Luke 10:25-37

Introduction
How on earth do you preach on the Parable of the Good Samaritan? It’s so
well known. We’ve reduced it just to a set of cheesy morals. That’s why I’ve
avoided hymns this morning like, ‘When I needed
a neighbour’.

Over the years, Christians have tried to freshen up their
approach to this parable, so that familiarity doesn’t breed contempt. In the 1970s,
the Riding Lights Theatre Company
published a book of sketches called ‘Time
To Act’, which included ‘The
Parable of the Good Punk Rocker’. In the Seventies, when respectable,
mainstream society hated punks, it made sense to rewrite the parable. After all,
as I once heard a preacher
say, it’s no more a nice Sunday School story than going into Israel today and telling
the story of the good Palestinian.

We need to avoid just reducing it to, ‘Be nice to everybody’,
and we have to do more than simply update it by putting in the latest bogeyman
as the hero – the Parable of the Good Al Qaeda Terrorist, for example.

But how to do it? My suggestion is this: rather than
bringing it up to date, let’s try going back two thousand years. I’m going to
try retelling the story with some of the background[1]
in the hope that we can recapture something of its original meaning. I think
we’ll see that this is more than about being nice to each other, even the
people who don’t like us.

Round One
There are three sports my Dad and I both love – cricket, rugby and football. But
there is one on which we disagree – one he participated in at school and in his
National Service. Boxing. I understand the thought of sports where you might
risk being hurt, but I can’t get my head around a sport where the intention is
to hurt. Dad doesn’t see it like that.

But at the beginning of our reading, the lawyer is up for an
intellectual boxing match with Jesus, or at least some sparring. The lawyer ‘stood
up’ – that’s a sign of respect for Jesus as a teacher, or of acknowledging him
as an equal. He even calls him, ‘Teacher.’ However, it’s all just a show,
because he stands up to ‘test’ Jesus. Social courtesy is coupled with a
deceptive and corrupt heart. When the lawyer asks, ‘What must I do to inherit
eternal life?’ (verse 25) you have to wonder about the sincerity of the
question.

So what does Jesus do? Well, he takes on the question. You might
wonder why, given that he is not prone to wasting his time on those who are not
serious. But he does so, in order to make a point against his opponents. He responds
to the sparring.

Jesus could take the question of inheriting one of two ways.
He could think about the inheritance of the land, which Israel knew was a gift
from God, and therefore you couldn’t do
anything to inherit it. Inheriting the land was seen as a metaphor for eternal
life. So if you took this approach there would be no question of doing anything
to get it. But he knows the lawyer is talking about inheriting eternal life in
the tradition of the rabbis, who saw it as a matter of keeping the Torah, the
Jewish Law. He doesn’t just say, ‘You’ve got it wrong, eternal life is all
about the undeserved grace of God, it’s a free gift’ (which it is), he meets
the guy on his own terms, on his own territory. It’s ‘wrong’ territory, the
idea that you can work your way to eternal life. But that is what the lawyer
thinks, so Jesus responds to that.

However – he responds, not with an answer, but a question. Jesus
probes those who come to him. He doesn’t always serve up an answer, well cooked
and neatly presented on a plate. He throws the question back at the man, and in
his own terms: ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ (verse 26)
‘What do you read there?’ could be a way of asking the lawyer, ‘How do you
recite this in worship?’ And so he responds with what amounts to a Jewish
creed: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as
yourself.’ (verse 27)

Perhaps it was popular to put the two commandments about
loving God and loving your neighbour together; Jesus had certainly done it. But
whether it was popular, or the lawyer was echoing Jesus, or it was a sincere
comment, Jesus seems to praise him: ‘You have given the right answer; do this,
and you will live.’ (verse 28) It’s the kind of affirmation that raises
questions: lawyer, you have the right beliefs, but do you put them into
practice? Faith without works is dead, Jesus’ brother James would later say.
Lawyer, you have told yourself what to do; now will you do it?

