The Good Samaritan
Luke 10. 25-37
A sermon given on July 10th, 2022, the 5th Sunday in Pentecost, at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Oklahoma City, OK.
It was many years ago now that St. Paul’s was the “Christian” stop on what was known as the Youth Interfaith Tour in Oklahoma City. It had been a tradition that the Oklahoma Conferene of Churches sponsored an event where teenagers would, on a Sunday afternoon, hop on rented buses and visit three different communities of faith, each from a different religion.
Now, to be sure, not three different Christian denominations, but three different religions. I say that because as I have taught teenagers these past 30 years, I still see them struggling with this particular nuance. Presbyterians and Baptists are not different religions, they are different “flavors,” as I call them, of the Christian tradition. But I digress.
The Youth Interfaith Tour would make three stops on that Sunday afternoon. An example; the first stop would be a Mosque for Isalm, a second stop a Hindu Temple, and a third would be a particular “flavor” of Christianity. At each stop, the pastor, Rabbi, or Imam would give a talk, and often one of the teens from their community would be a part of that presentation. On one of those years, our Cathedral was the Christian stop on the tour, and we enlisted one of our high school students to give the presentation. Among other things, this is what he said. Are you ready?
“One of the things I love about being an Episcopalian is that you can believe whatever you want, and it doesn’t matter.”
I cringed. Now, I’m pretty sure I understood what our teen was attempting to convey, but he missed it.
There are two theological concepts that I think would be helpful for you to know as you move along your journey with Jesus. The first is one that I would venture most of you are familiar with. It is the concept of orthodoxy, which practically translated means “right or correct belief.” As an Episcopalian, you can say that you believe God is best described as a giant spaghetti monster in the sky, but I assure you that would not be “orthodox.” This is an extreme example. The delineation of what is right versus wrong belief is more nuanced than that, and what our teenager was trying to say on that day is that our Christian community tends to give each other a lot of latitude in those nuances of Christian belief. Can I get an Amen?
Every Sunday, we recite together the Nicene Creed. We’re going to do it right after my sermon (which will correct everything I get wrong in the sermon!) This creed is the result of a 4th century A.D. argument about some particular boundaries of “right belief.” The Creed was the winner of that argument. I bet if we all met in the Welcome Center after church today and had chat about what each of you thinks about the Creed we would demonstrate this “latitude of thought” our teenager was trying to articulate that Sunday afternoon.
The second word that is just as useful and important but that is referred to less often is the word “orthopraxy.” You can guess what this means. It is right or correct practice. It’s tied to personal and communal ethics and morality. It tries to answer the question, “If we believe this about God, how then shall we live?” If we have learned about Jesus, and God, and have the right belief about them, then what are the implications for our daily lives?
And just like orthodoxy, Episcopalians tend to give greater latitude around these issues. However, can you imagine that teenager getting up and saying “The thing I like about being an Episcopalian is that you can live however you want and it doesn’t matter?” Right?
Jesus, Yeshua, was a master teacher. At that moment, an expert in Jewish orthodoxy and orthopraxy, asks him, “Give me the bottom line. What is the most important teaching and/or practice in our spiritual tradition? What does God really want?” The answer that Jesus’ draws from the man was not a surprise to either of them. They were these big beautiful abstractions that one could hardly argue with; love God with your entire being and love your neighbor as yourself. It was the follow-up question that the man was actually interested in, and he had it on-the-ready. Well then, who is my neighbor?
In response, Jesus tells a parable, rooted in practical theology, and he makes the hero of the story a heretic, someone who didn’t have his beliefs (and maybe some of his practice) lined up exactly right.
Samaria. Samaritans. If you really want to understand what Jesus was up to, it is worth your time to do a deep dive into Samaria. For Jews who were trying to live right, to think right, to be seen as right, you had to be careful having any kind of friendships with Samaritans. They were a group of people held under great suspicion.
The origin of this suspicion was centuries old. Centuries. There had been a period of relative political, cultural, and religious unity in ancient Israel known as the United Monarchy. It was three successive kings that, according to the scriptures, reigned each for 40 years: King Saul, forty years, King David, forty years, and finally King Solomon, forty years. You might be dubious about how neat and tidy three reigns of 40 years each were, but that’s part of the point. This was a religious history that had a certain poetic and artistic shape to it. It was underscoring 120 years of relative UNITY.
It was toward the end of Solomon’s reign that he basically drives this united kingdom into the ditch (an entirely separate sermon) and the United Monarchy SPLITS into TWO separate kingdoms. A SEPARATE CAPITOL, different from Jerusalem, was established in what would eventually become the region of? Does anyone want to guess?
Samaria.
Now, part of what characterized the split was the emergence of something called FERTILITY RELIGIONS. Trust me when I tell you that I can’t share with you all that entailed (There are children in the room). I can invite you to use your imagination and to do your own research, but it was very evocative, and as we often say at school…inappropriate. A large number of Jews at that time, particularly in the northern regions, began to combine and mix fertility religious beliefs and practices with their Judaism, a practice known as syncretism. It was a mess.
Eventually, this mess works itself out and gets tempered. But the damage was done. And some 700 years later what remained was a subdued version of that mixture; a version of Judaism that was, let's just say unusual. To help people understand I sometimes describe Samaritans as “hippie Jews.” They were Jewish, to be sure, but their beliefs and practices were held under suspicion by…you know…proper folks.
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So, when Jesus chooses to make a Samaritan the hero of a parable that he is using to work through the nuance of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, he’s teaching like a Third Order Jedi playing chess on a two-level-board. And it probably made the person asking the question's head explode.
Episcopal Christians. Yes, you. I think maybe you can’t “believe whatever you want” and that maybe you can’t “live however we want.” But Jesus is certainly prioritizing the discussion for you. If you feel like you might get orthodoxy or orthopraxy wrong from time to time, Jesus wants you to place your best energies on love-in-action. And when you do that, you may very well be making up for all those times and places when you sometimes are indeed getting it wrong.
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