Posts Tagged ‘inclusiveness’

Who is my neighbour?

July 12, 2025

Pentecost 5 – 2025

Luke 10:25-37

Marian Free

In the name of God whose love knows no constraints. Amen.

I don’t know about you, but at the moment I am overwhelmed by the state of the world, and I feel utterly powerless to intervene or to make any difference at all. Gaza, of course, is the most demanding of our attention, but not us let forget Ukraine, South Sudan and all the other nations involved in on-going conflict or civil war. Then there is the changing geopolitical situation and the potential economic consequence of the US tariffs and aid cuts. All over the world innocent people are suffering the effects of climate change and the increasing unpredictability of the weather. Here in Australia the people of Northern Rivers have experienced once in a lifetime flood twice in two years. They barely have time to recover before they have to begin again. (And that in a wealthy first world country. Imagine trying to re-build one’s life and livelihood in a nation without the resources to which we have access.) I find myself paralysed with indecision. What difference can I make? Will my small contributions help at all? 

I’m not even sure how to pray. In the first instance, I do not have the words to use. Secondly, I am not at all sure that my prayers, however fervent, have made a difference.

It is tempting to throw up my hands and leave it all to God. It is equally tempting to narrow my focus, to decide who and what is most deserving of my help or to justify inaction because not being able to do it all I find myself not doing enough.

In order to rationalise my inaction, I find myself thinking about how different the world today is from Jesus’ world and wonder if some of Jesus’ instructions simply don’t translate into the  21st century. In the first century, there was no social service, there were (at least for those of Jesus’ faith) clear guidelines about responsibility for family, for widows and orphans. Smaller communities meant that people were more aware of other people’s business, and they would probably have known the background of the person who begged them for a small coin or two. Without modern forms of communication very few would have known the state of the world beyond their village or region.

In contrast, today in Australia we have social welfare (even if it is inadequate), six-foot fences separate us from our neighbours and in cities that number millions there is a limit to how much we can know about the circumstances of others. The internet and social media mean that we know about disasters all over the world almost as soon as they happen. 

The question: ‘Who is my neighbour?’ is even more pressing than it was two thousand years ago. I see my physical neighbours only when I make an effort or pass them on the street. It is generally impossible to know how I can be a neighbour to them.

Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s question is important, but so too is the question, and the intent of the one asking. We are told that the lawyer is seeking to justify himself. He knows the answer to his first question “What must I do?” – he is a lawyer after all. He asks the second question because he wants to limit and confine the extent to which he has to follow the law. He wants to narrow down what it means ‘to love his neighbour as himself.’ 

No doubt the lawyer, and no doubt those who have gathered around fully expect Jesus to limit neighbourliness to fellow Jews. After all, they are the chosen.

Jesus however does at least two unexpected things in his story of the man who was a neighbour. Instead of giving a definition of neighbour, Jesus tells a story of neighbourliness. He subverts the expectation that it will be the good, pious Jews on their way to Jerusalem who will offer assistance to the wounded man, and he gives the starring role to a rank outsider, an enemy, a person considered unclean according to Jewish law! The example of neighbourliness is the person least expected.

The Samaritan did not consider political or social implications of helping a Jew, he did not withhold his help because of the deep enmity between his people and theirs, and he did not stop to consider his capacity to help. (What would he do if the inn keeper charged him more than he could afford?)

Jesus doesn’t directly answer the lawyer’s question. He doesn’t say that the Samaritan is the neighbour who should be loved. What Jesus does is to confront the lawyer with what it means to be a neighbour. Using the despised Samaritan as the example, Jesus makes it clear that there are no boundaries to “neighbour”. Shocking as it might be to Jesus’ audience, it is the outsider who demonstrates that being a neighbour doesn’t consider the race, religion, or economic status of the other. 

Love of neighbour cannot be limited or reduced to a simple formula because the definition of ‘neighbour’ has no bounds. God’s love, and therefore our love does not discriminate between worthy and unworthy, insider or outsider, but is extended to all humanity. 

The problems in the world are overwhelming, but we are not to be discouraged. We will do well if remain open-minded and open-hearted, sympathetic towards the suffering of the good, the bad and the deserving and the undeserving, the familiar and the unfamiliar and if we do all we can to alleviate that suffering through direct support, through volunteering, through political and social action and through prayer.

In this increasingly divided and fractious world. Who is my neighbour? might be the question most demanding of an answer.

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A son who brings shame and dishonour and a father who couldn’t care less

March 29, 2025

Lent 4 – 2025

Luke 15:11-32

Marian Free

In the name of God who, on our part endures humiliation and shame in order to show love to and to welcome home the worst of us. Amen.

(You might like to watch the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane’s one minute reflection on today’s gospel.)

