Readings, 1 Timothy 6:6-19 and Luke 16:19-31
 Image, The Rich Man and Lazarus, David Wojkowicz
 
We likely know Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, or at least a filmed adaptation (with or without muppets). Wealthy, miserly old Scrooge is visited by three ghosts – of Christmas past, present, and future – and told to change his ways or be forever cursed. Scrooge is confronted by the harm of his greed, the pain caused by his profit-seeking and closed heart. At first, Scrooge resists the lessons, until seeing that his own future death will be met with no tenderness or grief (but relief and giddiness) and pledges to change his ways (and in so doing seek to prevent the death of poor Tiny Tim).
 
What I’ve left out of this little summary is an important visitation that occurs before the ghosts. Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s deceased business partner, equal in his greed and miserliness, appears before Scrooge, weighed down by chains and money boxes. Marley has been cursed to wander the earth so encumbered, and warns Scrooge that the same fate awaits him should he refuse to change his ways.
 
When considering this tale next to today’s parable, Dickens seems more generous than Jesus. For if we consider the rich man to be Jacob Marely, begging Father Abraham to send Lazarus to the house of his brothers to warn them of the awaiting agony, Abraham refuses this request. No further warnings, They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them. No, father Abraham; The rich man persists, if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But there shall be no Marley, there shall be no ghosts: If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.
 
Perhaps Jesus’ lesson is that so tightly does greed and wealth close the heart to one’s neighbour that in reality, Scrooge would be unmoved even after his Christmas visitations. Perhaps thinking of the story of Moses, Jesus reflects on the closed heart of Pharoah, whose heart remains shut even to the most remarkable of signs; unable to release the slaves even when it would prevent him from agony.
 
Indeed, it appears that the rich man’s heart remains closed to his neighbour even in agony. For while he demonstrates concern for his brothers, this doesn’t mean much (as Jesus says elsewhere, anyone can do that). For the rich man, in the language of 1 Timothy, has wandered so far away from the faith, has, in his desire for wealth, become so trapped by senseless and harmful desires, that even in agony, even looking up to the unreachable heavens, his selfishness is untamed. For both of his pleas to Father Abraham are accompanied by demands of Lazarus – and not only demands, but indirect demands – he never addresses Lazarus directly. He speaks to Abraham, but about Lazarus, a sign that in death, as in life, the fullness of Lazarus life goes unrecognised. The chasm that exists between the rich man and Lazarus goes back a long way.
 
Indeed, as the writer of 1 Timothy makes clear, the chasm created by the love of money estranges us in three directions. It creates a chasm between the individual and their neighbour, between the individual and God, and between the individual and their own life. Those who want to be rich, declares the writer of 1 Timothy, fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.
 
As we heard Jesus say last week, we cannot serve God and money, because the love of money opens a chasm between us and God; it makes God’s wisdom and commandments a thing to be despised. This chasm in turn opens another between us and our neighbour. And in becoming estranged from God and neighbour, a further chasm will eventually open within ourselves. Our desires, our self-understanding become gnarled, twisted, and perverted around the insatiable want for riches, plunging us into ruin. For this is what has befallen the rich man of the parable: in failing to attend to the teachings of Moses and the prophets, he has become estranged from God. Failing to see Lazarus (in life and death) as a full human deserving of dignity and care, he has become estranged from his neighbour. And unable to understand his life in relation to God and neighbour, to see the chasms which had opened around him, he has become estranged from himself.
 
In contrast to this this life of estrangement and chasms, is what the reading in 1 Timothy describes as the life that truly is life. One of my absolute favourite phrases in Scripture. This phrase concludes the instructions to those rich in this life, who are told not to trust wealth, but be rich in good works, generous, sharing what they have – in such they make a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
 
For the life that truly is life is one lived like the swallow finding a home at the altar of God. It is a life in harmonious relations with God, neighbour, and self.
 
