What Is the Right Question?
Reflections on Luke 10.25-37
RCL Proper 15C
10 July 2016
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Some years
ago General Theological Seminary in New York invited Vancouver School of
Theology to send a faculty member and a student to participate in a conference on
the future of the Anglican Communion.
One of our Anglican students was chosen and I went as the School’s
faculty representative.
The
conference itself was very good. But
there was one session that was unpleasant because of the attitude of a faculty
member from a theological college I won’t name.
During a panel discussion where he and the other panellists were
receiving questions from students, he consistently responded to each student
question with the following comment, ‘Well, that’s really not the right
question, is it?’ The problem was that
the other panellists and every other faculty member in the room knew that every
student had actually asked the right question.
Our colleague was simply dodging those questions that challenged some of
the positions he had taken in the discussion.
Asking the
right question, however, is an important part of being a thoughtful human
being. For example, it is common in
contemporary society for some people to assume that there is a conflict between
science and religion regarding creation.
Scientific and religious fundamentalists love to draw their swords and
debate the first two chapters of Genesis.
They both think that Genesis is trying answer the question of how did
the universe come into being. But this
is the wrong question. Genesis is
answering the question of why the universe came into being.
When
scientists and theologians ask the right question, then they quickly discover
that their differences shrink in comparison with their shared convictions. Each learns that the other values the
integrity of creation, honours the dignity of human beings and respects the
vital importance of studying the mysteries of the universe we inhabit. Quantum physics poses no threat to my religious
faith nor does my belief that the universe exists because of God’s love
threaten research into how the universe works.
Today’s
gospel is a familiar story to all of us.
Yet it is a story that begins with the wrong question. But before I say more about this, let me be
very clear about a couple of things.
First, this story has been used over the centuries as a weapon to
condemn Judaism. It is very easy to see
the lawyer, the priest and the Levite in a negative light and then to
generalize about Jews and Judaism. But
such an approach fails to understand the story.
- The lawyer is asking an honest question, one that we all ask from time to time. He wants to know what Jesus thinks God expects of a faithful person.
- Feigning injury or death was a frequent ploy used by bandits to lure well-meaning people into a trap. So, it is any wonder that the priest and the Levite might avoid a possible trap. How many of us have avoided ‘getting involved’ when we see someone in trouble?
Second,
Jesus is being provocative. When he uses
a Samaritan as the hero of the story, he knows that he will get a
response. The history between the
Samaritans and what I will call the Judeans is complicated, about as
complicated as the history between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Just replace ‘man’ with ‘Jewish settler’,
‘priest’ with ‘rabbi’, ‘Levite’ with ‘Christian’ and ‘Samaritan’ with
‘Palestinian’ and you’ll get the drift of how Jesus gets the attention of his
listeners.
Let’s go back
to the wrong question. The law of Moses
has a substantial amount to say about how one is to conduct oneself regarding
one’s neighbour. After all, in the
Gospel according to Mark Jesus quotes a traditional Jewish summary of the
requirements of the Law: "12.28
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and
seeing that [Jesus] answered them well, he asked him, 'Which commandment is the
first of all?' 29 Jesus answered, 'The first is, "Hear, O Israel:
the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and
with all your strength." 31
The second is this, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’" There is no other commandment greater than
these.'"
So the lawyer in Luke’s gospel wants to make sure that he
can be faithful to God’s expectations.
But, as the parable unfolds, we learn that he has asked the wrong
question.
For Jesus
the right question is ‘How does a neighbour act?’ not ‘Who is my
neighbour?’. Note how carefully Jesus
poses a question to the lawyer: “’10.36
Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into
the hands of the robbers?’ 37
[The lawyer] said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do
likewise.’” To be a follower of Jesus is
to be a neighbour by doing justice, loving mercy and living humbly before
God. For the followers of Jesus every
human being is to be embraced by our neighbourliness.
As we look
around the world today, we see so many people who are asking the wrong
question. Fear is driving people to seek
to define the limits of generosity, of respect and of compassion. Violence is fuelled when we no longer see
another human being as flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. Indifference is powered by the belief that we
have no responsibility toward those who are in need. Intolerance is generated by a self-centred
blindness that can see no other point of view other than our own.
While many
of our fears are unjustifiable, some are justifiable and cannot be
ignored. However, for the followers of
Jesus our question lies in how we respond to our fears justly, compassionately
and soberly. Sometimes it means
confronting those who demonize others and trade on fear. Other times it means daring to speak in
favour of generosity when all around us are counselling restraint. From time to time it means crossing the
invisible boundaries that exist between ourselves and those we might call ‘the
others’.
I believe
that the core purpose of an Anglican parish is to take care of its
neighbourhood. This means that there
will always be more parishioners, the people who live within the parish
boundaries, than congregants, the people who gather for worship and who give of
their resources for the support of the parish’s ministries. It’s not always easy to live our our
vocation, but perhaps another word for ‘Christian’ is simply ‘neighbour’.
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