When our first grandchild came
to be with us, my father held back, unable
to bring himself again to give his heart
to another child, another who would
call forth his love, no matter the cost.
And then, knowing her smallness, her helplessness,
her inheritance of this world’s sorrow,
he gave his heart, and so was given
what he had suffered longest and needed most.
In a “jingle-jangle morning” a long time ago, a young folk singer from Minnesota began a complex and rambling journey that has continued through my entire lifetime and still goes on today. His trek reached a culmination this week when the Nobel Prize committee awarded Bob Dylan the prize for Literature.
Today we proclaim him our Internet Monk Rambler of the Week.
This article in the Daily Beast outlines six paths Dylan has traveled throughout his musical career, complete with representative songs from each era.
Protest singer (1963-65)
Electric Troubadour (1965-67)
Country Prophet (1967-74)
Rock Star (1975-88)
Rebirth (1989-99)
On the Road Again (2000-Present)
Another way to trace Dylan’s pilgrimage is to note how his spiritual/religious identity has changed over the years. An article in Sojourners outlines these changes.
Raised in a Jewish family, he married and raised five children in the faith.
In the late 1970’s after a divorce, he was baptized a Christian. Two of his records were openly oriented to this perspective, but his actual faith journey was complicated, as he continued to attend synagogue and write lyrics that questioned the faith as well as promoting it.
In subsequent years, spiritual themes continue to appear in Dylan’s work in darker, more mystical tones.
NPR interviewed Sean Wilentz, Princeton University professor and historian, and author of the book Bob Dylan In America, and asked him about Dylan’s work and his thoughts about the singer-songwriter being awarded the Nobel Prize.
Bob Dylan, like many if not most literary greats, is an alchemist. He manages to take materials from here and there and to turn them into something different — to make them larger, to make them his own. And Dylan started out working in the American folk song tradition, which is actually the Anglo-American folk tradition, and he took songs that had been sung for hundreds of years and turned them into different works of art.
He’s continued in that vein — Dylan’s career is a series of breaks. I mean, he’s not a person who’s done the same thing throughout and improved on it — he’s rather diverged quite sharply from period to period, but always bringing it together into something that’s a vision very much his own.
Anna North at the New York Times admires Dylan, but doesn’t think this particular prize was appropriately rewarded. North wishes the Nobel committee would reserve it for those who specifically produce literature rather than giving it to someone who is indeed a writer, but whose identity and vocation is more in song. Sean Wilentz thinks this wrongfully denigrates the fact that good lyricists are indeed creating a literature that is worth contemplating, within the context of musical settings.
Well, I would hope that after this, songwriters, serious songwriters — Leonard Cohen’s name comes to mind — would be taken seriously as writers as well. Because they are writers. And it’s really that simple. There’s been this artificial — what do we say, snobbism? — about what literature is and what literature isn’t. I hope that, as much as Bob Dylan has broken down these barriers for his entire career — I hope that this award will help break down those barriers for songwriting generally.
Indeed, Carl Sunstein at the Salt Lake Tribune asserts that “Bob Dylan has surpassed Walt Whitman as the defining American artist, celebrating the capacity for self-invention as the highest form of freedom.”
At any rate, kudos to a man who has been on a long and sometimes strange rambling journey, who has accompanied us on our life travels for over five decade, and who has in many ways helped to define those travels. Congratulations to our Rambler of the Week, Bob Dylan.
• • •
STORIES FROM THE WEEK
✎ DISTURBING HEALTH NEWS
More bad news for the health care system in the U.S. The rate at which women die during pregnancy or childbirth has been rising in the U.S. over the last fifteen years, according to several new studies.
Diane Rehm did a show on the subject this past week, and what the studies show is alarming. One person she interviewed was Marion MacDorman, a maternal and child health researcher at the Maryland population research center at the University of Maryland. MacDorman reported that the maternal mortality rate increased by 27 percent from 2000 to 2014 for a group of 48 states and Washington, D.C., and that the rate nearly doubled in Texas between 2010 and 2012. The maternal mortality rate is the rate of women who die as a result of complications of pregnancy or childbirth. And this can extend beyond pregnancy itself; it can be up to one year after pregnancy. Rates in the U.S. are at 23.8 per 100,000 live births, compared to rates like 4-8 per 100,000 in countries like Germany, the UK and Japan. In Texas in 2013, the number was 35.8. By contrast, California, which has intentionally focused on the issue, the rate decreased from around 21.5 in 2004 to 15 in 2014.
A situation like this should be deemed intolerable in a country like ours.
Nine miles from the volcano the Maasai call the “Mountain of God,” researchers have cataloged a spectacularly rare find: an enormous set of well-preserved human footprints left in the mud between 5,000 and 19,000 years ago.
The more than 400 footprints cover an area slightly larger than a tennis court, crisscrossing the dark gray mudflat of Engare Sero, on the southern shore of Tanzania’s Lake Natron. No other site in Africa has as many ancient Homo sapiens footprints—making it a treasure trove for scientists trying to tell the story of humankind’s earliest days.
Some of the tracks seem to show people jogging through the muck, keeping upwards of a 12-minute-mile pace. Other prints imply a person with a slightly strange, possibly broken big toe.