But Jesus has done more than that in saying, ‘Do this and
you shall live.’ He is saying, ‘Do this and you will really be living now. Don’t
just see eternal life as something in the future after death; don’t just buy
your ticket to heaven, as if you could. Loving God and loving neighbour is
truly coming alive.’ But not only that, Jesus implies it’s something not to do
once, but to keep on doing. If the lawyer wanted a simple answer that was easy
to fulfil, he didn’t get it. So we move to the second round of the bout.

Round Two
The lawyer wanted to see himself as fully righteous, so he asks, ‘And who is my
neighbour?’ (verse 29) He hopes Jesus will answer, ‘Your relative and your
friend.’ The rabbis thought your neighbour was your fellow Jew, maybe converts
to the faith, but certainly not Gentiles. There was a rabbinical saying ‘that
heretics, informers, and renegades ‘should be pushed (into the ditch) and not
pulled out’’[2].

It’s at this point that Jesus responds with his story. How else
can he respond? As someone has put it, ‘The question is unanswerable, and ought
not to be asked. For love does not begin by defining its objects: it discovers
them.’[3]
The lawyer gets a parable, not a list of neighbours.

The man is walking a descending seventeen-mile route from Jerusalem
to Jericho. The road has been notorious even in succeeding centuries. The crusaders
built a fort halfway along to protect pilgrims. In the nineteenth century, some
only walked it with an armed guard.

The robbers leave the man – presumably a Jew – beaten,
stripped and half-dead. ‘Beaten’ suggests he struggled; ‘half dead’ means he
was on the point of death. Stripped and unconscious, no-one who happens upon
him can now identify what national, social or religious background he comes
from.

First on the scene, is an aristocrat, a priest, who would
have been riding a beast. But his duty is to do good to a devout man, not a
sinner, a humble man, not a godless one (Sirach 12:1-7). He cannot be sure if
the naked, unconscious man at death’s door is good and devout. If he is
actually dead, contact with a dead body will defile the priest, so he will not
be able to collect, distribute and eat the tithes of food. He and his household
will suffer. What humiliation if he cannot feed his family! Even within four
cubits of a dead body he will be defiled, so he passes by on the other side
(verse 31). He is trying to be a good priest, keeping his status in the community
that supports him.

Next comes the Levite, a man of lower social class. Given that
the road was a straight Roman road and the nature of the man’s injuries, we can
assume he arrives quite soon after the priest, and has seen the priest steer
away. Fewer rules bound the Levite: the four-cubit exclusion zone would only
apply to him when he was on duty. If he’s travelling from Jerusalem, he’s off
duty. However, he also passes by on the other side (verse 32). Is it fear of
the robbers that makes him do so? Or is it that he dares not contradict the
example of the priest, a higher-ranking man than him? He gets closer than the priest
does – he comes ‘to the place’. He could have offered some first aid. But rules
and hierarchy mean he leaves the man to die.

Who will come next? A pious Jew hearing that first a priest
and then a Levite came will expect one from ‘the delegation of Israel’, nonprofessionals
who helped at the Temple. But to the lawyer’s shock, it’s that old enemy, a
Samaritan. And a Samaritan travelling in Judea is hardly likely to be coming
across a ‘neighbour’ in the usual limited sense. Yet he is ‘moved with pity’
(verse 33). That translates a Greek word that means he felt compassion in his
bowels. This is gut-level compassion.

He takes a risk. He too could be ritually unclean by contact
with a dead body – and so would his animal and his wares. Likewise, his animal
and his wares make him a prime target for the robbers. None of this stops him. He
sets to work. ‘He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and
wine on them.’ (verse 34a) Why mention the binding of wounds before the
application of the oil and wine, which would have happened first to soften and
clean the wounds? Perhaps because the binding of wounds was characteristically
a picture of how God saves his people in the Old Testament (Jeremiah 30:17;
Hosea 6:1-10). And the oil and wine aren’t simply part of a first century St
John’s Ambulance kit, they are also elements used in the sacrificial worship at
the Temple. This is true worship, what Paul called ‘a living sacrifice’ (Romans
12:1).

