The Way Home

And He instructs His Apostles,

The blessings soon to alight upon the Gentiles and Samaritans are a subject for another day. This morning our subject is the Twelve sons of Jacob who have entered the Land of Promise, and the spiritual state of their descendents, the Lost Sheep of Israel (Jacob's other name).

What do we mean by lost? They are lost to God, no longer in relationship with God, and have no hope of finding their way home to His Kingdom.

Is not this the sole purpose of the Advent of God? After all, the nascent Church was called The Way, that is, "the Way home." This is explicit:

God's people, you see, are lost. God, therefore, has sent His Son. He is the Way home.

Exactly how have God's people become lost? As our many visits to the Tribe of Gad have demonstrated, the reasons are interior ones: fascinated with sensual life, we disfigure ourselves into a state that is repugnant to God. That is, transformation of body and soul and mind, as the Gospel reminded us this morning, are fundamental where the Divine is concerned. Everything depends on that. At the very moment He begins His mission as the Father's Emissary, Jesus says, "Metanoeite!" meaning, "Be transformed ... in body, heart, soul, and mind! The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near. Be cleansed! Be made whole! in order that you may enter it."

Of course in the alternative is not entering the Kingdom of Heaven. It was all around us! And we never entered it.

Jesus is the Way. His life is our pattern. As He is holy, so we must be holy. This is also explicit. To borrow the words of St. Peter,

So here is the entire program of Christian life, which we call theosis. Jesus is the Way to the Father, Who is Holy. In order to follow Him on the Way, we must become Him, for the Way is no inanimate path, but rather a Person, the Most Holy Person of God. His way must be our way.

As Jesus says, there is no other path to the Father, which is to say, there is no "middle way," no "half-way" (Rev 3:16). Either we are God's, or we are entirely divorced from God, giving ourselves body and soul to the demons. For if nature abhors a vacuum, then spiritual nature can never be vacant. Either we are full of the Holy Spirit, or we go down the dark path of demon possession. It is for us either on or off, either yes or no, either light or darkness. There is no "life in twilight."

These past two Sundays we have reflected on the many ways we might open ourselves to demon possession. The Gospel narrative reveals a Levant that is teeming with possessed people, who were once God's own people, the descendents of Jacob, but who are now lost to God.

But how could this be? we ask. Did not God pattern man after Himself? Did not God set His Own Image upon man? Certainly, our free choice to depart from God is partly to blame. But as in our own culture, where public prayer has been outlawed, the Hebrew people in the centuries just preceding the Savior's birth, were also cut off from their wholesome spiritual traditions.

You know, all of us, so old, knew this world. Each day began with prayer in public school. How many people went to church in 1930? 73% of the entire population. How many in 1945? 76%. You remember Sundays. The stores were all closed. The streets were empty. And everyone gathered with their families following worship at church. Americans today have been robbed of this good world.

We often speak of the Babylonian Captivity (589-586 B.C.) destroying the Southern Kingdom of Judah, exiling a third of its population, and crippling its Hebrew culture. But we ought also mention the Assyrian Captivity (732-722 B.C.) which destroyed the Northern Kingdom, relocated several thousand Israelites, and deeply fractured its culture. The Ten non-Judean Tribes who lived in the Northern Kingdom would ever after be known as the "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel." During these eighth-century invasions, the Southern Kingdom survived intact, that is, until the Neo-Babylonian invasions began less than two centuries later.

As the Tribes of Levi and Benjamin, by tradition, fled from the North to the Southern Kingdom, the phrase "Tribe of Judah" would come to signify both Judah and Benjamin. By contrast, the Tribe of Levi, a race of priests, would occupy an outsiders role in the Zion Temple. They were called Levites. They would not be permitted inside the Holy of Holies, which was reserved to the Sadducees, also known as the Zadokites, or "the priests of the Temple."