Yet more tracks suggest that around a dozen people, mostly women and children, traveled across the mudflat together, striking toward the southwest for parts unknown. The mud tracked it all—including the dirty droplets that fell from their feet with each step.
The footprints are near Ol Doinyo Lengai, a volcano that looms over Lake Natron, a place of pilgrimage for the Maasai people. The team of excavators that unearthed them think that the ash-rich mud containing the footprints originally washed off Ol Doinyo Lengai’s flanks, making its way downhill to form the mudflats. The mud’s surface quickly dried out, preserving the prints in a cracked crust. Another flow of debris then buried the footprints at least 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
✄
✎ RUSSELL MOORE’S ELECTION DAY QUANDARY
Ana Marie Cox at the New York Times recently interviewed Russell Moore about the quandary he finds himself in regarding the presidential election. Here is part of what he said:
One of the places of common ground that I’ve found between people on the right and the left is a common commiserating about how bad both of these candidates are.
…I understand why people across the religious and political spectrum would conclude that they have to wrestle with their consciences and vote for one of these candidates. I’m pro-life, pro-family, pro-racial reconciliation, pro-immigrant and pro-character in office, so no matter what happens in November, I lose.
We here at Internet Monk sympathize with Russell Moore and find ourselves in the same quandary. So today we offer our second alternative candidate for your consideration on November 8.
Here’s a talented (?) guy who finds himself out of work and might be interested if the right person asked him. I know he seems a little clueless, but since when has that ever stopped someone from running for president?
✄
✎ C’MON CUBS, WIN ONE FOR BOB!
The TV cameras love to look for celebrities at ballgames, and during the recent Cubs series, comedian Bill Murray was the star most featured.
But there’s another comedian, 87 years old now, who likewise lives and dies with his beloved Chicago Cubs, and that’s Bob Newhart.
In a story at Fox Sports, Bob, a Cubs fan from the time he was a young kid, described how he was actually there the last time the Cubs reached the World Series.
Newhart said he first visited Wrigley Field when he was six or seven years old and grew up going to games with his mother. And when the Cubs won their most recent National League pennant in 1945, a 16-year-old Newhart was among the fans celebrating during the team’s victory parade.
“They had this big motorcade down LaSalle Street, and I was there in the crowd, cheering the victorious Cubs — that’s before they had divisions and all that — before they played the Detroit Tigers,” Newhart said. “So I was there and I’m cheering, yelling to Phil Cavarretta and Stan Hack and Nicholson, Andy Pafko in center field. And they’re all waving back. It was great.”
Ever optimistic, Newhart thinks this year (or maybe 2017) will certainly see them break through and win the Series.
“It looks like it’s going to happen, if not this year then next year,” Newhart said. “But boy, the way they do it — I’m 87 years old, and I can’t take this anymore. Would it be too much to just rout the other team so I wouldn’t have to go through this every game?
“But it’s been a joy,” he continued. “And you know, how much more time do I have left? So if they blow it this time –”
Newhart pauses.
“But I don’t think they will,” he said, picking his thought back up.”They just look too good. So go Cubs, go.”
✄
✎ ANOTHER MIRACLE BY ST. TIM OF TEBOW
Meanwhile, speaking of baseball, the hagiography of St. Tim of Tebow — now trying to make it for the Mets in their minor league system — continues to grow. That transcendent news source, Charisma News, offers a breathless account of how “Tim Tebow’s Prayers Stop[ped] Baseball Fan’s Massive Seizure.”
While other news outlets were content to simply report Tebow’s good deed of helping a man in need, Charisma goes right to the scene and brings us eyewitness accounts captured on tweets, such as:
“Tebow signing autographs. Fan has what looks like seizure. Not moving. Tebow puts hand on him and says a prayer. Man breathes. WOW.”
Eager to confirm their theology, Charisma immediately pronounced this a supernatural intervention: “The violent seizure reportedly stopped moments after Tebow prayed with him. The miraculous healing had many people take to social media expressing their amazement at the power of prayer.”
• • •
LAUGHS FROM THE WEEK
✎ Photo of the Week
Members of the Erie Otters, perfectly aligned on the bench at an Ontario Hockey League game against the Niagara IceDogs.
Note from CM: I had the privilege of going downtown to hear Nadia Bolz-Weber speak tonight. She did a couple of readings, took questions and answers, oversaw her signature “ham raffle,” and signed books and took pictures with folks afterwards. I found her humble, funny, and thoughtful. Yes, she used some words we don’t normally hear in church. No, it didn’t bother me.
Her overall message was the pure grace of God in Jesus, who welcomes us as we really are. She let us know it’s okay to be sinful, flawed humans who need God. That’s not failure, that’s life. In fine Lutheran form, she reminded us that Christians are 100% sinners and 100% saints, and there has never been one of us for whom the percentages shifted. In her benediction, based on the Beatitudes and from the final chapter of her book Accidental Saints, she left us with the wonderful good news that God in Jesus blesses all the wrong people. And aren’t we glad God does?
In the following excerpt from her book, she describes how pastors need this kind of grace as much (sometimes more) than anyone else.