He also risks rejection. If the man awoke and recognised him
as a Samaritan, then he is receiving oil and wine from a man from whom he is
forbidden to receive them. The man may have to pay tithes on them – and he can’t
even pay an hotel bill. He might dismiss the Samaritan with a curse. He would
be foolish, but he might.

More risks come. The Samaritan puts the man on his animal
(which the priest could have done), and leads him (as a servant would lead a
master who has mounted a beast) to an inn. Staying overnight to tend him is
fraught with danger. Presumably, the inn is at Jericho – there are no records
of inns in the middle of the desert. It looks like this is the man’s hometown. His
relatives could seek revenge on the attackers. But if they could not track down
the assailants, then anyone remotely related might be a victim. They might pick
on the hated Samaritan. He has risked his life again.

Finally, he pays the bill to the innkeeper. Innkeepers had a
terrible reputation, and inns were often associated with prostitution. The injured
man will be able to leave (and perhaps be glad to, if it is a place of ill
repute). However, the Samaritan has no chance of reimbursement if he has
overpaid. A Jewish innkeeper might do that for another Jew, but not for a
Samaritan.

With such an amazing figure as the Samaritan, no wonder the
church of the early centuries thought he stood for the incarnate Christ. Everything
about him is Christlike. But in the parable, Jesus is bringing the lawyer to an
awkward conclusion. You asked who your neighbour is: that’s the wrong question,
says Jesus. The right question, the question motivated by love of God, is, ‘To
whom can I become a neighbour?’

And at that point, the lawyer knows he is never going to inherit
eternal life on these terms. It isn’t just a one-off. Remember, Jesus was
telling him to keep on doing this in order to be fully alive now and in the
future. Who can meet this standard? Mother Teresa? A few others? What hope is
there for the lawyer? What hope is there for us?

It’s a knockout punch for the pretentious lawyer. Hope comes
in that ancient identification of the Samaritan with Jesus. As salvation came
in a costly expression of love to the wounded man, so it also comes that way to
us, through the Cross. We do not earn it. What is impossible for us is possible
for God.

But when we find God’s love through the sacrificial death of
Christ, he calls us to love him and look for neighbours to love, too. ‘Go and
do likewise,’ said Jesus (verse 37). So must we.

Technorati Tags: parables, GoodSamaritan, SydneyCarter, RidingLights, RogerForster, boxing, eternallife, Jerusalem, Jericho, Luke, Jesus, incarnation, Cross, KennethBailey, JoachimJeremias, TWManson

Luke 10:25-37

Introduction
How on earth do you preach on the Parable of the Good Samaritan? It’s so
well known. We’ve reduced it just to a set of cheesy morals. That’s why I’ve
avoided hymns this morning like, ‘When I needed
a neighbour’.

Over the years, Christians have tried to freshen up their
approach to this parable, so that familiarity doesn’t breed contempt. In the 1970s,
the Riding Lights Theatre Company
published a book of sketches called ‘Time
To Act’, which included ‘The
Parable of the Good Punk Rocker’. In the Seventies, when respectable,
mainstream society hated punks, it made sense to rewrite the parable. After all,
as I once heard a preacher
say, it’s no more a nice Sunday School story than going into Israel today and telling
the story of the good Palestinian.

We need to avoid just reducing it to, ‘Be nice to everybody’,
and we have to do more than simply update it by putting in the latest bogeyman
as the hero – the Parable of the Good Al Qaeda Terrorist, for example.

But how to do it? My suggestion is this: rather than
bringing it up to date, let’s try going back two thousand years. I’m going to
try retelling the story with some of the background[1]
in the hope that we can recapture something of its original meaning. I think
we’ll see that this is more than about being nice to each other, even the
people who don’t like us.

Round One
There are three sports my Dad and I both love – cricket, rugby and football. But
there is one on which we disagree – one he participated in at school and in his
National Service. Boxing. I understand the thought of sports where you might
risk being hurt, but I can’t get my head around a sport where the intention is
to hurt. Dad doesn’t see it like that.

