to lending to everyone who wants to borrow from

 us, to loving our enemies, and finally, to the demand, on top

 of all that, that we be perfect, as perfect as God, we have a

 list of requirements that probably no human being except

 Jesus himself has ever achieved, or even attempted.

Even the saints were, are, likely not capable of all of these,

not all at the same time anyway. What are we going to do with

this list of impossible requirements?

     The least we can do is understand what Jesus is saying

here, what Jesus is describing, what situation we are in

from Jesus’s point of view. He is describing the Kingdom,

and what personal relations would be like there. And

he’s describing what would be the state of

mind, the consciousness, the psychology of the individual

and the group, in the Kingdom, what it takes to get there,

and what it takes to stay in it.

     “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a

tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an

evildoer.” Jesus is here renouncing violence of any

kind. In Jesus’s earthly life, this meant, among other

things, renouncing violence against the Roman power.

One commentator suggests that this may have been why

Judas abandoned Jesus; it is possible that Judas wanted

Jesus to be the nationalist Messiah that many hoped for, and

was disappointed when Jesus would not accept the role

and its inevitable violence. Paul the Apostle affirms this

teaching of Jesus when he writes in his Letter to the Romans,

“Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for

what is noble in the sight of all.”

     And this means renouncing economic violence as well.

Jesus teaches us to be generous, and more than generous,

when he says that we should settle for more than we are sued

for, and give to those who beg from us, and lend to those

who want to borrow. The core idea here is freedom

from selfishness and abuse and exploitation and

financial manipulation of others. The core idea, in other

words, is an economy not at all like the economies we know

about. The cure for this is the free generosity which

Jesus is advocating. His teaching in its literal meaning is

very radical, of course. And we need to be reminded,

frequently, just how radical Jesus’s teaching really is. In

our current economy it is hard, maybe even impossible, to

be so radical, but it is possible to turn ourselves in the

direction of the free generosity which will bring us closer

to the Kingdom.

     “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your

neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love

your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Well,

here it is again, another radical injunction from Our Lord.

This is another declaration, another version,  of

Jesus’s renunciation of violence, a variation on his

command not to resist an evildoer.

     What is Jesus quoting when he says, “You have heard

that it was said,” and so on. This is not an exact

quotation of anything in the Scriptures, although there are

lines in Psalm 139 and in the Book of Sirach, which

mention hatred of enemies without actually exhorting

us to imitate the state of mind of the writers. But Jesus is

referring to something that evidently his hearers were

familiar with, an idea common to the time and place. And

we are familiar with it too. Hatred of enemies is a

common attitude, a dangerous, deadly one, in tribal cultures

past and present. We see the murderous effects of this

attitude in many places in the world today. And it is this

tribal consciousness, or rather, tribal unconsciousness, that

Jesus is calling us to leave behind. The “eye for an eye”

mentality, the selfishness which motivates so much

economic activity, and mindless hatred of the other, the

so-called ‘enemy,’ are all typical of a primitive, not fully

conscious tribal state of mind which we are being called to

leave behind. Jesus is calling us to a new state of being, to a

new life free of these ancient limitations, a new life in God.

And this life we call the Kingdom.

     “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those

who persecute you, so that you may be children of your

Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil

and the good.” Here Jesus acknowledges that ancient

and perplexing problem, the problem of evil. Why does God

allow evil to exist? Jesus’s response to the problem of evil

is to admit its reality, and to say, “Don’t add to it.

Don’t perpetuate it. Choose the good, even in the face of

evil.” Jesus is putting this choice before us, a choice that is

always available to us. Choice, in other words, a choice to

free ourselves from the primitive tribal instinct to hate the

enemy, is always available. The choice to step out of

tribal unconsciousness is always available to us. I know that

there are hard cases, and our world is full of them, in which

choice appears to be between one evil and another. But

God “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” In

other words, God’s grace is always present, even in the

most difficult of situations. The call out of unconsciousness

is a call to free choice, to act in a way that brings the

Kingdom a little closer.

     “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

One commentator describes this text as the most abused

text, at least in English-speaking countries, in the whole

of the New Testament. The problem, as we know, is that

little word “perfect.” It conjures up for us a

connotation of rectitude and righteousness which are

impossible to achieve. We have met people, I’m sure, who

attempt this, or, worse, people who think that they have

achieved it. We all know how inhuman, how lacking in

realism, empathy, such an attitude can be. There is a lot of

it in many places today. In the end, it can get a lot of people

killed, and damage the survivors. This is not the perfection

that our text is talking about.

     The Greek word behind this erroneous translation

means something like “brought to completion” or “brought

to the end state.” The Greek root is “telos,” “end.” We’ve all

heard the word “teleological,” referring to the end state

of the world. When Our Lord tells us to be, like God,

“teleios,” he is telling us to be open to the end for which

we are made, which is life in the Kingdom. This life is

typified by freedom, the freedom to be generous, the

freedom from an unconscious tribal mentality, freedom to

love, freedom to choose the good. That is the perfection to

which we are called, for which we are made.

     So these impossible teachings of Our Lord are

really descriptions, pointers to the end state, pointers

to the Kingdom. We begin to live in the Kingdom, we

bring it a little closer, when we choose the freedom in God

which Our Lord is putting before us. We are not to stay

in, or revert to, the old morality, but are to choose the

morality of love, of freedom, of life, in the Kingdom.

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. (III.14. Adv.)