If we abide in the
domain of divine love, care of all God's creation is indeed within our reach.
Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year C by Dennis Ormseth
Reading
for Series C: 2012-2013
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Psalm 25:1-10 (4)
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
The Gospel lesson for the Eighth Sunday after
Pentecost carries forward several themes from the previous two Sundays. Once more, Jesus and his followers are in the
hostile territory of Samaria. Once again, Jesus confronts the cultural and
religious competition between Jews and Samaritans. Once more, he is challenged
to clarify how the presence of God is brought near in the relationships between
people who live in hostile relationships with each other. Once more, actually
with climactic emphasis this time, we are called to “love the neighbor,”
indeed, on this occasion, with central emphasis on the command “to love your
neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). Given this continuity, we might well expect
that the readings should firmly underscore the learnings regarding care of
creation we have developed those two previous Sundays.
There is one difficulty, however: the concept of
the Kingdom of God is not specifically referenced here, rendering unavailable
the eco-friendly translation of it as Great Economy that was crucial for our
reading of those texts. Indeed, the topic introduced by the lawyer’s question
seems to lead us in quite a different direction: “Teacher, what must I do to
inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25). Accustomed as we are to hearing in this
question an individual's spiritual quest for salvation, we might expect to be
disappointed with respect to our concern for creation.
That expectation is unfounded, of course. When the
lawyer asks about “inheriting eternal life,” we notice, Jesus immediately
redirects the question to the Torah and its greatest commandment. As Luke
Timothy Johnson observes, however, the Torah does not actually provide an
answer to that precise question (The Gospel of Luke. Collegeville,
Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1991; p. 173). Its main concern, as our first
reading amply reminds us, is rather with the inheritance of the land and the
life of the people there—“the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous
in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your
livestock, and in the fruit of your soil” (Deuteronomy 30:9)—and with the very
presence of God as mediated through the Torah—the “word” that “is very near to
you; it is in your mouth and in your heart and for you to observe” (30:14). As
Walter Breuggemann comments with reference to this passage in his discussion of
Torah as mediator of God's presence, “Moses,
the giver of Torah from Mount Sinai, provides both the commands of Yahweh that
Israel is capable of obeying (Deut. 30;11-14) and the provisions of Yahweh
wherein Israel may host the holy and enjoy God's presence (Theology of the
Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1997; pp. 583).
While those provisions normally have to do
explicitly with Israel's worship practices, there is also a profound sense in
which Torah itself becomes the means of that communion. The completed Torah,
Breuggemann argues, is “not simply a set of commands that determined the conditions
of Israel's existence,” as Christians are often inclined to see it. “[I]t is
also a rich, dense field of imagination in which Israel is free to receive its
life, playfully, as the people of God” (Theology, p. 590). As the people turned to Torah as a source of
guidance and instruction (note that the Psalm appointed for this Sunday is "a
Prayer for Guidance and for Deliverance"; NRSV, The Green Bible, p.
529) it was . . .
no longer simply the revelation of Sinai; Torah is
now drawn more centrally into the large, wondrous realm of all of creation. The
Torah is, for that, no less Israelite, but now it comprehends all the gifts and
offers of life from Yahweh, which are everywhere signaled in the life of the
world and in the experience of Judaism in a gentile world. Torah becomes, in
this later venturesome development, a Yahweh-oriented pondering of and
engagement with the life that is everywhere available in Yahweh's world. Thus,
in Sirach 24, wisdom is food that nourishes (vv. 19-22) and water that sustains
(vv. 25-31). That is, Torah is the very gift of life from Yahweh that permeates
the world. And Israel, in its Mosaic
stance, are the people who are first of all invited to “choose life” (Theology,
pp. 592-93).
Put differently, “practice
of Torah is not only study; it is also worship. It is being in the presence of
the One who lives in, with, and under this authoritative text, and who is
present in the ongoing work of imagination from this text.” As such, Breuggemann
insists, this practice is “a way of thinking not only about Torah; for
Christians it is a way of understanding Christ, who is both the one who
commands and the one who offers self in intimacy” (Theology, p. 599).
The exchange between the
lawyer and Jesus about “eternal life,” it seems to us, is an instance of such “Yahweh-oriented
pondering of and engagement with the life that is everywhere available in
Yahweh's world.” In the company of the new Moses, the lawyer is prompted to
explore whether Jesus knows not only about living according to the
commandments, but also about living in the presence of God. Luke's use of the
term "eternal life," which is relatively frequent in comparison with
the other gospels, serves here to widen the circle of “inheritance” to the
cosmic expanse of God’s own presence within the creation. What was a local
conflict in the previous two Sunday's gospels, albeit a conflict transcended in
Jesus' preaching of the Kingdom, leads here to a question of universal
applicability, namely, the lawyer's question, “And who is my neighbor?"
(Luke 10:15). And appropriate to the scope of that question, Jesus' answer to
him is presented in, as Johnson aptly describes it, “one of the most beautiful
of all the Gospel parables, the moral tale (unique to Luke's composition) of
the compassionate Samaritan” (Johnson, p. 175). The exchange is about the full
domain of God, after all!
We will return to this expansive concern for life
below, to consider its implications for care of creation. The details of the
parable itself merit our attention, however, on the way to that discussion. The
tale is highly provocative, Johnson notes; we are shocked on three levels. First,
[t]he violence done to the traveling Judean is
overt: he is stripped, beaten, left half dead. This is not a sentimental tale.