It is a life lived in communion with God, marked by a grace-filled the enjoyment of God, the love of God’s wisdom, and an earnest attempt to live God’s way. It is a life lived in openness to our neighbour, an openness marked by a willingness to give and receive, to learn and to grow, to serve and be served in pursuit of flourishing, justice, and dignity. And it is a life lived in a rightly ordered understanding of the self – where the self is not defined by what we can claim ownership of, by numbers and acquisition, by grind and reach, but the self defined through relationships (dependence on God and interdependence with creation). This is what marks the life that truly is life, the life we learn from Moses, the Prophets, and the one who rose from the dead – the blessed and only sovereign. For after all, Jesus was more generous than Dickens, becoming himself the one risen from the dead not only to proclaim both the call to change our ways but also to make this possible through the news of his completed work, the sending of the Spirit, and the gift of the Church.
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The challenge for us then, as a people, is not to require ghosts of Christmas past, present, or future, not to need someone sent back from the dead with ill-tidings and skeletal warnings, to alert us to the widening of chasms separating us from God, neighbour, and self. Because instead of ghosts sent on the precipice of disaster, we have the completed work of Christ, the gifts of the Spirit, and the daily fellowship of the saints. We have one another to encourage, correct, and walk with down the path Jesus has opened. We, who are sent by Christ to the world, are also bound by Christ to one another. In the counsel of the Spirit, we take up the responsibility of siblings to remind each other to remain open to the words of Scripture and the presence of our neighbour. We have each other (as well as the tireless example of Saints long passed) to build bridges over chasms and to seek together, day by day in the land of the living, the life that truly is life. The life which knows a day in the house of the Lord is better than a thousand elsewhere. Like the mother of Jesus and the beloved disciple standing at the foot of the cross, we have been given by Jesus to one another to be and become a people who assist one another to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. [Who] Fight the good fight of the faith; [and] take hold of the eternal life. The life that truly is life.

Readings, Hosea 11:1-11 and Luke 12:13-21
Image, Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child (1880)
 
You might be familiar with the phrase “Chekhov’s gun.” It comes from the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who remarked – more or less – that if there’s a gun on the wall in the first act, it better be fired in the fifth. You’ll have encountered this in storytelling before, just recall any broad comedy that spends a lot of time early in the show drawing attention to grandma’s antique vase, you know that is coming crashing down later in the story. What you set up, needs to be paid off. So, what has been getting set up in Hosea?
 
Across the preceding chapters of Hosea, the wrath of God has been building toward Israel. God and prophet lay the charges of injustice and idolatry:
You have ploughed wickedness,
   you have reaped injustice,
   you have eaten the fruit of lies.
 
Their heart is false;
   now they must bear their guilt.
The Lord will break down their altars,
   and destroy their pillars.
 
The days of punishment have come
 
The promised judgment shall be swift and the punishment severe:
 
Even if they bring up children,
   I will bereave them until no one is left.
Woe to them indeed
   when I depart from them!
 
As Hosea declares, the very basis of the identity of the people as God’s people, recipients of the covenant and its promises, all this shall be snatched away:
Because they have not listened to him,
   my God will reject them;
   they shall become wanderers among the nations.
 
The verdict has been pronounced, the sentence prepared… and then, at the eleventh hour, in the eleventh chapter, there is a shift in tone.
 
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
Out of Egypt I called my son.
 
In this sequence, God describes Their relationship with the people of Israel as that of a mother to her infant child. It was I, God declares, who taught you to walk, I who lifted you from the ground so you could nurse, I who led you with bands of love.
 
In the first instance this seems only to heighten the betrayal. Israel’s idolatry is akin to the rejection of one’s own mother, who has done nothing but protect, love, and provide. But the image also signifies a shift – not in what Israel is done, but in what God is going to do:
 
How can I give you up, Ephraim?
   How can I hand you over, O Israel?
My heart recoils within me;
   my compassion grows warm and tender.
 
Here, contradicting Hosea’s earlier warning that God shall reject them, God asks, How can I give you up? It is the kind of question we may have asked ourselves, when despite all the rational reasons one might have to let go, or part, or reject, we realise that the heart is not so easily convinced, its desires not so quickly quenched, its ties not so swiftly sundered. As we read in our book club novel just this last week, “human relationships are not social services, and love has nothing to do with deserving.” How can I give you up, How can I hand you over. God’s own heart recoils within, and God’s compassion grows warm and tender, and the prophesied wrath will not come to pass.
 
There is a long abiding tension in the Christian tradition over the impassibility of God. That is to say, that for some part and parcel of what it means to confess God’s perfection is to confess that God never changes. To change, the argument goes, implies a shift from perhaps less perfect to more perfect. The argument also goes that a changeable God is not as reliable an object of our trust and devotion, compared to an impassable and unchangeable God who cannot be swayed or moved. But at the same time, the Biblical account, particularly through the Old Testament, is filled with stories of God changing God’s mind, of God relenting from a plan of destruction, of God been swayed by the appeal of a prophet.
 