• • •
Absolution for Assholes
“Hello?” Caitlin answered her phone. Thank God.
“Can you meet me for confession and absolution? Like, now?” I wished I had one of those old phone cords so I could twist it around my hand. Sometimes a good fidget can transfer the shakiness from your voice to your fingers.
…Caitlin is my “mother confessor.” She knows me. Really well. And she is unimpressed with my sin. I’ve told her things about myself that I’ve not told anyone else and she still wants to be my friend. Not because she is magnanimous but because she believes in the power of forgiveness and the grace of God. You’d think this would be true of all clergy, but trust me when I tell you it’s not.
“A parishioner of mine died today,” I told her, “and I can’t go comfort his wife until I confess something awful.”
“Come on over,” she said.
An hour later, as I walked into her office, she joked, “Wait. You didn’t kill him, did you?”
Nope. I hadn’t killed Larry. I just hadn’t been a very good pastor to the guy, even though, unlike myself, he was really nice. And now he was dead and I had to comfort his widow and I knew I couldn’t be present to her grief if all I could think of was that stupid thing I did to him recently, which wasn’t very nice.
It was a thing no one would ever know I’d done but that I simply had to confess and be absolved of: I’d purposely left Larry’s address off a mass e-mail I sent out, reminding people to register for the spring retreat. Seriously. Who does a thing like that? It had weighed on me ever since, even though in the grand scheme of crime and betrayal it was, at worst, a misdemeanor.
…Okay, fine, so there was one other thing I’d done to Larry. Hardly worth mentioning…
A week after Larry was diagnosed with a brain tumor, he had e-mailed me saying that he and his girlfriend were afraid of him dying and they wanted to get married the following week, and would I do the wedding? Fortunately, I had an out. As I explained to Caitlin in her office, my policy has always been to undergo a series of premarital counseling sessions before officiating anyone’s wedding, so I said I’m sorry but I couldn’t. In the end they got a shaman who was a friend of his fiancée to officiate.
But the fact is, if my longtime parishioners Jim and Stuart, or another couple I love, had become deathly ill and wanted to get married right away, I’d have done it in a heartbeat. I just didn’t want to do this wedding. So I gave them the excuse about premarital counseling and even got my bishop to cosign….
…Thinking back, I can say that maybe my sin toward Larry doesn’t rank up there with embezzling tithes or schtupping the choir director, but if someone comes to your church and you make up excuses to not serve them with grace and love, it’s still despicable. And the fact that I “learned” from it all and haven’t done that kind of thing since doesn’t make up for it, because I’m sure if I had a minute, I could come up with other things I’ve done in its stead. Which means that I am in perpetual need of grace.
Quietly, Caitlin took it all in. She took a drink of her water, then reached out for my hand and said, “Nadia, Jesus died for our sins. Including that one.”
…I wish I could say that, after the absolution Caitlin proclaimed to me, I was totally freed from any burden of conscience, but that’s not entirely true. It didn’t totally happen until a middle-aged white lady came up to me and said, “You’re Nadia, right?”
She took my hands and looked startlingly straight into my eyes. “I wanted to thank you for having a church where Larry felt so welcome. He spoke so highly of you and your congregation, and I know that having you as his pastor meant a lot for him in the final months.”
There it was. A blessed exchange. My crap for Jesus’s mercy.
I will never know Larry. I’ll never know what it is like to love him, to see him, to know what the source of his tenderness toward his wife was or from where he drew his strength in his final days. That is all lost to me. But for some reason our congregation was a place of comfort for him.
Sometimes God needs some stuff done, even though I can be a real asshole. There is absolutely no justice in the fact that Larry loved me and that church. But if I got what I deserved in this life, I’d be screwed — so instead, I receive that grace for what it is: a gift.
How is it that the people who claim to follow you most closely bear such a marked resemblance to the ones you criticized most during your ministry?
People of the Book.
Separated from “sinners.”
Concerned for your glory.
We are devoted to studying the scriptures and parsing out their meaning and application to our lives.
We have a passion to be pure and holy and right.
We are so concerned about offending you and worried about the lifestyles of others that we are convinced offend you.
We listen to long sermons, attend Bible studies, and try to read our Bibles daily.
We attend church, gather in small groups, and spend the vast majority of our time with other Christians.
We pray for the state of our world and our nation, constantly lamenting how far they have strayed from you, fearing (or are we secretly longing for?) your judgment.
We hide your word in our hearts.
We walk not in the counsel of the ungodly. We do not stand in the way of sinners. We don’t sit in the seat of scoffers.
We have come out from among them and try our best not to touch what is unclean.
We go to Bible-believing, Bible-teaching churches.
We listen to Christian programs and Christian music. We attend Christian schools. We support Christian causes.
We raise our hands and close our eyes when we sing praise songs. We earnestly squinch our eyes when we pray and utter our “amens.”
But still…
Why do I get this feeling that we are missing you?
Why are we so afraid to burst this “bubble” in which we live?
Why do we avoid the world so much — the world you called good?
How is it that we can’t seem to even conceive of obeying some of your clearest instructions? Like “love your enemies” and “do not judge” and “make every effort to keep unity”?