But at the beginning of our reading, the lawyer is up for an
intellectual boxing match with Jesus, or at least some sparring. The lawyer ‘stood
up’ – that’s a sign of respect for Jesus as a teacher, or of acknowledging him
as an equal. He even calls him, ‘Teacher.’ However, it’s all just a show,
because he stands up to ‘test’ Jesus. Social courtesy is coupled with a
deceptive and corrupt heart. When the lawyer asks, ‘What must I do to inherit
eternal life?’ (verse 25) you have to wonder about the sincerity of the
question.

So what does Jesus do? Well, he takes on the question. You might
wonder why, given that he is not prone to wasting his time on those who are not
serious. But he does so, in order to make a point against his opponents. He responds
to the sparring.

Jesus could take the question of inheriting one of two ways.
He could think about the inheritance of the land, which Israel knew was a gift
from God, and therefore you couldn’t do
anything to inherit it. Inheriting the land was seen as a metaphor for eternal
life. So if you took this approach there would be no question of doing anything
to get it. But he knows the lawyer is talking about inheriting eternal life in
the tradition of the rabbis, who saw it as a matter of keeping the Torah, the
Jewish Law. He doesn’t just say, ‘You’ve got it wrong, eternal life is all
about the undeserved grace of God, it’s a free gift’ (which it is), he meets
the guy on his own terms, on his own territory. It’s ‘wrong’ territory, the
idea that you can work your way to eternal life. But that is what the lawyer
thinks, so Jesus responds to that.

However – he responds, not with an answer, but a question. Jesus
probes those who come to him. He doesn’t always serve up an answer, well cooked
and neatly presented on a plate. He throws the question back at the man, and in
his own terms: ‘What is written in the law? What do you read there?’ (verse 26)
‘What do you read there?’ could be a way of asking the lawyer, ‘How do you
recite this in worship?’ And so he responds with what amounts to a Jewish
creed: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as
yourself.’ (verse 27)

Perhaps it was popular to put the two commandments about
loving God and loving your neighbour together; Jesus had certainly done it. But
whether it was popular, or the lawyer was echoing Jesus, or it was a sincere
comment, Jesus seems to praise him: ‘You have given the right answer; do this,
and you will live.’ (verse 28) It’s the kind of affirmation that raises
questions: lawyer, you have the right beliefs, but do you put them into
practice? Faith without works is dead, Jesus’ brother James would later say.
Lawyer, you have told yourself what to do; now will you do it?

But Jesus has done more than that in saying, ‘Do this and
you shall live.’ He is saying, ‘Do this and you will really be living now. Don’t
just see eternal life as something in the future after death; don’t just buy
your ticket to heaven, as if you could. Loving God and loving neighbour is
truly coming alive.’ But not only that, Jesus implies it’s something not to do
once, but to keep on doing. If the lawyer wanted a simple answer that was easy
to fulfil, he didn’t get it. So we move to the second round of the bout.

Round Two
The lawyer wanted to see himself as fully righteous, so he asks, ‘And who is my
neighbour?’ (verse 29) He hopes Jesus will answer, ‘Your relative and your
friend.’ The rabbis thought your neighbour was your fellow Jew, maybe converts
to the faith, but certainly not Gentiles. There was a rabbinical saying ‘that
heretics, informers, and renegades ‘should be pushed (into the ditch) and not
pulled out’’[2].

It’s at this point that Jesus responds with his story. How else
can he respond? As someone has put it, ‘The question is unanswerable, and ought
not to be asked. For love does not begin by defining its objects: it discovers
them.’[3]
The lawyer gets a parable, not a list of neighbours.

The man is walking a descending seventeen-mile route from Jerusalem
to Jericho. The road has been notorious even in succeeding centuries. The crusaders
built a fort halfway along to protect pilgrims. In the nineteenth century, some
only walked it with an armed guard.

The robbers leave the man – presumably a Jew – beaten,
stripped and half-dead. ‘Beaten’ suggests he struggled; ‘half dead’ means he
was on the point of death. Stripped and unconscious, no-one who happens upon
him can now identify what national, social or religious background he comes
from.