What’s interesting to observe in this reading, is God’s own reasoning for the shift, God’s own rationale for the decision not to execute God’s fierce anger:
For I am God and no mortal,
the Holy One in your midst,
and I will not come in wrath.
 
It is human, it seems, to be able to forget the former love, human to resist the recoiling of the heart, human to be able to cool compassion and remain firm against its tender pull. It is human to be able to look upon a betrayer and reject, renounce, and depart… human, we might say, to be in a sense impassable in the face of deserved judgment and irrevocable breach. And we need to be able to be human, to sometimes be impassable to the appeals of those once dear to us who have hurt us, we need to be able to do this for our safety, health, and flourishing… but God is God and no mortal, and God doesn’t need to do anything. God is free to recoil, to respond to the tugs of compassion, to remember the days bending down to nurse those now bent on turning away. God is God and no mortal, and it is precisely as God, as the Holy One in [our] midst, that God does not come in wrath but is led by bands of love. It is not the promised judgment, nor the power to bring devastation and desolation, that the Divine Nature is revealed. Rather it is the compassion induced decision to not come in wrath that reveals what it means to be God in distinction to a mortal.
 
If God is impassable, perhaps it is that our human proclivity to sin and idolatry is not powerful enough to pass by, to overcome, or render null and void God’s earlier decision to be for us and for our freedom. If we go back to Chekhov, the gun of God’s judgment might have been on the wall in act one, but there is something deeper, and older of God’s nature which is the foundation of the whole set. God’s prior decision to be for us, holds up the entire edifice, and it is this, which is paid off in Chapter 11. For God is the one who called Israel out of Egypt, determined to be their God and have them be God’s people. Just as God is the one who in Jesus Christ chose us before the foundation of the world. This eternal decision of election, of covenantal love, of redemptive presence, is impassable. It cannot be altered by our misdeeds, forgetfulness, sin or tomfoolery. For God’s own heart recoils in the face of wrath, God’s compassion wells on the threshold of departure. Gods divine nature determines God’s divine activity and so God does not come in wrath but roars like a lion to call God’s children back to their proper home. God has chosen to be for us, often despite us doing anything to warrant such tenderness and compassion, but this is why it’s grace.
 
And this is also why we can do wild and crazy things like resist the urge to build up our storehouses and stockpile our wealth. This is why we can attempt to live into the topsy-turvy economics of the kingdom of God, which resists taking refuge in wealth and hoarding what we do not need so that there might be none with need in our midst. Someone in the crowd asks Jesus to arbitrate over their inheritance squabble, but Jesus is God, not a mortal, and has come in our midst for something far better than that. Jesus has come to share the riches of God so that we might be able to be rich toward God. Jesus has been sent into the world, not to condemn the world, but to show once more the world shall be saved through him. It is in being reminded of the nature of our God, compassionate and tender, steadfast in love and faithfulness, that we are strengthened and sustained to live a life which does not consist in the abundance of possessions, but learns to walk with God, led by bands of love and nursed at the table of grace.       

Readings, Amos 8:1-12 and Psalm 52
Image, Vincent van Gogh, “Olive Grove,” July 1889​

There’s an old axiom that a preacher should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Hardly an iron, or even golden, rule, but there are times, even when one does not set out to do so, that the news and the assigned reading happen to touch. This week one particular story overlapped so much with our reading from Amos that the Venn diagram is practically a circle. We’ll get to the story soon, let’s begin with Amos.
 
Last week, Amos was told to pack up and leave by the powers that be, this week we see what he has to say in response: The Lord said to me, ‘The end has come upon my people Israel.’ Hardly likely to reverse the prevailing antagonism being directed toward him.
 
Readings like these are part of a slew of texts which stress the sinfulness of economic exploitation and injustice. The word of the Lord given to Amos rails against those who trample the poor and treat the Sabbath and holy festivals as inconveniences delaying their profiteering off their neighbour. When, they ask, can we go back to practicing deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat. The exploitative nature of these practices is evident – placing a thumb on the scale to increase price and profit, trapping the poor and vulnerable in cycles of debt, issuing dangerous loans to those without basic necessities, selling that which God’s law stipulates is meant to be left for the vulnerable. The Lord promises that these deeds shall not be forgotten, and God’s wrath shall be swift and severe: I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.
 
