On Changing Roles (July 13)

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.