How is it that we can rationalize some of the most hateful words and attitudes imaginable while being convinced that we are serving God?
Why do we leave some of the most obviously needed works of compassion to the “Samaritans”?
How is it that we can spot another’s sin a mile away but cannot see the Pharisee in the mirror?
David Bentley Hart has written a challenging piece at Commonweal, called “Christ’s Rabble,” in which he asks “whether in our wildest imaginings we could ever desire to be the kind of persons that the New Testament describes as fitting the pattern of life in Christ.”
How does the New Testament describe such persons? Hart speaks of them generally in these terms:
…I mean that most of us would find Christians truly cast in the New Testament mold fairly obnoxious: civically reprobate, ideologically unsound, economically destructive, politically irresponsible, socially discreditable, and really just a bit indecent.
Hart wrote this piece in the context of two experiences: doing a new translation of the NT and being involved in a series of lectures in which he argued that genuine Christianity and capitalist culture are incompatible.
My basic argument was that a capitalist culture is, of necessity, a secularist culture, no matter how long the quaint customs and intuitions of folk piety may persist among some of its citizens; that secularism simply is capitalism in its full cultural manifestation; that late capitalist “consumerism”—with its attendant ethos of voluntarism, exuberant and interminable acquisitiveness, self-absorption, “lust of the eyes,” and moral relativism—is not an accidental accretion upon an essentially benign economic system, but the inevitable result of the most fundamental capitalist values.
Hart notes that theological teaching about wealth and poverty made a significant turn early in Christian history (he cites Clement of Alexandria as an example). Instead of taking the New Testament at face value, in all its “raw rhetoric,” Clement and those who followed him distinguished between poverty of spirit (the true and required impoverishment) and actual material poverty (which is not required).
Eventually, this theological movement reached another important moment in the Reformation, when religious anxiety became focused on “spiritual” pathologies such as “works-righteousness,” replacing concerns about actually seeking holiness in our actions and deeds. David Bentley Hart has no stomach for what he thinks amounts to the Reformation’s actual denial of NT teaching: “In a sense, the good news announced by Scripture was that Christ had come to save us from the burden of Christianity.”
The lusty embrace of the material and everyday as embodied in Luther is attractive to Hart — he calls it “the sanctification of the ordinary,” and suggests that it is “Protestantism’s single greatest imaginative contribution to Christian culture as a whole.”
Big problem, however. In Hart’s reading, it simply doesn’t fit the logic and imagination of those who wrote the New Testament. When he reads its pages, rather than seeing a kind of creational “common sense,” he finds only “relentless torrents of exorbitance and extremism” in its teachings. This extremism is not occasional or extraordinary but forms the “entire cultural and spiritual atmosphere” of the Gospels and epistles.
We saw this emphasis in our recent study in James, and Hart correctly observes that James’s radical teachings about poverty and wealth are given in an apocalyptic context, in the light of what Hart interprets to be imminent “final judgment.” Unfortunately, in my view he does not follow the narrative logic of that observation. Is it possible that NT readers are not to universalize all these sayings but rather recognize that we must take into account the crises Jesus and the apostles were facing (for example, the Fall of Jerusalem) when we read texts that tell us that “riches will not save” and that we must not put any trust in earthly security?
There are many places in the epistles where the setting seems to be peaceful enough and where apostolic exhortations don’t even bring up the subject of wealth and the kind of communistic sharing that Hart commends as more “Christian” than modern capitalism. In these more serene everyday contexts, Paul and the other apostles speak a lot more about relational concerns within the churches, keeping a good reputation among their neighbors, and cultivating the virtues of faith, hope, and love. I don’t see them calling business people to abandon their concerns or give all their profits to the poor. When he took his offering from Gentile congregations to help the poor in Jerusalem he urged them to give willingly and did not lay upon them radical obligations regarding their personal finances or possessions.
In my opinion David Bentley Hart overplays his hand when he writes these words as a universal description of the early Christians:
The first, perhaps most crucial thing to understand about the earliest generations of Christians is that they were a company of extremists, radical in their rejection of the values and priorities of society not only at its most degenerate, but often at its most reasonable and decent. They were rabble. They lightly cast off all their prior loyalties and attachments: religion, empire, nation, tribe, even family. In fact, far from teaching “family values,” Christ was remarkably dismissive of the family. And decent civic order, like social respectability, was apparently of no importance to him. Not only did he not promise his followers worldly success (even success in making things better for others); he told them to hope for a Kingdom not of this world, and promised them that in this world they would win only rejection, persecution, tribulation, and failure. Yet he instructed them also to take no thought for the morrow.
And he betrays the utter impossibility of his proposals when he suggests that Clement may have had good intentions about trying to accommodate the Gospel’s teaching to a more Christianized society, but it was the Desert Fathers who actually “took the Gospel at its word.”
Really? I don’t see Jesus or the apostles suggesting that all believers literally abandon the world and go to the wilderness. Paul’s counsel to the Thessalonians, for example, couldn’t be clearer or indeed, more bourgeois:
“Aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you, so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one.” (1Thess 4:11)
I happen to think that Luther’s teaching on vocation was and is a needed corrective to this view that genuine Christianity is only legitimate in its “radical” forms. Hart’s description, to me, is hagiography not reality. Those who are called to more radical vocations are no more holy than anyone else, and they are certainly no more genuine.
Whether it comes from Protestant evangelicals like Francis Chan or David Platt, or from Catholics or Orthodox leaders like David Bentley Hart, the pronouncement that all Christians must be “radical” (however that looks), is in my opinion a misreading of Scripture, an unfortunate denigration of two thousand years of Christians who lived ordinary yet faithful lives and a burden far too heavy to bear to place on God’s people today.
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
• • •
As many of you know, our family is being fruitful and multiplying. Recently, we had our fifth grandchild when we welcomed a little boy into the family, and in the spring we are anticipating our sixth from our other daughter and her husband.
We’re probably having the most fun right now with our granddaughter, who will turn two in January. Those of you with children know that when they begin to learn their first words, parents are eager to teach them manner words, like “please” and “thank you.” So, they’ll hold up a piece of food before the little one, the child will reach for it, and the parent will pull it back and say, “Now, what do you say?” After a bit of training like this, the toddler will say, “Please” or some variation thereof, and the parent will reward him or her with the food. And afterwards, “Now, what do you say?” After some time, the child will learn to say, “Thank you.”
We want our children to have good manners. We know instinctively that manners are designed to show respect to others, and we delight when our kids show kindness and respect.
On one level, our Gospel story this morning might sound like a simple lesson in good manners. Ten lepers approach Jesus and request healing. Jesus gives them instructions about what to do, and when they follow those instructions, they find themselves healed and made ceremonially clean. They continue on their way to do what Jesus told them to do. All except for one, who is so overwhelmed by Jesus’ gift of healing that he turns around, runs back to Jesus, falls at his feet, and says, “Thank you.” Jesus then makes the point that only one out of the ten did this. Only one said thanks.
The lesson most of us would probably draw from the surface of this narrative is that it’s a good thing to say “thank you” to God for the benefits he gives us, that many of us forget to do that, but that God delights when we remember to pause, turn around, and express our gratitude for his grace and mercy.
It’s as though Jesus heals these people, then waits. Then he says, “Now, what do you say? What do you say?” But only one of them has good enough manners to say “Thank you.”
I guess you might draw that lesson from this text, and I have before when I’ve studied it and taught it. However, there are some problems with this interpretation.
First of all, before the one leper turned back, all ten lepers who were healed were doing what Jesus had instructed them to do. What did he say to them, in response to their appeal for mercy? He told them to go and show themselves to the priest, right? That’s exactly what they did. They were obeying, following Jesus’ command. The fact is that nine of them kept going, doing what Jesus said to do. It seems to me that this is not something the text is criticizing.
Second, the story implies that the nine lepers who did not turn back were Jewish. That means they could go to the Jewish priest and show themselves to be clean. But the tenth man was a Samaritan. Even if he had continued in the company of the other lepers when they went to the priest, he would not have been welcomed there. So in reality, he had nowhere to go.
I don’t think this story is simply about the fact that Jesus healed ten people and nine of them failed to turn around and say thank you, while one of them did. The lesson for us is not “give thanks like the one, don’t be like the nine.”
❧
So if that is not the lesson of this story about Jesus, what is? Well, let’s first remember that this is a story about Jesus, it is not first of all a story designed to give a moral lesson to us. It was written to tell us something about him. Let’s try to figure that out first, and then maybe we can draw some lessons for our own lives.
The first thing we read here is that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem. This journey began back in Luke 9:51. Turn there with me. “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” We know, therefore, that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem for the last time, the time when he would be arrested, tried, convicted, crucified, buried, raised from the dead, and taken up into heaven at the ascension.
The next verse, Luke 9:52, tells us that he sent messengers into a village of what kind of people? That’s right, Samaritans. Right at the beginning of the journey, Jesus was dealing with Samaritans. In this case, the Samaritans rejected him and this is the time when James and John asked the Lord if he wanted them to call down fire from heaven on the village like Elijah did in the Old Testament. In response, Jesus rebuked his disciples for their attitude toward the Samaritans.
They journeyed on from there, and after a few other stories we come to a story that begins at Luke 10:25. In this event, a teacher of the law came to Jesus with a question about eternal life. In response, Jesus told him a parable. Do you recall which parable it was? That’s right. We call it the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritans show up again! In this case, Jesus uses the Samaritan as a positive role model of what it means to love your neighbor. That was a real slap in the face to this Jewish lawyer and the other Jews who might have been listening. It would have been like a member of the KKK praising a member of the NAACP.
So, on this final journey of Jesus, we have two occasions when he had occasion to talk about Samaritan people, and in both cases he showed a spirit of inclusiveness and generosity toward them.
Oh, there is one other passage in Luke that we should look at: Luke 4:16 and following. This was Jesus’ inaugural sermon at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. He reads from Isaiah about how he came to set the captives free and give the blind sight. Then he closes the scroll and begins to tell them about what this kind of ministry will look like. Beginning in verse 23, we read:
He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
I want you to note particularly the section here about Elisha and Naaman. That story, when Elisha healed Naaman, took place in the vicinity of Samaria. Naaman was a foreigner and a leper, who washed in the river and was made clean.