There are two parables (only found in Luke) that have become part of common parlance.  These are known as the parable of the Good Samaritan and the parable of the Prodigal Son. Unfortunately, our over familiarisation with these parables (and with parables in general) is that they have lost their capacity to shock, to pull us up short. In the first instance, Jesus’ parable about the Samaritan is not a call to do good works, but a critique of those – good Christians all– who think that in some way superior to those whom they consider as somehow lesser than themselves. In the second instance, Jesus is challenging the view of those who thought that Jesus should only eat with/associate with those who kept the law and those who observed the niceties of social expectations (Luke 15:1).

In the case of the Prodigal son, as the name suggests, the focus tends to be on the son. When we read the parable, we put ourselves in the place of the son and feel immense gratitude that God overlooks our faults when and if we repent. What we fail to see, is what the parable tells us about the Father – by implication what it tells us about God and Jesus. In fact, scholars today call the parable the forgiving father, because that more accurately represents Jesus’ meaning.

The focus in this parable is not the repentance (if it was repentance) of the son, but on the father, who, ignoring ridicule and having no regard to his position in society, not only indulges the son, but who watches day and night for the son’s return and who runs to greet him on the road. In this parable, Jesus turns the honour/shame culture of the Middle East on its head. 

At that time (and in some places today) the concept of honour/shame was central to all relationships in the Middle East. There were complex protocols governing all human behaviour because honour was a finite resource and if you wanted to increase your own honour you could only do it at the expense of someone else’s honour. In an interaction between people of differing status, there were quite specific codes to follow so that each person, whether of higher or lower status, was not in danger of threatening the honour of the other.  

A loss of honour was equally the loss of respect and status in the community. This is the reason why Herod felt that he had to honour the request of his step daughter to behead John the Baptist. To have failed to do so would have meant that he would have lost face (respect, status) before his guests.  If a person lost their honour, it was lost for good. Had Herod not fulfilled his promise, he might have been able to maintain his power by force, but not through his status in the community. (He would have become an object of ridicule, someone who could not be expected to keep his word.)

In a collective (not individualistic) society, honour was collective. A man’s honour was dependent on the behaviour of his family – so much so that homes were often open to the street to demonstrate that the head of the household had nothing to fear. In this case the actions of the son reflect badly on and diminish the father’s honour.

This is what makes Jesus’ parable of the forgiving father all the more surprising, even shocking to his audience. From beginning to end the story is about a father whose honour is challenged and diminished and about a father who doesn’t care less about honour, his dignity or the regard in which he is held by his neighbours.  He cares only for the well-being of the son.

According to the parable the younger son asks for his share of the inheritance. Not only is this son greedy, selfish and impatient he is, by asking for his inheritance, implying that wished his father dead. Jesus’ audience would have understood that the son’s request was in clear violation of the fourth commandment to honour your father and mother. Further, anyone dependent on making a living from the land would be well aware of the financial burden that paying out the son would put on the father (and the remaining brother). The son has brought shame on the family, possibly impoverished the family and has thought only of himself and his short-term pleasure.

You might say, “yes, but he did come to his senses’. But did he? Was he really repentant or was he still putting his own needs first. Peter Hawkins (among others) observes that there is something quite calculating in the son’s thought process[1]. His speech is even rehearsed: “I will say to him.” There is no mention in the account that he is sorry, only that returning home would be a solution to his state of starvation. 

If anyone has/had any doubt that God was not a God of judgement and condemnation, but a God of compassion and second chances, this parable (and the two that precede it) puts paid to any questions on that score.

The father (probably representing God) has asked nothing of the son but has freely given him what he wanted, released him from all responsibility and let him go. Then, day after day, it appears, he has kept a lookout for this lost boy – forgoing pride and any sense of social respectability (the son has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be part of the family and has brought dishonour on his family name). 

Finally, the father sees the son and, without thought for his personal dignity and paying no regard to the diminished esteem in which he will be held by his neighbours, he runs (runs not walks) to take his son in his arms before son has any opportunity to give his well-thought out and well-rehearsed speech. If that were not enough to indicate to his neighbours his lack of self-respect, he then calls for the best robe, a ring for the finger, sandals for his feet AND a feast with the fatted calf, any one of which would be shocking and incomprehensible to his community.  A member of the family who had brought them into such disrepute and brought such shame upon them, should at the very least be shunned if not severely punished.

By turning upside down the social conventions of the time, Jesus wants his audience to let go of an idea that God only welcomes those self-righteous people who keep the law and set themselves apart from the sinner and tax-collector. Just the opposite, God’s primary concern is for the sheep who has wandered from the fold, the coin that has found its way into a hidden corner, and the son or daughter who has cut themselves off from God’s love. 

God of the lost, giver of second chances – is not a God who wants to condemn and exclude, but a God whose open embrace welcomes all who would turn to him – without question, without recrimination and certainly without judgement.

