Can the Good Samaritan Save Christianity?
Ecumenism seeks to restore
wholeness to the family Jesus’ followers, a family that appears to be divided over
issues of doctrine. For me the Kin-dom is founded upon the personal spiritual
experience of recognising the Fatherhood of God and its correlated truth the
Brotherhood of Man or, simpler, your personal experience of the love of God and your love for God. The foundation of the identity
of the followers of Jesus is the personal experience
of the love for and faith in the Father as reveal in the life and teachings of
the Son and not upon the assertion of provisional assent to some system of
dogmas or doctrines. Such an experience may inspire dogma, doctrine, art,
prayer, worship, service, etc. but these are consequences not causes, they are the shadows not the substance.
Any attempt to use shadows as a foundation is doomed to failure.
So, how can the Good Samaritan help?
Can he carry us out of the darkness of the shadows of mere belief (provisional
assent) and into the healing hostel of the personal experience of spiritual
truth and divine realities? Tall order, I know, but let’s see.
It’s hard for us to appreciate the
audacity of Jesus in making a Samaritan the hero in a story being told to
Palestinian Jews two thousand years ago. When we hear this story today it
appears sweet but when first it was heard it was a shocking and unsettling
challenge to the prejudice and hypocrisy of his people! Jesus chose this type
of individual as a worthy vehicle to exemplify the spirit of the Kin-dom. Were
he in Ireland today he might well make a Traveller the main character or a
Transgender person. If he was in China maybe he’d be a Human Rights Lawyer. If
he was in America there’s a chanced he’d be an African-American Muslim.
There are many significant
features to this story. At that time Samaritans were held in lower esteem than
even the Romans. They were despised by the Jews. Not only were the Samaritans
regarded as racially inferior, they also practiced a different religion to the
Jews – a fact even Jesus acknowledged when speaking to the woman by the well.
Thus, Jesus selected a man from a despised minority, one that was not even a
Hebrew, and made him the primary instrument in one of his most famous parables.
The nature of Parable is also
significant to our enterprise. The purpose of a parable is not to communicate
some literal fact but to convey a spiritual (inspirational) truth. Jesus was
not interested in the beliefs to which this man subscribed, it was the spirit
of his life that he commended, the values inspired him, and the ideals he held
that shaped his life. Jesus asked his hearer’s to look passed all that was
objectionable: his minority status, the historical grievances between the Jews
and the Samaritans, the fact of his different and supposedly inferior religion
and perceive the spirit wherewith this child of God lived his life.
The Samaritans heart reached out
passed all objections and questions about the man’s identity, passed wondering
if he was rich or poor, Jew or gentile, deserving or undeserving, saw a man in
need and took upon himself the responsibility of ensuring that this man was
nursed back to health. This quality is as admirable now as it was then and it
is to Masters’ credit that he concocted a story that has lost none of its
sweetness, or its power to illuminate, even after two thousand years. It wasn’t
this man’s religion that made him a beautiful portrayal of the spirit of the
Kin-dom. If anything, traditional loyalties would have prejudiced him. Had he
obeyed the dictates of tradition and custom, as the others had done, he would
have amounted to little more than a commendable hypocrite. It was the fact that
he courageously and quietly broke through all these confines to reach out to
someone in need. In this parable Jesus pierced through all objectionable
incidentals and revealed the child of God beneath and in so doing he challenges
us to challenge our own prejudice or, at the very least, to be aware of them
and recognise that these can become spiritual prisons.
There are tremendous truths
enfolded in parables and when telling them Jesus was often heard to cry, ‘Let
you that have the eyes to see – see, and you that have the ears to hear –
hear!’ His parables and method of teaching played upon a favourite spiritual
principle of his, ‘Seek and you will find.’ He understood that if someone is
truly dedicated to finding truth then they most certainly would but, equally,
if they were equally determined to NOT
find truth then they most certainly would not; if they were determined to find
that which would justify their own bias and prejudice they would find it. TRUTH is more than figuratively in the
eye of the beholder. Dogma and doctrine, then, are useless to one that is
dedicated to not finding truth and are unnecessary to one who is. Consequently,
we find that those that seek to find a cause for offense do indeed find
offense. While, conversely, those that seek cause to join hands – find it.
Over and over, throughout the
Masters life, he laboured to teach us that we are not defiled by what enters
through the eyes, ears, and mouth and, that being the case, neither can we be
sanctified by what enters through the eyes, ears, and mouth. Sanctification or
desecration comes from the heart. It was for this reason he looked with favour
upon the prayer, ‘Create in me a clean heart, oh Lord!’ why Paul, and others,
spoke about the regenerative work of the indwelling spirit. This emphasis on
SPIRIT, in terms of the indwelling spirit, the inner guide that leads the way
for every truth seeking child of God, and the Almighty Spirit that is shaping
the destiny of the Universe, were fundamental to the teachings of Jesus.
When it came to prayer he taught
that the Father was focused on the intention (spirit) not the words.
Which is just as well really, given that the carpenter from Nazareth never
spoke a word of English in his entire life and I doubt that situation has changed
much in the last two thousand years. Thus the Spirit God reacts to the spirit
content of your prayer and even your life. This being the case, that the spirit
(the substance) is supreme over the letter (the cultural form), can it be that
dogma, doctrine, tradition is somehow higher than the spirit that inspired it?
Hardly, these are the effects, not the cause; the shadow, not the object. The
substance of any prayer, parable, doctrine or dogma, lies with the spirit that
inspired it and not in the letter wherewith it was constructed. Jesus always
taught that spiritual realities are supreme over material one’s; that matter
relates to spirit similar to how effects relate to cause. It was for this
reason that he admonished us to be mindful of the desires we nurtured in our
hearts, for of such come the issues of life.
The source of division amongst
the grand family of the followers of Jesus probably lies more in the damaged,
fractured and fragmented human heart than in doctrine and dogma. Like the
Apostles, we are brothers, but we constantly bicker over who will be greatest
in the Kin-dom. By succumbing to the delusion that we are somehow better than
our brothers, more holy, closer to God, more fully in the Kin-dom, more
authentic, more sincere, more loyal to the ideals and values of the gospel,
means we have lost our spiritual way. Such is Pharisee Talk, ego, vanity and
arrogance creating the spiritual stumbling blocks of prejudice, hypocrisy and
self-righteousness, keeping us blind to the fact that our real purpose is to
serve one another as friends and brothers and not to seek to lord it over one
another as the heathen do. But to see your self (your church) as nothing and
others as higher and more deserving, to be humble, sincere and service
oriented, that would be more in keeping with the Kin-dom values taught by the
Master.
I’d imagine few things make
Heaven wince quite like an arrogant Church. Pride goes before a fall and
perhaps this is why our Church now appears as one bloodied and bruised, naked
and discarded on the roadside, like one whom passers-by step gingerly around in
order to avoid. Could the Good Samaritan save it from this sorry plight?