Second, a deeper level of shock, however, is the recognition that Jews esteemed
for their place in the people and dedicated to holiness before the Lord would
allow considerations of personal safety or even concern for ritual purity (a
corpse defiled) to justify their not even crossing the road to look. They “pass
by on the other side.” If love for neighbor meant anything, it meant to care
for the “sons of your own people.” But they cannot be bothered. A third shock
is the discovery that a despised Samaritan, himself most at risk in this
dangerous no man’s land of deserted territory, takes the chance of stopping,
looking, and---increasing his own vulnerability—leading the man on his beast to
an inn. It is the hated enemy who is the hero with a human heart (Johnson, p.
175).
We underscore: the graphic violence of the parable
mirrors the possible consequences of the hostility between Jews and Samaritans,
or for that matter, any other peoples in cultural and religious conflict.
Furthermore, whether for reasons of ritual purity (symbolizing love of God
through holiness) or "love of self" (manifest in self-concern for
personal safety) persons expected to represent the presence of God in the land
fail to keep the commandment. The Samaritan, on the other hand, risks much: not
at home in the wilderness between Jerusalem and Jericho, he nevertheless spares
no expense—oil, wine, shelter, time (two days! and more later) and remuneration
for the innkeeper's care. Why? Because he “felt compassion” for him, “the emotion
attributed to Jesus in 7:13,” Johnson notes. This sets up Jesus’ stunning reversal
of the lawyer's question: as Johnson puts it, “Jesus reverses the question from
one of legal obligation (who deserves my love) to one of gift-giving (to whom
can I show myself neighbor); and of this the despised Samaritan is the moral
exemplar!” (Johnson, p. 173). The point, Johnson concludes
is not who deserves to be
cared for, but rather the demand to become a person who treats everyone
encountered---however frightening, alien, naked or defenseless---with compassion:
“you go and do the same.” Jesus does not clarify a point of law, but transmutes
law to gospel. One must take the same risks with one's life and possessions
that the Samaritan did. One must, that is, if one wants to participate in the
presence of God within the creation, and to share in God's love for that
creation.
If, as we suggested above, the exchange between the
lawyer and Jesus, taken as a whole under the rubric of the quest for “eternal
life,” is a demonstration of the
extension of the practice of Torah into all of creation, then the
parable is an illustration of how that extension is to take place: not by holy
people safeguarding holy things, not by the self-interested concern that seeks
safety and well-being only for one's own, an orientation to life which results
in an incessant competition between peoples for the blessings of life, but by
the risking of self and all that one holds holy, for the sake of another,
action inspired and driven by compassion to care for the other, that is a mark
of living in the eternal presence of God.
It was an extension unthinkable for the times, from
Jewish neighbor (“sons of your own people”) to anyone in need of mercy whom the
Jewish lawyer might encounter; and then surely as the Christian community spreads out throughout
the Roman Empire more fully—always on Luke's agenda, from Jews and Samaritans
to gentile pagans, caught up in their own quest for dominance. The need for
this extension never ceases; and the impulse of compassion is also never
exhausted. But in our time of ecological disaster, the challenge of extension
clearly concerns our relationship not only with our human neighbors, those
present now and those to inhabit the earth in the future, but our other-kind
neighbors as well. They, too, lie brutalized in the ditch; and, without
immediate aid, they will perish from the earth. Will the religious communities
of the world also "pass by on the other side"? Or will we be inspired
by the compassion of our God and Lord Jesus Christ to have compassion and do
what it takes to restore them?
In his provocative essay on "Kenosis and
Nature," Holms Rolston argues that humans have the capacity beyond actualizing
of self “to see others, to oversee a world.” This is “an exciting difference
between humans and nonhumans,” in that
. . . while animals and plants can defend only
their own lives, with their offspring and kind, humans can defend life with
vision of greater scope. They can sacrifice themselves for the good of humans
yet unborn or, on the other side of the globe, the entire human community. Humans
can also care for the biotic communities with which they share this planet;
they can care for their biosphere. Here we recognize a difference crucial for
understanding the human possibilities in the world. Humans can be genuine
altruists; this begins when they recognize the claims of other humans, whether
or not such claims are compatible with their own self-interest. The evolution
of altruism and the possibility of kenosis is complete only when humans can
recognize the claims of nonhumans (In The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis,
edited by John Polkinghorne. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 2001; p. 64).
The hazard of modern human
culture is that our habit of managing nature tends mainly to escalate our “inherited
desires for self-actualizing, tempted now into self-aggrandizement on scales
never before possible,” now that we “are no longer checked by the long-standing
ecological and evolutionary forces in which [we] have so long resided”
(Rolston, p. 64-65). Our texts offer a clear alternative beyond this conundrum:
love of neighbor as of self, which immerses us in the compassionate love of God
which empowers love of the other. As our first reading assures us, that love is
as close to us as the word of Torah and the word of the Christian gospel,
which, is '”very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to
observe.” Wherever we are, whomever we are, we abide in the domain of divine
love, the Kingdom of God; in Christ, we inherit eternal life. If so, care of
all God's creation is indeed within our reach.
For additional
care for creation reflections on the overall themes of the lectionary lessons
for the month by Trisha K Tull, Professor Emerita of Old Testament,
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and columnist for The Working Preacher, visit: http://www.workingpreacher.org/columnist_home.aspx?author_id=288
