Homily for 14 July 2013 (Proper 10, Year C)

Deuteronomy 30: 9-14. Psalm 25: 1-9. Colossians 1: 1-14. Luke 10: 25-37.

What is there to say fresh about such a famous text? Perhaps it will do no harm to hear it again.

Duty versus love. Placing duty over love is what the priest and Levite did. There are times when we’ve all done that. There’s a scene in John Le Carré’s Smiley’s People where George Smiley is writing to Karla to confront him with evidence of his duplicity. Karla, the Russian secret service boss, demands loyalty to the system above all else, and anyone who transgresses is imprisoned or worse. But he has a secret. He has a daughter, supposedly with psychiatric illness, hidden away in a clinic in Switzerland. He channels some of his budget into secret accounts to support her. He is not living by the standards of duty that he exacts from others. George Smiley writes to Karla: ‘you have placed love above duty’. Karla has at last done right, but at the cost of having to leave home, lose respectability and become an outcast. This is the penalty that comes of doing the right thing. And the longer we delay, the heavier the penalty.

Who is my neighbour? The lawyer wants a definition of ‘neighbour’ so that he can do things by the book and keep his nose clean. If you’re a Liverpool supporter, the neighbour in need could be a Man U supporter. If you’re a Laois supporter, the neighbour in need could be a Carlow supporter. If you’re an ardent republican, your neighbour could be a royalist. If you’re out of work and in negative equity, the neighbour in need might be a banker.

It’s easy to fall into the lawyer’s trap. You could say ‘central Africa is a long way away and I don’t come across the starving millions in my daily activities, so they are not my neighbours. Anyway, I wouldn’t know about them if it weren’t for modern communications.’ This is being like the lawyer, wanting to define ‘neighbour’ so that you can draw lines in order to do things by the book and keep your nose clean. Or you might say: ‘is he really in need? I saw that so-called beggar arrive round the corner in a Mercedes.’ Or you might say: ‘she’s got a medical card and is better off on benefits than I am.’ These are distractions, I think. I have sympathy with those observations—there is nothing in Scripture that says we should not be responsible for ourselves and there is nothing that says we should expect a free ride (the opposite, in fact)—but to draw lines like this is to be like the lawyer. If you see someone in need, help them. End of. When I come into your presence I become your neighbour.

Think about the Samaritan. Did he stand to gain by crossing over and helping? He would have been delayed, and he was certainly out of pocket. Everybody helps friends and people they like. But are we willing at some personal cost to help anyone who needs it? It’s easy to chuck cash into a church gate collection. You feel better about yourself. I feel uneasy about such collections. It’s like having a fix of chocolate, or toast and butter. They lull us into a self-satisfied glow, at least for a short time. Love in practice means action, something personal. Throwing coins into a bucket is cosmetic and spiritually dangerous for it induces complacency.

Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do thy will, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Think about the victim. What does he, a Jew presumably, feel about being even touched, let alone helped, by a Samaritan? Would he allow it if he were healthy? Are there people you don’t want to touch you? Are there some people you will not sit next to? Do you know someone who refuses help from certain people? That kind of pride, to which we are all prone, harms only the proud. When you’re at death’s door, you will accept help from anyone. When you’ve lost everything, you’ve nothing else to lose. If I refuse someone’s help, I haven’t suffered enough yet.

The Samaritan is Jesus. The priest and Levite represent Jewish law that advises people to avoid sin. This is a bit like advising chocoholics to avoid chocolate, or me to avoid salt. No use at all. It’s help we need! The help, the healing comes from someone—the enemy in the story—who has crossed to the other side (God to man). An unlikely source. The Samaritan/Jesus takes the victim to the Inn. The Inn is the church and its sacraments: the cleansing waters of Baptism, and the Body and Blood, ‘the spiritual medicine of the People of God’. All of us who have been baptized, very members incorporate in the mystical body, can be Christs, ministering to the world. In Colossians we hear of Jesus (the Samaritan in this story) as the image of the Divine. God is love, and Jesus is love in action. In God there is no un-Christlikeness at all.

Part of me is a world-weary cynic, worn down by slithering and slimy politics of academic life, church life, government scandals, bureaucratic nonsense, trials of daily life and the shame and mistakes that come after 63 years of consciousness on this planet. This part of me is the priest, the Levite, too busy, too weary, too impatient to stop. But part of me is still a wide-eyed mischievous 6-year old, open to the world, trusting and naïve, who thinks that people are basically good despite our inevitable cock-ups. This part of me is the Samaritan, and this part of me is the bit that I can concentrate on. We are all called to be Samaritans. As the writer of Deuteronomy says: the word is in your mouth and your heart.

When I come into your presence, or you into mine, we become neighbours.

Homily for 2 June 2013

1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43. Psalm 96:1-9. Galatians 1:1-12. Luke 7:1-10.

