Stop, Look, and Listen
Luke 10:25-37

July 17, 2005

Bethlehem - one word or two? A rail way crossing sign, three words or two? I have chosen to divide today’s sermon into three scenes with the words “stop, look, and listen.” To our ears Bethlehem is one word. Yet its two words - “house of bread” or “house of war” - recognize the two biblical words Bet and Lehem the King James translators faced as did a modern Israeli map maker. The map shows the Bethlehem in Judea near Jerusalem as one word and a BET LEHEM Ha GALIT for another “Bethlehem” near Nazareth.

I retired at just the right time for the late Barry Bushell, interlibrary loan and our Saskatoon church bookstore to flood my bookshelves and mind with new ideas on biblical material. My wife’s internet connection let me type “Bethlehem ha Galit” into its search engine. Full STOP - scene one. The search engine Google scanned its files and found only one author and one place in Galilee to wake up both the right and left sides of my brain. Bet Lehem ha Galit, only 7 kilometers from Nazareth, is clearly marked on the Israeli map Ed Tucker brought back from his recent trip to the Holy Land.

Bob Kitchen tells me there is no “Th” letter combination in Hebrew. The King James translators’ “th” made two words read as one. There are several Bethlehems in ancient Israel. Bob wasn’t as excited as I that the next village on the map from Nazareth was called Bet Lehem. I asked if a young woman in the final days of her pregnancy could survive a 150 mile donkey ride to the Judean Bethlehem. Or if another Bet Lehem right next to Nazareth... might be the one.

A private internet letter stirs the one author’s imagination. A purchaser has found a rambling old house in the nearer Bet Lehem. And has learned of a catholic church that once had beautiful frescoes. Removed to Rome in the 1950’s, they have disappeared. Full stop again. The letter writer wonders about it as he readies his home for his family. And the author turns his thoughts to Joseph whom he places in Bet Lehem ha Galit as a farmer carpenter. Bet Lehem ha Galit. Four separate words if you are still counting.

To earn some money with his carpentry and use the time before he can plant his crops, Joseph travels those 7 kilometers to Nazareth. And that’s how he comes to Mary’s family home. Many catholic accounts suggest Joseph is older than Mary. Look at your Christmas art. That he could be a widower who needs a wife to look after his children in Bet Lehem of Galilee. Mary agrees. Tongues wag in Nazareth. He takes her to his nearby town to protect her from their gossip. A little homesick, she visits her cousin Elizabeth. But when Mary’s time comes it makes sense that Jesus will be born in that nearby Bet Lehem of Galilee.

And there is ,more that flows from that. A husband was given a place to live by her family. Joseph with a new wife, a new baby and his other children is naturally expected by the first wife’s family to return to Mary’s Nazareth. “Let her family provide them with a place to live.” End of scene one. It is time to LOOK.

Scene two begins around the kitchen table in Westminster United (Regina)’s church lounge where Crosstown AOTS plans its future meetings. On the wall a poster of the laughing Christ - young, Jewish, and full of life. We agree to ask Florence Paull to speak that month to our supper meeting. About Jesus, she brings us the word “Mamzer” by another author. Jesus was destined to be a loner.

The two scenes mesh for me. Nazareth tongues did not wag because of Mary’s pregnancy. Those who said “can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” looked down even more at the Galilean Bet Lehem. They targeted Jesus because Mary had married into the wrong community! That’s what the word Mamzer could mean. (It still happens)

The loner spends a lot of time roaming the hills. He enjoys the company of hermit shepherds and other outcastes. He understood them, and valued their friendship, and probably gained from them the questioning skills that impressed doctors of the law on his family’s pilgrimage trip to Jerusalem. Jesus stayed behind for three days. One can imagine that the doctors of the law wanted to keep him with them. Just as Samuel’s mother had given Samuel to the priest Eli. The Bible is silent on his childhood. Since Jesus returns to Nazareth with his family and increase in stature and wisdom, one can assume he turns again to the shepherds and outcastes because they would listen and respond to him.

Stop. Look and listen. To LISTEN is our third warning sign.

Today’s listening flows from the research of the Jesus Seminar. In Robert W. Funk’s Honest to Jesus, he is inclined to the view that “Jesus caught a glimpse of what the world is really like when you look at it with God’s eyes.” His understanding of what the world really looks like to God filled his life fully. “Jesus endeavored to pass that glimpse along in short stories we call parables,” what Funk calls “subversive proverbs.”

There is a Good Sam trailer club. The decal of the guy with a halo of helpfulness. Good Sam is the title Funk gives to Luke’s telling of Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. But Luke individualizes the older story. What else must I do? Who is my neighbour? Go and do thou likewise. Luke individualizes the story because thirty years after Jesus’ death Samaritans were just another group of Gentiles that the early church was trying to reach.

To recover what is hidden or lost and to pluralize it, turn the clock back thirty gospel years. Put yourself in a crowd of Judeans hearing Jesus for the first time. Jesus knows how to “hook” his audience. All of them know the dangers of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, or Jericho to Jerusalem. They shudder in unison as the traveler is set upon and dragged half dead into the ditch. He has their sympathy. It could be any one of them. Their concern concentrates on the story’s victim. Full STOP.

But Jesus changes the tempo and divides his audience. Half of them are sure the temple industry, its priests and Levites are a drain on their meager incomes. What Jerusalem does politically bodes ill for everyone’s peace and safety. “Good to see the high and mighty brought down a peg.” But LOOKing further ahead. the other half understand the need to have proper rituals and attendants. They search for ways to excuse the two religious figures. Why, the man in the ditch might be dead. No amount of ritual washing could restore that priest in time for his priestly role. The Levite must hurry on his way. Or he won’t be there in time to make sure everything is ready. Yet none of them expect the curve Jesus is going to add to his story. Let us LISTEN.

At the mention of the word Samaritan their anger is redirected -- to Jesus. If anyone is going to be a hero, let it be one of their own. To be fair, if there were any Samaritans in the crowd, unimaginable as that would be, they would be equally angry. Jesus’ story for their ears and ours is thirty years earlier than Luke’s preserving of the words. Why would a Samaritan put himself out to help any Judean? Back in Jesus’ day, Jews and Samaritans had nothing but hatred for each other’s past wrongs. Jesus is risking a lot to make his point. But for Luke writing his Jesus Story 30 years later, Samaritans are just another group of gentiles, and Christians want ot forget past enmities.

The parable is not about Samaritan helpers. Only victims need apply for help. Those religiously privileged do not need help, so they don’t stop and help. Religious outcastes know they need assistance. They can stop because they have nothing to lose.

1. In God’s domain help comes only to those who have no right to expect it and cannot resist it when it is offered.

2. Help always comes from the unexpected quarter.

Funk further reduces those two statements to one that is quite unlike the personal focus added to it by Luke and others like ourselves.

In God’s domain help is perpetually a surprise.

For this Galilean Jesus, to all that goes with God’s choice of Galilee, to this loner who found his response in those of low estate, to this teller of plural political parables who dared to challenge every certainty of his time and tradition -- may we dare to live our collective “Amen.”

Preached by Bob Gay
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan