Testing Jesus

One of the things I seem to be accumulating is a collection of hymn books.  I have the red hymnbook from the 1970’s, the green hymn book from the 90’s, Voices United and More Voices.  I even have the 1950’s Songs of the Gospel which was the first hymn book I ever sang from as a child.  And now that I’m on a subcommittee helping with the new hymn book with over a thousand submissions we’re wading through, I’m very aware of the hard work that goes into putting it together.  And how much compromise and testing goes into selecting hymns. And how no matter how hard we work, there will be someone unhappy with the decisions that were made. 

Cecile passed on this little gem to me (pictured on the right here) when they were getting packed up for their move.  It is a Methodist hymnbook, (Methodists were part of our founding congregations, where we get the dove in our crest), and the preface described the need for a hymn book for the newly amalgamated Methodist Church of Canada of 1874, between the Wesleyan Methodists and the Methodist New Connexion of Canada. They wanted a Canadian hymnbook that would unify them in song.

But there’s something about hymn books that have the critics hunting for all the problems they can find.  When Voices United came out, I went through the Green Hymnbook to see which were kept and which were included.  There were a few, like “Give me Oil in my Lamp” that I was surprised didn’t make it.  So, it was amusing to see someone wrote in this old copy, “Why omit Charles Wesley’s ‘Rejoice the Lord is King?’”

Testing the decisions of the hymn committee.  We do that.  We test.  We challenge.  We question, especially anything that is new.  Maybe because we are in a grumpy mood, or because we have a level of expertise that is higher than what we think the other person has. Or because we have an idea worth contributing.  Or because we are coming from a less than humble attitude of superiority.  Or because we find someone else’s idea threatening.  Or even worse, because we find that person themself threatening.

The lawyer felt threatened by Jesus’ new approach.  Maybe he distrusted the charisma or the leadership skills, the new ideas or the sense of authority or the growth of new disciples and followers.  Maybe he had a toothache that day, or his supper hadn’t agreed with him.  Regardless, he didn’t like what Jesus was doing, and he was determined to test Jesus.

So Jesus pulled out a story that has become so famous that as soon as we hear the words “Good Samaritan”, we know it.  Folks who have never heard the story may still know the phrase, and it’s interesting that when I got my Naloxone training, I was told about the ‘Good Samaritan’ law, which was put in place so that if one addict tries to save another addict’s life from an overdose, they will not be arrested.  Good Samaritan was even used this week for a CBC story of people helping pull a man out of a burning car in Ontario. It’s a familiar phrase and there may be people who have no idea that Jesus invented it in response to being tested.

It was a shocking story, deliberately challenging the lawyer so badly that he could not answer Jesus’ question of who actually acted like a neighbor.  If Jesus was here today, the story would be about a Ukrainian civilian who was hurt in a missile strike.  A Ukrainian Orthodox priest walked by and crossed to the other side instead of taking care of the wounded civilian, then President Zelensky also walked by and again crossed to the other side.  Then a Russian soldier walking by found the Ukrainian civilian, dug them out from the rubble of what was left of their house, and carried them to the nearest hospital.  The soldier gave the hospital money for antibiotics and promised to take care of any additional expenses on their return.  The shock of the Russian being the one to help is like the scandalized lawyer’s inability to even say the word ‘Samaritan’.

Jesus tested him, "Which of these three was the neighbor?"  The lawyer answered, "The one who showed kindness."

Jesus challenged his tester to move beyond wordsmithing and legalese, logic puzzles and abstract philosophy which put following God into an intellectual exercise for abstract arguments.  Jesus wanted his tester to see the debate about defining neighbor more than mental gymnastics, but something that challenged the emotions as well as the logic.  And not only moving it from an ethical debate to an exercise in empathy, ultimately moving it into the realm of action.  As one Maritime song put it, move from the head to the heart to the hands.  How do we get our faith to move in that direction?

Someone recently joked that the difference between the Methodists and the Presbyterians is that when you tell a Methodist about a problem, they will say, “I will pray for you”.  When you tell a Presbyterian, they will say, “I will think about you.”  We who are United can combine the best of both worlds, think, pray, and see what we can do, not to take over and fix things for people which just enables them, but what we can do to empower them, help them come up with their own actions and support those actions as best we can.  Our hymns can help us do that.  When we read the words of the hymns, we engage our thinking.  When we hear the music, we engage our feelings.  When we sing the words, we engage our bodies in acting on the words and
feelings.  Test, empathize and act in compassion and love.  The more we do that, the more we become able to think of and respond to the neighbors we are called by God to love. May it be so for us all!