This morning’s reading from Hebrew Scripture commends ministry to outsiders, not just to members of the club. That message also comes across in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Paul is gravely disappointed that the Galatians should have been foolish enough to listen to people who said that only Jews – that is club members – would be saved. He is very cross – incandescent I’d say – that he has to tell them again that that isn’t the case. And in the Gospel, we see Jesus healing an outsider. An outsider of outsiders, in a way: not a Jew, not even a Roman, but the servant of a Roman. The servant could have been from anywhere. That theme, that Christianity is for all, not just the chosen elite, is something that all churches need to take seriously: as we welcome people, as we give out notices—it’s easy to assume if I say ‘tell the Wardens’ that people will know who the Wardens are, as I’m greeting people before and after services. It’s easy for us to fall into chatting with people we know, and ignore those we don’t. We’ve talked about that before, and doubtless will again. But not today. Today I want to consider healing itself.

We say medicine is about the relief of suffering. In Christianity, and I suspect in many of our childhood experiences, there’s always been something of a suffering-is-good-for-you masochism. It’ll make a man of you. Sportsmen proudly bearing their scars as a token of ‘hardness’. Some Christians seem to glory in suffering. Their aim is not to avoid pain but to embrace it. And I suspect we all know people who make a virtue of enjoying ill health. ‘After all’, they say sanctimoniously, ‘Jesus knowingly goes to the cross, and in this suffering I’m imitating Our Lord, present alongside those who suffer’. This is not a view I’m keen on myself. My idea of suffering is running out of ice cubes. The logical position for these people would be to eschew antibiotics, elastoplasts, pain-killlers, hip replacements. And the rest.

Other faiths are more sensible than some Christians. Members of other Abrahamic faiths have no problem with alleviating suffering, accepting contraception when a pregnancy is likely to threaten a woman’s health, even the killing of the unborn in certain circumstances. Jewish writers denounce the glorification of suffering, and even prefer to forego future reward if it involves present agony. So let’s not kid ourselves that we need to be miserable, despite the emphasis on the suffering servanthood of Christ that is pushed by some branches of Christianity.

Let’s consider healing. As I’ve said before, healing is not about cure. After all, we’re all going to die sooner or later, and there is no cure of that. Medical cure today of one disease simply means that we’ll die tomorrow of something else. Not recognizing that is one reason why so much money is poured into the health services; why doctors are so well-funded by the folly of patients who think that they should live for ever; why people pay for unnecessary plastic surgery and cosmetics; why people obsess about their appearance. This obsession with perfect health and appearance is saying that we are intolerant of imperfection and disability. I speak with some insight here: there was a time when I spent money on gym memberships in the quest for some physical ideal. You can see how far I have fallen short, and how that money was wasted. We are all afflicted to some degree or other. But the quest for perfection and immortality is, I think, a perversion by satanic elements in our culture of a perfectly reasonable spiritual quest for wholeness.

Surely, that’s what healing is about: the quest for wholeness. Here are some other words and ideas that mean the same: salving, restoring integrity, soothing, and the one I like best: coming to terms with the situation we’re in. When we have come to terms with our situation, we do feel better, we know we need to ask for help, and that is itself a form of healing. At the bedside, I often pray that we will have grace to bear what must be borne, and patience to cooperate with the healing process.

In today’s Gospel, it’s easily missed that the centurion and Jesus never actually met. It’s healing from afar. You could say that Jesus did nothing, because by the time he was told of the servant’s condition, the centurion had already sent out messengers to say that the servant was healed, so Jesus needn’t go any further. It seems to indicate that healing began as soon as the need for it was acknowledged. I think this is absolutely true. When I realize that I have a cold, or manflu or whatever, I can relax a bit and accept the fact that I won’t be able to do this or that or the other. And concentrate on resting to allow biological healing processes. It’s as if the healing process is locked away inside us and can’t begin until we consciously realize that we need to let it start working.

We don’t need to hide our broken-ness. At the Eucharist, there’s great significance in one little act immediately after the Lord’s Prayer. The bread which we break is a sharing in the body of Christ. It was the wounds to Jesus’ body that did the healing work. We don’t need to pretend we’re perfect. We are human: we can never be perfect. It’s our imperfections that help us to understand one other. When we see someone else’s faults, and that they acknowledge them, we feel more kindly disposed to them. This is the first stage of healing. This is why people who never acknowledge their mistakes are so scorned. Why spin doctors are reviled. I view it as one of my tasks to make plain my faults for all to see. Some people want their ministers to be perfect. Good luck with that one. Let’s put aside any facade of perfection, and acknowledge that we all need healing from something: childhood hurts; or resentments that we refuse to let go; or addictions to attitudes, to chemicals, to ways of behaving. We need healing from all the things that are thieves of our true selves.

In hospitals, patients tell me their secrets. They whisper them to me, and we talk about them. They smile nervously as they do so. And then I can see them sinking back into their pillows. I can see the relief. This is a coming to terms operation. It’s a setting down the load operation. It’s an acceptance of who they are, and when they see that they are not condemned for being who they are, it’s a healing.

You and I are human. We have no need to pretend to be anything else. In the Christian way of thinking, our humanity was raised to the level of the Divine at the Ascension. Made like him, like him we rise. We begin to be healed when we accept our need for healing. Just like the centurion and his servant.