In other words, right from the beginning, according to Luke, Jesus said his ministry was going to include people like foreigners and he would impact places like Samaria, and he would heal people like lepers.
What did his hometown friends think of that? They didn’t like it, did they? In fact they tried to kill him by forming a mob and attempting to throw him off a cliff!
And now, in today’s text and the others we have looked at from Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem, these things come back into view again. Foreigners, lepers, the region of Samaria. Our Gospel reading today says that Jesus found himself, as he traveled to Jerusalem, in a region between Samaria and Galilee. It goes on to say that he was approached by lepers. It tells us that among them was a Samaritan. Jesus healed them all, and most of them went on their way, going to the priest as Jesus had instructed them, but it was the Samaritan that responded by turning back, falling at Jesus’ feet, and expressing his gratitude. And, as if we didn’t get the point by that point, the text says plainly, “And he was a Samaritan.”
This is not a story about thanksgiving as much as it is a story about how Jesus intentionally and relentlessly broke down boundaries about who is welcome in the kingdom of God. The Jews and the Samaritans were bitter enemies, not unlike the Jews and Palestinians of today. They stayed away from each other whenever possible. They did not have dealings with each other. They did not think kindly of each other. At times they acted with hostility and violence toward one another.
Jesus apparently didn’t care a fig for any of that. He sought outsiders and even enemies on purpose. He put himself in their world and in close proximity to them. He extended mercy and grace to them. He listened to them and talked to them, touched them and healed them, forgave their sins and welcomed them with kindness into his kingdom.
When others lived in a spirit of fear and distrust, when others thought the best way to stay holy and righteous was to separate themselves from the unclean and maintain strict limits and boundaries, Jesus exhibited an entirely different spirit and mode of operation. From the separationists’ point of view, he went to all the wrong places, engaged all the wrong kinds of people, and said outlandish things like, “Your sins are forgiven” and “Go in peace, your faith has saved you.”
This Gospel story is first of all about Jesus, and this is what Jesus is like.
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But there’s a second point here, and this was even more radical to those who first witnessed it. In this story, Jesus praises the Samaritan for returning and praising God and uses him as an example of faith to his disciples. Verse 17:
Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”
I think Jesus’ point is not to disparage the other nine lepers, who after all, just did what he told them to do. I think his point is to lift up the extraordinary act of the Samaritan leper, who displayed a unique understanding of what had happened. He recognized God working through Jesus. His faith was exemplary. He got it, he really got it, and Jesus wanted to point out the extraordinary fact that it was a foreigner who displayed this kind of faith.
This is akin to what happens in the parable of the Good Samaritan, when Jesus intentionally draws a contrast between the priest and the Levite on the one hand, and the Samaritan on the other hand. The Samaritan, of all people, turned out to be a better neighbor to the man by the side of the road than the religious leaders who passed by!
So, I think the other point in this story is for us to recognize that God is working in the world in ways we cannot even imagine, and that we must not automatically think that because our neighbors are not church-goers or devout people, that God is not active in their lives and that they have nothing to teach us.
It may very well be that one day we’ll find out that they far outshine us in the kingdom of heaven. We may find ourselves dancing down the road one day on the way to church, happy for what God has done for us. And then we might catch a glimpse of our neighbor in the rear view mirror, running back to Jesus, falling on his face, and giving praise to God in a way that far surpasses our ordinary piety. We might see that person we deem ungodly acting as a good neighbor in ways that shame us as we scurry on to participate in our religious activities.
There were ten lepers, after all, on that day. Nine of them went on their way, doing what they had been told to do. But one of them surprised everyone with his actions.
The Rankins as a musical group were born out of the practice of the céilidh, a traditional Gaelic social gathering for storytelling, music, and dancing. The Rankins had twelve children in their small community of Mabou on the west coast of Cape Breton Island who regularly entertained their neighbors on the weekend gatherings.
Five of the children eventually formed a group and performed at various occasions in the 1970s. In the 1980s and 90s they began recording and became an award-winning musical act in Canada, winning several Juno awards, the equivalent of the U.S. Grammy.
Members of the group eventually went their separate ways to pursue independent careers, and brother John Morris and sister Raylene have since died.
The Rankins’ music over the years has included a wonderful combination of original pieces, poignant traditional Gaelic songs, and rollicking jigs and reels. I especially love it in the fall, when the north country cries out amidst fading beauty and joy delights in the harvest dance.
I speak this poem now with grave and level voice
In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.
I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall
Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.
I praise the fall: it is the human season.
Now
No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,
Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth,
Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough,
But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows
Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone:
There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn
Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes.
Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves
And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow
We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know
The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.
It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.
This week we’re inaugurating a new way to open Saturday Ramblings. Each Saturday we will give honor to a Rambler of the Week, someone who shows us what it means to live the journey of life fully.
The only qualifications will be that the person honored will exhibit interesting and praiseworthy characteristics, revealed in the context of some kind of actual journey. I’ll be scouring the internet to find such individuals (or groups) and you are welcome to submit nominations to me during the week via email (just click the link on the right top of the page).