First on the scene, is an aristocrat, a priest, who would
have been riding a beast. But his duty is to do good to a devout man, not a
sinner, a humble man, not a godless one (Sirach 12:1-7). He cannot be sure if
the naked, unconscious man at death’s door is good and devout. If he is
actually dead, contact with a dead body will defile the priest, so he will not
be able to collect, distribute and eat the tithes of food. He and his household
will suffer. What humiliation if he cannot feed his family! Even within four
cubits of a dead body he will be defiled, so he passes by on the other side
(verse 31). He is trying to be a good priest, keeping his status in the community
that supports him.

Next comes the Levite, a man of lower social class. Given that
the road was a straight Roman road and the nature of the man’s injuries, we can
assume he arrives quite soon after the priest, and has seen the priest steer
away. Fewer rules bound the Levite: the four-cubit exclusion zone would only
apply to him when he was on duty. If he’s travelling from Jerusalem, he’s off
duty. However, he also passes by on the other side (verse 32). Is it fear of
the robbers that makes him do so? Or is it that he dares not contradict the
example of the priest, a higher-ranking man than him? He gets closer than the priest
does – he comes ‘to the place’. He could have offered some first aid. But rules
and hierarchy mean he leaves the man to die.

Who will come next? A pious Jew hearing that first a priest
and then a Levite came will expect one from ‘the delegation of Israel’, nonprofessionals
who helped at the Temple. But to the lawyer’s shock, it’s that old enemy, a
Samaritan. And a Samaritan travelling in Judea is hardly likely to be coming
across a ‘neighbour’ in the usual limited sense. Yet he is ‘moved with pity’
(verse 33). That translates a Greek word that means he felt compassion in his
bowels. This is gut-level compassion.

He takes a risk. He too could be ritually unclean by contact
with a dead body – and so would his animal and his wares. Likewise, his animal
and his wares make him a prime target for the robbers. None of this stops him. He
sets to work. ‘He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and
wine on them.’ (verse 34a) Why mention the binding of wounds before the
application of the oil and wine, which would have happened first to soften and
clean the wounds? Perhaps because the binding of wounds was characteristically
a picture of how God saves his people in the Old Testament (Jeremiah 30:17;
Hosea 6:1-10). And the oil and wine aren’t simply part of a first century St
John’s Ambulance kit, they are also elements used in the sacrificial worship at
the Temple. This is true worship, what Paul called ‘a living sacrifice’ (Romans
12:1).

He also risks rejection. If the man awoke and recognised him
as a Samaritan, then he is receiving oil and wine from a man from whom he is
forbidden to receive them. The man may have to pay tithes on them – and he can’t
even pay an hotel bill. He might dismiss the Samaritan with a curse. He would
be foolish, but he might.

More risks come. The Samaritan puts the man on his animal
(which the priest could have done), and leads him (as a servant would lead a
master who has mounted a beast) to an inn. Staying overnight to tend him is
fraught with danger. Presumably, the inn is at Jericho – there are no records
of inns in the middle of the desert. It looks like this is the man’s hometown. His
relatives could seek revenge on the attackers. But if they could not track down
the assailants, then anyone remotely related might be a victim. They might pick
on the hated Samaritan. He has risked his life again.

Finally, he pays the bill to the innkeeper. Innkeepers had a
terrible reputation, and inns were often associated with prostitution. The injured
man will be able to leave (and perhaps be glad to, if it is a place of ill
repute). However, the Samaritan has no chance of reimbursement if he has
overpaid. A Jewish innkeeper might do that for another Jew, but not for a
Samaritan.

With such an amazing figure as the Samaritan, no wonder the
church of the early centuries thought he stood for the incarnate Christ. Everything
about him is Christlike. But in the parable, Jesus is bringing the lawyer to an
awkward conclusion. You asked who your neighbour is: that’s the wrong question,
says Jesus. The right question, the question motivated by love of God, is, ‘To
whom can I become a neighbour?’

And at that point, the lawyer knows he is never going to inherit
eternal life on these terms. It isn’t just a one-off. Remember, Jesus was
telling him to keep on doing this in order to be fully alive now and in the
future. Who can meet this standard? Mother Teresa? A few others? What hope is
there for the lawyer? What hope is there for us?