Today’s psalm also looks forward to a great upturning where those who performed mischief against the godly, trusted in abundant riches, and sought refuge in wealth will be broken down for ever, snatched from their tent, and uprooted from the land of the living.
 
The vehemence of these condemnations is due to the fact that these violations of the poor, this exploitation of the needy, this rank profiteering is a gross abnegation of what it means to be the people of God. God’s people are set apart to serve as an example to the nations, a witness to the nature of God, a testament to the possibility and beauty of another way to be in the world. From the beginning, when Israel is shepherded safely across the Nile, they are called to be different to the empire which had enslaved and exploited them. As the fourth commandment declares in instituting the Sabbath, Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day. The Sabbath is placed in contrast with exploitative earthly economics which work people, animals, and land without rest. It is the same with the laws of Jubilee, which decree that every seventh year the land must be allowed to rest, that land sold because of economic trouble, should be returned to those who sold it, and that those who had to sell themselves into slavery are set free. In this way the laws of Sabbath and Jubilee, like the broader laws around the care of orphans, widows, and foreigners, are aimed to stress that economic exploitation and injustice which cause perpetual inequality and indenture are anathema to the Lord. In contrast, the Lord requires justice, mercy, and kindness, desiring a people determined not to let struggle and bad luck entrench generational divides of haves and have nots, free and unfree, rich and poor. In short, a people who do not seek refuge in money, but trust in the steadfast love of God. It is the dire gap between the people as they should be and as they have been that provokes the judgment of God delivered by the prophet Amos.
 
Now to the promised stories. Which are also a situation where in the realm of economic justice the has comes up despairingly short of the should. SBS News reported on a recent study of nearly 3000 workers under the age of 30. The study found one-third recorded been underpaid by their employers (some are being paid $10 less than the minimum wage), 1/3rd were found to have not been paid their compulsory super and the same number had been banned from taking entitled breaks. As alarming as this sounds, the researchers are confident that these numbers underreport the issue, as many, many more simply do not know or understand that they are being exploited or underpaid.
 
Another story reported the expansion of the AfterPay app and the intention to make it as widely available as card payments. Debt support groups have expressed alarm and concern, that such ease (especially when used to purchase every day, basic necessities) dramatically increases the risk of already vulnerable people getting trapped in debt spirals.
 
Another story recorded on once more that not only is the current gap between rich and poor the widest in history, but the gap between rich and “comfortable” is so ludicrously large we cannot even fathom the maths required to comprehend it. For instance, let’s say tomorrow when you awoke, I gave you $150million. Pretty sweet deal and likely enough to get everything you ever wanted or needed. And then the next day you wake up and I give you $150m again, okay, still sweet, now you can likely get everything all your loved ones ever wanted or needed. Ok, the next day, 150m again, look now you can buy a sports car and a house for everyone working at your favourite ten cafes. Another day, another 150m, now you can give handsomely to all the charities that mean a lot to you and become an esteemed patron of the arts. Another day… now don’t tire on me yet, we’re not even out of the first week! Imagine this goes on and on, every morning for a year. Do you know what you have at the end of this year, after receiving 150m a day for 365 days, what your refuge of wealth will have amounted to? ¼ of the net worth of the world’s richest man.
 
So perhaps it’s better to focus back on that SBS article: the little infringements, the small thefts of wages, which are hardly insignificant in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. But one of the troubles we face when we consider our response is that, in contrast to Amos, we are not speaking to or about the people of God. That is to say, we cannot presume to say, hey this is wrong because our God loves justice. We cannot presume to say, if we do not fix our ways, the songs of the temple shall become wailing. Because that might have meant something to Amos’ audience (though perhaps not enough) but it means little to less now.
 
It is interesting then, to consider exactly what God says shall befall Israel for its wanton disregard of the commands for economic fairness and integrity: The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. This is the cataclysm that is coming, this will be the result of all that false piety. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
 
Could this have befallen our own day? Could such inequality, injustice, and rank ignoring of systemic jubilee, be the result of a famine of hearing the word of God? Could it be that so few who see the state of the world are moved to act is because the words of prophet and psalmist have fallen on closed ears? That these stories can be frowned upon without the fear of God, could this be in part the result of a famine of hearing the words of the Lord?
 