Today, our Rambler of the week award goes posthumously to Norma Bauerschmidt, a 91-year old with endometrial cancer who decided she’d rather head out on the open road than spend the final season of her life in doctor’s offices and suffering the side effects of surgery and treatments.
When she was 90, two days after her husband of 67 years died Norma was diagnosed and the doctor recommended a hysterectomy and chemotherapy. She said no way.
Her son Tim and wife Ramie offered to have Norma come live with them and their dog Ringo. But there was a catch — they live in an RV and travel full time. “I’m 90-years-old,” Norma said. “I’m hitting the road. Let’s go have some fun. I don’t want to spend another minute in the doctor’s office.”
And so began a year-long ramble across the U.S.
Over the course of the year, they traveled nearly 13,000 miles and slept in over 75 locations in 32 states. They visited dozens of national parks, monuments and recreation areas, and Norma got to experience some smaller joys as well, like going up in a hot air balloon, riding a horse and getting a pedicure.
They made it from Michigan to the state of Washington, where Norma died last week at the age of 91.
Now she’s rambling in a better land.
• • •
IM PRESIDENTIAL ENDORSEMENTS
The presidential election is a little more than a month away here in the U.S. We here at Internet Monk don’t like either of the major party candidates, and the “third-party” candidates appear to us to be a few cards short of a full deck. What to do in the face of this dilemma?
We want to help you find alternative candidates in whom you can put your trust to lead our country with vision, wisdom, and skill. So, for the next few weeks we’ll be recommending worthy people for your consideration. We know it’s late, but with a groundswell of support, perhaps one of these outstanding candidates can make their mark this year.
We begin with a man who is as eloquent and well-spoken as he is handsome. Internet Monk proudly recommends you consider casting your vote for Boomhauer in 2016. In the first video, Boomhauer explains his overall philosophy of life, and the second contains a compilation of his wisdom, expressed in a variety of contexts.
• • •
INTERVARSITY ASKS STAFFERS TO CHOOSE
The campus ministry InterVarsity has been conducting an 18-month study on sexuality, and now in light of their conclusions, staffers are being asked to come forward and make their opposition known if they disagree with the theological conclusions detailed in the official document that summarizes their findings. They are asking staffers to do this voluntarily, rather than asking people to assign or affirm any kind of morality clause or statement.
“We’re trusting their integrity that they’ll resign rather than continue to work with an organization that disagrees with them,” said [Greg] Jao [vice president and director of campus engagement]. “We framed it as an involuntary termination even though staff are self-disclosing. We are trying to acknowledge that they would not have chosen this except for the fact we have clarified and reiterated our position.”
The story was covered by Time magazine this week, prompting a lot of discussion. In their article, they summarized the ministry’s perspectives and position:
…“Scripture is very clear that God’s intention for sexual expression is to be between a husband and wife in marriage. Every other sexual practice is outside of God’s plan and therefore is a distortion of God’s loving design for humanity.”
The position paper also outlined theological positions against divorce, sex before marriage, pornography, cohabitation and sexual abuse, but the practical application of the study focused on implications for the LGBTQ community. The July letter [sent to staff explaining the policy] states, “We expect that all staff will ‘believe and behave in a manner consonant with our “Theological Summary of Human Sexuality” paper,’ as described by the Code of Conduct. (To ‘believe and behave’ means we [1] agree with the substance and conclusions of the ‘Theological Summary of Human Sexuality,’ [2] will not engage in sexual immorality as defined in the paper, and [3] will not promote positions inconsistent with the ‘Theological Summary of Human Sexuality.’)”
• • •
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET?
Want to have more fun than you can stand? Try The Conspiracy Blog, your one-stop for keeping up with the wildest and wackiest stories of the treachery and intrigue that only the truly initiated can grasp.
Some of my favorite headlines:
Elvis Presley was Adolf Hitler
Dinosaurs a Myth Designed to Undermine the Bible
Did Obama Have a Nose Job to Hide Davis Resemblance?
Oh, and the crackpot theory of the week:
Obama is Trying to Impeach Himself
You’ll find a dozen categories in which conspiracies abound, including Bible & Religion, World Governments, Historical Conspiracies, Secret Societies, and Media, Television, & News.
Did you know that the YMCA is a CIA front?
That Justin Bieber And Miley Cyrus are actually the same person?
That Catholics may be in conspiracy with pagan Muslims who worship the crescent moon? That Islam itself is a Vatican conspiracy?
That the AIDS virus came from aliens?
That the earthquake in Haiti was caused by a U.S. “earthquake weapon”?
I can’t get enough of this stuff!
• • •
REFORMATION MONTH: LUTHER INSULT OF THE WEEK
• • •
POINTING OUT LITURGICAL ABUSE
Apparently, a growing trend on the internet, “liturgy shaming” finds furious believers using social media to denounce pastors or parishes that in the critics’ eyes are promoting something outrageous in the sanctuary.
Someone in a Catholic parish in Seattle, for example, posted pictures of liturgical dance from their church, clearly intending that they be ridiculed as self-indulgent and in bad taste.