Both Northern and Southern Kingdoms had temples. The capital city of the Southern Kingdom, Jerusalem, was the site of the Temple on Mt. Zion. The capital city of the Northern Kingdom, Shechem, was the site of the Temple on Mt. Gerizim. (According to first century geography, this would been Samaria.) Both kingdoms claimed their temple mount to be the historical Mt. Moriah, where Abraham had laid his son Isaac on an altar. Each kingdom regarded its temple to be the holiest site on earth, the navel of the world. They both claimed that their temple mount was where Joshua erected the first altar. Excavations now suggest that the Mt. Gerizim Temple was built upon that most holy site.

And while I have been tempted in the past to view Mt. Gerizim as the place where the religion of the Patriarchs might have survived, archeological evidence, turning up many thousands of animal bones, shows that blood sacrifice was practiced there, too. So you see, the Assyrians influenced the Northern Kingdom (two and a half-centuries after Solomon) in the same way the Neo-Babylonians would influence the Southern Kingdom. Both Kingdoms would become vassal states. They were forced to accept the customs of their overlords. As we considered recently, ancient Persian inscriptions attest that a primary duty of the king was to ensure that all his subjects practiced correct religious rites according to their pagan beliefs.

The Gospel of St. John attests these counter-claims through St. Photini as she encounters Jesus in Shechem:

Jesus' answer provides one of the keys that unlock the Scriptures:

That is, the worship outlined by the Levite Moses, signified by both temples, is wrong-headed. As Jesus tells Photini, "You worship what you do not know" (Jn 4:22). True worship, He says, is the seeking of salvation, which "is of the Jews" (insofar as Jesus descends from the House of Judah .... though never a Jew). Photini agrees saying, "The Christ will tell us all things."

But what exactly is the seeking of salvation? It is surely not animal sacrifice, signified by both the first-century Mt. Zion Temple and the Mt. Gerizim Temple, but rather a "worship [of] the Father in Spirit and Truth." True worship offered to the Father, therefore, is a renovation of one's spirit in the original Image in which we were made, which is the Truth — that is, the Image of the Lord Christ, Whom we must follow and emulate.

☦

Let us remain right here in Samaria as we open the story that is lesson today. A man lies naked and bleeding beside the Jericho Road, a rough and arid road strewn with sharp rocks. Sr. Mary Anne has seen this road. So have I. I suppose you could not fall on this road without cutting open your skin. He has been set upon by thieves who rob him even of his clothing, which might have protected his tender skin. Soon a traveler comes upon the scene, a priest of the Jerusalem Temple (i.e., a Zadokite). He carefully gives the wounded man a wide berth, for he could be dead, which would render the priest ritually unclean and therefore unable to serve in the Temple. Certainly, he is bleeding, which likewise would render the priest unclean. Soon another traveler comes along, a Levite. He also gives the bleeding man a wide berth lest he also become ritually unclean.

This is the historical perspective, but let us now read the passage allegorically. You recall that we are commanded the read the Scriptures historically, allegorically, tropologically, and eschatologically. So let us consider the allegorical meaning.

Two men of the Zion Temple are walking down the Jericho Road to Jerusalem. The first, a Sadducee, represents the Babylonian Captivity. The second, a Levite, represents the Assyrian Captivity. You see, the priest has the mind of Babylon, and the Levite has the mind of Assyria (which is not very different). Both of their ancestral traditions have been waylaid by robbers. These are not highway robbers, but spiritual robbers, for the impose their pagan religion upon those they vanquish. This is commanded by their divine law. Their subjects, therefore, are have been stripped of true worship consigned to "worship what they do not know." That is, as priests who served within vassal states of Assyria and, later, under Babylonian and, later, Persian control, they have been formed and trained in Mesopotamian ritual. In the Southern Kingdom, the Ezra-Nehemiah tradition has declared this to be the new holy.

So lost are they in these alien rites, that they cannot see through its noxious fog. Their only thoughts are for the the responsibilities and rituals of their altars, which are soaked with animal blood. This blood, ironically, they deem holy. Yet, they are blind to what is precious in God's sight, which is this man's life ebbing out of him onto the Jericho Road, this man on whom He has set His Image, this man for whom He has sent His Only Son. So they leave this man to die in this wilderness place so as not to violate the petty rules of a temple cultus that is sickening to God.