[1] Christian Century. Sunday’s Coming. 25/3/25

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Loyalty to God alone

January 5, 2019

Epiphany – 2019

Matthew 2:1-12

Marian Free

In the name of God who holds all people in God’s embrace and longs only that they allow themselves to be held. Amen.

Last week there were shepherds and a stable. This week there are kings and a house . The differences between Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth and that of Matthew are striking and tell us something about the perspective of the authors. Luke, as we shall see throughout this year, emphasizes Jesus’ concern for and identification with the poor and the marginalised. No room can be found to house the pregnant Mary and the only visitors are shepherds (the lowest rung of the social ladder). Luke’s shepherds bring no gifts. The author of Matthew has different interests. He is more concerned with the fulfillment of prophesy and with Jesus’ place within Judaism. In Matthew Jesus’ visitors are respected Magi – of such significant rank that they receive an audience with King Herod and they present the child with rich gifts. Matthew makes it clear that this is no ordinary child but a king. The Magi go to the palace to ask Herod where they can find ‘the King of the Jews’ and Herod’s grip on power is so tenuous that the thought that there might be competition fills him with terror.

In the context of today’s gospel, it is interesting to note the contradiction between, but also within the two accounts of Jesus’ life – especially in relation to the inclusion of those who were not Jewish by birth. Luke’s gospel makes it clear that faith in Jesus is open to those outside the Jewish faith – the Gentiles. For example, in both the parable of the Good Samaritan and in the account of the ten lepers, it is a despised Samaritan whose behaviour shows up that of Jesus’ own people. In contrast, Matthew appears to believe that faith in Jesus is a logical – indeed foretold – continuation of Judaism. Matthew emphasises the Jewish law and the keeping of that law which, of course, is only relevant if you are Jewish. It is only in Matthew’s gospel that Jesus instructs the disciples to “go only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

At the same, even though Luke’s gospel is much more inclusive of non-Jews, the author is at pains to establish Jesus’ Jewish heritage and the devoutness of Jesus’ parents. Luke’s gospel both begins and ends in the Temple – the centre of Jewish religious practice. Matthew, whose gospel appears to exclude non-Jewish believers, both begins and ends in a way that implies the inclusion of Gentiles. Here at the very beginning of the story, it is the non-Jewish Magi who not only recognize Jesus but worship him – while the Jewish authorities (represented by Herod and the priests) and terrified of his existence. At the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel Jesus insists that the disciples “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. Matthew’s very Jewish Gospel is opened wide to all people

Both gospels, but that of Matthew in particular, reflect a contradiction that exists already in Judaism. From the time of Abraham onwards, the religion of the Hebrews was unique in that it promoted belief in one God who had a special and exclusive relationship with God’s chosen people – Israel. The children of Abraham were a people set apart for God and who had, in response, to set themselves apart from the nations around them – nations who believed in multiple gods and whose practices did not match the high standards that God expected of those whom God had set aside as God’s own. In order to ensure that the Israelites did not become contaminated by those who did not belong, God gave very clear instructions including ordering the genocide of the inhabitants of the Promised Land and a directive that the children of Abraham were not to marry men or women of different ethnic backgrounds.

Despite this, despite God’s obvious preference for Israel, there is a thread that runs through the Old Testament that makes it clear both that the relationship between God and God’s people is not entirely exclusive and that in the future all nations will worship the God of Israel. To give just two examples – the book of Ruth informs us that Ruth, a Gentile, is to become the forbear of David – Israel’s most beloved king and in turn the forbear of Jesus. The book of Jonah makes it quite clear that God has compassion on the Gentile Ninevites and will not destroy them if they acknowledge their fault. In more than one place we are informed that there will be a time when all nations will stream into Jerusalem to offer worship to God.

These contradictions, which continue in the New Testament, remind us that God, who is the creator of all, and the God above all Gods is a jealous God who demands absolute loyalty and insists that God’s people set themselves apart as God’s holy people yet at the same time is the God of every nation who cares for and longs to include all of humanity in God’s embrace.

The visit of the Magi to Jesus cautions us not to think too highly of ourselves in comparison with others. It was outsiders who saw the signs, those who did not belong who sought out Israel’s king and those who belonged to a very different faith who fell down and worshipped the infant Jesus. The people who should have been alert to the signs, the people whose king had come to birth and who should have been first to offer homage had stopped expecting a king. They took for granted their status as the people of God and had accommodated themselves to their situation as servants of Rome. Jesus was seen, not as a king to be welcomed, but as a threat who needed to be destroyed because he would expose the compromises they had made and return power to God and not the Empire.

May the visit of the Magi remind us that we should never be complacent and self-satisfied about our place in the kingdom, that we should always be alert to the signs of God’s presence and that we should not be in the all to the powers and values of this world but remember that our first and only loyalty is to God and to God alone.

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