This instance of online liturgy shaming wasn’t unique in its viciousness. I followed a handful of groups on Facebook that frequently engage in this practice, including the amusingly named “SLAP” or “Survivors of Liturgical Abuse in Parishes.” The group exists in part to curate the names of renegade parishes and liturgical horror stories. The posts are often accompanied with photographic evidence, usually something shocking or cringe-worthy.
…if we step back, reflect and pray, it should become obvious that Catholics must avoid using the brute force of the Internet to “expose” liturgical problems and shame the offending parishes. It is both uncharitable and impractical — uncharitable because we often wrongly assume the worst rather than the best intentions of the parish (“they’re heretics”; “this isn’t allowed in the Church”; “they must not care for God or the Eucharist”) without knowing anything about it. It is impractical because viral shaming campaigns are not a realistic method of reform or correction in the Catholic Church. Shaming people does not encourage them to listen; it usually urges them to hide, as this parish did by closing down its Facebook page.
…As Catholics we’re still learning how to navigate the tides of the Internet effectively without falling into worldly and often sinful habits. We will all make mistakes, I’m sure, but we must continue to examine our behavior, promote what is working and throw out what is not.
In the story of the Pharisee and the publican (Luke 18:9-14), we hear a story from Jesus’ lips about how the trappings of religion can keep us far from God. Oddly, the benefits of the religious life that enhance our thoughts, words, and actions, that re-order our relationships and priorities and bring us new purpose and direction, can also corrode our hearts. Such is the human capacity for self-deceit and self-righteousness, that we can transform God’s undeserved blessings into trophies of pride and weapons of contempt.
It’s even more dangerous than that. In the very situation where we are trying to do a faithful and obedient deed, our religious habits can lead us astray. We can forget the simple human act. We can define, “doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God” (Micah 6:8) in such “spiritual” or ecclesiastical terms that we neglect the common practices of ordinary neighborliness that actually embody such Biblical instructions.
It may be time to close the Book, exit the sanctuary, and look into our neighbor’s eyes.
When I first wrote this post a few years ago, I was reading two “new” books by the late Henri Nouwen. Both were assembled from his writing, notes, journals, and courses by friends. (Reviews to come later this week.) As always, when reading Nouwen, I was struck by the simplicity and utter humanity of his words. For Nouwen, any claim to a life with God is not authentic unless it makes us profoundly human. We find God in the brother as well as in the Book, in our neighbor in the world as well as among his people.
Though his ability and wisdom were apparent from the start, Nouwen’s chose to leave the academic world of Harvard University to live among mentally handicapped people, first at L’Arche in France and then at Daybreak community in Toronto. These intimate experiences of companionship and service pressed a deep sense of humanity into Nouwen.
His first assignment at L’Arche was to care for a severely handicapped 24-year-old man named Adam. Adam could not talk, walk, dress or undress himself. His body was misshapen and he suffered from epileptic seizures. One could have no ordinary converse with Adam. Nouwen helped him get up in the morning, bathe and toilet, and transported him to breakfast. He assisted him with eating, which Adam loved to do, taking over an hour at the table for a single meal. In sheer silence. Through this daily companionship, the teacher, a master with words, learned to be silent. The activist learned to be still. The one who thought he must be constantly doing the Lord’s work learned to simply be with another human being.
Their relationship lasted for ten years, and then Adam died. In their time together, God spoke to Henri Nouwen through this profoundly disabled man. He learned to embrace Adam as a brother and friend. He realized that the ones we deem “helpless” can give as much or more than they receive. Adam taught this renowned scholar and priest to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”
Nouwen used to tell a tale from the Talmud to remind religious people that we must not allow our “spiritual” practices to lead us astray from our calling to love our neighbors, to be friends with people like Adam.
One day a young fugitive, trying to hide himself from the enemy, entered a small village. The people were kind to him and offered him a place to stay. But when the solders who sought the fugitive asked where he was hiding, everyone became very fearful. The soldiers threatened to burn the village and kill every person in it unless the young man was handed over to them before dawn. The people went to the Rabbi and asked him what to do. Torn between handing over the boy to the enemy and having his people killed, the Rabbi withdrew to his room and read his Bible, hoping to find an answer before dawn. In the early morning, his eyes fell on these words: “It is better that one man dies than that the whole people be lost.”
Then the Rabbi closed the Bible, called the soldiers, and told them where the boy was hidden. And after the soldiers led the fugitive away to be killed, there was a feast in the village because the Rabbi had saved the lives of the people. But the Rabbi did not celebrate. Overcome with a deep sadness, he remained in his room. That night an angel came to him and asked, “What have you done?” He said: “I handed over the fugitive to the enemy.” Then the angel said: “But don’t you know that you have handed over the Messiah?” “How could I know?” the Rabbi replied anxiously. Then the angel said: “If, instead of reading your Bible, you had visited this young man just once and looked into his eyes, you would have known.”
• Spiritual Direction, p. 26f
It may be time to close the Book, exit the sanctuary, and look into our neighbor’s eyes.
This article in the Daily Beast
✎ DISTURBING HEALTH NEWS
, she left us with the wonderful good news that God in Jesus blesses all the wrong people. And aren’t we glad God does?
Last year, 
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