Of course, the cosmic irony of this story is that God's Son will also be set upon by robbers. He will also be stripped of His clothing. (You recall the scene of the Roman soldiers gambling to see who will get His clothing.) He also will be beaten until He bleeds. And He also will be left do die. No priest or Levite of the Zion Temple will come to His aid. Indeed, in their spiritually lost state, it is they who will murder Him. He offered Himself as a ransom and then gazed out on a horizon to see who would come to rescue Him. But no one crossed that horizon. No one stepped forward to say, "I will be His ransom!"

Who will come to the aid of thi bleeding man on the Jericho Road? Who is this Good Samaritan? And who is his neighbor? His Neighbor, stripped and bleeding and left to die, is, of course, God Incarnate, "the Son of Man [who has] come .... to give His life as a ransom for many" (Mt 20:28, Mk 10:45). But anyone who has offered himself to be a ransom might himself be ransomed. This was well known if only by virtue of the story of Damon and Pythias teaches — a story known and reverenced throughout the first-century world and cited by St. Luke as the banner under which Christians sail (recall this passage from the Book of Acts).

First-century listeners of this parable would have instantly recognized the significance of the characters: the Zadokite priest, the Levite, and the scene set in Samaria, where the Gerizim Temple had been destroyed not so long ago by these same Sadducees and Levites. That is, Jesus' audience would have recognized the competing religious claims among the Tribes of Israel and their willingness to destroy each other over these differences .... no longer able even to countenance simple virtue or respond to life-or-death need, so lost were they in their internecine battles.

What they certainly could not see, Jesus teaches them: the victim in all of this is the Living God. God has sent His Son to the lost that they might be found. He will offer Himself as a ransom. But who will come to His rescue? Who will come to His aid? This He teaches them with the present parable. We might say that this is the towering significance of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. How many of us have noticed that the Victim is Jesus?

Do you have eyes that see? Then come to the aid of a precious human life who is dying before your eyes. Do you have eyes that can penerate Divine mystery? Then see the Living God standing right before you. See how He has offered Himself for us. But who will come to His aid? He is the Way and the Truth and the Life. He shows us the Way to the Father. Who, then, will lay down their lives for this One who calls us His friends? Who will step forward to be the ransom for the One Who has ransomed so many?

Do you see what I am saying? Yes, the many wars and invasions suffered by the House of Israel are regrettable and certainly a sore trial. But so long as the Tribes cling to the Kingdom-of-Heaven religion, the way of the Patriarchs, they will be safe in the end. Sadly, however, "the Jews" (as the Hebrew St. John called them in distaste) have become so absorbed in their hybrid religion Judah-ism, dictated and imposed by Mesopotamian overlords, that relationship and intimacy with God has finally eluded them entirely, even with the Son of God who has offered His hand to them.

And now He lies on a road, assailed by robbers, like the evil tenants of the Vineyard who would kill the Heir (Lu 20:14), and the Jews leave Him to die because to help would offend their Babylonian-Persian sensibilities. Is this not a fitting image for their entire society, ignoring the Christ, Who bleeds on a Cross, while they ensure that their Mesopotamian customs and good order?

And can we not say the same thing of ourselves? The Way of the Christ, the Way of Theosis — of rejecting the world, of striving for holiness, which is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, of laying down one's life for a Heavenly cause — these have mostly eluded us in twenty-first-century America. Either God is entirely rejected out of hand, replaced by the false freedom of pleasure-seeking, or the Way of Jesus and the Apostles has been eclipsed by the American religion: the instant-gratification religion that we hear or see on every airwave and in most towns and cities.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan turns out to be a cornerstone of Jesus' ministry: His cry to us is to "Wake up! .... Metanoeite!" He proclaims, "The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near!" We are to follow Him. We are to put ourselves out as the Good Samaritan has done. We are to become transformed, mind, body, and soul, becoming more and more like Jesus, our Master.

Here is the true religion. Here is the Life He has ordained. "Greater love," He says, "hath no one than this: than for a man to lay down his life for his friends." This is the Way.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.