It’s a knockout punch for the pretentious lawyer. Hope comes
in that ancient identification of the Samaritan with Jesus. As salvation came
in a costly expression of love to the wounded man, so it also comes that way to
us, through the Cross. We do not earn it. What is impossible for us is possible
for God.

But when we find God’s love through the sacrificial death of
Christ, he calls us to love him and look for neighbours to love, too. ‘Go and
do likewise,’ said Jesus (verse 37). So must we.

Technorati Tags: parables, GoodSamaritan, SydneyCarter, RidingLights, RogerForster, boxing, eternallife, Jerusalem, Jericho, Luke, Jesus, incarnation, Cross, KennethBailey, JoachimJeremias, TWManson

More from Alan
Hirsch’s book ‘The
Forgotten Ways’: between pages 120 and 125 he says that we have transformational
learning all wrong in the church. We have opted for the idea that you think
your way into acting, instead of acting your way into thinking. We are
influenced by Greek approaches, whereas ‘acting your way into thinking’ is the
Hebraic model that Jesus used in leading the disciples. He is therefore
critical of the way we train leaders in a seminary approach that mimics the
secular academy.

There is some strong merit in what he says. And it isn’t
merely about academic training. It’s also about popular spirituality. Take this
extract from a popular Christian paperback. It illustrates the problem well.

It’s an uncomfortable thought that has nagged me for years,
but it persists: ‘Why is it that some folks, who apparently spend lots of time
in prayer, are so downright nasty?’ I’ve bumped into Christians who allegedly enjoy
a splendid prayer life, but they don’t seem remotely to resemble the Jesus with
whom they spend so much time. Surely, if their praying were effective as well
as lengthy, they would manifest some love, some kindness and grace to others,
and even a little humour here and there? Why, if they really do spend so much
time in the company of the ultimate Architect of grace, are they so graceless,
so negative, and so addicted to spiritualised snooping and finding fault? Ironically,
for some their spirituality has been a toxic force that has affected them for
the negative; they are the worse for their praying.
(Jeff Lucas, How Not To Pray,
p110f)

Clearly there are many for whom the theoretical approach
doesn’t work. But ‘acting into thinking’ doesn’t work for everybody, either. I’m
one of them. I once had to work with a colleague who was a pain in every part
of the body to me. We didn’t have theological differences – in fact, we were
quite close in our convictions. We fell out over other issues. I tried blessing
in the hope that my feelings would change. I brought him a bottle of wine home from
a holiday on the Algarve, and so on. But my heart never changed. In the end we
had to stop working together.

Equally, I do know the value of learning in practice. When I
was exploring God’s call on my life, I listed various ways in which I believed
God had spoken to me. I was very close to offering for the ordained ministry
when I went on a college placement in Bradford.
One of my objections to the ministry was that I was a quiet, introverted type. I
found myself working with a vicar (who is still there twenty years later – see the
Bradford hyperlink) with a similar personality. Yet he had a fruitful ministry.
It was the last domino to fall.

However, I wonder whether the question of learning is more subtle
than whether we act our way into thinking or think our way into acting. At my
first college I was introduced to Peter Honey’s Learning Styles
Questionnaire. We had to take the test in order to be aware both of our own
preferred learning styles and that members of our congregations might be
different. I came out as very strongly a theorist, next I was a reflector, I had
a small amount of activist and I scored nil for pragmatist. Now while the
reflector and activist aspects of my personality might fit with ‘acting my way
into thinking’, the high theorist score doesn’t. The question of learning
styles is a complicated one, and it cashes out differently for the great range
of human personalities. A valid question against the Peter Honey approach might
be, ‘Learning what?’, but enough of his analysis chimes with me to make me
think that this is a complex issue.

That leaves Hirsch’s criticism of the seminary approach. He notes
that the Forge Mission Training Network,
where he serves, only appoints staff who are practitioners. They also teach by
throwing students into practical situations where they are out of their depth,
and looking for what can be learned as a result. Having had experience of two
theological colleges, I can see his point. My first college was superb, but my
second was dire. One difference was theological (the first was thoughtful
evangelical, which I like to think suited me), the second was liberal with a
constitutional disdain for evangelicals, even those like me who undertook
postgrad research.

