The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Trinity Church
Towson, MD
RCL Year C - 8 Pentecost (Proper 10) - July 14, 2013
Stephanie Spellers,
a priest in the diocese of Massachusetts, has introduced a term to the church that
I think we need to pay a bit of attention to this morning. The term is called Radical Welcome. It’s easy, as she says, when we hear the words
- radical welcome - to primarily think of radical welcome as the warm way we
receive people at the door or the quality of snacks following the service, but
in her book that bears the name Radical Welcome: Embracing God, the Other, and the Spirit of
Transformation, she encourages the reader to stretch beyond… to stretch beyond the normal way we would
think of welcome and go a bit deeper.
Stephanie defines
Radical Welcome the way I think a church should look at it… She says that Radical Welcome is a “spiritual
practice, it is an attitude of welcome that combines a clear awareness of power
and patterns of inclusion and exclusion.”
It’s an awareness and acceptance of who you are, your acceptance of
others and spiritual transformation that takes place as a result of the
encounter.
For information on how
Jesus taught Radical Welcome, We can turn to our scripture readings for
today. Our readings, as familiar as they
may seem to us, say something very profound about who we are and how we should be
in relation to the other… of how to be
an agent of radical welcome.
The Lawyer that
questions Jesus about eternal life made a distinct choice to frame his question
trying to trick Jesus… The Lawyer asked
him a question directly related to the Mosaic law. (of which he is considered an expert!). Jesus
answers the question with a question and the Lawyer… Of course, the Lawyer, who is the resident
expert in law, responds with what is referred to now as a summary of the law… “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and with all your strength…
and love your neighbor as yourself.”
In his answer, the
Lawyer tries to backstroke a bit, knowing that Jesus had outsmarted him, and
“justifies” himself by asking Jesus to define neighbor. Then Jesus, as he does though-out his
ministry, chooses to use a parable story to explain things… We know the parable well, probably because it
is one of the first parables that we learn as a child in Sunday School… The parable of the Good Samaritan…
Good Samaritan… sort of an oxymoron to call it “good
Samaritan,” because Samaritans in the Jewish society where not considered
anything close to good. There was extreme tension between the Samaritans and
the Judeans. The Samaritans were most
definitely the other – the outsider. They
were considered unclean and mixed up pagan beliefs.
Jesus presents his
parable story, But Luke doesn’t explain to the reader why some of the
characters involved, did what they did… Maybe
because the folks Jesus was talking to already understood the roles of the
characters involved, and the predicaments they were in. But today, we are out
of context And if we don’t understand who these characters are, it becomes
pretty easy to place a lot of blame on the two guys that made the choice to
ignore the injured man.
Like Stephanie Spellers
would say, in order to understand how this message will transform us, we need
to have a clear awareness of power in relation to action and patters that
exist. We need to step back a second and take a look… We need to examine the
scene more closely. Looking at the parable this way allows us to gain a deeper
understanding about why the characters in Jesus’ parable did some of the things
they did.
Let’s look first at
the priest and the Levite… we can
understand why it’s pretty easy to let these guys catch all the blame… They seem pretty arrogant as they trot by on
the other side of the road. But what we tend to overlook is that the priest and
Levite rank pretty high on the purity list.
According to Mosaic law, they had to remain pure to do their job, that
means that they were to avoid, at all cost, ANY contact with a naked body, especially
one that was bleeding or possibly dead. So contact with the naked body of the
injured man on the road was not even an option for them.
They decided to
remain pure rather than help the man… to remain pure – true to their office and
function and maintain their religious purity according to mosaic law – they pass
by on the other side of the road, to avoid any contact with the naked bleeding
body.
As wrong as it may seem
to us, as far as they were concerned, according to the law, they had no other
choice… The Samaritan, on the other
hand, didn’t even rank on the purity list… they were despised by the Jews and they were considered
unclean…
This particular
Samaritan was traveling back and forth on the road, from Jerusalem to Jericho and carried with him
oil, and wine and what seemed to be some considerable funds. Some of the
Biblical scholars suggest that he might be a trader of goods. A trader of goods
at that time was a despised profession, because they were thought to have gotten
rich at the expense of others.
But this Samaritan
trader decides to stop… to stop, and to help the poor man that was injured, bleeding,
and lying there in the road… Using the
wares that he carries with him (his livelihood)… He cleans, anoints, and
dresses the man’s wounds… and then goes above and beyond the call of duty, and
loads him on his own donkey and takes him to a nearby inn.
So we have Jesus’ telling
his parable this morning to a group of listeners that understand the characters
in the story… and they also understand
what a predicament Jesus presents to the Lawyer. And although we may have learned this story
as a child, we may not have thought about it this way…
On the surface, the
story seems pretty simple… and Jesus gives the lawyer a clear answer. He puts care for a
fellow human being ahead of any of the “Mosaic purity laws”… And therefore explains the true sense of the
law – “to love your neighbor” without the need of worrying about who your
neighbor is… He may have not called it
that, but he explains Radical Welcome.
It kind of makes us
mad today, that the priest and the Levite characters in the story ignore the
injured mam, but Jesus understood the folks he was talking to… He knew that the folks wouldn’t think anything
of a priest or a Levite deciding to pass by on the other side of the road.
The people
understood the role of the two men and why they did what they did, as they
understood the law… But Jesus also knew
that the group he was talking to would be completely “outraged” because he used
the Samaritan in the story to show mercy to the man… and he used the Samaritan
to be the one who became the neighbor… to be the new standard by which to act…
In our lives… in our journey as Christians, we are often faced
with the question of who is our neighbor, and we are always challenged to offer
our neighbor an attitude of Radical Welcome - and love them as we would love
our self. If we have the attitude of radical welcome in our hearts, and if we
love everyone who is other to us without condition, then we are doing exactly
what Jesus wants us to do!
As we go forth from
this place, we can take with transforming teachings from this very
brief parable told by Jesus that takes us right to the point! We can understand
what Radical Welcome meant to Jesus – that we welcome and care for and love ALL
– We don’t jump to conclusions about someone and judge them because they act or
dress a certain way, but we strive to engage and understand… understand why they’re doing what they’re
doing… And then we let go of our own
convictions and understandings and do what Jesus calls us to do… to be a nurturing, healing, and reconciling
presence in the broken world around us.
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