If this could be the case then what is needed is what the psalmist describes: people rooted like a green olive tree in the house of God; ready to laugh at the evildoer and trust in the steadfast love of God. That is to say, what is needed are those who live not on bread alone but every word that proceeds from the mouth of our Lord. Those able to see the mockery of God in the tipping of scales, the stealing of wages, and the building up of storehouses so monumental they make the tower of Babel seem a miniature made for model train set. Perhaps one way through is for people rooted in God’s word and love to speak, like Amos, the word of righteous judgment against the sins of exploitation and inequity.
 
But importantly, this people, being rooted in God’s word and God’s love, fed on scripture and song, must offer more than just critique. The point of a people of God is to be an alternative, to embody possibility. The people of God are set apart to witness, to be a testament to what is possible when rooted in God’s house, God’s word, God’s love. To show what can happen when we commit to living the way of justice, mercy, and kindness, where our way of relating to people, creation, and wealth is not one of competition, acquisition, and surplus, but is grounded on rest, peace, wholeness, community, and abundance of life.
 
The call placed upon us as the church, as a people set apart, is to glorify God and serve the world by being a living example of what can be possible when rest, mutuality, jubilee, justice, and neighbourliness, shape the ordering of our days together. What we owe to the world is a commitment to this vision, possibility, and calling. And we sustain this commitment by being rooted in the house of God so we shall never hunger or thirst for God’s word. It won’t solve everything, and we can’t do it alone, but the wider results of such witness are almost secondary. Because first and foremost such a commitment is one which keeps us from being uprooted by the winds of worldly allure, by grounding us in the house of God where in the presence of the faithful we proclaim the Holy Name, for it is good.  

Readings, Amos 7:7-17 and Luke 10:25-37
Image, Emma Amos, Untitled (1962)
 
Let’s ask one of those classic questions we ask when reading the Bible: where, or who, do you think you are in the story? There are seven people: the teacher of the law, Jesus, the injured man, his attackers, priest, Levite, and Samaritan (and perhaps a donkey if you're so inclined). To whom do you relate?
 
In many ways we have been taught to place ourselves in the role of the Samaritan – or at least to see our role as aspiring to be like the Samaritan. An understandable tendency since, Jesus ends the parable with the command: go and do likewise. At the heart of discipleship is the love of neighbour, as so, we as disciples, are called to be like the Samaritan: hearts welling with compassion, devoting our time and material goods to alleviate the suffering of others even if they are very different to ourselves and have no way of repaying our kindness.
 
This is a good goal to fix before us. However, we can run into trouble if we fix ourself in that role, if we, like the classic Actor-Director of the local theatre company, continue to cast ourselves as the heroic lead and never the one in need of help (let alone as a villain).
 
Because who we relate to in the story is not fixed. At different points in our life, we might relate to most, if not all, of these players. Like the man attacked, we have probably all been someone who needed a neighbour, needed care and support in a difficult time and perhaps found it performed by an unexpected person. Likely, we have all had a moment like the teacher of the law where we have wondered how far our responsibility for care extends, who exactly we need to prioritise as an object of our love. Perhaps you have found yourself in the position of Jesus, helping to teach someone the importance of treating others as we’d like to be treated, challenging parochial approaches to charity and justice. If we are honest, I’m sure we can all name times where, like the Levite or the Priest, we have averted our eyes, quickened our step, or rationalised our decision to not stop and help. And if we are really honest, we may look back at moments in our lives where we have knowingly caused harm, where we have taken unjustly, where we have been cruel.
 
And if it can be true for us that we move between the various stars in the constellation of this story, then it can be true for everyone. That is to say, the story is a moving map of the world, as who among us does not, at some time, need a neighbour, be a neighbour, ignore a neighbour, create a problem for a neighbour, or discuss the ethics of neighbourliness. And the reason I am emphasising that it is not only us who move across the spectrum of roles in this story, is because it is the very act of fixing people in a role, in associating a person or community with a single role, while keeping ourselves centred as the Samaritan, that makes the very command of the story, go and do likewise, impossible.
 