But there was a major difference in teaching style, too. At the
first, the academic and the practical were integrated. The staff all had to be
rooted in local church experience, even while they were tutors. And if any did
go off into some ivory tower flight of academic fancy, we students would soon
bring them down to earth and ask exactly what this high-falutin stuff had to do
with ministry. Not only that, we felt like Christian community. When a
Singaporean student lost her mother back home, we raised the funds for her to
fly home. When Shell were up to naughty things in Nigeria, some students
picketed local garages. And that is just the two examples that immediately
spring to mind.

At the second college it was different. I paid a visit
before starting there, and the Principal, knowing my theological college
background, bemoaned the students who failed to engage in theological
reflection. He had just marked an essay where the student hadn’t connected his
academic studies with ministry. Terrible, I thought. But I understood why when I
got there. For the academic and the practical were separated: academic studies
happened at the university theological faculty, where the tutors were under no
obligation to make connections with ministry, and the practical, ministerial
studies were back at the college. The college did teach a course on theological
reflection, but not until the third year. Any salvation came in summer
placements.

Conclusion? Difficult: I’ve been out of theological colleges
for fifteen years. Much has probably changed. I thought it had, and I hope so. But if Hirsch is right, not
enough has changed. Is he right? Perhaps those who have been studying in recent years can enlighten me.

Technorati Tags: AlanHirsch, JeffLucas, HolyTrinityIdle, PeterHoney, ForgeMissionTrainingNetwork, learningstyles, TrinityCollegeBristol, HartleyVictoriaCollege, LutherKingHouse

This prayer for Holy Communion by Cheryl Lawrie is beautiful. Link via Jonny Baker.

Technorati Tags: holycommunion

What are we to do with the Pope’s latest offensive statement about non-Catholics? Yesterday’s Guardian wrongly headlines it as, ‘Dismay and anger as Pope declares Protestants cannot have churches’, when what it really means is ‘Protestants are not churches’.

Why do I care? For the following reasons:

1. This is all the ammunition that hardline Protestants need. It almost makes me feel like joining them. (I won’t.)

2. I’ve worked with Catholic priests who stretch the rules of their church every bit as far as they can to accommodate other Christians. Two have allowed me to take communion under their presidency. One said, ‘I wasn’t ordained to check someone’s membership’; another found a Catholic rule that said non-Catholics could take the sacrament if they couldn’t worship at their own church. Since we had closed that Sunday morning for a united service, he told us to come forward for more than a blessing.

3. My closest friend from schooldays (and who was also best man at our wedding) is a practising Catholic. This gets personal! I still remember him not being allowed by his priest to take communion at my confirmation service when we were sixteen.

The Guardian observes,

The Church of England reacted more cautiously than seven years ago when
Dominus Iesus was issued and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George
Carey, denounced it as unacceptable. The spokesman for the current
archbishop, Rowan Williams, said: “This is a serious document, teaching
on important ecclesiological matters and of significance to the
churches’ commitment to the full, visible unity to the one church of
Jesus Christ.”

I’m with George Carey here. His comments of seven years ago still stand, on thsi basis. Enough of the weasel words about serious documents. This is unacceptable.

Technorati Tags: Pope, RomanCatholicism, Protestantism, ecumenism, RowanWilliams, GeorgeCarey

Methodist Conference has received a report on the Fresh Expressions initiative. The report can be downloaded from this page as a Word document (see under Tuesday 10 July 2007, 10:40 am). The final two paragraphs before the resolutions are telling:

The development of fresh ways of being church as part of a ‘mixed economy’< – valuing both the new and the established – raises questions which are as yet unanswered. How do we value and encourage both the new and the old while making room for the new? What is the relationship between a fresh expression and a Local Church, Circuit or District sponsoring it? How can we encourage a fresh expression to maturity? How can we station a minister who is called to develop a fresh expression? How do we test that call? How do we test, recognize and enhance the ministries of the people God is calling to work in fresh expressions of church, particularly those pioneers not already ordained who have a proven track record of starting churches?

Further work in these areas is required. We therefore ask the Conference to direct the Methodist Council to ensure that the encouragement of new ways of being church in general and the work of the Fresh Expressions team continues to be properly resourced and supported. The Council should further ensure that the key issues being raised are addressed and appropriate guidance is brought to future Conferences.

I wonder how radical they will be. Martyn Atkins made it clear in his Presidential address that Methodism has to reshape in today’s society to be faithful to her original DNA.

Technorati Tags: Methodism, MethodistConference, FreshExpressions

… can be found here. He calls Methodism to rediscover its original spiritual DNA, rather than hanker for a golden age. Here are some juicy quotes:

I understand God best in missiological terms.

The Church is first and foremost the product of God’s mission, and then participants and partners in God’s mission to restore and renew all things. … Whenever pre-occupation with its own survival takes centre stage then the Church has lost sight of its true nature and purpose.

Consequently when the Church is missionary and evangelistic in this cosmic, wide and wonderful sense it is never more truly being itself, and when it is not, it is never more ‘unlike’ its true self.

My own view is that new ways of being Church are called into being by the Spirit of God whenever existing expressions of Church are unable or unwilling to share effectively in God’s mission in a new time, place and context. God does not shape the mission to the Church, but reshapes Church around God’s mission of reaching out, redeeming and restoring.

we should proceed apace with new ways of being Church, working out our issues as we enable their emergence, rather than kicking them into the long grass until we’ve got it all sorted. And if they are God’s idea then we must continue to take ever more seriously the strategizing and management required to redirect our resources, reconfigure our ministries, and revisit and re-envision what it means to be the People called Methodist.

Methodism was brought into being by the restoring, renewing God with a particular DNA – or better, particular Charisms, – grace gifts of a gracious God – so as to be able to play a particular role in God’s conspiracy of goodness.

My own ‘two-pennyworth’ is that the People called Methodist – lay and ordained, one People in Christ’s ministry – are a movement ‘charismatised’ with an engaging evangelicalism. The roots of some traditions are found in doctrinal disputes; the Wesleyan tradition emerges from an evangelistic imperative. Our ecclesiology is essentially missiological. Our charisms include humbly but clearly sharing Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord, by word and action. They include a reliance on the prevenient work of the Spirit, God going before and beyond and urging us to follow. They include living – individually and corporately – lives of social and personal holiness and responsibility, all arising from taking the scriptures with the utmost seriousness. Each of these involves a pragmatic, incarnational engagement rather than an unresponsive, distant disengagement. As a movement, we are created to move, being dynamic rather than static in terms of embodying the hope that is within us.

Steve Wild talks about Methodist evangelism as ‘evangelastic’; that which stretches and alters so as to be what it is. I like this term because it also hints at a lifelong process of conversion and discipleship, an Emmaus road journey, on which Damascus road encounters occasionally break in and lead on.

renewal, true renewal, is fundamentally and ultimately a sovereign work of God. We can’t create it or command God to bring it about. We can’t strategize or scheme so that renewal must come. On the other hand renewal is not totally disconnected from human longing and preparation.

My favourite model of renewal arises from Vatican II and catches this energizing balance between what God alone can do, and what lies with us. The first is to return to the gospel, and more particularly to those words of Jesus which most powerfully articulate ‘who you are’ as a community of Christ; the ‘loud’ words which speak prophetically to you, and relocate you in the gospel tradition.

The second is to return to the founding charisms, to revisit why God raised you up in the first place. Not that renewal comes because you have rediscovered your charisms. Rather that through the challenging process of identifying charisms, then retrieving them, and then reproducing them for today, you rediscover who you are in God’s continuing call. You find yourselves again.

Thirdly, to do all this as you read the signs of the times. To take seriously that you live in world radically different to that of your founding mothers and fathers, and therefore although the charisms remain, how they are expressed and embodied changes.

The continuing call of God to the People called Methodist involves fresh expressions of our DNA, for today. It is more about raising children than making clones.

Technorati Tags: MartynAtkins, Methodism, MethodistConference, mission