A couple of weeks ago, Sureka Gorringe was here from UnitingWorld. She made the observation that mission and Christian aid has often been imagined in this kind of fixed relation. We are the Samaritan who show up to help our overseas neighbour who is in need. We don’t hear from them; we just decide on the path of care and move on. And while much of this was performed with compassion, and much of this addressed urgent needs, it does not, Sureka taught us, reflect the proper nature of the church. It ignores that the image of the body is one of interdependence – where there are no lesser members who can be ignored or cut off. Indeed, the church is made the body of Christ in the mutual giving and receiving of the Spirit’s gifts – no one is only given gifts to give, we are also to receive from one another. Too rarely, Sureka noted, has the Western church seen itself as the one requiring compassion and care from those typically cast as disadvantaged or needy.
 
Naomi Wolfe, a trawloolway woman, historian and theologian has made a similar point when considering her experience with this story in churches. She’s written* about the perpetual casting of Indigenous people as the voiceless victim in need of a good white neighbour. But this ignores the wisdom, testimony, and witness of Indigenous siblings in Christ – just as it ignores that in matters of justice in this land, the mainline church has played, at varied points, the role of bandit, Levite, Priest, and teacher of the law wondering who really counts as neighbour.
 
Assuming the fixity of our role as Samaritan, as the benevolent extender of compassion and justice, of the neighbour with rather than without, also risks closing ourselves off to the word of truth which brings repentance and freedom. Amos goes to the heart of his nation with the word of God’s judgment. But the Priest of Bethel says to the King of Israel:
Amos has conspired against you in the very centre of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words.
 
The word of God, given to the prophet, is unseemly to the priest and the king. It is not a prophetic warning but conspiratorial threat, it is not righteous judgment but words which taint the land and tarnish the nation. The prophet’s words are deemed to spit on the image of the people as the people of God, on the status of the city as sanctuary of the king, the temple as temple of the kingdom. So fixed is the view of the priest, king, and nation that they are the centre of God’s story, the agents of God’s agenda, that the words of the prophet, the words of truth, the words of warning, can only be received as a threat and their teller must be expunged: O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there.
 
We might hear echoes of these words in many times and places, where those who raise a word of critique against their society or nation are met with the rebuff, well if you don’t like it, leave. We might hear echoes of these words across the eons of the church where the call to reform has led to excommunication and persecution. We might hear echoes in these words in families and communities who claim calls to redress the past as conspiracies against the foundations of the house. We might hear echoes in the defensiveness of friends and loved ones who were unable to bear warnings about the perils of their chosen path.
 
And time and again these rejections, rebuffs, silencing, and accusations are the result of a fixed conception of the self (or the institution, community, nation) as the good guy. As one whose only role is Samaritan (or aspiring Samaritan). But the only one who is ever only in that role, the only one without need, the only one without error, the only one possessing only gifts to bestow is God. The church is foremost the church in repentance, in a posture of humility and confession, understanding that we have not always got it right, that we do need correction, that we do need, perpetually, to turn once more to follow Christ.
 
Because to follow Jesus’ command to go and do likewise, to inherit eternal life, to love our neighbour as ourself requires us to be more than just the Samaritan, it asks more of us than solely compassion and charity. To love our neighbour, to be part of the kingdom we need to allow ourselves to be loved, allow ourselves to receive help, allow ourselves to be shaped through relationship.
 
To repent and seek the kingdom means we have to be open to the truth, open to the word of the prophets, open to the judgment of God, and to do this we have to be able to consider the various roles we embody, and the various roles our church has played. We need to recognise the times we have been a neighbour, but also when we have needed, ignored, or mistreated a neighbour. We must resist the lure to justify ourselves, to consider our obligation to the law fulfilled and recognise that we – like everyone else – are never one thing to each other, even though we are always, and perpetually one thing before God: one who has been rescued by God from the power of sin and transferred into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
 
When we know ourselves first as the one rescued and in perpetual need of rescuing, we are freed to see the fluidity of our movement across the spectrum of this story, to receive the prophetic words of repent and repair, and to know that even if we have not always been a neighbour, the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit make it possible for us to change our role in the story.  

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* Naomi Wolfe, "Reading the Bible in Australia: A Place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples," in Reading the Bible in Australia, Edited by Deborah R. Storie, Barbara Deutschmann and Michelle Eastwood (Wipf & Stock, 2024), pp. 30-31.